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st_salieri referenced an old post by swsa. I remember when swsa made the original post, the same comment that st_salieri referenced was the one that caught my eye...and broke my heart a little.
The reason reading the statement hurt a little was mainly because it's true. It is tiresome that any discussion of Spuffy comes with a need to write a dissertation... and that's just within the Spike and Spuffy fandoms. If one ventures into the broader BtVS fandom, it can become decidedly more difficult and warlike. I tend to steer clear of the larger fandom anti-Spike/anti-redemption/anti-Spuffy wars because, as I said in the comments of one ofrahirah's posts about a fandom kerfuffle about Spike and Spuffy fanfic (specifically regarding soulless redemption stories), I think that it serves no real purpose to try to marginalize anyone's fanfic genre. It's fanfic. We all have differing perspectives on these things. The only thing that really frustrates me at this point is people spouting "can't" and "shouldn't," because the canon text is over. We all saw it. We just came away with differing interpretations of it. That's not going to change, so can't we all agree to live and let live? It's fanfic. There's room for everyone to have what they want and have their own view of the show reinforced. We don't have to agree, but it would be nice to peacefully co-exist.
Which isn't to say that I don't find debates interesting, I do find them interesting (and I'm easily drawn into them). I just don't want to wade into a war with someone who saw the show very, very differently than I did. It's like when, ages ago in someone else's journal, I ran across a perfectly nice, sane, and rational B/Aer (Yes, Virginia, they do exist. I know, we're more used to the nuts, but there also exist B/Aers of a non-toxic variety) who said it seemed clear to her that in Chosen an inevitable Buffy/Angel reunion was set up and that it was clearly reinforced by everything in Chosen. After I blinked a few times and scratched my head, I had to say that this was not the impression that I had taken from Chosen. But, that said, I could see how a B/Aer would walk away with that impression (and that it makes sense for B/Aers to happily write OTP reunion fanfic) because I think Joss intended that interpretation to be possible. Not the only interpretation (God knows, it's not my interpretation of what happened), but a possible interpretation. And, I think Joss deliberately tried to give Spuffies the same thing with the "I love you" and the flaming hands and the fade-to-black. I believe it is certainly possible (and intended) that Spuffies should see those scenes and be capable of leaving the show believing that their couple was consecrated in Jossian canon as a legitimate ship. He's flat out given approval for Spuffies to go out and create their fanfic (after all, he basically admitted that was intended by the fade-to-black in the basement). So, seeing those scenes and coming away with the feeling that Spuffy was given a go-ahead is also a legitimate interpretation of the text. I don't think Spuffies are nuts (nor, as per some of the debates online, 'just fluffy') As such I can completely sympathize withswsa's and st_salieri's frustrations, because I do feel that a fandom double-standard actually exists.
Which isn't to say that I came away from Chosen with a sense of clarity. I didn't. Perhaps it's because I see it as Joss handing out multiple interpretations that I cannot see any single interpretation but the muddle. I tend to simply see Joss as liberally handing out cookie crumbs. For that reason, I didn't come away feeling "yeah, that's it." In fact, my inner Spuffy came away feeling jerked around. (After all this time, you couldn't come up with a better solution than throwing it all up in the air and have a wanking free-for-all?) Even today, when I insist to myself that I'm quite sanguine with the whole thing, that I'm willing to accept the ambiguity of it all (that there is even some merit in ambiguity), my inner Spuffy pouts, feeling that there wasn't the pay-off needed to balance all the angst and hell that Spuffy had gone through (Yes, my inner Spuffy is twelve.) I become a bit pissy when I read the argument "Oh, [naysayers] weren't satisfied because they can't deal with the complexity of Spuffy." No, complexity isn't the problem. I can love complex and even ambiguous relationships in fiction. It's just that, with Spuffy, I felt like in a storytelling/pacing sense, I'd been jerked around for a few years and given very little payoff to balance the amount of angst that I had to sit through. It's a personal thing. Everyone has their own tolerance levels, but canon Spuffy felt like it became a Jossian game of cat and mouse to me, such that rather than embrace the ambiguity (as I do in many cases), I rather resent the endless ambiguity (in canon at least). It's the sense of having been toyed with, I think.
The truth is, when push comes to shove, I really do not know what Joss was trying to say with Chosen. I can see where he's giving Spuffies room to believe and where he's giving B/Aers room to believe, but for the life of me, I cannot say with any conviction what Joss believed... other than he believed in liberally handing out hope to shippers on both sides. Which isn't 'wrong' so much as it feels like it smacks of an incomplete vision. I feel a bit patronized by it. Oh, I can fanwank it... and I think that's where I always tend to fall in the debate -- that it's all a fanwank (and that's probably why I am so easily drawn into the debates despite my aforementioned reluctance to enter anti-Spuffy wars).
