#the most traumatizing thing buffy ever did was just his revenge on angel for being the one buffy chose instead of him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jbuffyangel · 4 years

Note

Hi Jen! I know you're a diehard Stelena shipper so here's my question for you with a bit of backstory. I was a hardcore Stelena fan until when Stephan made Elena think he'd drive them off the bridge (3x10?) so she'd let him go. I understand why he did it, but that went too far for me and i couldn't ever ship them again after that. I couldn't get over him forcing her to relive her most traumatic moment, regardless of his reasoning. What are your thoughts on that moment in their relationship?

Yeah, that was a real low point in Stelena’s story. For me, not as low as Stefan drowning in a safe all summer while Elena banged his brother, but still low.

Before we get into this I’m going to just say - every viewer has to draw their own line in the sand. If that moment was your line that’s completely fine. I may have different lines for different shows and characters, but I don’t believe anyone’s lines are more valid than others.

So here’s the way I look at The Vampire Diaries Nonnie - they are all terrible people. Arguing morality with these characters is a black hole. They are all murderers. In fact, if a character runs the straight and narrow for too long Julie Plec & Co. actually went out of their way to make that character do something horrible.

Case in point - Caroline. Pure sunshine.

She murdered only one person and it was when she was a newbie vamp. By the numbers count Caroline was doing pretty good for TVD. Then she was up on the moral high ground and threw a lot of judgement Damon’s way (well deserved in my opinion). She was extremely anti Delena in Season 4 and was not pleased with Elena’s choices as a vampire. So what did the writers do? They had her kill 12 witches in 4x17. Say goodbye to the moral high ground, Caroline.

That’s the show and you are going to do terrible things if you’re a vampire. Humans like Matt, Jeremy and Bonnie fared better, but each makes morally questionable, if not down right wrong, decisions. Their opinions about vampires and all the murderer was typically correct, but frequently viewed as judgmental by fans.

So what’s my point? Any fan of the love triangle got on board with these relationships with full knowledge the brothers were killers. Just because Stefan was a solid dude when Elena met him didn’t erase the fact he spent the better part of the 1920s ripping people’s heads off. Hell, Damon murdered people while he was dating Elena. Murder is not a deal breaker- either to Elena or Stelena/Delena fans. If Elena was supposed to end up with the most moral person on TVD she should’ve married this blue eyed cupcake.

Stefan (or Damon for that matter) being cruel to Elena didn’t really make me want to peace out on the show or stop shipping their relationship. Just because Elena is the focus of the terrible thing doesn’t suddenly make it more terrible than all the other things Stefan and/or Damon have done.

I’m not going to defend what Stefan did. You are kinder to him than I am because I think it had zip to do with forcing Elena to let him go. Stefan was still on human blood which made him a rage machine. He was pissed at Klaus for destroying his life (rightfully so) and hell bent on revenge.

Do I believe Stefan, with his humanity switch on, would actually kill Elena? No, which is why I kind of yawned my way through the whole driving her off the bridge plan. Klaus was an idiot for buying it, but the only reason he did was because Elena was terrified. Stefan said her fear sold it. The point was to traumatize her, which makes Stefan an enormous dick.

And yet, three episodes later he’s off human blood and Elena is begging him to feel something for her.

This show was ridiculous. Both sides of the love triangle are abusive, co dependent, toxic train wrecks at certain points in the story. Some points last longer than other points, but I’ll side eye any Stelena or Delena fan who argues differently.

Stefan was faaaaar too “heroic” by The Vampire Diaries standards the first two seasons. In order to make this love triangle a real love triangle Stefan had to be a dick with his humanity switch ON. The whole Ripper/no humanity thing gives him an easy pass. And The Vampire Diaries, for better or worse, was based on the love triangle.

No, in order for Elena to really struggle choosing between the two brothers, and not looking like a loony tune for giving Damon a second look while Stefan was literally the vampire equivalent of Clark Kent, they needed Stefan to go to the dark side. This made Damon step up to the plate and he became the hero in Elena’s life. And we’re off to the races with the love triangle, which was the whole point of Season 3 - ELENA’S CHOICE. If I took a shot every time Elena said, “I don’t know how I feel,” I would’ve permanently damaged my liver.

So why did I keep shipping Stelena after that moment?

Because I knew what the show was trying to do. Stefan had to do something as terrible as Damon killing Jeremy to even the playing field.

