[ SECRET POST #3557 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3557 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 11 secrets from Secret Submission Post #508.
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

[sabotabby]

Disagreed on everything except Riley and Xander. I actually liked Riley's arc because I thought he was a terrible human from the get-go, and him making Buffy's grief over her mother's illness and death all about him was 100% in character. It made me hate Xander for backing him, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Omg finally someone else who dislikes Riley! Everyone I talk to is all, "Oh he's perfect and Buffy never deserved him!"

[sabotabby]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I remember everyone hating him at the time but I never know who fandom likes or doesn't.

[(Anonymous)]

No sarcasm. I disliked him from the beginning when he was all whinyupset that Buffy was stronger than him. He just seemed to get worse to me as the seasons went on, and yet everyone seemed to think he was amazing for some reason.

[sabotabby]

I recently made my boyfriend watch it with me (up to the musical) because he'd never seen it despite being 200x nerdier than I am in most ways. It was highly enjoyable to watch his visceral hatred of Riley. During one of Angel's guest spots he remarked that the only good thing about Riley is that he made Angel seem cool by comparison.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think that was the season that my attitude towards Xander officially shifted from "means well, but needs to grow the fuck up" to "why do you have any friends, you ass."

[sabotabby]

I can excuse a lot of his early behaviour because teenage boys are generally not paragons of emotional maturity. But at this point he's a grown-ass man engaged to be married and I get a lot less forgiving.

[(Anonymous)]

Riley left before her mother died.

[sabotabby]

Okay, but he was still a jerkass as she was dying. It's not like "weird brain tumor" is a diagnosis likely to result in a happy ending, but he was still making it all about him.

[(Anonymous)]

op- yeah that baffled me beyond belief.

like i felt the show was trying to sell riley as always being understanding about everything, even though he struggled with it (the whole "oh no buffy is stronger than me thing" i thought was very human. you've got this macho army guy and the slayer just blows him out of the water without breaking a sweat)...

and then he gets butthurt because buffy reacts to her mother's illness-a BRAIN TUMOR - by not running to him??

i feel like basically he broke up with her because she did not need him. he couldn't save her. he always had a supporting role, being there to have her back when she needed it... which i thought was the strong (and incredibly boring) point of their relationship. buffy had this weird hectic life and he was supposed to be the rock that she could fall back to when she needed to. he was dependable.

and then he goes and says "give me a good reason to stay or i leave in a few hours", probably forever

what the shit. there were so many ways in which that could have come across as not douchey! he WAS being put on the spot by the military, it was a very sudden offer! maybe it made him realise he needed something more than being a support character, that's cool. but then you don't try to put that decision on your partner's shoulders! you don't go and tell them it's their fault that you're suddenly leaving, because they did not try hard enough.

manipulative little SHIT. and the show SUPPORTED IT. buffy came running after him!

UGH.

[sabotabby]

It's sad because the story really was potentially interesting. But the narrative was a) sympathetic to his side over Buffy's, and b) didn't let him grow and change.

I'm actually okay with Buffy running after him, because she's young and has just had so many things to deal with and zero time to sort out her feelings. But what it needed was someone—Willow, Giles, hell, even Anya—standing up for her, being an authorial voice, and saying that he acted like a selfish little shit. Instead, the show's mouthpiece is Xander saying dumbass things.

[(Anonymous)]

and it wasn't even "xander being xander". like it was such a weird speech, suddenly he was this odd mature guy giving her a serious talk.

i feel like they just chose xander randomly, it could have been anyone. they just needed a mouthpiece for ~riley's plight~. annoying.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. Like, he'd never shown huge amounts of interest in Riley, beyond thinking he was cool and preferring him to Angel, and all of a sudden he's the best person wut

[(Anonymous)]

Delusional Spike fan spotted.

[sabotabby]

If you think so.