What Do You Do With a Problem Like Buffy

[shipperx]

It's been interesting reading some of the reactions to the last comic. I've been fascinated by the ones who keep speculating that someone needs to come pick up the pieces of Buffy and put her back together again (Candidates generally seem to be Xander or Spike). Am I the only one whose reaction is... no? I think there have already been enough problems with the comics what with the apparent source of the problem being that Buffy screwed things up by empowering more than just one woman in the world. Somehow this 'threw off the balance'. Then we have guys trying to make decisions for Buffy behind her back. And we have things like Willow summoning up some earth magic phallic root to penetrate one of their enemies while she struggles against a literal vagina dentata. The feminist cred isn't as strong as it used to be. Plus there's the fact that Buffy actually needs to learn something from this four years long series of bad decisions.

And, at the risk of being labeled a 'hater' I have to think that the problem that needs to be addressed in the wake of Season 8 is the problem that is Buffy. I don't mean that in a hater sense. It's just if the character is ever going to be allowed to grow up (something I'm far from certain that Joss has any interest in doing), but if the character is ever to grow up, now is the time to put up or shut up about it.

This got me to thinking of the character arc of Season 1-2 of Being Erica. I actually liked how they book-ended Season 1 and Season 2. For those who never watched or don't know about the show, it's a female protagonist in magical time-travel therapy... and it's more interesting than weird as it sounds.

The series starts with the heroine, Erica Strange, having an incredibly shitty day, she's dumped by her boyfriend and she also gets fired. This is bookended at the end of Season 2 when in the finale Erica is fired (again) and also breaks up with her boyfriend. But, it's actually a quite good ending. I enjoyed it and thought it was great, because the point was that what's changed between the first episode and the Season 2 finale wasn't so much Erica's circumstances but the character herself. She was in roughly the same circumstances, but this time she was okay. It was all good.

In the first episode the job she was fired from was just the latest in a long series of stop-gap jobs and the boyfriend who dumped her was just yet another bad relationship coming to a bad close. Erica is directionless and lost. Over the course of the show (and therapy) she's allowed to learn from her mistakes. So, in Ep 1 she's fired and in Season 2's finale she's fired, but she's not directionless any more. She knows what she wants and she takes the chance, partnering up with a friend to launch their own business. She now has a direction. And while the break-up in the first episode had her going into the usual meltdown over being dumped, the breakup with Season 2 boyfriend was a good thing. In Season 1 she was being dumped in a dysfunctional relationship. Since then she actually 'got' the guy that she always thought she wanted. Turns out, the dream "Mr. Right" was just a human being, the kind with his own wants and needs and flaws. He really was a nice guy. She wasn't disillusioned by him, but she had to give up the fantasy and admit to herself that just because he's the guy she always wanted, that doesn't mean that the relationship actually works for her (or for him). They don't really want the same things in life. So they break up, in a honest and caring fashion, because she's strong enough to no longer cling to fairy tales, to not need a prince charming to rescue her, and to look for a relationship that will fulfill both her and her partner's needs. This break-up was a good thing.

So why do I bring this up with Buffy. The point I took from the Being Erica arc was that the problem wasn't just a matter of circumstances. Her circumstances and in Season 2 were roughly the the same as in Episode 1. The problem had been in and the change had been in Erica. It wasn't what was around her, it was her. Her learning from her mistakes, allowing herself to develop and move forward, gives her an entirely different outlook. In Episode 1 she was devestated. In the Season 2 finale, she was actually in a really good place... despite that in both instances she was unemployed and single.

So when I say that the problem is Buffy. It isn't in a haterade sense. It's that no character is ever going to fix her story for her. No character will ever fulfill her. No character will solve her loneliness, her lack of connection, her misery, etc. No character but her. No character needs to pick Buffy up and put her back together again. No character but her. (I just don't know that I trust Joss or Dark Horse to tell that story.)

[ETA: And I know that it's easy to reference that Erica has her therapist. I wouldn't be against Buffy having one of those too. (Actually I've thought that since Season 6). But I think the time for mentors for Buffy is over.]

Comments

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one whose reaction is... no?
You definitely aren't the only one.

Pllus there's the fact that Buffy actually needs to learn something from these four years long series of bad decisions.
Amen to that. Actually, amen to your entire post.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

You aren't the only one. If Buffy needs anything, it's alone time.

llus there's the fact that Buffy actually needs to learn something from these four years long series of bad decisions.