Do I feel those moments equate? No, but I’m a Stelena fan so that’s not a shock. I own my bias. Bloodaholic Stefan was never going to hurt Elena (no not even turn her into a vampire) whereas Damon literally killed Jeremy.

I also kept shipping them because I knew this was the low point. I knew good Stefan would start to come back after this. And Stefan, when he’s not ripping heads off, has his humanity switch on, and his blood addiction under control, is one of the best people on that show. Selfless, heroic, warm, compassionate, protective and giving. He’s devoted to Elena and loves her deeply, but he also loves her friends and family. Does Stefan put those people first all the time like Elena wanted him to? No, but he prioritized them a hell of a lot more than Damon.

I was willing to forgive Stefan for Wickery Bridge because I knew Stefan would feel immense guilt once the haze of revenge lifted and he allowed the full weight of all the things he did hit him. Stefan would punish himself more than I ever could and do everything in his power to make amends because that’s who he is.

This is the same reason Elena chose Stefan at the end of Season 3. Did he “earn” his redemption by 3x22? No, the dude had been acting good for a total of nine episodes. Well, techinically five if we’re being strict about what constitutes “Good Stefan.” Elena didn’t choose Stefan because of the person he was during Season 3. She chose Stefan because of the man he had been in Season 1 and Season 2. That’s the man she loved and she knew that man had come back.

But if we’re really being fair - Damon probably deserved to be chosen more than Stefan just based on their behavior in Season 3. Same rules apply for Season 4. Stefan deserved to be chosen more than Damon then.

***Side note. One thing TVD did extremely well was parallels. I loved that she told Stefan on the phone that she loved him in 3x01 and to hold on to that. Then told Damon on the phone that she is choosing Stefan in 3x22.

(This is also why Elena told Damon she loved him for the first time over the phone. It was to make up for the time she dumped him over the phone and left him for dead. See? They all did crappy stuff to each other CONSTANTLY).

The difference between the brothers is not good and bad. Stefan isn’t entirely good just like Damon isn’t entirely bad. The difference between the two brothers is one fights the good in him while the other fights the bad. Neither are successful in their battles all the time. Stefan did terrible things, with his humanity on, and Damon could be wonderfully heroic and sweet.

But Damon pushed against that goodness A LOT. Whereas Stefan pushed against his badness A LOT. I’m not into the bad boys or the anti heroes. I like darkness in my fictional men, but I enjoy watching them fight it and not relish it.

But I don’t glean any morality from The Vampire Diaries. It was a fantasy show. It’s crap I watched for fun and had pointless, but entertaining, ship debates with strangers on the Internet. Nor do I apply my real world principles to my shipping preferences. I am married to the kindest, gentlest, most moral man I know. I like the goody guys with NO darkness in real life. I would never allow my kid to date a Stefan or Angel or hell not even Oliver Queen in real life. Are you nuts???? THEY MURDERED PEOPLE.

But in my fantasy world, yes I am extremely forgiving. Not unlike Elena Gilbert, Buffy Summers and Felicity Smoak. Oliver Queen is as squeaky clean as I get. It’s a little easier I think with Angel (versus Stefan) because he only did horrible things after he lost his soul, which was not his fault.

It’s really two personas. I love Angel, but I hated Angelus. I never wanted Buffy to hook up with Angelus.

Does that erase his responsibility over Jenny Calendar?

Nope. But simply because I knew Jenny Calendar as a viewer, and Angel was hurting people Buffy loved, doesn’t suddenly make that murder worse than all the others Angelus killed. Just because Buffy didn’t know those people, and they died hundreds of years ago, doesn’t make their lives any less valuable. But I got on board with Buffy dating Angel knowing all that before he lost his soul, so the morality factor didn’t really change after he got his soul back. Make sense?

It’s similar with Stefan. Stefan and The Ripper are two personas, but TVD liked to muddy the water a little more than Whedon with the humanity switch - a grey area. But in general I divide his character into two selves.

Now, in real life if I was on a jury these guys would be serving 25 to life. But this is fantasy. Vampires don’t really exist. Teenage girls don’t date men over 110 years old. It’s illegal.

Characters like Stefan and Angel are an allegory. They represent the struggle between good and evil that live within all of us. The writers use vampirism to represent our sinful nature. The human struggle to be good and battle against our (hopefully) lower scale darkness/sins is the only real moral lesson I apply. That and always put Paul Wesley in a white tank top.

