#but if people have blacklisted it because they dont wanna read negative stuff then that's fair enough

[herinsectreflection]

What is it you don't like about Spuffy?

For what it's worth, there's a lot of stuff I do like about Spuffy. I think their dynamic is very interesting and brings a lot of great stuff to the show. Some of their scenes together are among my favourite scenes in the show. I think they have great chemistry and their blossoming romance is compelling. I have a (small) Spotify playlist for them. I love Spuffy. But also, sometimes, I hate Spuffy. I contain multitudes. So here I will focus on what I do not like. I just don't want to be pigeonholed as a "Spuffy hater" or whatever because that's not me, and also that's a boring way to interact with media. But also I have opinions and sometimes I do hate Spuffy, so here we go.

Fair warning, this is more a subjective rant that substantial media critique.

My problems with Spuffy lie almost entirely with the way they are used in S7. Actually - scratch that, because S7 contains their best scenes. Their gentle holding in Touched is one of the most romantic moments in the series, and the church scene in Beneath You is a genuinely brilliant bit of television. The problem is that almost nothing between those two moments works for me.

I feel like there's a missing section in Buffy's arc. She goes from being pretty standoffish and conflicted about him in Beneath You (which makes perfect sense to me) to passionately singing his praises by Never Leave Me. I think that "I've seen your penance" line is what breaks me. Because... what penance? What has Spike actually done up until that point? All he's done is be crazy in a basement and hypnotically murder people.

It presents Spike choosing to get a soul as redemption in itself, that alone completely wipes away any negative feelings Buffy might understandably have towards him. This is where the show loses me on this relationship because I wanted a much slower burn, with Buffy gradually growing to trust Spike and open up to him in a new way. What I feel like I got was Buffy accelerating to this passionately pro-Spike position in a few episodes, and then being locked in that mode for the rest of the season. It's an inadequate response to what happened in Seeing Red and Buffy's trauma, and it's just a more boring story for me.

This is related to my wider frustrations with how S7 uses Spike. Spike is one of my favourite characters, and I don't think S7 serves him well at all. Like a lot of stuff in S7, there are the bones of a wonderful arc, taking him from a lost boy broken by his own choices in Beneath You to a "champion" in Chosen. But the meat is entirely lacking. Where is the actual arc? Where are the moments he is challenged, that he makes decisions, that he changes his course? He is made an object in the first half of the season - being crazy, being mind-controlled, being captured. His big moments in the second half involving reclaiming the metaphorical skin of a woman he murdered and then verbally torturing her son - not exactly "champion" material there.

Post-S5, there is a real dearth of Spike having meaningful relationships with anyone that isn't Buffy. People talk a lot about his affection for Dawn, but they have nothing after Bargaining, and Spike is an active hindrance to her and Buffy's relationship in S6. Obviously Joyce is gone. He stops having scenes with Xander, Willow, or Giles like he did in S4. He almost stops existing outside of Spuffy. Which is great if you're really into Spuffy but is frustrating if you want to see Spike form bonds with many different characters. His romance starts to feel like a straightjacket on his character, confining him to one thing rather than expanding his horizons. It reminds me a lot of Angel in S3 - a character constricted, not able to reach their full potential until they move over to AtS.

Honestly, this is all just stuff that I wish was better than stuff that is actually bad. On its own, this would just leave me with a relationship I generally liked and would cut a bit of slack. However, S7 also does its best to make me actively resent Spuffy.

"S7 ruined Buffy's relationships with the Scoobies in order to make Spike look better" is an old take that I think doesn't do justice to the complexity of the situation. I don't like to agree with it because it almost seems boring at this point, and I don't like to take boring perspectives. And yet... I can't help but agree with the general gist, if not the specifics. S7 repeatedly pits Spike against every other character, and then comes down hard on Spike's side. It seems to take Spike's insistence that he is "the only one there for [Buffy]" in S6 (there I think a transparently self-serving narrative) and swallow it wholly unironically. And all I can think is what an awfully unromantic idea. I can't imagine anything worse than a relationship that is oppositional to friends and family. It works for S6, which is meant to be this fascinating toxic codependent mess, and I love it there. But S7 wants to present a better, healthier version of their relationship, and yet this aspect feels obviously unhealthy.

And it's just... so unnecessary. There is absolutely no reason for these relationships to be in competition. There should be space for all of them. And yet the LMPTM/Empty Places debacles destroy Buffy's platonic relationship, and hold up Spike positively in comparison. As someone who is far more invested in Buffy's relationships with Giles, Xander, Willow and Dawn than I am her relationship with Spike, it makes me resent the latter when they should be able to coexist just fine.