Yes, I can see how the flaming hands are to be a symbol of love. Yes, it is a symbol of love, but, you know what? I didn't much believe Buffy either by that point... which isn't to say that I think Buffy was lying. It just means that after a few years of being yanked around by the writers (and in a way by the character of Buffy) I didn't consider Buffy a reliable emotional compass. I fully believe that Buffy meant her words to Spike in the "I love you." But, by that point, I can't say that I invested a great deal of weight in Buffy's words. And the worst thing is, I frequently find myself in the mindset of "yeah, you mean it for you" which bears particularly ugly connotations because that was used against Spike over and over again. To say such thing is really rather demeaning to a person ( or in this case, a character) and yet in my heart... that's what I tend to feel. Buffy meant it... for Buffy ( as in how Buffy defined it at that moment) and, quite frankly, I'm not sure that Buffy and I have the same sort of concept of what love is and what it means.
One person in the aforementioned threads commented that all of Buffy's actions in Season 7 spoke of love. I contend some of Buffy's actions speak of love... and others very much did not. It's the contradictory nature of it all that left me at a point where when Buffy finally, at last, said the words... they rang hollow to my ears. Not because I didn't believe she meant it, but because it didn't really mean much to me if she did. I couldn't place much import or faith in her words or in her ephemeral epiphanies. Nothing stuck. Nothing was free of the backtracking already laid with the consistent use of plausible deniability. I couldn't believe she meant what she said in that moment, but could very well not mean it five minutes from now, so I couldn't invest in her words. I just couldn't... which is why I totally understood Spike not believing her.
And I really don't believe that Spike believed her. I have seen all sorts of interpretations about how he really believed her, but he let her go. And, as I have stated, I believe that there are a multiplicity of possible interpretations of the text, so I'm not saying that someone is 'wrong' if they believe that Spike believed her but sacrificed that belief (or her) to send her to safety. But, in my view of the text... I just don't believe that he believed her. I don't think that he was willfully denying her words. That just doesn't seem like Spike to me. I just don't believe that he thought she loved him...not in a really real way or ,more importantly, in a lasting way.
What's more, I don't blame him for not believing her. In my mind, if Spike had believed her, he would have gone to her in AtS Season 5. Nothing on earth would have prevented him. What prevented him was the fact that he didn't believe her. He really didn't. But as long as he didn't see her, he could preserve both his and Buffy's plausible deniability. As long as they didn't revisit that moment, it could exist with the possibility of... hope. Hope that maybe she had meant it. Even if he didn't believe her, that doesn't mean he didn't hope that he was wrong. As long as the moment existed undisturbed, MAYBE it was true.
But if he had truly believed that she meant what she had said, Spike (love's bitch) would have gone to her. In my mind he quite simply didn't believe, but he also didn't want to destroy the pretty illusion that MAYBE he was wrong. (Which is why it still rather frustrates me that the "ILY"/"NYDBTFSI" was cut out of the AtS flashback. That scenes ambiguity informs Spike's constant contradictory statements in regards to Spuffy, and his indecision about seeing her. With that as context, his contradictory statements would make sense. As it is, that was never presented on AtS at all).
Which, indirectly, brings me to The Girl In Question, not because I think it says much as to whether or not Buffy actually loved Spike (or even Angel) because I don't think it says much of anything one way or the other. Well, except for Andrew's "She loves you both" which, honestly, I can interpret to mean all kinds of love and as such, doesn't make a huge impact on my interpretations of Chosen one way or the other. Chosen remains intact and Buffy running around with someone new doesn't really say much about whether or not she actually loved Spike because, yet again, (and I have to say that it amused me) the writers insist on maintaining plausible deniability. It's never made explicitly clear whether or not Buffy knows that Spike is alive (at least up until that point. One would assume that after TGIQ, Andrew would feel free to tell Buffy that Spike is alive, but by then we're to the end of the series so we really don't know the consequences of such a revelation). So I really don't look at the ep as an indication of Buffy's feelings for Spike.
No, what actually brings me back to The Girl In Question is that it does seem to leave itself open to interpretation as, it seems, there are differing interpretations of what is represented by Buffy in Rome.
Quite honestly, I find the portrait of Buffy in The Girl In Question to be an unflattering one. I realize that it's painted very ambiguously. It's not explicit in saying anything about Buffy. Little real information is given about her, and certainly nothing that couldn't be quickly explained away by Joss. It's just on a pure viewing level, the portrait of Buffy that I gathered from The Girl in Question is not flattering (primarily, because it played into a lot of my issues with Buffy in the first place.)