So, that’s how I look at that scene Nonnie. As I said before it is completely fine for that to be the moment you stopped shipping Stelena. I never stopped shipping Stelena and I never will, which is why they are one of my OTPs. They are a tragic story, but I will always love them. Despite all of Stefan’s terrible mistakes, I will always believe he was the best choice Elena ever made.

#stelena #stelena meta #stefan salvatore #elena gilbert #stefan and elena #anti damon #anti delena #anti damon salvatore #angel #buffy the vampire slayer #btvs meta #asks #Anonymous

57 notes · View notes

moistvonlipwig · 5 years

Text

Angel’s Redemption Arc

I think it’s interesting that in the Buffyverse fandom, which often concerns itself with debating and discussing redemption arcs, I don’t see much airtime devoted to the one that’s foundational to Angel as a show, namely Angel’s own redemption arc. Part of this is probably because Angel’s redemption arc is non-traditional in the sense that it has arguably begun even before Episode 1 of Buffy; part of it is probably because fandom has a tendency to dismiss Angel as “boring” and unworthy of time and energy that they could instead devote to talking about Willow or Spike or Faith. But I actually think Angel’s redemption arc is one of the best and most interesting in the pair of shows; IMO in terms of how well it’s executed it’s right up there at the top with Darla’s.

Now, when we talk about redemption arcs, it’s first important to establish what it is that the character is actually seeking redemption for. In the case of someone like Angel, it’s tempting to guess that the answer is “pretty much everything he’s ever done”. But ultimately Angel is a character in a narrative, and not everything he does, good or bad, is given equal narrative importance. Redemption arcs often focus on redeeming a character for what the narrative frames as their primary sin. So what does the narrative consider to be Angel’s primary sin? Again, it’s tempting to answer “everything”. But is the narrative of Angel really all that hung up on, for example, the time Angel nailed a puppy to the ceiling? Certainly as viewers we may squirm to hear that, especially if we’re dog-lovers, but it’s brought up maybe twice in the entirety of both shows. And while Angel has killed a ton of people, most of his victims died off-screen, years before Buffy began, and remain unnamed and unseen by the audience. Angel no doubt feels bad about killing them, but is the narrative of his show really all that concerned with them?

I would argue that the narrative of Angel does not consider Angel’s primary sin to be any of his actual murders at all. If you think about it, Angel’s problem can’t be that he kills people because that’s every vampire’s problem. That’s like saying a human character’s problem is that they don’t always drive exactly at the speed limit. It’s not technically wrong, it’s just not specific. What’s specific about Angel is that he doesn’t just kill people. He takes the time to psychologically destroy them. And often those people go on to do terrible things themselves, either because Angel sires them (see Drusilla) or because Angel’s actions beget a cycle of abuse that they perpetuate (see Holtz). Angel’s problem, therefore, is not that he’s a monster. It’s that he makes monsters of other people.

Examples of this can be seen throughout both shows. As mentioned above, there’s Drusilla, possibly the ur-example of this behavior pattern from Angel: she was a good person and he tortured her, traumatized her, killed her, and turned her into a vampire, both figuratively and literally turning her into a monster. There’s Spike; Angel didn’t actually turn him personally, but Spike refers to Angel as his Yoda and blames Angel for being the one to truly make a monster of him, which given what we see of their interactions in ye olden days is probably more or less true. There’s Sam Lawson, the vampire from “Why We Fight”, left physically and metaphorically adrift after Angel turned him, who turns to killing because it’s the only thing he can think of to do. There’s also Penn, the vampire from “Somnambulist” who, while not the most important to the overall narrative of the show, does say some things that I think are important to understanding Angel’s character arc; more on that later. And on a less vampiric note, there’s Holtz: Angel killed his family and, importantly, forced Holtz to kill his own vampirized child (again, more on this later). In turn, Holtz becomes so intent on revenge that he kidnaps, manipulates, and abuses Angel’s child right up until (and including) the moment Holtz dies. Holtz, like Drusilla, is symbolic of this behavior pattern of Angel’s; there’s a reason that both of them play such significant roles in Angel.

