[ SECRET POST #2730 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2730 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 045 secrets from Secret Submission Post #390.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[kaijinscendre]

Maybe I was able to get a hold of assume never aired episodes but I recall many who were not about Buffy crying about some man.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but I think the OP's point is that she was basically never allowed to be single. It wasn't like Twilight, I'll grant you, but it is annoying.

[kaijinscendre]

I'd assume he was catering to his audience. I mean, it aired on the WB which was teen/young adult central. Hell, after Buffy came out the WB pushed for more shows that their teen audience would enjoy, that is all their shows were geared toward for years (Dawnson's Creek, Charmed, Felicity, etc).

I don't remember Firefly having women characters who were always angsting about finding a man.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't remember Firefly having women characters who were always angsting about finding a man.

Really? Because apart from being quirky and female, that was Kaylee's whole bag.

[kaijinscendre]

But they were not being angsty about it. She was just like, "Hey Simon you're hot. I'm hot. We are stuck on this ship all the time. *waggles eyebrows*"

If I am stuck on a ship for months at a time and I am single, I am going to be looking for a potential...shipmate with benefits. And I assume, Kaylee was heterosexual. So her options were Jayne or Simon.

[greenvelvetcake]

And even if she wasn't heterosexual, that leaves Inara, who is out of her price range (plus, I saw their dynamic as big/little sister), underage River, and married Zoe.

[(Anonymous)]

*whispers* should have gone for Jayne

[(Anonymous)]

No, but whole story arcs were. Buffy and Angel. Buffy and Parker. Buffy and Spike. Buffy and Reilly. And there was so much angst.

[(Anonymous)]

Uh, just because Buffy doesn't have to be literally crying over a dude in every single episode doesn't mean the series as a whole was very focused on her relationships with guys.

[kaijinscendre]

She was a teenager/young adult, many of them are obsessed with finding relationships. Not all of them, but many. And I would imagine that a young person who has to deal with all this terrible stuff AND knowing the fact that she probably won't live into her late twenties would be doubly obsessed with finding a connection with someone else in the world. Unfortunately for her, she lives on the Hellmouth and most of the people she makes connections with are also connected to the supernatural.

Also, this was a show that aired on the WB and was marketed towards teens (similar shows at the time being Charmed, Felicity, and Dawnson's Creek).

[esteefee]

I just did a rewatch recently, and my impression was most of her angst was about being a slayer, not about guys. Her almost constant refrain was she wanted to be normal. And, in fact, in the very final seconds of the series, her incredulous smile was all about doing "Anything we want." (Spike had just died, but she didn't seem to be angsting over it much.)

[cassandraoftroy]

Her almost constant refrain was she wanted to be normal.

...You know, that's actually a really good point. And what's the most stereotypically "normal" thing for a young woman her age to be interested in? Boys. So that probably played into her continued pursuit of romance -- wanting to feel like a "normal girl."

[esteefee]

Yes! Exactly. Actually, that reminds me of the Buffy Bot episode, which was a direct repudiation of Buffy being stereotypically girly-needy about boys.

[(Anonymous)]

The series as a whole was focused on her relationships. Period, full stop. Friendships, enemies, family, mentors, other Slayers, everything. Including romance.

As people above pointed out, Buffy spends the majority of the show just wanting to be normal. And to connect with the people around her. She wants to involve herself in life, and live to the fullest. And for her, that means dating guys and (gasp!) having relationships with them. What a concept.

[(Anonymous)]

About as focused as it was on her relationship with her friends, her mother, her father-figure, and eventually her sister.

It was a show about relationships. All kinds.

[skippydelicious]

If she wasn't trying to get some icicle dick from Angel she was mooning over Giles being her substitute daddy, or that soldier guy, or that guy who she dated but ditched when he was an adrenaline junkie, or crashing a party to get a guy and almost being devoured by a demon snake, or the black generic guy, or Dracula's icicle dick. Buffy was all about some short martial arts girl getting some dick.

[darkmanifest]

I wouldn't have minded her getting some healthy amounts of dick, it was the angsting over the dick that annoyed me. She couldn't even have a normal college fling without it turning into an emotional crisis.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but that dude was a dick.

As many college men are.

[darkmanifest]

But why did he need to be a dick? Why couldn't Buffy have been looking for the same thing he was, no-strings-attached sexual release and they didn't need to be best buddies afterward (and he didn't need to be a disrespectful asshole about a nice lay)? That whole thing was just more of the "sex bad" bullshit that plagued the whole Buffy series.

[(Anonymous)]

Because she was an 18-year-old college freshman who had slept with exactly one person in her life, and look how that turned out? Based on everything we saw of her personality and life experience up to that point, I would have found it unrealistic if she was into the idea of fuckbuddies right then.

[darkmanifest]

To me, it was her personality and previous life experience that made what happened seem so inconsistent. She only ever had sex in a long-term mutually committed relationship, so then she...slept with guy she barely knew because she thought he was cute and interesting. Which would have made sense if her character had evolved to exploring her sexuality with no strings attached (like plenty of college freshmen do) after years of being strung up to a guy she could never have. But that wasn't the case, so it seemed like the narrative purpose of any of it was actually taking Buffy out of character to have the guy be a dick afterwards and therefore feed us some tired moral about Sex Bad.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT, days late because ... anon:

I can see your argument. I still feel like overall in terms of her character development having her try casual sex and discover it sucks was fairly unrealistic, but in terms of presenting a sex-positive moral message they could have handled it better.

[(Anonymous)]

Because what happened to her is a pretty stereotypical thing that happens to people growing up? It's not exactly uncommon for a person to think someone else is really into them, and then sleep with them and find the person just wanted to add a notch on their bedpost. Especially in college.

[darkmanifest]

It's also pretty stereotypical for young people growing up to explore their sexuality with casual partners without expecting a long-term relationship, but that wasn't what the writers chose to go with. And regardless, Buffy wasn't a blank slate onto which stereotypical experiences could be placed without a narrative purpose, and the purpose of that event in the context of Buffy's development seemed to be a reiteration of Sex Bad.