#it was also nice to do something for bangel again (my first of the year) because i've so been wanting to. i just didn't know what but i've

[oveliagirlhaditright]

"Miss You" by Sweetbox. Somewhat inspired by how one of the Buffy writers said that she thought one of the reasons Buffy and Angel really resonated with people in season three, was how even though they truly loved each other, that still wasn't enough to make it work for them. And sometimes that is the case with real life relationships too, of course.

[iwillrememberyoumarathon]

Bangel fans, we want to hear from you! As we celebrate this year's IWRY Fic Marathon, we're getting to know each other through our Meet the Fandom series. Answer the questions here to join in.

What is your name?

Liana-Medea

Where do you hang out?

AO3 as well as Discord (and I do share my German fanworks on a German site)

Do you create any fan works?

Yes, I write fanfic - mostly German, but I started writing in English rarely (and something about Bangel is just asking to be written in English, somehow, especially, if my ideas are already in English)

Funniest Bangel/Buffyverse moment?

Well, it's Wesley pretending to be Angel in Guise will be Guise, especially when he has to drink the blood he is given and tries to dispose of it after he took a sip while trying not to gag.

What Buffyverse opinion would have you chased through the village with pitchforks?

The smashing of the Gem of Amara was more than justified, because the risk of it falling in the wrong hands was way too high (as proven in the episode itself)

Share a headcanon you have about Bangel or the Buffyverse?

Hm, I always thought that Buffy doesn't know that Liam was Angel's human name (and on that front we should be glad that he went with the English version and doesn't force everyone to pronounce the Irish Gaelic version).

How would you have given Buffy and Angel their Happily Ever After?

Allrighty, that's something I am probably gonna write at some point (as soon as I manage to put together a reasonable outcome for NFA). What I got so far involves a Shanshu in Ireland (probably even his hometown), that he goes by Liam again and well, he and Buffy somehow cross paths again. They'll probably eat ice cream at the Corrib at some point (or do a picknick there like half of Galway on a nice summer day) and Liam will be the one that cooks all the time (one of his first human purchases was an Irish cookbook), although he sometimes tried combinations that are not that great together and Buffy also told him to cut back on the potatoes, after he served her four different versions of potatoes with salmon and vegetables (on the same plate!). They spent quite some time in Ireland, Liam draws for a living, Buffy does martial arts or counselling work and they have children together. They are wearing their Claddagh rings on the left hand, heart pointing in and will grow old together.

Last fic you read?

The Grass Isn't Always Greener in the Sunlight by Ralkana

Slay, Lay, Obey - Connor, Doyle, Liam?

Goddess that's tricky!

I am going with Doyle for Slay (probably because I am the least attached to him and well, I am not going to lay with him and obey, hm, probably also not the wisest choice).

Lay: guys, seriously, I am a lesbian and we got three guys here, so I am going with the most conventionally attractive one and say Liam, who is also – come December – exactly my age. Who knows, maybe he will surprise me, Angel's positive character traits can't manifest themselves out of thin air! And maybe I get a drawing out of it or better language skills, which I both would appreciate!

Obey: let's go with Connor, because I like him too much to slay, but well, I am talking series finale Connor here!

Fill in the quiz so the fandom can meet you!

[faithlesbian]

how do we feel about t4t bangel ?

oh my god that's spooky i was literally just thinking about what it would look like for them both to talk about their bisexuality after that s3 dyke (proverbial) post!! let these two discuss their queer experiences night apparently

i'm assuming u mean trans girl buffy right? love that reading. i've gotta say, similar to the t4t spangel ask (im assuming ur the same anon), i'm not a "shipper" in the traditional sense and specifically in this instance part of my love for their dynamic is Really feeling glad they don't end up together. my opinions on them in general probably deserve their own post, so i'll just summarise and say my favourite iteration of their relationship is friendly exes who can go to eachother for help, specifically stuff like angel showing up after joyce's funeral and the offscreen reunion after her resurrection in s6. like. these people care about eachother!!! and they want to make life easier for eachother!! specifically i love it when buffy can lean on angel for support if she needs to despite their lives being fairly seperate, bc good god does she need that.