I know there's the argument that she's now a "normal" girl and thus is "free," and yet this entire message is totally at odds with the AtS message of "the fight never ends." I always found the AtS message about always continuing the fight (or to go to BSG's Kara Thrace's comments in the finale "We fight until we can't fight any more") far more compelling than an ongoing desire to be "normal." It just seems so conformist and a bit self-oriented (even shallow by comparison). I realize this view heavily influences my reaction to Rome Buffy. But... there you go.
I don't take the "she's free to have a normal life" thing because she isn't normal. She's a Slayer. Even with Potentials, she isn't normal. She's still a Slayer. And what's more, clubbing in Rome doesn't strike me as all that great an end for anyone (And, maybe it's just sloughing off real world responsibilities and heading to a European capital as if it's Disneyland that bugs. I was rewatching the pen-ultimate episodes of Sex and the City last night, and I'm always frustrated with Carrie's desire to chuck what is actually a rather cushy career (and her friends) to head to Paris to...um... sit around a lot and wear evening gowns. I'm all for sight seeing, but life isn't sight-seeing. And I'm not sure that Europe is the answer to all one's life-issues. I tend to think of Farscape's Crichton when he tells Aeryn "Running away isn't fate. Running away is just running away." And Buffy's extended stay in Rome just seems... empty, because we're never given any info that it involves anything more than hanging out and hitting clubs or cuddling with the cipher that is The Immortal. Yeah, sure it could involve more, but we're never told anything but frivolity. And Buffy always had a tendency toward being frivolous. It was the Slaying part of her that balanced the fluff. Without it, I'm not sure that she's much more than a sorority girl on a European vacation ...which isn't wrong so much as why should I CARE? In general, I don't think that AtS presents Buffy in a good light in TGIQ (which isn't all that unusual for AtS, actually). She's just some blonde girl (one in a line of many that The Immortal has bedded. Really, is she given any precedence or stature over even the likes of Darla in this scenario? (Actually, I'd argue, that in general AtS gives Darla more importance to Angel than it ever gave to Buffy so Darla might actually be more important. Spike is a slightly different matter.) However, in general, unlike BtVS which was "all about Buffy" in AtS-land, Buffy usually isn't portrayed very well.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I had actually been a B/Aer. I was actually angry with the way that Angel had left her in the end of BtVS Season 3 (though I did realize that B/A had pretty much, dramatically, run its course. I just thought that Angel was rather high handed in the way he handled the situation). However, when Buffy showed up on AtS in "Sanctuary", well, I mostly hated her by the end of Sanctuary, and I was 100% OFF the B/A bus. Buffy's behavior in Sanctuary indicated very strongly to me that Buffy had no idea whatsoever who Angel actually was. What's more, she had no desire to actually find out who Angel was. She didn't know what made him tick, what his desires were, what his hopes and fears were, what it was which drove him to do anything that he did. For Buffy it was about Angel as the handsome, mysterious boyfriend and that's it. She wanted that fantasy. It wasn't about reality. It was about a dream and maintaining a dream. And the more Buffy stayed away, the more cemented I became in the belief that Buffy (and Angel, btw) was invested in maintaining the illusion of B/A in her head. Not the reality, but the fantasy. And, much of the conflict of Spuffy is that Buffy's hands could not be pried off of a dream of how Buffy had cast "true love forever" in her head and how that had combined with "love is pain and death." Buffy didn't want a real B/A (she would have pursued it, if she had) but she liked the shield of the dream of B/A... to the point that she would overlook the love that was standing by her side fight after fight after fight and willing to self immolate to achieve the impossible standard.
Which is why I cannot accept "The Immortal" as a good thing. I know, I know. It's supposed to be some rif on Angel and Spike and their "rivalry" with him. First off, I can't believe we're supposed to buy into The Immortal. Dramatically, that cannot work as he's this faceless creature, and the story on AtS is about Angel (and Spike). We are, by association, going to be on their side and not on this nameless, faceless Immortal's. We can see that Angel and Spike are being ridiculous, but we're also left feeling that The Immortal is nothing but a cipher. He exists as nothing but a walking, talking fantasy. And, unfortunately, that plays right into many of my issues with Buffy.
The fact is, The Immortal is a nameless fantasy-- rich, good looking, playboy with a thing for Zen philosophy. It's like he hopped out of Zoolander (And yeah, in my head he sort of looks like an Owen brother...or Fabio. Okay, maybe Fabio). And Buffy is all caught up in a fantasy. It just makes me think that Buffy hasn't matured. Her cookie dough hasn't baked. She's just fallen into yet another fantasy, one that The Immortal embodies in his very formlessness.
