Ryn (they/them)

on the OTHER hand, because btvs is nothing without its dichotomies, i feel as the other coinflip of pain is presented in tandem. the flipside of death is life. it is textual, we see this happening the way buffy grows more lively and more in touch with life after she starts her relationship with spike, who has multiple times been connected with the imagery of death. he is the slayer of slayers, he'll make her neck his chalice, he's the one who first brings up the inherent death drive of the slayer and how he took pleasure in killing them. and YETTT. buffy begins her relationship with spike/death that is filled with roughness and bruises and blood and episode-by-episode, we watch her become more connected with her friends and family again. maybe another person has a different reading of this, but i have always viewed that it was this relationship with spike, which was supposed to be that death knell/this unconscious action to get her closer to oblivion, that was instead the feeling (once more, with feeling) given back to her tryst after tryst to bring her back to herself. and she ends their relationship once she's well and truly alive again. i wont discredit the scoobies, her relationship to them is extremely important, but i feel like it really was spike and their affair that led buffy to switch her tracks from death to life.

one’s character has no impact on whether they were/are a victim or not, victim status is not something that is only afforded to the palatable.

i cannot stress how much it does for us

a while ago, one of my mutuals was considering quitting writing. her fics weren’t doing as well, and the algorithm wasn’t favoring her writing like it used to.

so as a collective 10-15 writers, we all reblogged her fic once each. that alone put her writing at the top of the tag.

it makes a difference. way more than you think. it doesn’t matter if people see it because of you, it still gets promoted by the algorithm.

i need everyone to stop projecting their ideas of normal/traditional healthy human relationship/dynamics onto spike and buffy because there is literally no way in hell anybody in this show is redeemable or worthy of forgiveness by any standard if you do that, including buffy herself. and it's a complete waste of nuance that was very deliberately crafted into the story too. spike is a villain and buffy is a hero and both want to kill each other for different reasons and they both actively try to do exactly that multiple times. both feel deep deep hatred for one another for most of the time they spend in the other's presence. spike should by all accounts try to kill her constantly because he is the villainnnnn. it's almost his job. same way buffy should want to kill him any chance she gets. that's the standard that's set and that the characters should meet. it's only when they get caught off guard by their own self reflected back to them through this other being that their preconceived ideas of how they should behave take a step back and they engage with each other almost softly, very gently. like in the scene that's referenced in the op.

i guess my problem with it is that it comes across as if fans only like spuffy because james marsters is hot and people are too dumb to think critically about the media they're consuming. which sure, seeing these dynamics could be harmful if you're a teenager watching, but not more harmful than, say, bangel. not by any standards. bangel might be worse by the simple fact that angel is not supposed to be perceived as a villain so anything he does gets idealized and romanticized, while spike is perceived as a villain and punished for it all the way to the end of the show.