So, we’ve figured out what Angel’s primary sin is, according to the narrative presented by Buffy and Angel: he turns people into monsters. The next question that naturally presents itself is: how can he redeem himself from that? It seems fairly logical to say that one of the best ways someone can redeem themselves is to undo what they have done. Unfortunately, on a literal level, this is impossible for Angel: he cannot unmake the monsters he has created. But perhaps on a figurative level, this is possible. Angel may not be able to make it so that he never turned people into monsters. But he can try to turn monstrous people back into good ones. Angel thus commits himself to trying not just to redeem himself but to redeem other people. Along the way, he has successes (Faith being his most significant one) and failures (Lindsey, among others). But he always tries. He even offers Jasmine a second chance to become a better person, which says a lot about Angel and his commitment to his mission to make better people out of monsters, given how deeply and profoundly Jasmine ruined his life and the lives of his loved ones.

That’s all well and good. But this discussion is still missing a piece, and that’s Connor. How, you may be thinking, does Connor possibly fit into all of this? To understand that, we have to return to Penn and what he had to say about Angel in “Somnambulist”. Penn doesn’t just accuse Angel of making him a monster like Spike does, although that is probably the meaning behind his words. What Penn actually says is that he has spent his unlife trying to get back at his father, but he realizes now that all that was in vain, because Angel is his real father. The implication is that, when Angel engages in monster-making, he is also engaging in person-making, in an act of creation, in fatherhood. Angel doesn’t just make monsters, he fathers them. That, therefore, is Angel’s real problem: he’s a bad father.

Why did he become a bad father, I hear you ask? Well, like most bad fathers, he had a bad father of his own. In “The Prodigal”, we flash back to Liam’s interactions with his own father. His father is controlling and disparaging, and makes him feel worthless. Ultimately, the newly-sired Angel kills his father. But Darla warns him that this is not truly a victory, because it only lasted moments, while his father’s defeat of him will last his whole life. This clearly sticks with Angel, and he basically spends the rest of his time as a soulless vampire trying to recreate what his father did to him by doing it to others: defeating them not for a moment, but for the rest of their lives.

And, indeed, he succeeds in this mission. Not only does he make more monsters, but he even makes more bad parents. Holtz, a shining example of Angel’s work, is an abysmal father. Angel prompts his first arguably monstrous act as a father, namely the killing of his own daughter, which depending how you view vampires in the Buffyverse was either a terrible thing or a mercy, but regardless was not an action a parent should ever have to take. Later, Holtz kidnaps an infant Connor, emotionally and physically abuses him in a hell dimension for eighteen years, and in a final act of parental monstrosity, deliberately manipulates him through his own suicide.

Drusilla (who, I should note, frequently refers to Angel as “Daddy”) also becomes a bad “mummy” to Darla in “The Trial”, when she turns her as Angel looks on, completing the cycle that Angel and Darla started when they turned her. Significantly, Drusilla does this just as Darla, with Angel’s help, has come to a realization about her past actions and has decided she wants to try to atone for them despite knowing she can’t. In other words, Drusilla is directly interfering with one of Angel’s most important attempts at redeeming someone else’s soul. One of Angel’s own monster ‘children’ is the one to snatch away his ability to help create or ‘father’ a good person, and instead claim the mantle of parenthood for themselves. Angel’s actions thus are ultimately self-defeating, usually in a poignantly ironic way. But he does accomplish his goal of inflicting on others a worse version of what his father inflicted on him.

Ironically, however, every time he does this, he only succumbs further and further to his father’s defeat. His father is the one who made him a monster, just like Angel ends up doing to his victims, and thus with every monstrous action he takes, he only solidifies his father’s victory. Angel’s quest to control and corrupt his victims, aka his metaphorical children, stems from a desire to defeat his father by outdoing him at his own game. But in the end it only replicates and affirms his father’s defeat of him. To truly defeat his father, he needs to stop playing his game altogether and break free of the cycle.

Enter Connor. At first glance it may appear a somewhat random choice to give Angel a human son partway through his show. But if you look at Angel’s arc through the lens of him being a bad father, Connor’s narrative reason for existing is illuminated. As Darla puts it right before she stakes herself, Connor is the only good thing that she and Angel ever created together. In other words, he is Angel’s opportunity to truly (and literally) be a good father.

But Angel has had years of practice at being a bad one, and he doesn’t get it right on his first try. For one thing, Holtz obstructs his efforts to raise his son well by kidnapping him and taking him to Quor’toth. Again, we see one of Angel’s metaphorical ‘children’ denying Angel the opportunity to properly father a good person, only this time it’s more literal as it’s his actual child that gets taken from him. As always, Angel’s actions are cyclical and self-defeating.