so assuming obviously that buffy would be living as a girl from the get go in this version, you could build a starting over as herself element into her moving to a new town and new school in the pilot. you could play with the supernatural-as-queerness subtext from the show and have the understanding of her slayer identity between her and angel that she doesn't feel from her normal friends extend to her being out to him before she's out to the scoobies, which could then extend further into the s2 angelus arc with the threat of him outing her, and potentially that being how the scoobies find out if you really want narrative cohesion with canon (or if you want to be nice to buffy then. literally anything else happening)

going with my established Trans Angel Reading, he'd only figure things out himself long after their relationship is over, and i think that could honestly be such a fucking Moment for them both, for him to confide this in her now after they've reached an understanding as she did in him right back at the start before everything went wrong. bittersweet but also kind of promising, like if it's possible to learn something new about yourself after 250 years then there's definitely still ways for their relationship to grow even if they cant be together. i feel like just as angel was able to help buffy navigate the world of the supernatural initially, she could help him navigate gender in the 21st century, and i think getting that understanding from her would be really important to him in a totally different way to getting it from the ats gang.

i think for buffy it could be a kind of closure for, once again, just how badly their relationship went to know that despite everything she was understood by the first person she loved, more than she even knew at the time. however, a beloved Buffy Trait of mine is how badly she reacts to people she sees as threatening to replace her in any way (see homecoming and kendra and faith's respective first episodes) so alternately you could get the much funnier response of hello?? that was my thing first?? how dare you?? which synchronises really well with the previous ask and the possibility for coming out to put an end to angel and spike's rivalry - it starts a whole new one with buffy!

[wishiwasmorticia]

Let’s settle this for once and for all: your moralizing about Spike being a rapist is bullshit because...(a rant)

I’ve seen too many rants about this lately to keep quiet for much longer, so here we go.  ** DISCLAIMER: I do not hate Angel or Bangel. I prefer Spike and Spuffy, but this does not mean I hate Bangel or Bangel fans. I have lots of nice things to say about Angel; I just like him better on his own show, and I prefer him with Cordelia. But I appreciate that you love Angel/Bangel so much. Rock on. Love them as hard as you can. What I DO hate are double standards, uninformed opinions, and such deep emotional investment in a character or a ship that one blindly puts it on a pedestal and deliberately ignores its flaws, while vilifying a rival character or ship for being “problematic,” and while also projecting that onto fans of the rival character/ship, saying THEY’RE blindly putting their fave on a pedestal and rationalizing. If you are an Angel/Bangel fan and you’re happy to live and let live where Spike/Spuffy fans are concerned, you’re cool - this isn’t about you. **

Claiming that Spike is irredeemable because he attempted to rape Buffy is complete bullshit - projection and rationalization rooted in nothing more than the fact that you like Angel better and wanted him to end up with Buffy. A bold claim? How about we deconstruct the anti-Spike/Spuffy rhetoric for a moment...

