giles-disapproves
Buffy Stuffy
Ve, she/her :) Just another Buffy fan
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btvs season 1 episode 10 "nightmares" is a story about abuse, and more specifically about a young boy who has been abused by an authority figure. in a very real sense, the titular nightmares stem from this act of abuse—they're of course doing some metaphorical work on the level of individual character (e.g. willow's opera dream represents her fear of being scrutinized and "found out"), but as they all come from billy, we can also understand them as a metaphor for the kind of unreasoning fear an abusive authority figure might inspire in a child under their care.
see buffy's behavior, for example. this episode identifies buffy with billy—she serves as a kind of proxy for him, running from the monster with him and ultimately helping him defeat it. it's the running that's interesting here. buffy describes the ugly man as "too strong" for her to fight, something we only rarely see her do, and usually in reference to enemies of a far greater caliber than this kind of villain‐of-the-week. in fact, buffy spends a big chunk of this episode in abject fear!
in the end, of course, she faces down the ugly man and saves the day. it takes her a good while, though, and by that time someone else has beaten her to the punch (🤡) and already faced his fears.
despite his connection with buffy in this episode, the fact that billy is a young boy who has been physically abused by someone who was supposed to look after him positions him as a much more direct parallel to xander, who at various points in the show is heavily implied to have been (and at this point in time presumably still is) a victim of abuse at his parents' hand. interesting, then, that it's specifically xander who turns around and decks his nightmare in the face!
it's played as a comedic beat, and there's not much in the way of on-screen justification for xander's sudden burst of courage, but given the context of the episode it feels significant that it's him. in fact, if the ugly man represents billy's baseball coach, then there's no reason why we can't understand the clown (textually an adult who terrorized xander when he was a child) as a stand-in for xander's parents.
what's more, towards the end of the episode, when billy is "unmasking" the ugly man, willow expresses confusion—but xander says, "i get it." out of all of them, he's the one who understands exactly what billy is going through. this similarity between them is further underscored by xander's line in the final scene, when buffy expresses disbelief at the coach's actions: "you obviously haven't played kiddy league. i'm surprised it wasn't one of the parents."
"i get it." and of course he would. he's been there himself.
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really can’t stop thinking abt human spike using the word bulge and effulgent as rhymes in his poem. with his tiny little glasses
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Spike: You're flirting.
Buffy: I have a knife to your throat.
Spike: Seducing, really.
(c: @akwardsilince)
#buffy the vampire slayer#buffy the vampire slayer incorrect quotes#btvs#spike btvs#spuffy#buffy x spike#spike x buffy#btvs incorrect quotes
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Rip James Potter you would have loved wearing a pink sparkly top that said ‘I am kenough’
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i think frequently about how insufferable giles would be with a smart phone (once he gave in to learning how to use it)
buffy would say an idiom like 'til the cow's come home and question "hm wonder where that comes from" and ten minutes later when the conversation's moved on he'd be like "well according to grammarist.com..." and they'd all throw tomatoes at him
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"she who hangs out a lot at cemeteries"
ive been experimenting with black shadows, so this one was fun to make
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this line rotates in my brain every day. killing me that its not an inescapable meme
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Still thinking about sweet William
It was so exciting to draw him
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#spike said fine if you won't let me be your boyfriend I will be your mom's son in law
(via @anyxnka)
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The bathroom scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer still stands out objectively as just one of the worst things in a show or movie.
The idea of reminding the audience that Spike is a villain doesn’t work that deep into the narrative, but even then there were a million other ways to display him being evil or morally conflicted, ways that didn’t involve a out of pocket attempted rape scene.
Place aside filming it made both actors uncomfortable and both to this day are still pissed about the entire thing and how bizarre and random it was.
The scene didn’t have weight. It was sudden and gross and hellish and then sort of slowly became just this thing. Nothing about it was handled well narratively speaking.
Plus it being what drove Spike to end up accidentally receiving a soul. Other than temporarily driving him insane with guilt a soul made no major difference in Spike as a person. Spike had never been a good vampire, he wasn’t good at being a man in the era he was born into and he wasn’t good at being a vampire.
As a human he was gentle and shy and soft and lovely. Traits that had him mocked and teased and pushed out, seen as “strange” and “unmanly”. Then we see him as a vampire and he’s unique as Dru is unique, he is beyond capable of love. This man, this monster fucking loves intensely and it is his biggest trait as soon as he is introduced.
He is nothing like Angel. Angel as a human was a rude sexist drunk and a bit of a prick. Angel as a vampire was as demonic and horrendous as any monster could be, even with Dru he drove her insane then turned her, he can pretend he loves her just to toy with her, but he would kill her if she proved useless to him. Being cursed with a soul is solely the only thing making him a “good” person. Every time he loses his soul he is dangerous.
But Spike isn’t like that. Even before being chipped, even before the soul he was complicated and complex, he was protective and intense and emotional.
The show if Whedon hadn’t been insistently bizarre about Spike could have explored so much that was already laid out. What does a soul even mean? What does it mean if Spike sand soul is capable of compassion and guilt and love and kindness? That he can break down sobbing when Buffy died, that to honor a promise to a dead woman he watched after her teenage sister? What does it mean that Angel without a soul uses every kindness and softness Buffy and Giles and others showed him against them? That her vulnerability becomes something he can torment her with.
What does a soul mean or matter in this case? Is Angel a good person in any real capacity? His soul given to him as a curse is genuinely the only thing making him be good. And there is something about that that makes Angel terrifying as a character for me. Don’t get me wrong I love Angel good or evil, I love him more in Angel the series, but in general it is difficult to really take him necessarily as good.
While Spike on the other hand is more in line with a human, he isn’t good or bad. He is traumatized and hurt and angry and in love and so human despite having a demon soul.
And these complexities could have been explored. Not a pull it out of left field sexual assault scene.
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buffy summers is iconic for many reasons but one of her best moments must be when she frees a bunch of wage slaves from employment a hell dimension and fights the capitalist demons literally using a giant hammer and sickle as weapons. buffy said workers of the world unite and slay
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Do you ever think about how in School Hard Spike credits his defeat with Buffy having family and friends that came to her aid, then Spike became the one person always willing to have her back no matter how many times Giles tried to say she needed to go it alone
Her watcher repeatedly insisted she needed to stand on her own two feet but Spike, slayer of slayers, knew that was the thing that got slayers killed
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