But Connor does come back eventually. When he does, Angel tries his best but ultimately pushes him farther away, by lying to him (qv “Benediction”), denying him forgiveness (qv “Deep Down”), isolating him by kicking him out of the hotel (qv “Deep Down”, “Habeas Corpses”) and letting his jealousy influence his treatment of him (qv a good chunk of Season 4). (For the record: I am not trying to cast judgment on Angel for these choices, some of which were perfectly justifiable and some of which were less so. I am merely saying that they were not the ideal choices for Connor’s well-being.) These choices, combined with the abuse Connor suffered at Holtz’s hands (which wasn’t Angel’s fault, but which did ultimately spring from Angel’s actions) and Team Angel’s general dislike and distrust of Connor, make Connor susceptible to Jasmine’s manipulations, which ultimately lead to his emotional and psychological breakdown at the end of Season 4.

If there’s a common thread we can pick out between all of Angel’s choices regarding Connor after Connor returns from Quor’toth, I think it’s that Angel, for all that he loves Connor, also ultimately wants Connor to be what Angel wants him to be. This is more common among parents than most would ever admit. And it isn’t always a bad thing! Most parents, including Angel, want the best for their children. But they don’t always know what that actually is. And Angel’s desire for Connor to be happy and well-adjusted and, above all, a good person frequently expresses itself as Angel attempting to control Connor. Not for the same reasons he tried to control his prior ‘children’, but with unfortunately similar results. Angel lies to Connor because he wants Connor to think of him a certain way; he wants to control Connor’s perception of him. He kicks Connor out of the hotel because he wants Connor to learn a lesson; he wants to control Connor’s behavior. He disparages and tries to impede Connor’s relationship with a Jasmine-possessed Cordelia; he wants to control Connor’s relationships and feelings. (Again: not saying these actions were all unjustified, just that they were taken with Angel’s feelings in mind, not Connor’s.) In the end, although Angel is not trying to replicate his father’s treatment of him in his parenting of Connor, he ends up doing so regardless. His desire to do the opposite of what he normally does, to make a good person out of Connor, drives him to try to control Connor when Connor seems to go against that objective, which only further primes Connor to be more easily molded into a monster.

Thus the defining moment of Angel’s redemption arc is when Angel finally lets go of his need to define and control his child, who is now a sort of symbol for all his children, literal and metaphorical. I am speaking, of course, of the moment when Angel makes the deal with Wolfram & Hart to alter reality and wipe Connor’s memories. Ethics of memory-wiping aside, this is perhaps the greatest thing Angel could ever do for Connor, and it is the moment when Angel finally achieves victory over his own father, not by winning at his game, but by acknowledging he has lost and refusing to play any longer. In Angel, realizing you are wrong and have done wrong to others is often portrayed as one of the most crucial parts of the journey to redemption, and is usually a turning point for the characters who reach it. (See: Faith in “Five by Five”, Darla in “The Trial” and “Lullaby”, Spike in “Damage”, etc.) I believe Angel’s moment of realization is here in “Home”. This is when he understands that he has failed as a father, and that he cannot succeed just by continuing to try to control Connor’s behavior. To truly be a good father to Connor, Angel has to cede control entirely and give him over to a family who will do right by him. He has to stop playing any variant of his father’s game, and accept that the price of Connor being happy is that Angel cannot influence him for life -- for good or for evil -- the way his own father influenced him.

So that’s exactly what Angel does. He ‘kills’ Connor, and it is a terrible irony that the false prophecy Wesley feared so much, that the father would kill the son, comes true not as Angel’s lowest point or greatest failure, but as a moment of spiritual victory and redemption for Angel. In fact, it is a moment of freedom, for both him and Connor: freedom from the cycle of fathers and sons, like Liam’s father and Angel and Holtz and Connor, inflicting harm on each other ad infinitum. The power of the prophecy “the father will kill the son” lies not just in the emotional specificity of Angel and Connor’s own situation, but in its applicability to the general field of fathers and sons everywhere. In the world of Angel, every father, in some way or another, kills his son. Sometimes literally, often metaphorically; sometimes purposefully, often unintentionally. But always, the father kills the son. That’s part of why Wesley is so willing to believe the prophecy; he knows all too well that fathers are perfectly capable of killing their sons. Ironically, it is only by taking the prophecy to its most literal and logical conclusion and killing Connor (as we know him) outright that Angel is able to defy it, and end the cycle of fathers killing sons for good.