Let’s begin with the idea that sexual offenders can’t be rehabilitated. I minored in psychology as an undergrad. In 2013, I took Psychology of Atypical Sexuality. The class dealt with things like fetishes and paraphilia, and went all the way through sex offenders. The first week, we had a guest lecturer from New Zealand, a colleague my professor met when she was on sabbatical. They have a completely different way of handling sex offenders there, and have significantly reduced recidivism rates. What are they doing that we’re not in the US? Mostly, it’s the fact that they actually TRY to rehabilitate offenders, and offer them community support and the tools to change, rather than focusing on retribution and humiliation. Only the highest-risk offenders go on registries, and that didn’t even go into effect until last year. This does not mean that the rest get off scott free, but what it does mean is that they accept that there is such a thing as paying one’s debt to society and once they’ve served their sentence, the goal is to help integrate them back into the community and be productive members of society who don’t sexually offend. It’s hard. It takes a lot of therapy. It takes a lot of community support. But it’s doable...if you actually DO it. Americans don’t like to hear that, though. Even though studies show that our current methods of dealing with sex offenders do NOTHING to prevent recidivism and often actually increase it, but we LIKE the sex offender lists and the laws that keep them away from children, because dammit, somebody did something to keep us safe and it satisfies our need for retribution! So if this is the kind of mindset you’re coming from when writing Spike off as nothing but a rapist, I can’t change your mind...but you’re still wrong.  Also, let’s remember that Spike DID NOT have a soul when that happened. You claim that it does not matter - I’m going to debunk that one next - but if we follow the metaphor of New Zealand and community support, that’s pretty much how Spike getting a soul and becoming an integral part of the Scoobies afterward functioned. If you listen closely to his Crazy in the Basement™ ramblings, he knows what he did was wrong and why it was wrong. He learned. He’s capable of change. He can’t operate in the human world the same way he did in the vampire world. The rules are different.  Yes, Spike assaulted Buffy in her bathroom. We (Spike/Spuffy fans) know it. We’re confronted with that every time that episode comes on - and every time some of you have to make yourselves feel better by telling us how sick we make you. About that... Now let’s unpack this idea that Angel is somehow morally better than Spike, and let’s talk about souls. And let’s start with who they were before they became vampires. William Pratt moved in high society circles, was not respected by his peers, and wrote bad poetry for a woman who would never love him back. He was a mama’s boy. He may have tried too hard in some ways, but that’s really the worst we can say about him. Liam, on the other hand, was a pretty shitty person. VERY handsy with the women (hmmmm, sounds strikingly similar to certain complaints I hear about Spike), and was otherwise a lazy, entitled drunk. Yeah, Angel’s doing GREAT in our comparison so far.  As soulless vampires, Spike had a reputation that ALMOST rivaled Angelus’s in terms of torture, etc., but we know for a fact that Angelus is worse. For one thing, we can tell that Angelus was not capable of love and he enjoyed torture. And you are naïve and deluded if you believe that didn’t include rape at some point in his career as the baddest vampire ever. Furthermore, Angelus never would have chosen to change. He LIKED the hedonism and depravity of the vampire life. The soul was the result of a CURSE, meant to make him suffer.  Spike, on the other hand, IS capable of love without a soul. We see that in his devotion to Dru. He also loves Buffy. Yes, it’s a selfish love - BECAUSE HE’S A FUCKING VAMPIRE WITHOUT A SOUL. Duh. But he’s not nearly as sadistic as Angel. He clearly displays empathy from time to time. Even pre-chip (again, I refer you to his relationship with Dru).  So let’s talk about ensouled vampires. Angel says he loved Buffy the moment he first saw her. We know that’s when she was a FRESHMAN IN HIGH SCHOOL in Los Angeles. I don’t think it says specifically when in the school year that flashback took place, but Buffy could have been as young as FOURTEEN. Ew, much? ENSOULED ANGEL HAS ROMANTIC FEELINGS FOR AN ADOLESCENT CHILD. That’s called an ephebophile since y’all are insisting on sex offender rhetoric. And we’re going to pretend that that’s so much better than what Spike did WITHOUT a soul? Yeah, right. Let’s remember that Buffy was a grown woman of 20 when Spike developed feelings for her, and 21 when they’d began their sexual relationship. Granted, Buffy made some bad choices due to being in a bad place from having been DEAD and all, but somehow we forget to talk about the guy who entered into a relationship with an inexperienced teenager. Or maybe you all do talk about that - but somehow that never comes up when some of you go on the attack against Spike and Spuffy fans. Even if we believe that Spike assumed getting his soul would be a quid pro quo deal in terms of winning Buffy’s affections afterward, the bottom line is, something inside told him that he’d never achieve the impulse control he needed without one, and that there’d be no way he’d be WORTHY of Buffy’s love without one. That to me sounds more like Buffy’s standards being the yardstick for what a good man is than it does a trade for her love, but as I mentioned above even if he did go in assuming the soul would make her love him, he understood the reality of the situation afterward, and his actions were more in line with giving her what she needed instead of taking what he wanted.  But! But! But! Spike is back to his old tricks in ATS with Harmony!!! So, what you’re saying is, you’ve never known anyone who’s gone to rehab, who’s had good days and bad days, and maybe has fallen off the wagon, especially after suffering a trauma....maybe like DEATH? And then being recorporialized? No? Well, me either, at least the death and recorporialization part - but if we think about anyone in ANY behavior modification situation, yes, relapse is common. ESPECIALLY when you’re cut off from your support system and surrounded by people who treat you like shit. Just saying. As already stated in the thing about how New Zealand has programs that handle sex offenders differently, community support is crucial to the success of reducing recidivism. Spike didn’t have that in Season 5 of ATS. If we keep up with the rehabilitation metaphor, Season 5 Spike is comparable to what happens to sex offenders who can’t get jobs because of their records and end up homeless because the registries don’t leave them anywhere to live. These stressors often lead to reoffending. But you’re right - they DESERVE all of that. So what if that makes them continue to be dangerous even though there are alternatives that are more effective? So what stopped Angel from reoffending when he had a soul? BECAUSE IT WAS PART OF THE FUCKING CURSE THAT HE WOULD FEEL HIS VICTIMS’ SUFFERING!!!! Spike is under the constraints of no such curse, though he does admit to feeling remorse. Angel’s gypsy curse is the ensouled equivalent of having a chip in his head like Spike did when he was a vampire. Think about it. Too bad it wasn’t enough to stop him from macking on little girls, huh?  Double Standards: They’re Not Just for Breakfast Angel Anymore. In the final analysis, Angel isn’t REALLY any better than Spike in a side-by-side comparison. But if we take shipability with Buffy out of the equation, let’s expose some more hypocricy where the rhetoric against Spike is concerned: WILLOW: Gets addicted to magic, gets Dawn hurt in a car wreck, turns evil and MURDERS WARREN BY SKINNING HIM ALIVE. Maybe he had it coming, but if rape is rape, then murder is murder, AMIRITE? Status: FORGIVEN BY THE FANDOM. ANDREW: Member of the misogynistic Trio who went so far as to turn Warren’s ex girlfriend INTO A SEX SLAVE ZOMBIE. Did all kinds of shit to Buffy. MURDERS HIS PARTNER IN CRIME, JONATHAN. Switches sides after becoming their hostage, and lookie there, he’s a fucking JUNIOR WATCHER after helping to close the Hellmouth. Status: FORGIVEN BY THE FANDOM.