As stupid and silly as Spike and Angel are in their pettiness... they are real-- flaws and all. In the kindest of all interpretations, The Immortal is AtS's version of Red Dwarf's Ace Rimmer (which was an episode's long rif on the 'perfect' hero, an alternate version of Rimmer who Real Rimmer loathed but who everyone else fell for on the spot and droolled all over). The thing is, it's not real. No one BUYS the "perfect" guy. He doesn't exist. It's a farce. So in the kindest of interpretations, Buffy is dallying with an illusion... which sort of makes her seem like a bubblehead to me. She's still acting like an adolescent girl more interested in a mysterious, handsome boyfriend than actually creating something real with someone with flaws.
A less flattering interpretation is that The Immortal is NOT a good guy. In fact, they never once try to make him out as a "good guy." It's stated several times that The Immortal is amoral, without morals. This isn't a "good" guy... nor is he a "bad" guy. Basically, he doesn't give a damn about moralty. He's pure hedonism. So, Buffy has now embraced hedonism. We're left with the AtS character battling the final apocalypse and Buffy is dancing her nights away in a life of pure hedonism (with The Immortal). Again, not a flattering epilogue for Buffy because it goes back to being purposeless. From the girl with a mission, she becomes the girl with blisters from dancing and... meh. Why would I care?
And a less flattering interpretation still is that The Immortal is a suspicious character because the characters on screen crying his praises are demons and the head of Wolfram & Hart: Rome Division. (Oh, and yeah, Drusilla and Darla. You know, evil vampires. The Immortal slept with two uberevil vampires with the express purpose of...um... giving them repeated orgasms. I mean, if he was a "good guy" wouldn't he have had a bit more noble motives than getting off with two evil female vampires concurrently with perhaps a side motive of maybe just pissing off two other vampires? Even the so-called "noble" actions are mostly explained by annoying the crap out of the Angel and Spike (even if we're to believe that Angel and Spike are overly invested in the guy). Still, we're told point blank that The Immortal is amoral so, we aren't being told to interpret his actions as being done out of nobility. He's not noble. The Immortal is, in other words, perhaps rather shady. And I'm not judging in an "oh, that makes Buffy bad" way. It...well... considering her stances in the past, it makes her seem a bit of a bubblehead to be blinded by the pretty this time.
And finally in the meta, we know that the writers were doing a rif on their inability to line SMG up to appear in "Damage" or "You're Welcome" when AtS had tried to schedule her. SMG had produced a series of 'reasons' why she couldn't arrange to make an appearance. That being the case, The Immortal seems to have a meta commentary of Celebrity and Fame (as the AtS writers... and FOX by that point didn't seem all that well disposed to SMG I don't think they were all that bothered by the implications of what that said about Buffy).
All in all, as silly and farcical as Spike and Angel are in The Girl in Question. As much as they NEEDED to hear that they should get their own lives, I never, ever took The Girl In Question to mean anything flattering for Buffy. It was just elusive (frivolous) Buffy off being a young GIRL (not a woman) who, quite frankly, was never made to appear all that great from the AtS side of the glass. Especially with the ep sandwiched between Fred's death and where Angel, Spike, and gang are left with the final apocalypse. Buffy meanwhile is living in a hedonistic bubble.
I always thought TGIQ said far less flattering things about Buffy's than it did the boys, but then, I do realize that like just about everything Mutant Enemy did in the latter seasons, it's open to a wide range of interpretations where motives are left shrouded in ambiguity since...well... Buffy is nothing but a big swinging mass of blonde hair in the episode. I don't think she comes off as bad just... kinda shallow. (but, hey, I've always perceived that to be one of Buffy's problems that she needed to battle. She always seemed to have far too much ability to be distracted by shiny things and aspire to very little. She always preferred fantasy to reality, so I just saw The Immortal = Fantasy Guy and was singularly unimpressed with Buffy's version of "moving on." It looked a lot like backsliding to me).
At any rate, to drag it all back to the beginning. I think Joss deliberately left a lot of wiggle room for himself and that few (if any) hard, firm stances were taken in Chosen (or TGIQ). It's always up for interpretation. And mostly, I'm okay with that, because asking questions which makes fanfic interesting. I don't begrudge anyone their own interpretations. And I most certainly enjoy the Spuffy-positive interpretations. But I'm afraid my final impressions of Spuffy were murky, muddled, and conflicted... which doesn't lessen my fascination with them. It just means that I never found satisfaction with canon.