This is very much why it won't work. Why it's an impossibility. How exactly do you learn from something that you knew was wrong when you did it? All we're shown is that Buffy is out of character--and we're deliberately shown she's out of character, no question. The usually even have another character there to show how real!Buffy would act (Mel in ToYL, for instance). Unless we get a reason, and at this point it almost has to be mystical of origin, all you can ever have is an unreliable hypocrite character. "You can't defeat evil by doing evil" *attempts to do evil to do good* "Whoops! Guess I was right!" That's all you end up with.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

The usually even have another character there to show how real!Buffy would act

Interesting thought. Might get dropped (like so many other plot lines, forshadows and hints) now that a new team of writers will start afresh/really old (already has: S. Allie wrote the last arc from all we can gather).

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

All we're shown is that Buffy is out of character--and we're deliberately shown she's out of character, no question.

Is she really?

The bank robbery aside, and the part where she herself gives up her powers (and not the other slayers--just her), I can't think of too much that I would consider OoC for Buffy in the comics or even find questionable as to what her character would do...at the very least, the facets of her are there.

Can't say the same for Angel in the least, though.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm still scratching my head over how DH and/or Joss thought that this was a good idea especially executed the way it has been without even a stab at explanations. I don't know what DH was thinking. I can't help that Joss's thought process may have been passive-aggressive issues with his most famous and most successful project, the way that it holds on even as his newer, younger babies (that never got old enough to disappoint him) died. Ubi4soft linked to that quote where Joss called it an albatross, and I can't help but think that sentiment shows.

[shapinglight]

That you should have to keep emphasising that you don't hate Buffy makes me cross. How has it come to this over a comic?

I've been fascinated by the ones who keep speculating that someone needs to come pick up the pieces of Buffy and put her back together again (Candidates generally seem to be Xander or Spike). Am I the only one whose reaction is... no?

I agree on an intellectual level. However, since Spike is the only thing left I care about in this sorry mess, I just find myself thinking yet again he has nothing to do and no reason to be there. I know he gets a scene with Buffy in 40, because Allie said so, but again it won't be anything like what people want or expect - those of us that want to be 'spoon-fed,' that is.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

those of us that want to be 'spoon-fed,' that is.

Is that the wording he used?

[rahirah]

Well, to be fair, the comics have stirred everyone up, but people who criticize Buffy have been called haters by some Buffy fans since the show was airing. (And also to be fair, some of them are, though I would not put Lisa in that category - I have seen some pretty epic Buffy hate in my day. Of course, I've also seen some pretty epic Buffy whitewashing.)

I've seen a couple of people who assume that Spike will of course stick around and dry Buffy's tears, but why would he? As far as he knows, she's head over heels about Angel, even after all Angel's done. The battle's done and they kinda won, and Spike's got no reason to hang around.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

By spoon-fed if you mean 'something that is actually illustrated or in the text or even implied in the actual text as opposed to something intuited out of the ether.' Then, yes. I need to be spoon-fed.

Although what I basically expect is Buffy giving some half-assed "I know I was rude..." with Spike going "Don't give it another thought, love. I should've called." The end.

It'll be the height of subliminal Spuffy.

[ubi4soft.livejournal.com]

It's that no character is ever going to fix her story for her. No character will ever fulfill her. No character will solve her loneliness, her lack of connection, her misery, etc. No character but her. No character needs to pick Buffy up and put her back together again. No character but her.

Agree. We (Romanian) have a saying (sorry if it didn't translate well in English): "Until you hit your head on the upper threshold you won't see the lower threshold". But this applies to people who learn from their own mistakes, some are smart or caution enough to learn from others, some never learn.

I hope she will be able to rebuilt herself (oh, God, I'm pathetic, speaking of a fictional character).

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh. Don't feel bad. I speak of her that way too, even though I'm perfectly well aware that she's nothing but a fictional construct.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't Buffy.

It's Joss.

The only way to fix it is for Joss to publicly admit, in plain and unambiguous words, that he has spent the past four years in a drug-addled haze and had no idea what he was doing when he 'wrote' the comic and recruited the world's worst artist to draw it.

[sp23.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I do agree that the problem is Joss and I'm unenthusiatic and not optimistic because it is Joss. Joss has always been far more dramatic and successful in breaking his toys, usually without a plan to put them back together again.

