[ SECRET POST #4698 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4698 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 44 secrets from Secret Submission Post #673.
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

[fscom]

05. https://i.imgur.com/T23mvpO.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Hell YES. With the way fandom has changed, I keep it quiet, but MAN this ship does all kinds of things for me. The fucked-up-ness is a feature, not a bug.

[(Anonymous)]

Amen. I watched the show for the first time about a year ago, and fuuuck did they do it for me.

[(Anonymous)]

This is my feeling as well. I expected I would dislike it, but I think the show is really the most honest about the problems with that relationship, and the ones it does romanticise are just as bad or worse, IMO anyway.

On rewatching as an adult Angel horrifying, Riley is so much worse than I remembered, and Xander should just glue a fedora to his head and not talk to women ever.

I also hate that Buffy's big fuck you moment to the council was about Giles getting his job back and not waking up to the fact that if they pay watchers they should pay slayers.

There are lots of things I liked about the show but I have so many opinions now.

[sabotabby]

All of these opinions are quite similar to mine.

[(Anonymous)]

I never understood the appeal of Angel. At least with Spike she was an adult and they were honest with each other, even if she was an adult making poor decisions.

[(Anonymous)]

When I was 16, I got the appeal of Angel because of the angsty, star-crossed lovers. It was romantic, in the Anne Shirley sense of the word. But even as a teenager, the practical side of me never saw them getting a happily ever after because even if you ignored the curse they were terrible at talking to each other and also Angel had a tendency for being patronizing that annoyed me.

Rewatching as an adult makes it abundantly clear that on top of other issues, Angel's also a creeper perving on a literal child for most of his run on the show, so you know. Ick.

[(Anonymous)]

Different anon, but you summed it up. I liked Angel when I first watched it and he was a mysterious older guy. As an adult he's just the dude who hangs out with high school girls that everyone his own age stopped talking to because they think he's weird.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. We're supposed to believe that there's no college-aged or older people who would have been okay with accepting Angel into their circle of friends? The only person who could really understand him was a high school sophomore. Uh huh.

[(Anonymous)]

ahaha Riley, I remember not being a huge fan the first time through, on re-watch he was tolerable in like the first half of season 4 and by the time it got to season 5 every time he was on screen I was just going 'whhhhhy is he still here when is it the episode where he goes awaaaay'

[silverr]

Same. I also think it's a more realistic portrayal of a relationship -- they both had issues, they did some damage to themselves and each other, but ultimately they worked shit through. (Spike not only knew how monstrously he fucked up while he was soulless, he almost immediately went out and made sure it would never happen again. He knew that charm and half-assed apologies wouldn't cut it.)

And I agree so much about the S7 moments: The end of "Showtime," for example, when she finally gets him from the Ubervamp cave? I've seen that scene dozens of times and it always makes me burst out in ugly sobbing.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

His post-soul line about "the kind of man who would never" always struck me. He wasn't trying to be redeemed, he never asked for forgiveness (and nobody DID forgive him), he just knew what he'd done was too far and he needed to do whatever it took to not be that person ever again, no matter what happened to him.

[silverr]

Yes, precisely. He even says, iirc, during that same speech "Can't say sorry" -- meaning that he know that no apology would ever be is enough, let alone asking for forgiveness or hoping for redemption.

[philstar22]

I love Buffy/Spike. Then again I also love Buffy/Angel and Angel/Spike. This is one fandom where I really do OT3. I never cared for the ship war because I liked both equally. I always thought the three of them were best together. But yes, Buffy and Spike are hot. And I also love the sweet, non-sexual season 7 moments. His devotion to her is adorable, honestly.

[(Anonymous)]

I watched this show for the first time in my mid 30s, and Buffy/Spike was definitely my no. 1 ship. I mean, yeah, it was problematic, that was the whole appeal. Agree with you on the season 7 post-soul dynamic between them.

Would love to read your AUs.

I also always got a kick out of Spike's interactions with Joyce.

[(Anonymous)]

The devotion thing got me. And it's not just when he was hoping he'd have a chance and he was trying to impress her. When she's dead he still stays with Dawn and protects her friends because he's trying to keep his promise.

[(Anonymous)]

Definitely, those bits towards the end of season 5 when he doesn't think he has even a sliver of a hope and he's still there trying to help, damn. I especially love the scene where they've gone back to her house to get weapons, and she forgot that he would be stuck at the door because he was un-invited, and he doesn't even suggest that she re-invite him, he's just like 'pass the stuff over the threshold, it's fine'. And then she does invite him in again. <3

[silverr]

Yesssss. That's such a great moment.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm, I might need to rewatch BtVS. Buffy/Spike is usually the kind of ship that I gravitate to (heroine that can take the villain down, and the villain that loves her for it), but I never got over my disgust at the gross Buffybot shenanigans that predated their relationship.

[(Anonymous)]

At least the show was honest about how fucked up the Buffybot thing was. That made it easier to handle, for me at least.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I probably should have been more bothered by the Buffybot thing than I was. It was definitely bad and gross, but somehow the amount of detail that he put into seemed almost sweet, in a suitably fucked up Spike way? Like, he could have gotten a Buffy-shaped version of the first bot Warren built, that basically had no personality traits other than 'loves the guy it was programmed to love', but he didn't want that. He wanted it to be as realistic as a version of Buffy that was totally into him could be. That doesn't make it not gross, but the idea of it as a private outlet for someone who knows he'll never be able to have what he really wants, and knows too that he'll never be happy with anything else, speaks to me on some level.

Also, I will 100% forgive the Buffybot storyline in general because of a) some of the hilarious moments it caused and b) that scene after Spike was tortured by Glory, where actual Buffy comes to see him pretending to be the bot.

[silverr]

Yes, that's another one of my favorite moments of the show. I always loved that he knew the exact moment it wasn't the bot. "And my robot?" "The robot was gross and disgusting. And it wasn't real... but what you did for Dawn, that was real, and I won't forget it."