JMHO, of course.
st_salieri referenced an old post by swsa. I remember when swsa made the original post, the same comment that st_salieri referenced was the one that caught my eye...and broke my heart a little. This is totally bringing up one of my fandom pet peeves, wherein I think I've managed to ship the *only* couple in creation where it's not allowed to just state the love as if it's a foregone conclusion. But if I say Buffy loves Spike without explanation, justification, and shooting script quotes, I've got a debate on my hands. Even though, I've got mutual "I love you's" and third party confirmation on my side.
The reason reading the statement hurt a little was mainly because it's true. It is tiresome that any discussion of Spuffy comes with a need to write a dissertation... and that's just within the Spike and Spuffy fandoms. If one ventures into the broader BtVS fandom, it can become decidedly more difficult and warlike. I tend to steer clear of the larger fandom anti-Spike/anti-redemption/anti-Spuffy wars because, as I said in the comments of one of
rahirah's posts about a fandom kerfuffle about Spike and Spuffy fanfic (specifically regarding soulless redemption stories), I think that it serves no real purpose to try to marginalize anyone's fanfic genre. It's fanfic. We all have differing perspectives on these things. The only thing that really frustrates me at this point is people spouting "can't" and "shouldn't," because the canon text is over. We all saw it. We just came away with differing interpretations of it. That's not going to change, so can't we all agree to live and let live? It's fanfic. There's room for everyone to have what they want and have their own view of the show reinforced. We don't have to agree, but it would be nice to peacefully co-exist.Which isn't to say that I don't find debates interesting, I do find them interesting (and I'm easily drawn into them). I just don't want to wade into a war with someone who saw the show very, very differently than I did. It's like when, ages ago in someone else's journal, I ran across a perfectly nice, sane, and rational B/Aer (Yes, Virginia, they do exist. I know, we're more used to the nuts, but there also exist B/Aers of a non-toxic variety) who said it seemed clear to her that in Chosen an inevitable Buffy/Angel reunion was set up and that it was clearly reinforced by everything in Chosen. After I blinked a few times and scratched my head, I had to say that this was not the impression that I had taken from Chosen. But, that said, I could see how a B/Aer would walk away with that impression (and that it makes sense for B/Aers to happily write OTP reunion fanfic) because I think Joss intended that interpretation to be possible. Not the only interpretation (God knows, it's not my interpretation of what happened), but a possible interpretation. And, I think Joss deliberately tried to give Spuffies the same thing with the "I love you" and the flaming hands and the fade-to-black. I believe it is certainly possible (and intended) that Spuffies should see those scenes and be capable of leaving the show believing that their couple was consecrated in Jossian canon as a legitimate ship. He's flat out given approval for Spuffies to go out and create their fanfic (after all, he basically admitted that was intended by the fade-to-black in the basement). So, seeing those scenes and coming away with the feeling that Spuffy was given a go-ahead is also a legitimate interpretation of the text. I don't think Spuffies are nuts (nor, as per some of the debates online, 'just fluffy') As such I can completely sympathize with
swsa's and st_salieri's frustrations, because I do feel that a fandom double-standard actually exists. Which isn't to say that I came away from Chosen with a sense of clarity. I didn't. Perhaps it's because I see it as Joss handing out multiple interpretations that I cannot see any single interpretation but the muddle. I tend to simply see Joss as liberally handing out cookie crumbs. For that reason, I didn't come away feeling "yeah, that's it." In fact, my inner Spuffy came away feeling jerked around. (After all this time, you couldn't come up with a better solution than throwing it all up in the air and have a wanking free-for-all?) Even today, when I insist to myself that I'm quite sanguine with the whole thing, that I'm willing to accept the ambiguity of it all (that there is even some merit in ambiguity), my inner Spuffy pouts, feeling that there wasn't the pay-off needed to balance all the angst and hell that Spuffy had gone through (Yes, my inner Spuffy is twelve.) I become a bit pissy when I read the argument "Oh, [naysayers] weren't satisfied because they can't deal with the complexity of Spuffy." No, complexity isn't the problem. I can love complex and even ambiguous relationships in fiction. It's just that, with Spuffy, I felt like in a storytelling/pacing sense, I'd been jerked around for a few years and given very little payoff to balance the amount of angst that I had to sit through. It's a personal thing. Everyone has their own tolerance levels, but canon Spuffy felt like it became a Jossian game of cat and mouse to me, such that rather than embrace the ambiguity (as I do in many cases), I rather resent the endless ambiguity (in canon at least). It's the sense of having been toyed with, I think.
The truth is, when push comes to shove, I really do not know what Joss was trying to say with Chosen. I can see where he's giving Spuffies room to believe and where he's giving B/Aers room to believe, but for the life of me, I cannot say with any conviction what Joss believed... other than he believed in liberally handing out hope to shippers on both sides. Which isn't 'wrong' so much as it feels like it smacks of an incomplete vision. I feel a bit patronized by it. Oh, I can fanwank it... and I think that's where I always tend to fall in the debate -- that it's all a fanwank (and that's probably why I am so easily drawn into the debates despite my aforementioned reluctance to enter anti-Spuffy wars).
