I can take it. Tell me the truth.

[botias]

Does Buffy take crap from guys? I don't want it to be true and yet...

One of my fic pet peeves is when Buffy is some guy's spaniel, Spike or otherwise. It's definitely in the top 5 things which have me scrabbling for the 'Back' button on my browser. But... is it true to her character?

1. If Angel's lukewarm attitudes toward making their love work put Buffy off of him at all, she doesn't show it. And we won't even go into Angelus since she wasn't dating him, for all that I feel certain plenty of girls would not have been so forgiving of their man's alter-ego



2. In S4 Buffy blames herself for Parker's brutal B.S. For awhile there she would have gone crawling back to him in a heartbeat if he had changed his mind.



3. Buffy catches Riley 'cheating' on her. Granted, she initially drops him with all due alacrity, but it doesn't take much to convince her that the sort of straight-shootin' guy that deals with relationship problems by stepping out is the best thing that will ever happen to her. She RUNS after him *woof*woof*

Maybe all the fic writers that get their S6 revenge by having a post-NFA Buffy traipsing loyally after a cruelly disinterested Spike or the writers that have her get deeply entrenched with various asshats have got it right.

Comments

[rahirah]

Buffy is deeply insecure about her relationships, yeah. Probably has roots in her deteriorating post-divorce relationship with her father (though I don't necessarily agree with the people who think she's looking to her boyfriends to replace her father - she looks to Giles to replace her father.) Considering the first guy she really falls for goes evil and she has to kill him and then he comes back to life and dumps her, she can be forgiven for having issues. In her later relationships, she gets into a Catch-22 where she withholds emotionally to avoid being hurt the way she was hurt with Angel, She has the classic "I'll push you away before you can push me away" thing going. When the man of the moment reacts badly (and no, I'm not saying they're not responsible for their actions) and betrays or leaves her in some fashion, Buffy's worst fears are confirmed, and the downward spiral continues into the next relationship.

I think perhaps that Joss intended S7 to be (in part) about Buffy breaking that pattern, by showing her 'getting the fire back' and daring to love someone in the full knowledge that they were about to die and abandon her. We were intended to assume that Spike's willing sacrifice healed the wounds left by Angel's unwilling one, and post-NFA Buffy would have buried her demons (literally) and now be capable of a healthy relationship with some normal, non-vampire guy. But I could be wrong, and in any case, if that was one of Joss's points, I don't think it came across very well. It can easily be interpreted as when Buffy thinks a guy isn't interested, or is, say, about to burn to death saving the world, it's safe for her to love him, because there's no chance he'll reciprocate - and again, she won't be hurt.

[botias.livejournal.com]

She is deeply insecure about men and her attractiveness to same. Added to whatever damage men may have done, I expect she feels a freak. The super strength that is a Slayer prerequisite makes seeming normal difficult, as does her demanding, outfit destroying, sooper sekrit job.

And the whole, 'push them away before they can reject her' thing makes a lot of sense, yet the more I think about it, the more it seems like she selected men which she genuinely did not believe she would need to protect herself from. Parker was Not Angel, he was normal and as deeply interested in her as she was in him. (oops! Angelus was a metaphor for real boyz) Riley was Not Parker, the sort of solid Midwestern guy who defends a girl's honor with a pop in the nose. (oops! even the solid ones need luv not just appreciation) And finally Spike who was None of the Above, not only do his affections thrive on neglect, he is so honestly disreputable and inappropriate that she cannot be surprised, disappointed or hurt by anything he does. (oops! Not catching feelings for your fuck buddy isn't easy as it looks on TV)

I did think that by S7 she had moved past that. Wasn't her speech to Dawn at the end of S6 about wanting both of them to embrace life and not run from it, no matter how painful? And if the cookie dough speech is to be believed, she wasn't about the search for Mr. Not Wrong any more, but about becoming herself.

[botias.livejournal.com]

She absolutely was very hurt and disappointed by a number of things he did. I was trying to say that Buffy seems to have gone into her relationships making certain assumptions. I can't imagine that Buffy entered into her relationship with Spike with any notion that she would become vulnerable to him emotionally. But of course, she did.

There seems to be a pattern of 'He can't hurt me the way the last one(s) did.' Unfortunately, this either turned out to be false, as in the case of Parker, or the relationship failed in ways that she did not foresee.

[botias.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I think though, if you had asked Buffy her top 50 reasons that she had absolutely no intention of getting involved with Spike, the idea that she might become emotionally involved with him and get hurt would not be on there.