FAITH: Murder and mayhem everywhere she went! Literally had no conscience until she checked into Angel’s One-Man Rehab™ and then turned herself in to pay her debt to society in prison. FORCED  HERSELF ON ANGEL in order to try to turn him into Angelus. USED BUFFY’S BODY TO RAPE RILEY! Not to worry: she turns a new leaf and helps to save the world. Status: FORGIVEN BY THE FANDOM. (Wait, what? I thought rapists couldn’t be forgiven? Oh, wait - that’s only if you’re a man and don’t happen to be the one you ship with the Slayer.) I could go on, but hopefully you’re getting the picture. If you’ve forgiven/accepted these characters in the face of what they’ve done, your feelings against Spike have NOTHING to do with attempted sexual assault or any other crime he’s committed. It’s time to come clean about that. Really. Those characters have atoned. So has he. Let it go. On the other hand, if you hate all these characters for the unforgivable shit they’ve done, then good for you for being consistent - but your rhetoric had better match your moral compass.  The TL/DR version: It’s okay to love something that’s problematic - but ENGAGE WITH THAT! Don’t put it on a perfect pedestal while vilifying a rival character or ship, or the people who love it. Check your own biases. Spike and Spuffy fans know full well what Spike did and have grappled with it, and we still came out on #TeamSpike and #TeamSpuffy. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to switch sides. You don’t even have to like Spike. Just...STOP IT WITH YOUR MORALIZING AND YOUR DOUBLE STANDARDS, and be honest about the fact that it’s because you think Angel is hotter or you’d rather see him and Buffy together because of the tinglys they give you, or whatever the real reason is. Quit pretending it’s about rape or misogyny.  Also, if anyone is going to be a coward and send me anon hate over this, don’t waste your time, because any anon hate is going to be summarily deleted without acknowledgement. 

[we-pay-for-everything]

A, B, C, D, J, K, L, M, N, O, U, V!

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Bangel - a lifelong OTP.

Klaroline - a current OTP. I’ve been reading tons of fanfics about them!

Klebekah - platonically, of course! Klaus and Rebekah Mikaelson are my favorite pair of siblings, perhaps ever. They are so similar that I could buy them as twins: both are blond, have strong personalities, are brash, impulsive, often wear their hearts on their sleeves, are passionate and emotional, fearless and feared. They both demand loyalty and love but often don’t know how to give it. But they love each other more than anything and are together through everything, and I love their bond. 