Yes, I can see how the flaming hands are to be a symbol of love. Yes, it is a symbol of love, but, you know what? I didn't much believe Buffy either by that point... which isn't to say that I think Buffy was lying. It just means that after a few years of being yanked around by the writers (and in a way by the character of Buffy) I didn't consider Buffy a reliable emotional compass. I fully believe that Buffy meant her words to Spike in the "I love you." But, by that point, I can't say that I invested a great deal of weight in Buffy's words. And the worst thing is, I frequently find myself in the mindset of "yeah, you mean it for you" which bears particularly ugly connotations because that was used against Spike over and over again. To say such thing is really rather demeaning to a person ( or in this case, a character) and yet in my heart... that's what I tend to feel. Buffy meant it... for Buffy ( as in how Buffy defined it at that moment) and, quite frankly, I'm not sure that Buffy and I have the same sort of concept of what love is and what it means.
One person in the aforementioned threads commented that all of Buffy's actions in Season 7 spoke of love. I contend some of Buffy's actions speak of love... and others very much did not. It's the contradictory nature of it all that left me at a point where when Buffy finally, at last, said the words... they rang hollow to my ears. Not because I didn't believe she meant it, but because it didn't really mean much to me if she did. I couldn't place much import or faith in her words or in her ephemeral epiphanies. Nothing stuck. Nothing was free of the backtracking already laid with the consistent use of plausible deniability. I couldn't believe she meant what she said in that moment, but could very well not mean it five minutes from now, so I couldn't invest in her words. I just couldn't... which is why I totally understood Spike not believing her.
And I really don't believe that Spike believed her. I have seen all sorts of interpretations about how he really believed her, but he let her go. And, as I have stated, I believe that there are a multiplicity of possible interpretations of the text, so I'm not saying that someone is 'wrong' if they believe that Spike believed her but sacrificed that belief (or her) to send her to safety. But, in my view of the text... I just don't believe that he believed her. I don't think that he was willfully denying her words. That just doesn't seem like Spike to me. I just don't believe that he thought she loved him...not in a really real way or ,more importantly, in a lasting way.
What's more, I don't blame him for not believing her. In my mind, if Spike had believed her, he would have gone to her in AtS Season 5. Nothing on earth would have prevented him. What prevented him was the fact that he didn't believe her. He really didn't. But as long as he didn't see her, he could preserve both his and Buffy's plausible deniability. As long as they didn't revisit that moment, it could exist with the possibility of... hope. Hope that maybe she had meant it. Even if he didn't believe her, that doesn't mean he didn't hope that he was wrong. As long as the moment existed undisturbed, MAYBE it was true.
But if he had truly believed that she meant what she had said, Spike (love's bitch) would have gone to her. In my mind he quite simply didn't believe, but he also didn't want to destroy the pretty illusion that MAYBE he was wrong. (Which is why it still rather frustrates me that the "ILY"/"NYDBTFSI" was cut out of the AtS flashback. That scenes ambiguity informs Spike's constant contradictory statements in regards to Spuffy, and his indecision about seeing her. With that as context, his contradictory statements would make sense. As it is, that was never presented on AtS at all).
Which, indirectly, brings me to The Girl In Question, not because I think it says much as to whether or not Buffy actually loved Spike (or even Angel) because I don't think it says much of anything one way or the other. Well, except for Andrew's "She loves you both" which, honestly, I can interpret to mean all kinds of love and as such, doesn't make a huge impact on my interpretations of Chosen one way or the other. Chosen remains intact and Buffy running around with someone new doesn't really say much about whether or not she actually loved Spike because, yet again, (and I have to say that it amused me) the writers insist on maintaining plausible deniability. It's never made explicitly clear whether or not Buffy knows that Spike is alive (at least up until that point. One would assume that after TGIQ, Andrew would feel free to tell Buffy that Spike is alive, but by then we're to the end of the series so we really don't know the consequences of such a revelation). So I really don't look at the ep as an indication of Buffy's feelings for Spike.
No, what actually brings me back to The Girl In Question is that it does seem to leave itself open to interpretation as, it seems, there are differing interpretations of what is represented by Buffy in Rome.
Quite honestly, I find the portrait of Buffy in The Girl In Question to be an unflattering one. I realize that it's painted very ambiguously. It's not explicit in saying anything about Buffy. Little real information is given about her, and certainly nothing that couldn't be quickly explained away by Joss. It's just on a pure viewing level, the portrait of Buffy that I gathered from The Girl in Question is not flattering (primarily, because it played into a lot of my issues with Buffy in the first place.)