Now, all of this is not to say that Angel “wins” or achieves some kind of redemption badge that means he’s suddenly forgiven and cool now. Angel can’t win; that’s the point. He can’t win against Wolfram & Hart and wipe out evil forever; he tries that and fails, and when Jasmine tries and succeeds, he sees that such a victory is in a way its own kind of evil, and rebels against her. He can’t win against the weight of his crimes and become a human with a clean slate; in fact he gives up two different opportunities to do so on two separate occasions, because he too knows it’s just a fantasy and not real redemption. And he definitely can’t win against his father in the great game of child-rearing; he doesn’t get to raise his son at all, and children aren’t game pieces anyway. No, as much as he may try, Angel can never win. But if he accepts that, if he lets go of his need to win, he can do someone a great kindness. He can help someone like Faith be better; he can forgive someone like Judy who has done him wrong; he can set someone like Connor free from a seemingly endless cycle of abuse that he himself once perpetuated. Angel can be kind. And that, perhaps, is more precious than winning could ever be.

#angel the series #ats #buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #ats meta #anyway that's why angel is iconic and we have decided to stan forever #well love is love and not fade away #i kind of want to slay the dragon

244 notes · View notes

marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer · 6 years

Text

MTVS Epic Rewatch #202

BTVS 7x17 Lies My Parents Told Me

Obligatory Soundtrack

Stray thoughts

1) Tbh, instead of the Spike or the Ripper spin-off, THIS is the spin-off the Buffyverse needs and deserves…

We don’t get to see much of Nikki Wood but the little we do, I love. She definitely has Buffy’s sass, spunk, and punning powers. And she can kick ass!! I just think it’s such a wonderful premise to have a black slayer fighting demons in the backdrop of 1970s New York.

It’s also neat to see the interactions between Nikki and Spike and how they mirror Spike’s relationship with Buffy in the early seasons – Spike chasing after her in what looks like foreplay to him while the Slayer only feels hatred and disgust towards him yet they’re still pitted against each other as worthy opponents.

2) I truly feel for Robin in this scene, though.

I mean, getting his ass saved by his mother’s murderer must be very conflicting, to say the least.

3) This is such a sad yet truthful statement…

Hey, any apocalypse I avert without dying? Yeah, those are the easy ones.

4) Oh, Giles, don’t you ever go changing…

BUFFY Maybe you're right. Maybe everything is fine.

BUFFY Giles, what's wrong?

GILES Have you seen the new library? There's nothing but computers. There's not a book to be seen. I—I don't know where to begin, Buffy. I mean, who do we speak to?

I just love that amidst all the chaos and end-of-the-world-ness, he’s worried about the school not having a library.

5) I think this scene was kind of meta, don’t you?

SPIKE Oh, bollocks. With all the rubbish people keep sticking in my head, it's a wonder that there's room for my brain.

GILES I don't think it takes up that much space, do you?

BURNNNNNN!!!

7) The CGI, though, it’s so cringey, looks like they did that with MSPaint.

8) Oh, and the cringefest continues, yikes…

I mean, where do I start? First, there’s the poem…

Yet her smell, it doth linger, painting pictures in my mind. Her eyes, balls of honey. Angel's harps her laugh. Oh, lark. Grant a sign if crook'd be Cupid's shaft. Hark, the lark, her name it hath spake. "Cecily" it discharges from twixt its wee beak.

I mean, it’s not necessarily bad, but it’s not… good. “Balls of honey”? Really, William? Really?

Then, there’s the fact that he’s obviously obsessed with Cecily and writing what apparently amounts to be a creepy amount of poems about her with HER ACTUAL NAME in them, and then he goes, “Hmmmm, Who is't is this cecily thee speaketh of? I knoweth not whom thee couldst possibly beest talking about. I has't nev'r hath heard such a name. Cecily, thee sayeth?”

And then there’s this, which is almost as cringey and disturbing as what comes later on between these two…

WOMAN She's lovely. You shouldn't be alone. You need a woman in your life.

WILLIAM I have a woman in my life.

WOMAN But you ne… Oh...

