Welcome all to Fangirl Hell!

“Why would you help me? After everything?”

“I don’t know. I’m tired of fighting you. I want things to be different.”

“I don’t deserve this.”

“You didn’t deserve the scar, either.”

“What if I turn on you?”

“Don’t. Help me escape instead. Then you can go find your Uncle, or you can come with us, help us defeat the Firelord and end the war.”

thinking about how becoming ii is this wound, this kind of death for buffy, she's never the same afterwards, it's the event that marks the shift in how she relates to her shadow selves, no longer the hotheaded freaky one but the careful reserved one, thinking about how buffy's whole life is falling apart and here's just some GUY, thinking about "i got nothing left to lose" / "i'm all you've got" / "take that away and what's left?" "me."

thinking about how becoming ii is the event that officially locks in spike falling in love with buffy, as per the fool for love 1998 flashback, and how spike by being their for her coming out gets an invitation to her home which will enable some of his future closeness with her family, how spike's love for buffy's family is what first lets her admit she has feelings for him, thinking about how this one event ripples out through their timeline and changes everything???? —2x22 "i want to save the world" → 5x22 "i made a promise to a lady" → 7x22 "i want to see how it ends"

like spike being there for buffy's coming out was already insane, becoming ii spuffy was already insane?? insane in this way that's like, the characters and the show didn't even know what was to come for them and yet this still HAPPENED. and then the 7x17 parallel literalizes that, it says spike being there for buffy's coming out is analogous to spike bringing home his new wife to meet mother, and how the seeds for that are already in the 2x22 shooting script which literally says yeah this is the vibes that buffy brought her new partner home to meet mom...

he's looking into her eyes and saying, i know what you want and i see it, and she knows it too,, and it's the death wish but it's also the vampire fetish,, and how buffy being into vampires, being into other slayers, has always been queercoded, has ALWAYS been about her non-normative desires

when he says, "that final gasp, that look of peace. part of you is desperate to know. what's it like? where does it lead you?"

and the way queerness is a kind of death. the way it's leaving behind one vision of what you thought life was going to be and intaking another, the way it's death as transformation. not to be a doctor who girl on main, but the way it's death as Just More Life Than You Were Expecting.

and the way buffy wants to know. the way that in the Text, buffy does have a death wish, it is implicitly acknowledged across this season and the next two. the way that, in the Subtext, that means buffy also wants the other thing. she wants the dead man. she wants the body she's not supposed to want. she wants queerly, and she wants that look of peace. that final gasp. she wants to know what it could be, to be happy and content, in a life of accepting and reveling and Living in wanting what she should not want....

And he sees her. sees even the parts she doesnt want to be seen. and He Knows, and most importantly, She Knows That He Knows,

and THAT'S why the back porch shoulder pat cry can happen. THAT'S WHY the "i can be alone with you here" can happen.

because spoike and buffy are the SAME PERSON, the text is SHOUTING IT AT US across the last three seasons, and in his origin story episode it's "i know im a bad poet, but i'm a good man. all i ask is that you try to See Me."

She’s a Sensation? Yeah that’s his dumbass right there 🙄🤣

Strength to Endure is the Intervention to getting a soul to I’ve come to redefine the words pain and suffering since I fell in love with you continuity

give me reasons we should be complete