I know there's the argument that she's now a "normal" girl and thus is "free," and yet this entire message is totally at odds with the AtS message of "the fight never ends." I always found the AtS message about always continuing the fight (or to go to BSG's Kara Thrace's comments in the finale "We fight until we can't fight any more") far more compelling than an ongoing desire to be "normal." It just seems so conformist and a bit self-oriented (even shallow by comparison). I realize this view heavily influences my reaction to Rome Buffy. But... there you go.
I don't take the "she's free to have a normal life" thing because she isn't normal. She's a Slayer. Even with Potentials, she isn't normal. She's still a Slayer. And what's more, clubbing in Rome doesn't strike me as all that great an end for anyone (And, maybe it's just sloughing off real world responsibilities and heading to a European capital as if it's Disneyland that bugs. I was rewatching the pen-ultimate episodes of Sex and the City last night, and I'm always frustrated with Carrie's desire to chuck what is actually a rather cushy career (and her friends) to head to Paris to...um... sit around a lot and wear evening gowns. I'm all for sight seeing, but life isn't sight-seeing. And I'm not sure that Europe is the answer to all one's life-issues. I tend to think of Farscape's Crichton when he tells Aeryn "Running away isn't fate. Running away is just running away." And Buffy's extended stay in Rome just seems... empty, because we're never given any info that it involves anything more than hanging out and hitting clubs or cuddling with the cipher that is The Immortal. Yeah, sure it could involve more, but we're never told anything but frivolity. And Buffy always had a tendency toward being frivolous. It was the Slaying part of her that balanced the fluff. Without it, I'm not sure that she's much more than a sorority girl on a European vacation ...which isn't wrong so much as why should I CARE? In general, I don't think that AtS presents Buffy in a good light in TGIQ (which isn't all that unusual for AtS, actually). She's just some blonde girl (one in a line of many that The Immortal has bedded. Really, is she given any precedence or stature over even the likes of Darla in this scenario? (Actually, I'd argue, that in general AtS gives Darla more importance to Angel than it ever gave to Buffy so Darla might actually be more important. Spike is a slightly different matter.) However, in general, unlike BtVS which was "all about Buffy" in AtS-land, Buffy usually isn't portrayed very well.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I had actually been a B/Aer. I was actually angry with the way that Angel had left her in the end of BtVS Season 3 (though I did realize that B/A had pretty much, dramatically, run its course. I just thought that Angel was rather high handed in the way he handled the situation). However, when Buffy showed up on AtS in "Sanctuary", well, I mostly hated her by the end of Sanctuary, and I was 100% OFF the B/A bus. Buffy's behavior in Sanctuary indicated very strongly to me that Buffy had no idea whatsoever who Angel actually was. What's more, she had no desire to actually find out who Angel was. She didn't know what made him tick, what his desires were, what his hopes and fears were, what it was which drove him to do anything that he did. For Buffy it was about Angel as the handsome, mysterious boyfriend and that's it. She wanted that fantasy. It wasn't about reality. It was about a dream and maintaining a dream. And the more Buffy stayed away, the more cemented I became in the belief that Buffy (and Angel, btw) was invested in maintaining the illusion of B/A in her head. Not the reality, but the fantasy. And, much of the conflict of Spuffy is that Buffy's hands could not be pried off of a dream of how Buffy had cast "true love forever" in her head and how that had combined with "love is pain and death." Buffy didn't want a real B/A (she would have pursued it, if she had) but she liked the shield of the dream of B/A... to the point that she would overlook the love that was standing by her side fight after fight after fight and willing to self immolate to achieve the impossible standard.
Which is why I cannot accept "The Immortal" as a good thing. I know, I know. It's supposed to be some rif on Angel and Spike and their "rivalry" with him. First off, I can't believe we're supposed to buy into The Immortal. Dramatically, that cannot work as he's this faceless creature, and the story on AtS is about Angel (and Spike). We are, by association, going to be on their side and not on this nameless, faceless Immortal's. We can see that Angel and Spike are being ridiculous, but we're also left feeling that The Immortal is nothing but a cipher. He exists as nothing but a walking, talking fantasy. And, unfortunately, that plays right into many of my issues with Buffy.
The fact is, The Immortal is a nameless fantasy-- rich, good looking, playboy with a thing for Zen philosophy. It's like he hopped out of Zoolander (And yeah, in my head he sort of looks like an Owen brother...or Fabio. Okay, maybe Fabio). And Buffy is all caught up in a fantasy. It just makes me think that Buffy hasn't matured. Her cookie dough hasn't baked. She's just fallen into yet another fantasy, one that The Immortal embodies in his very formlessness.