[liliaeth]

Another thing I feel the need to add, is that yes, Buffy needs a therapist, but the last thing she'd ever need is for her 'love interest' to be that therapist.

A good therapist should be able to take a difference from their client, or they wouldn't be able to do even half as good a job.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Another thing I feel the need to add, is that yes, Buffy needs a therapist

I've thought that too. Someone needs to write a crossover fanfic where Buffy goes to Erica's Dr. Thom.

[prophecygirrl.livejournal.com]

Absolutely yes. I am the spuffiest spuffy in spuffydom, but if you told me that Spike needed to save her, I would laugh right in your face. Because you were not watching the same show, or the same Buffy. Or the same Spike, for that matter. And that's OK. I wouldn't even say that a S.O. could heal her, but....give her the strength she needs to heal herself? Yes, I could see that. that's what love is for. And that's Spuffy, at least to me.

After Angel/Twilight, I don't think that Buffy would want someone to save her, either. Which was probably the excruciatingly painful, clumsily executed point of all of this. If Buffy does manage to put herself back together after all of this, *by herself* -- that would be something. I just don't know if I can stick around through the actual storytelling to see it. Too much collateral damage to characters that I love.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think DH doesn't realize what a monumental task they've set for themselves. I also don't know that I believe they're up to it even if they did. I fear Buffy as protagonist may be permanently damaged by this. There might be a way to fix her, I don't know that these comics are capable of adequately addressing it, though. So I'm anticipating avoidance.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post!

I guess, I disagree with the notion never grew up. She maybe had not reached the growth Erica foudn after two seasons (but then on Being Erica it's the sole focus of the story) but in the later seasons I felt that Buffy HAD grown, had left her childhood behind to an extent and became a grown up.

It's just that in the comics all that evolution was gone again. She was not only stuck, she had regressed for no good reason.

I don't even give the writers of S8 the credit that they captured the present Buffy and merely didn't move her own, they also stole the development she already had.

Not that a person can never have a relapse, but in the case of Buffy it makes no sense.

I agree that she can only put herself back together again, but even about that I can't really care, because it's not Buffy anyway.

[rahirah]

Back when S6 started, there was a guy whose name I can't remember who posted a lot on BAPS. He was primarily a Willow/Xander fan, but he liked Spike too. And when the spoilers for S6, with Xander hiding the engagement came out, he went bugfuck. He insisted that Joss couldn't handle writing adult characters, and that he was going to regress all the characters and their relationships, and ignore all the character development they'd had in S5, and so on. At the time, we thought he was crazy, and he eventually got so obnoxious that he was banned.

But in retrospect, he wasn't that far off. Joss seems to be able to take a character up to a certain point... but he can't get past that point, and has to roll them back.

[rahirah]

Hell to the yes.

[quinara]

I'm with you - but you probably knew that...

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

Oh hey hon, spoilers? (for Being Erica which I'm still catching up on!)

Re Buffy, I agree. She needs to solve something herself, not be white-knighted at LEAST once.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Sorry! I thought since Season 2 had aired a year ago I was in the clear. Ooops!

[next_to_normal]

Heh, well, obviously any argument that involves the awesomeness of Being Erica is going to win my heart, but yes, all of this.

I am unapologetically a Buffy stan, and I've identified quite a bit with her misery (particularly S6). But you've hit on exactly why I CAN'T identify with Buffy S8 - because I feel like we should be past this. I just don't understand how she's in the place that she's in. We should be building her back up instead of tearing her down even more. And I just don't think Joss is capable of that. Buffy never learns any lessons because Joss can't write a character who's not fundamentally screwed up.

I am also firmly of the belief that Buffy is in need of some quality therapy, and has been probably since S2. :)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh, well, obviously any argument that involves the awesomeness of Being Erica is going to win my heart, but yes, all of this

:)

Unfortunately, I wish I could better enjoy this seasons romance. I feel like I'm not allowed to dislike it because it's all honest and stuff, but...sheesh. I just don't see the chemistry between those two, even though I always knew Erica and Kai would be separated by time. Still, measuring chemistry? There's just no comparison.

because I feel like we should be past this.

I'll always be confused at the way she could overlook everything and just fling herself into Twangel's arms. It's not that I cannot buy that she prefers Angel. It's not that I can't buy her 'choosing' him. It's that I can't buy her overlooking 200 dead girls and an apocalypse to do so, that's where the cognitive dissonance kicks in.