She’s like blushing? They’re flirting? I just…

9) I get everyone freaking out about Spike’s trigger being activated, but the truth is, the trigger seemed to be dormant until they went messing with his head. What I don’t get is Spike wanting them to unchain him, though. It doesn’t make much sense when he had chained himself before and even asked Buffy to off him a couple of times. Why would he want to be free now that he knows he could still hurt people? I understand they were building up the conflict between Buffy/Spike vs Giles/Robin by having him ask to be released and having Buffy agree with him WHEN IT’S OBVIOUS HE SHOULD BE CHAINED UNTIL THEY FIGURE IT OUT AND IT’S COMPLETELY OOC FOR BOTH HIM AND BUFFY TO ARGUE OTHERWISE.

10) I fucking love Drusilla’s reaction here…

WILLIAM We'll ravage this city together, my pet. Lay waste to all of Europe. The three of us will teach those snobs and elitists with their falderal just what—

DRUSILLA Three?

WILLIAM You, me, and mother.

11) And then he goes and does the most sexual thing a vampire can do with a human BUT he’s surprised when that other thing happens? I’m sorry, but your relationship with your mom was weird way before she made a move on you…

12) I truly don’t get why they can’t read into The First’s actions and realize that it was manipulating them into doing exactly what they were planning to do. It’s so obvious to me, and I expected more from Giles, tbh. I can understand Robin because he had a personal vendetta against Spike and that’s obviously more important to him than the grand scheme of things. But Giles?

ROBIN Mr. Giles... You got a moment?

GILES What's on your mind?

ROBIN The same thing that's on yours. We got ourselves a problem.

GILES Spike.

ROBIN Yeah, if that trigger is still working, then the First must be waiting for just the right time to use it against us.

GILES It does seem doubtful the First simply forgot it had such a powerful weapon.

ROBIN Yeah, a while back, it slipped up. It told Andrew it wasn't time yet for Spike. So, whatever the First's ultimate plan is, it's obvious that Spike must play an integral part in that. Something needs to be done.

GILES Buffy would never allow it

Robin conveniently leaves out the fact that The First contacted him personally and divulged the fact that Spike had killed his mother. It truly doesn’t get more obvious than that! And I understand why Robin wouldn’t care. It was selfish but totally understandable.

On the other hand, Giles’s stance is rather disappointing. Not only because he fails to read between the lines but also because he’s clearly underestimating Buffy’s ability to make the tough calls when push comes to shove. Buffy had always proven that she has what it takes to make sacrifices for the greater good, even if that means dying or killing someone she loves. And at the same time, we know that she finds strength in her emotions and her love for others. So it’s kind of bewildering that Giles doubts her at this point.

There’s also the hypocrisy of him washing his hands clean off her when she needed him the most and was actively asking for his help but trying to dictate her actions and decisions now by deceiving her. I think that’s what gets me angry, really. It’s not his trying to off Spike, as daft a move that was. It’s his lying to her and deceiving her in order to do something he knew she wouldn’t agree to.

13) So, this is for the greater good, Robin? Hmmm….

It looks more like you’re trying to fulfill your revenge fantasy. Or maybe he had a weird crosses fetish?

14) I mean…

ROBIN No, I don't wanna kill you, Spike. I wanna kill the monster who took my mother away from me.

Technically, he could never kill the monster who killed his mother. To begin with, Spike has a soul now and by the show’s standards, he wasn’t the same person who’d killed Nikki. This is the reason why Robin chooses to use the trigger. But the monster that shows up when Spike’s trigger goes off is not the person who’d killed Nikki either. When Spike’s under the influence of the trigger he seems to be a much more primal, instinct-driven, lethal vampire, which is not the pre-soul Spike we’ve known.

15) I really like how the fight is juxtaposed with the scene between Spike and his mom. It’s a really nice way to show how he gets to accept and overcome the burden that makes the trigger work. You can see that he’s beaten not because of Robin’s punches but because of what he’s remembering.

I mean, who wouldn’t be traumatized…?

16) I kind of see some of the points both of them make during their final conversation. Spike, as usual, makes some very good observations as regards Robin and his vendetta against him in the sense that he’s trying to put the blame on Spike for getting robbed of his childhood when that’s not really the case. While it’s not true that Nikki “knew what she was signing up for” because being a Slayer is not a career choice or even a calling, she did choose to put her duties as a Slayer before her personal and family life, which is why she ended up getting killed. I think it would be interesting to see how she got that mentality. I can imagine her arriving at the conclusion that she had the chance to make the world a better place for her kid, which makes a lot of sense in my opinion. I can’t help but see her “the mission is what matters” statement as influenced by the Black Power movement, too. The thing is, the fact that Robin grew up without a mom was the result of a number of reasons. That doesn’t take away from the fact that Spike was, indeed, his mom’s murderer, but it feels like Robin was trying to channel his anger into Spike because he couldn’t deal with the fact that he resented his mother for not choosing him over her job. On some level, he must’ve blamed his mother, too. It’s just a very complex issue, and I don’t think Robin would’ve gotten over the whole thing just by killing Spike.