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

I don’t think there’s one pair that anyone made me like, but on Buffy-Boards, someone mentioned to me that Klaroline was going to happen in TVD and my reaction was “Ew”, but it made me pay more attention to the ship. Still, I only loved Klaroline on my second partial watch of the show, so it didn’t influence me much. I think negative influences are more common than positive ones when it comes to ships, in my case. 

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Spuffy. Really, fucking hate it. From moment 0. I may have liked Spike on my first watch of the show, but Spuffy was always a big no. 

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

Stelena? There isn’t a ship that I don’t like and wish I did, but I do wish I could see the appeal of Stelena. I know a lot of people, whom I like, that love Stelena and hate Delena - people who like Bangel, but I don’t see how those two ships compare. I love Bangel but like Delena much more than Stelena… I don’t see what my fellow Bangel fans see in that ship. 

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Skam? I follow two people that really like Skam and I hadn’t given it much thought until now. And perhaps OUAT because there’s a lot of that on tumblr. 

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Oooh… Okay, my mind says Wesley and Faith, but my heart wants to say Angel. I complain so much about season 5 (in fact, to me, his arc ends in season 4), but overall I’m so proud of Angel. I love that through thick and thin he maintained his love for humanity, his empathy, his courage and his strength. He was the glue that held the Fang Gang together and, because of him, the core mission statement of the show: fighting for what is right, drove the show right until the end. 

But obviously, Faith had an amazing redemption arc. In fact, her arc on Ats is flawless. And Wesley’s arc, while dark and painful, is compelling and layered.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

Oh, thank god I don’t have to say something nice about Camille or Spike! 

Well, I kind of hate Harmony but she was sweet to Wesley and Gunn after Fred died. I dislike Lindsey, but he was a good foil for Angel in season 1.

I dislike Lorelai but she can be quite sweet to Rory. I dislike Luke but he can be sweet to Rory also.

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

Angel. Not just because I love him, but because he’s been through so much and can be so inspiring! I’d just love to have someone like him in my life, someone who can believe in me and help me out right now that I’m going through a tough time. 

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

- More Angel love! Not only Angel, the character, but Ats as well.

- More meta! I love to read it and there isn’t enough of it. (This applies to pretty much every fandom). 

- More debate! Sometimes is great to get involved in a passionate argument! 

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

This isn’t a random song, but a friend of mine told me to listen to it because it reminded her of Weslah and it’s so good! Everyone should listen to this song.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI5hxEguomo

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Angel (BtVS + AtS); Angel is a fighter, and he has integrity. He has a set of beliefs and he’s incorruptible. He struggles and has his moments of doubt but he always dusts himself off and goes back to it. His heart is pure. He genuinely wants to help people and won’t ever give up on fighting for them. He’s the flawed champion we need. He’s inspiring and I draw strength from his strength, especially knowing that I’ve also felt weak like he has. 

Rebekah Mikaelson (The Originals): right now, she’s really a fave. Rebekah is powerful, strong. She falls in love over and over again (throughout 1000 years) even after getting her heart broken every time. It takes strength and courage to keep making yourself vulnerable like that and to keep having hope. She’s sassy, brave, headstrong, fearless, cruel, vindictive, fierce. She’s a Mikaelson!

Carrie Hopewell (Banshee): have to give a shoutout to my favorite girl, that few know. Carrie is a badass mother, lover, criminal! She’ll do anything for her family, but she struggles between being a mother and living in a lie (pretending to be a woman named Carrie) and giving in to her criminal roots (as Anna).

V - Which character do you relate to most?

Angel (one of the many reasons why he’s my fave). Angel is introverted, likes alone time, the quiet, to read philosophy and to listen to some classical music (he’s listening to Beethoven’s 9th symphony in some s1 episode). He’s also troubled. He doesn’t know peace or happiness (most of the time) and I can relate to that so much! My mind doesn’t fucking shut up. It keeps thinking and nagging me with thoughts of guilt, loneliness and self hatred. Angel has been through times when he felt hopeless and like he was worth nothing, but still believes that “if nothing we do matters than all that matters is what we do” and I firmly believe that as well. I believe that “the smallest act of kindness can be the greatest thing in the world” regardless of how hopeless some causes (including myself) can be. 