We should be building her back up instead of tearing her down even more. And I just don't think Joss is capable of that

This, Joss has always been better at breaking things than putting them back together again. I don't know that they understand that Buffy needs to earn back other characters and the audience's trust. I'm not sure that DH et al even think that she needs to.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

And, at the risk of being labeled a 'hater' I have to think that the problem that needs to be addressed in the wake of Season 8 is the problem that is Buffy. I don't mean that in a hater sense. It's just if the character is ever going to be allowed to grow up (something I'm far from certain that Joss has any interest in doing), but if the character is ever to grow up, now is the time to put up or shut up about it.

I'm not really sure who'd be calling you a hater re: this viewpoint...? If you look at what most of the Buffy stans are saying (which admittedly might just be me and Vampmogs at this point), they all want Buffy to go off and be alone, to deal with her issues, to get herself back together. (Didn't we bond in agreement over this very course of action in Maggie's comments a few days ago? I guess I'm puzzled where the expectation of Buffy haterade is coming from...)

Interestingly, I was just having a private chat with ladyofthelog where I plotted out post-Season 8 fic exploring how Buffy needs to heal herself. Admittedly, I'm with prophecygirrl in thinking that Spike or someone else can be present there for her to lean on if she chooses, but that she's the only one who can heal herself.

Here's the thing: It's not even possible for Spike to heal her. It's just... not. We know this. That's not how coping with depression works. That's not how recovering from trauma works. What works is a support system coupled with an individual's willingness to heal, to devote themselves to healing. But of the two, the individual's willingness is what's essential.

The presence of a man giving Buffy support isn't going to negate the reality that only she can heal herself. So it doesn't really even enter my mind as an issue.

He (Spike, Xander, Santa Claus, Obama!) can't heal her, so why would I be worried that he'd heal her and her strong feminist street cred would be damaged because a man fixed her?

His presence cannot diminish the very real internal battle that only she can face. It kinda feels like an extreme feminist point of view: no man can be present or this woman won't get credit for facing her own psychological issues!

Oh snap, another person is present, offered social support and has a penis. Well, clearly the man's the one who fixed her. Pfft, feminist hero, my ass. :P

And I know that it's easy to reference that Erica has her therapist. I wouldn't be against Buffy having one of those too. (Actually I've thought that since Season 6). But I think the time for mentors for Buffy is over.

I've never thought of therapists as mentors. I... don't think that's what they are. I can see how one might describe them that way, but... I mean, going to a surgeon to get my appendix taken out doesn't make him my mentor. Therapy to me is not about mentorship. It's about healing trauma, healing psychological injury. I see where there's similarities obviously, but that equation doesn't really work for me. But then I realize it's kinda a throwaway line there at the end so maybe if you expounded, I'd better understand your take. To me, mentorship is about learning skills from an experienced professional till you're their equal (at least that's what you hope). You don't go to a therapist for treatment so you can become a therapist (like I'm gonna shadow this therapist for a day and ask her to be my mentor). (the comparison is throwing me! ;)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure who'd be calling you a hater re: this viewpoint...?

I can link you to some of the 'debates' aycheb and I had, albeit she hasn't called me hateful (Lately. Though I think she did once draw some analogy where calling me a "Buffy fan" equated to something rather insulting, but I've forgotten once), just recently insulted my intelligence and reading comprehension. Hence my calling a halt to that debate.

What works is a support system coupled with an individual's willingness to heal, to devote themselves to healing.

I'm not saying she needs to be without a support system or that others need to turn against her. She actually has a support system. Despite everything that's happened, last I looked Dawn, Xander, and Spike all still believe in her and care about her. They cannot, however, make everything okay. They cannot ride to her rescue (as to where I saw this speculation about people needing 'to pick up the pieces and put Buffy back together', it's over on BuffyForums.)

I've never thought of therapists as mentors.

I don't either. My wording is awkward. I'm all for Buffy having a therapist, mystical or otherwise (Paging BE's Dr. Tom or Dr. Nadia. I think you could do a good thing in pitching in here!) I think though that the time for parental figures is over with the death of Giles. I wouldn't consider a therapist a parental figure though. I can see how what I wrote can be read that way, however. It's just not what I meant.