17) I’m not a fan of the resolution, though. The fact that Spike overcomes his trauma by pissing all over Robin’s in the most brutal way feels so wrong and unnecessary, and I don’t understand why the writers made that choice and expected the viewers to see Spike as the hero in that scenario. Of course, I didn’t want him to get killed and I do like how he got rid of the trigger – by being forced to confront what he probably deems his most horrible deed and understanding that what matters about his relationship with his mom is not its ending but everything that came before. But I don’t get why he had to be so brutal with Robin in order to do that? Telling him that his mom didn’t love him and all that? Like, these are all things Robin probably thought himself a million times before, but having someone else spit them out in your face – your mom’s murderer of all people – feels like the ultimate humiliation and I don’t appreciate the writers building up Spike as a “strong/badass” character again by trashing Robin in such a horrible way. I can’t imagine how anyone would cheer for Spike here? It feels wrong to do so.

18) This is the moment you choose to bring this up, Giles? Why wasn’t this an issue before? Why didn’t you question this before?

GILES You want Spike here even after what he's done to you in the past?

It’s such a douche move to bring this up when it suits your purposes instead of showing concern about this because, I don’t know, you’re worried about Buffy reconnecting with her attempted rapist?

19)

BUFFY I'm in the fight of my life.

VAMPIRE Really?

BUFFY Not you, Richard.

“Not you, Richard” is going to be my new “Take it easy, Joan.” I’m calling it.

20) I just love how the second Buffy realizes that Giles has been stalling her, she slays the vamp without even looking. It probably was harder for her to not kill him.

21) This also rubs me the wrong way…

BUFFY You try anything again, he'll kill you. More importantly, I'll let him. I have a mission to win this war, to save the world. I don't have time for vendettas. The mission is what matters.

I get that she strongly believes Spike is a warrior they need in this fight, but that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t stop him from killing Robin, someone who’s also an asset – vendetta or not - but more importantly, an innocent person. This is so unusually cold of Buffy, and I don’t like it at all.

22) I don’t know why Giles assumed that Robin would succeed in killing Spike? If he’d been smart and sneaky about it, of course, but Robin was more concerned about his vendetta and putting on a big show, he was probably the least qualified person to try and kill Spike because of how emotionally involved he was in the whole thing. It’s precisely because of his emotions that he didn’t succeed. And besides, fighter or not, he didn’t stand a chance against William the Bloody, which is the one he wanted to fight. Giles was kind of stupid, tbh. Like, he trusted this guy who he barely even knew with a very important task, one that would cost him his relationship with Buffy. And he didn’t even bother to make sure that Robin would do it in a foolproof way.

23) See the hypocrisy?

BUFFY He's alive. Spike's alive. Wood failed.

GILES Well, that doesn't change anything. What I told you is still true. You need to learn—

24) This is Buffy’s kiss of death, tbh, and I fucking love it, it’s so extra.

25) I’m kind of torn when it comes to this episode. I feel like it’s a solid episode in the sense that it explores both Robin’s and Spike’s issues with their mothers and Buffy’s relationship with her mentor/father figure. On the other hand, this is an episode that centers around three of my favorite characters in the show – Buffy, Spike, and Giles – and I can’t say that I like any of them in it. I can handle not liking one of them at once, but shaking my head at all of them simultaneously is too much for my poor fangirl heart, you know? I don’t know. They come across as idiotic, brutal, and cold, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. I love these characters, and watching them act so unlike themselves for the sake of the plot… I just get this uncomfortable feeling I can’t shake off. I feel... like second-hand wrongness or something.

26) If you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi. Thanks!

#Buffy the Vampire Slayer #BTVS #Rupert Giles #Buffy Summers #Spike #Robin Wood #MTVSepicrewatch #BTVSrewatch2015 #mine #recap #Lies My Parents Told Me #btvsrecap

57 notes · View notes