The fact that Angel realistically goes through periods of being more or less depressed, like a real person does, is what makes me relate to him so much in the end. He isn’t just one of those characters that goes through a period of depression but bounces back after a miracle in a season. Depression is a recurring theme. Angel is always melancholic and always struggling with fitting in and loneliness. Like a normal person, sometimes he wins the battle, sometimes he loses, but he always keeps fighting. 

Thanks for the ask, lovely! 

[sulietsexual]

LOVED your take on The Freshman, amazing meta as usual and I agree it's such an underrated episode. I can't believe you didn't mention the umbrella though! Also... since you were going to do Becoming... is it too much to ask for it now? I know I'm greedy... :)

ShortOpinion: Noother ship will ever tear me apart the way Bangel does

LongOpinion: BeforeThe Gift came along and stole my heart, Becoming was my favourite seasonfinale, and my favourite episode of BtVS. There is so much to love about thisdouble episode, as it so beautifully showcases Buffy becoming the Slayer, Angelbecoming a vampire and Buffy becoming strong enough to defeat Angel. Bringingthe Angelus arc to a close, while exploring themes of identity, destiny andself-preservation, Becoming is everything a season finale should be and playsthe emotional angle for all its worth.

While I understand how and whysome fans find Angel first seeing Buffy when she is so young creepy andunsettling, I also understand what the writers were trying to portray, showingAngel at his lowest and most desolate and demonstrating how, even before sheknew him, Buffy gave him hope enough to turn his life around, to become a partof something bigger. Whistler sending Angel to Buffy was never supposed to comeacross as stalkery (which it unfortunately does, to a certain extent – althoughnot the extent some fans try to make it out to be) but rather, was supposedshow that Angel sees more to Buffy than she sees in herself, and that heempathises with her loneliness and isolation (a running theme in Buffy andAngel’s relationship).

In the present day, we see Buffyand Willow finally discover the floppy disk (omg, BtVS really showsits age sometimes) containing the spell to re-ensoul Angel and Buffy makes thedecision to have Willow perform the spell. I want to take a moment to talkabout this decision, as I have long wanted to talk about the good oldSpike-fandom argument about Angelus having his soul forced upon him vs Spikeseeking his soul. No, I’m not going to talk about Angel vs. Spike, but rather,Buffy’s agency and autonomy regarding the two vampires receiving their souls.

As just pointed out, Buffy herselfis the one who chooses to re-ensoul Angel. She makes the decision togive Angel back his soul, thereby decided for herself that she is ready to haveAngel back, ready to accept him back into her life, to forgive him and to tryto move on. She makes this decision, using her own autonomy and agency.However, when Spike gets his soul back, he does so without Buffy’s knowledge oracceptance and he therefore forces her into a position she was not readyfor nor had decided she wanted. Spike getting his soul back actually takes awayBuffy’s agency, as it forces her to forgive him, forces her to accept him backinto her life, probably before she was ready to, whereas because Buffy choseto have Angel re-ensouled, she wasn’t forced into a position of forgivenessagainst her will. But I digress.

Becoming contains some wonderfulcharacterisation for not only Buffy and Angel, but most of the other maincharacters too. Willow’s Start of Darkness actually has its beginnings as earlyas this episode, as she insists on casting the re-ensouling spell, mentioningthat she has been researching the Dark Arts for “educational fun”. That rightthere, is a huge red warning sign, showing that Willow is already at this earlystage delving into magics she’s not ready to handle. When she eventuallysucceeds in casting the spell, the power she channels is a clear indicator of justhow much latent power Willow has residing inside her. Jenny previouslymentioned that the magics used to re-ensoul Angel were lost, even to herpeople, yet Willow, a seventeen-year-old girl who has never attempted magicbefore, somehow manages to channel enough power to cast a spell which is over acentury old. If this isn’t an indicator of Willow’s darker path and subsequentpower thirst, I don’t know what it. It’s actually quite alarming, when onethinks about it.

