[ SECRET POST #4354 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4354 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #623.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/1kHHaNO.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I'm only really annoyed if Angel fans bash Spike.

[(Anonymous)]

I loathed both of them.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, with any vampire/mortal pairing you're going to get massive age gaps and massive differences in experience. I mostly found Angel/Buffy creepy for the same reason I found Angel/Wesley or Angel/anyone creepy. Angel is just creepy, and relationships with him never bring out the best in anyone.

Granted any relationship with the caveat 'never know true happiness together or he'll turn into a sadistic demon and murder you' is never getting off on the best of feet anyway. Hence 'curse'. But still. His personality really doesn't make up for any of it either.

[(Anonymous)]

See, I felt like in his own show his personality was fun. He was still pouty (because, cursed and shitty life) but also sarcastic, devoted to his peeps, and a flat-out awkward dork in most social situations, so he was a lot more endearing. But IA any time he tried to date anyone it went to shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Spike was unquestionably better than Angel as boyfriend material. No-Soul!Angel is a monster who wants to torture Buffy and everyone she loves. No-Soul!Spike goes off and gets a soul even though he already loves her without one. I'm so sick of Spike getting shit and Angel getting a pass or ignored entirely.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, most people look at me like I'm insane when I say that.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, that's due to meta circumstances rather than solid characterization. No-Soul!Spike was a murderous dickbag in the beginning, too; that was the original template for the vamps in the first few seasons. That was what having no soul meant. All vampires were sadistic monsters who ate people. Angel losing his curse = actually acting like a vampire, just like early Spike.

But because everybody liked Marsters and wanted to keep him around, they had to tweak what "being a vampire" meant to get Spike to be able to become a Scooby. And Boreanaz left for his spinoff, which did give Angel better development in the long run, just not while around Buffy. So he didn't get the same opportunity of prolonged character evolution in the same setting, according to the same rules. It's apples and oranges.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

This is a very good point.

[philstar22]

This is mostly true. I'd still argue that at both of their very worst, Angelus was still miles worse than soulless Spike. Even from the beginning, Spike was able to love. His devotion to Drusilla was a good thing (as evidenced by the Judge). Angelus was genuinely terrifying.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't care for either pairing, but I liked Evil-to-Neutral Spike better than Good Spike. And all versions of Spike were better than Angel.

[tabaqui]

This. Even though Spike is a good 140 years older than Buffy, he didn't perv on her as a teen, or act like she was going to 'save' him.

Angel was just so...woe is me, and gloomy, and jerky. And stalking her as a fifteen/sixteen year old and being all googly-eyed over her....yuck.

I never liked that 'ship. Spike/Buffy had a massive amount of issues, but at least it didn't make me want to slap people.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I always did wonder why no one I ever talked to seemed to find Angel/Buffy as creepy as I did, considering she was just a kid in high school when they were together.

[(Anonymous)]

The first and most important lens through which to see Angel (at least during seasons 1-3 of Buffy) is as an example of a specific kind of teenage girl fantasy romantic object.

Focusing primarily on the literal, textual characteristics of Angel (IE, being a 200-year-old vampire) and missing the role that he actually plays in the show doesn't make sense to me.

Now obvs you can still say that the idea of the sensitive slightly older man as romantic target is bad, but that's a really important dimension of what's going on in the show.

[(Anonymous)]

Whereas I don't understand prioritising the archetype the show was going for over the character's actual, in-universe history and behaviour. And in-universe, Angel was a significantly older man with obsessive and stalker tendencies and a non-zero chance of flipping out and torturing people to death if Buffy pressed the wrong emotional button. Archetype or no archetype, that's not really a healthy relationship goal.

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, I'm not saying that you should ignore any aspect of the text. But I think keeping in mind the metaphor is crucial to understanding what is happening. even on that level, it's not really a functional relationship - the fact that Angel becomes a total piece of shit after they sleep together is really important to what is going on in the fiction. I'm just saying that the 200-year age gap maybe isn't that central and doesn't need to be taken exclusively literally.

[(Anonymous)]

I will grant that the age gap is among the least of anyone's worries in this relationship. It's still a bit of a doozy even on its own, though, because regardless of human or vampire years, he is still a LOT older than her, and a big part of their dynamic was him wanting this teenage girl to somehow save him from his accumulated life problems. 'Skeevy older man wants pure young thing to save him from his sins' isn't the best look on a character either.

[philstar22]

The age gap wouldn't bother me if she was of age. He's an adult. How big the gap is doesn't actually matter to me. He's an adult in a relationship with a teenager. That's not okay and shouldn't be romanticized. It doesn't bother me that she's into him. What gets me is the other people in her life being okay with it. Giles and especially her mother should have been a lot more freaked out about him being an adult, not just that he's a vampire.

[(Anonymous)]

I got the impression watching AtS that "Angel" was a newer being than "Angelus." He seemed pretty confused by the modern world and his existence, and spent like 20 years eating rats in a depressive, hallucinatory Gollum state as the curse made him recall decades of evil acts.

Which isn't exactly a glowing recommendation of his romantic chops, but in my mind he sort of underwent a factory reset, fairly recently to the events of the show. So he wasn't "pervy elderly man" so much as "super damaged twenty-something in a real old body."

[(Anonymous)]

Their relationship was always so creepy and overly melodramatic. It was my least favorite part of the show, and whenever they brought it up after AtS spun off, it dragged both series down, IMO. Esp AtS because they always had to modify or downright forget Angel's current characterization and concerns to fit into whatever story they were trying to tell with Buffy.

[(Anonymous)]

I always felt like Angel was so much more enjoyable on his own show than he ever was on Buffy. Like whenever he and Buffy were together he was suddenly the smoldering tortured king of angst and then he'd go back to his own show and it would be like 'this is Angel, he's a big dweeb and he loves Barry Manilow.'

[(Anonymous)]

+1 to both of the above comments. I loved Angel on his own series, and I felt like he actually had his own personality. On Buffy, he was just a cardboard cutout of handsome-brooding-mysterious. And I hated the way all of Angel's character development had to fly out the window when he interacted with Buffy in her series. I'm thinking of that very late-series episode of Buffy, and Angel just pained me in that episode, he was so OOC.

[meredith44]

I started watching Angel first. I then went back and tried to watch Buffy, and I just couldn't, and one of the reasons was the Buffy/Angel relationship, which I found really creepy. (I can't comment on the Spike part, because I never made it far enough to meet him.)

[(Anonymous)]

I ship Angel/Xander because no one else should have to put up with either of them.

[(Anonymous)]

LOL, I love this.