Buffy Wants A Dad And Giles Hates Himself So Violently That He Feels The Ultimate Act Of Paternal Devotion

“buffy wants a dad and giles hates himself so violently that he feels the ultimate act of paternal devotion is to refuse to be her dad” THANK YOU for reducing the parts of the early seasons esp that leave me screaming/crying/tearing my hair out/etc into an easily understandable statement. it's like. i love it in that its SO in character for the two of them that i can't imagine another way for them to be but also buffy wants it So Bad and my heart breaks for her and. AGH.

yeah and to elaborate on this thought: i am genuinely convinced that giles thinks buffy understands what he is doing. i am one hundred percent certain that this man is looking at the situation and going -- she knows how fucked up it would be if i was her dad, right? she knows that if i was her dad, i would be sending her out to die, and that would kill me, right? she knows that if i acknowledge her as my daughter, i would be instantly fucking pulling her out of this fight, because she doesn't deserve to be here and we both know that, but What She Needs is someone who is going to encourage her to do what is right for the World and a parent can't do that in this situation. a parent will always put their child first. and so in his head, actively Not Being Buffy's Dad is the greatest possible mercy and the greatest act of devotion that he can give to her without shattering both of them and also the world.

but the tragedy of it is that giles does not understand the way buffy sees it, and the way buffy sees it is that every time she reaches out and asks for him to be there, he flinches back and tells her that she needs to be stronger than she is. and what she learns from that is that her desire for giles to protect and comfort her is something that makes him uncomfortable, and something that he expects her to grow out of. he doesn't approve of her wanting to be his kid, and doesn't like the idea of being her dad, and obviously she's the one who kind of sucks for wanting to force him into a role that he has no interest in stepping into, right? obviously that's what he thinks of her, right?

and it is made SO MUCH WORSE by the fact that giles obviously cares about buffy! you would have to be completely detached from reality to see the way giles treats buffy and not pick up on the compassion. but the message that buffy gets from the paired statements of “i don’t want to be your dad” and “i care so much about you and would lay down my life for you” is that giles cares about her but doesn’t like how much she cares about him. which is true. however, because buffy is buffy, instead of following this thread to “giles hates himself,” she jumps to “giles thinks i am just Too Much in general.”

Just to expand on S7′s unwillingness to challenge the audience on Spike… it’s such a frustrating season for me, as a fan of Spike’s character, because like so much of the season it is so close to something so interesting, but refuses to actually go there.

Seeing Spike with a soul is so potentially rich, because it’s not something we’ve ever seen on the show before. Angel’s situation was different - not because of anything magically different about his soul, but the fact that we are first introduced to Angel and get attached to Angel, before the sudden turn to Angelus. The soul canon is irrelevant - what matters is that Angel with a soul is a different character to Angel with a soul. He acts different, he talks different, he dresses different - he’s a different character. So when he gets his soul back, it’s easy for the audience to see that as simply a reversion to the original character they already knew.

Whereas Spike’s story is a bit more interesting, because the character the audience has experienced for five seasons is a Spike without a soul. That’s the character we love and have grown attached to. When you give that character a soul, you can’t do an Angelus and have him act like a completely different character. He has to be recognisably Spike, as we’ve known him. He has to be the same person or we will not care about the character. So that opens up this incredibly fascinating territory to explore. If Spike is the same person with or without a soul, then can he be forgiven for the crimes he committed before? Where is the line drawn when it comes to moral responibility? Or if he is different without a soul, then is he no longer Spike? Can anything he did before this point really count - including the good stuff like protecting Dawn? What about his relationship with Buffy? This is really interesting, fertile ground for storytelling and either direction you go in, the audience is going to be challenged.

And so they decide to go in neither direction. They straddle the line. They have their cake and eat it too. Spike is absolved completely of any previous crimes. The show is didactic about this - he has a soul now, so it’s fine. Yet, at the same time, there is no change in Spike as a character. He’s still basically the same. The show engineers a situation in which Spike is killing again, and yet cannot reasonably be held accountable for it - yet other characters are held accountable for how they react to it.