Where I disagree with the aforementioned "S7 ruined other relationships to prop up Spuffy" take is that I don't think the writers are trying to do this. I think they're trying to say something about self-reliance and the toxicity of concentrated power. Judging from the way they are written in Chosen, I think S7 thinks it's repaired the broken Scooby bonds. The problem is that it never did - it skipped actually resolving Empty Places and so it ends up feeling like some relationships were torpedoed and others were propped up.

Kind of related sidenote - one of my largest pet peeves about S7 is how it shows Buffy's growing affection for Spike by having her prioritise his health/safety over others. Like Xander will be bleeding out from a huge gut wound or Dawn will have a metal bedframe thrown at her head, and Buffy will rush to Spike who has, like, a cut lip. I get why Spuffy fans would find this cute (and I know they do because I've seen the gifsets) but I find it irritating rather than endearing. Girl he is fine. He's a vampire. Your best friend is dying. Have some priorities.

(Spiral does this the right way round when Buffy ignores Spike's booboos to concentrate on Giles, and actually makes me like Spuffy way more.)

And kind of related to that - the way that LMPTM presents Buffy as being willing to sacrifice Dawn to save the world but Spike is a line she cannot cross*? Absolutely dire, bottom 5 moments in BtVS history. No love interest should come above Dawn, ever. I hate it. LMPTM actually makes me livid like four separate times.

(*Yes I know it's not literally saying that because there is an actual military/tactical reason to not just let Spike be murdered but the episode is structured as if it is saying that and that matters.)

Spuffy is almost an Uncanny Valley ship to me. It contains a lot of tropes and themes that I usually love in romances, and there are times when I absolutely adore them. But there are so many little things that are just a bit off from where I want them that I have moments of not being able to stand them. They're kind of the opposite to Bangel - a ship that just personally doesn't appeal to me but I find basically fine for what it is and never annoys me (in S1-3. I have some issues with the way it's used after this point). They're a ship that is absolutely my kind of thing and I feel like I should like more than I do, but has moments where the way it is written enrages me.

So I end up feeling the same about them both - I see the appeal, I respect each of them for what they are, and I think they are both very important relationships for different times in Buffy's life. But ultimately I find both Spike and Angel more interesting as characters outside of these romances, and I want Buffy to move on from them both.

Finally - and this is something that has nothing to do with the actual show and is entirely down to my own fandom experience - but I think I've just seen too much Spuffy lately. It's very popular here, and I think I followed a lot of pro-Spuffy blogs because honestly I tend to agree with Spuffy shippers on most parts of the show outside of Spike being Buffy's true love or whatever. And you know when something is just fine to you, you don't really have passionate feelings about it but everyone around you is obsessed with it and so you start to be irritated by it? That used to be BBC Sherlock for me. Lately it's been Spuffy. There was just too much of it on my dash and it has made me more negative and petty about the relationship even though there's plenty I love about it. I've had to unfollow a few people - not because they've done anything wrong but just to reduce the proportion of Spuffy on my dash. Honestly, ask me about Spuffy in a few months and I'll probably have a different take because I am 100% being influenced by my own fandom habits here.

[dairy-farmer]

Hey dairy, with the tumblr guidelines changing- is that gonna affect you? I'm sending messages to all my favorite content creators and since some of your fics are explicit I was wondering if you were going to be negatively impacted?

well first i just wanna say how touched i am by your message!!! thank you so much for the concern!!

and as for being affected, i think i got off pretty easy? (i know ive seen posts by a few nsfw writers i follow who’s stuff will fall under the ‘blacklist’ and are considering moving to other platforms)

 i won’t be impacted very much if at all. my content is all located and viewable on another site (that is archive of our own), tumblr serves as the intermediary platform where i can interact further with people who follow my stuff and even answer questions about fics since that’s not something really possible on ao3 (given the character limit on comments and lack of things like IM’s). like the most nsfw i get on this blog is maybe re blogging explicit art (which i rarely do and always tag) and posting the link to an explicit fic of mine.

according to this post by the staff “Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose...”

so if my links are ever like determined to be ‘inappropriate’ or violating the new guidelines ill probably like...move all my fic stuff to twitter?l ike i dont have one yet and id need to make one -but id probably just move things like posting links to fics, answering questions (which may be inconvenient for some because i think a lot of people are comfortable with the abilities to choose to ask questions anonymously). i mean id try to keep posting on tumblr because it’s my primary source for fandom stuff like art, theories, and reading fic content from other writers but if these new guidelines wipe those out then...there’s really no purpose in me being here either and maybe on a platform like twitter id give your guys like real time updates on fics or when new chapters are coming out since it’s structured in a way that makes that much easier than clicking open tumblr and making a textpost about it and then having it being immediately buried by 100 of mine and other people’s reblogs and posts

but yeah, for now i guess we’ll see what happens on dec 17 and whether ill have to take any steps to keep in touch with you guys