As stupid and silly as Spike and Angel are in their pettiness... they are real-- flaws and all. In the kindest of all interpretations, The Immortal is AtS's version of Red Dwarf's Ace Rimmer (which was an episode's long rif on the 'perfect' hero, an alternate version of Rimmer who Real Rimmer loathed but who everyone else fell for on the spot and droolled all over). The thing is, it's not real. No one BUYS the "perfect" guy. He doesn't exist. It's a farce. So in the kindest of interpretations, Buffy is dallying with an illusion... which sort of makes her seem like a bubblehead to me. She's still acting like an adolescent girl more interested in a mysterious, handsome boyfriend than actually creating something real with someone with flaws.
A less flattering interpretation is that The Immortal is NOT a good guy. In fact, they never once try to make him out as a "good guy." It's stated several times that The Immortal is amoral, without morals. This isn't a "good" guy... nor is he a "bad" guy. Basically, he doesn't give a damn about moralty. He's pure hedonism. So, Buffy has now embraced hedonism. We're left with the AtS character battling the final apocalypse and Buffy is dancing her nights away in a life of pure hedonism (with The Immortal). Again, not a flattering epilogue for Buffy because it goes back to being purposeless. From the girl with a mission, she becomes the girl with blisters from dancing and... meh. Why would I care?
And a less flattering interpretation still is that The Immortal is a suspicious character because the characters on screen crying his praises are demons and the head of Wolfram & Hart: Rome Division. (Oh, and yeah, Drusilla and Darla. You know, evil vampires. The Immortal slept with two uberevil vampires with the express purpose of...um... giving them repeated orgasms. I mean, if he was a "good guy" wouldn't he have had a bit more noble motives than getting off with two evil female vampires concurrently with perhaps a side motive of maybe just pissing off two other vampires? Even the so-called "noble" actions are mostly explained by annoying the crap out of the Angel and Spike (even if we're to believe that Angel and Spike are overly invested in the guy). Still, we're told point blank that The Immortal is amoral so, we aren't being told to interpret his actions as being done out of nobility. He's not noble. The Immortal is, in other words, perhaps rather shady. And I'm not judging in an "oh, that makes Buffy bad" way. It...well... considering her stances in the past, it makes her seem a bit of a bubblehead to be blinded by the pretty this time.
And finally in the meta, we know that the writers were doing a rif on their inability to line SMG up to appear in "Damage" or "You're Welcome" when AtS had tried to schedule her. SMG had produced a series of 'reasons' why she couldn't arrange to make an appearance. That being the case, The Immortal seems to have a meta commentary of Celebrity and Fame (as the AtS writers... and FOX by that point didn't seem all that well disposed to SMG I don't think they were all that bothered by the implications of what that said about Buffy).
All in all, as silly and farcical as Spike and Angel are in The Girl in Question. As much as they NEEDED to hear that they should get their own lives, I never, ever took The Girl In Question to mean anything flattering for Buffy. It was just elusive (frivolous) Buffy off being a young GIRL (not a woman) who, quite frankly, was never made to appear all that great from the AtS side of the glass. Especially with the ep sandwiched between Fred's death and where Angel, Spike, and gang are left with the final apocalypse. Buffy meanwhile is living in a hedonistic bubble.
I always thought TGIQ said far less flattering things about Buffy's than it did the boys, but then, I do realize that like just about everything Mutant Enemy did in the latter seasons, it's open to a wide range of interpretations where motives are left shrouded in ambiguity since...well... Buffy is nothing but a big swinging mass of blonde hair in the episode. I don't think she comes off as bad just... kinda shallow. (but, hey, I've always perceived that to be one of Buffy's problems that she needed to battle. She always seemed to have far too much ability to be distracted by shiny things and aspire to very little. She always preferred fantasy to reality, so I just saw The Immortal = Fantasy Guy and was singularly unimpressed with Buffy's version of "moving on." It looked a lot like backsliding to me).
At any rate, to drag it all back to the beginning. I think Joss deliberately left a lot of wiggle room for himself and that few (if any) hard, firm stances were taken in Chosen (or TGIQ). It's always up for interpretation. And mostly, I'm okay with that, because asking questions which makes fanfic interesting. I don't begrudge anyone their own interpretations. And I most certainly enjoy the Spuffy-positive interpretations. But I'm afraid my final impressions of Spuffy were murky, muddled, and conflicted... which doesn't lessen my fascination with them. It just means that I never found satisfaction with canon.
JMHO, of course.
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Date: 2006-03-31 05:32 pm (UTC)And, yes, please friend. More the merrier.