Nowhere is this line-hopping more apparent than in how the show approaches Nikki’s coat. The coat is an essential component of the character the audience recognises as Spike. Spike is indivisible from his iconography, and the coat is part of that. Fool For Love makes sure to soak that iconography in blood, and so make Spike’s crimes invisible from Spike. It is metaphorically a dead woman’s flayed skin. S7 then reminds us of this history through Robin, and the pain he experiences seeing a man in his mother’s metaphorical flayed skin. And Get it Done doubles down on this - the coat is tied to this idea of the “old Spike”, the person who tried to kill Buffy. The person who killed Nikki. And yet, when it comes to confronting Robin, the show is insistent on this Spike being new and different. He has a soul now. 

So which is it? Are we going to get rid of this piece of iconography because it represents “old Spike” (challenging!)? Or are we going to keep it and have Spike literally shoulder his old crimes (challenging!). What they do is neither. He doesn’t need to feel guilty about anything he’s done, but he gets to keep the coat because it looks cool. It does not explore the tension of that, because it’s not interested in risking the audience liking Spike less. The show’s stance is vague - and not so that the show can explore the ambiguities, but so that in any given situation, Spike can always be in the right. I don’t care if he is or not - I care that this approach is deeply boring.

It’s so frustrating. Spike is a deeply complex character who has always existed to to challenge the audience on what they thought they knew about vampires, and love, and the soul. Yet at all opportunities, S7 refuses to say anything challenging about Spike, and so avoids any stories that are actually you know, interesting.

I just started Harrow the ninth and the shift in tone… was both jarring and kind of hilarious.

We need to talk about the Enemies kiss from Faith's perspective. Because obviously this scene is framed from Buffy's POV, and invites us to ask questions about Buffy's character. The big question is "Is Buffy capable of killing Faith?" and the answer is explicitly "Not yet". "Yes" is the destination she will reach in the season finale. But the other question, implied but never brought to the forefront, is the inverse: Is Faith capable of killing Buffy? I would argue this scene proves that the answer is "No".

Faith and Buffy stand there, with knives to each others throats, a slight flick of the wrist away from ending the others' life. It seems like a Mexican standoff, an impasse - neither can kill the other without dying themselves. But the show tells us that it's actually not.

"What are you gonna do, B? Kill me? You become me. You're not ready for that."

The show tells us explicitly that Buffy will not kill Faith, and that Faith knows it. She is correct in her assessment here. She has to be correct, for Buffy's journey to make sense. She knows she is correct, because her role as Buffy's Shadow demands that she know.

It only follows, then, that Faith could have killed Buffy here. Since Buffy was incapable at that moment of killing Faith, it would have been trivial for Faith to kill her. She could have done it, and nobody could have stopped her. Nobody else was capable of stopping her.

So why doesn't she? If she kills Buffy in that moment, then she has won. She would be the only slayer, the one girl in all the world. Sunnydale would be her town to rule. If all her bravado about being jealous of Buffy and wanting to destroy her and her life and take anything she wanted without anyone holding her back was true, then killing Buffy here would achieve all that. If that was her only motivation, then she would have killed her.

But she doesn't. Because deep down, that is not the thing she always wanted. She never wanted to kill Buffy. I think that's one of the most important things about their relationship. Buffy can kill her - but she could never kill Buffy. Because who would she be without her? What is a shadow without its light?

That's not to whitewash Faith - she was perfectly capable of doing a lot of truly repugnant things to Buffy, and she did do a lot of them. But Buffy has an iron core that Faith does not, and it makes her capable of killing the people she loves. You can see this difference in the different ways they deal with Angelus. Buffy eventually musters up the strength to kill Angel in S2, while Faith remains resolute in absolutely refusing to do the same in AtS S4. It is the same for each other.

It's so fascinating. Buffy's arc is all about "becoming" Faith. "You kill me you become me". "You did it. You killed me". The show tells us that killing Faith proves Buffy's similarity to her, and yet also tells us the Faith was never capable of killing Buffy to begin with. How delightfully insane. How "she is more myself than I am" of them.

Faith stands there, with a knife to Buffy's throat, knowing full well that she could kill her right then. Nobody can or will stop her. She holds Buffy's death in her hands. A flick of the wrist, and she wins. She can have everything she claims to want. And what does she do?

She gives her a kiss.

Netflix really uploaded Nimona in its entirety on YouTube. With English subtitles. That’s really cool!