ah MAN season one in particular seems to have me in my xander feelings this time around, specifically because he is so WILDLY and OBVIOUSLY incorrect about buffy and about buffy/angel!!! like, okay, in the pack he is talking incessantly and obsessively about how buffy wants her men "mean and dangerous," and we will see this line repeated by him many, many times -- his perspective on the buffy/angel relationship is that buffy wants a hot older guy & that xander himself is the nice one who deserves to be rewarded! which, again, of course, disturbing gross i understand why this would hit a Really Really Specific Button with viewers.

BUT THE THING IS -- buffy's draw to angel is not because he is Mean and Dangerous, it's because he is guiding her! from the very start, he's been demonstrating that he cares about her, albeit through cryptic warnings and shop talk, and she is at her core this little girl who wants someone to look out for her and protect her. angel is someone who is objectively very attractive, QUITE emotionally unavailable, but consistently through s1 and s2 providing buffy with a place of cozy, cuddly vulnerability where she gets to be seen as a little girl. AND YES sometimes that can be patronizing as all hell but it also means she gets to feel like she's being protected! THIS, not the danger, is why she is so into angel. he is older and he is strong so he has the capacity to (ostensibly) keep her safe.

and so i'm looking at the people going "xander is gross because he thinks this way" and i'm like. yes. fully. absolutely. but i feel that then this line of thinking is continued on into "xander is gross because he thinks this way and the show agrees with him" which i do not agree with at all. we are shown very consistently through the way that buffy/angel is presented that xander is misguided as hell in the way he frames the buffy/angel relationship and that it's only in s3, when he is very clearly over her, that his anger starts coming from this very anti-vampire specific place.