Xander too gets some goodcharacterisation, despite him not coming off so well in this episode. I’vespoken about it before and Lord knows I will speak about it until the day Idie, but despite his asshole-ish tendencies, I really believe that there issomething deeper at play with Xander regarding Angel being re-ensouled andreceiving a second chance, and that something is Jesse’s death. When Jesse –someone whom Xander knew for years and cared for deeply – was turned, no oneever mentioned the possibility of redemption or change for Jesse. Instead,Xander was told, in no uncertain terms, that Jesse was gone and that the demonwho wore his face must be killed. Xander was then the one to actuallykill Jesse. I cannot stress enough how much of an impact this would have had onXander, the trauma he probably felt, and his only rationalization was thatvampires were evil and therefore Jesse was evil and he, Xander, had no choicebut to kill him.

Then, along comes Angel, thevampire with a soul, the man Buffy loves, allowed to live, allowed to be amember of the Scoobie gang. And Xander thinks, why wasn’t his friend allowedthe same chance, why wasn’t Jesse saved the same way Angel was. But Xander,despite what the fandom believes, actually does tolerate Angel while he has asoul (“Angel’s our friend! Except I don’t like him.”) Then Angel loses hissoul, and he becomes the demon that Xander was told Jesse was, yet Buffydoesn’t kill him, doesn’t hunt him. No one is pushing Buffy to kill him. And soXander sees the unfairness in this, the injustice of him having to kill hisbest friend but Buffy not only allowing Angelus to live, but offering him asecond chance. So he acts like a dick, throws Jenny’s death in Buffy’s face andutters the “Kick his ass” line. Because he never got over Jesse’s death, andbeing so young and immature, can’t see the bigger picture, only the injustice.And that’s why, after many years, I have been able to forgive Xander’s actionsin this episode.

Becoming showcases not only thecharacters’ emerging development, but also the development and stages of all ofthe romantic relationships. Willow’s and Oz’s relationship is shown to begetting deeper and more involved, as she calls out for Oz upon waking in thehospital, despite Xander’s declaration of love just moments before. Xander andCordelia embrace and kiss with genuine tenderness and affection, for probablythe first time this season, showing that their relationship is slowly evolvingbeyond that of a purely physical one. Giles’ relationship with Jenny is alsotouched upon, through Drusilla’s manipulations, showing how much Giles stillloves and grieves her (Giles’ torture is one of the few things I will neverforgive Angelus for, and I will always stand behind Giles and his attitudetowards Angel, even after Angel is re-ensouled). But the true emotional crux ofthis episode belongs to Buffy and Angel, and the tragic climax of the episodewhich sees Buffy having to kill Angel to save the world.

Ever since Angel turned intoAngelus, Buffy has spent her time building towards a mind frame wherein shewill be able to kill him (and failing miserably at that). Despite the fact thatAngelus is almost completely different to Angel, Buffy still can’t see past theface of her former lover, and time and again she lets Angelus go when sheeasily could have killed him. However, the dire circumstances in this episodefinally push her to the point where she is able to kill Angelus, and she goesinto the final fight ready to do what needs to be done.

Which is why it is all the moretragic when Angel is re-ensouled mere moments before Buffy is about tokill him. The horror and devastation on Buffy’s face as she realises what’shappened says it all. She went to the mansion to kill the demon wearing herformer lover’s face, not to end the man she loves with all her heart. Herresolve and dedication to saving the world is heartbreaking, as she tearfullytells Angel to close his eyes, before driving the sword through him. Sarah’sacting in this scene is phenomenal, as she portrays Buffy’s grief and horror atwhat she’s been forced to do. It’s interesting that at this point in theseries, Buffy is willing to sacrifice Angel to save the world, but by Season 5,she has become so broken by everything she’s faced that she is unable tosacrifice Dawn, choosing instead to let the world burn. It definitely says a lotabout Buffy’s mental state and how broken down and fractured her psyche becomesover the following seasons, and if we’re honest, this was probably the start ofit all, this first time her Slaying affected her on such a deep and personallevel.

I could honestly write so muchmore about this episode, given that I haven’t even really touched on Kendra’sdeath, or the flashbacks involving Drusilla and Angelus, not to mention Darla’sreappearance, but I believe I’ve rambled for long enough. All up, Becoming is agreat episode, definitely on of BtVS’s best. Well-written, beautifully acted,nicely paced and containing one of the most tragic climaxes of the series,Becoming deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest episodes of theWhedonverse.