[ SECRET POST #5967 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5967 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #853.
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

[(Anonymous)]

I don't fucking keep track of every tweet I see someone send about a Buffy character they hate, sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Which is exactly my fucking point!

Every Buffy fandom space, and I do mean every space that isn't deliberately pro-Xander, is saturated with Xanderslader. I don't have to keep track of all of the slander because it's just there: Day in and day out, without fucking end.

It's only gotten worse since the show ended, which I didn't think was possible, but here we fucking are!

[philstar22]

Not nonny, but the difference to me is that canon doesn't want us to think Spike is amazing and nearly perfect. Canon totally ignores Xander's awfulness. Spike starts as a villain, and canon never forgets that. Even when he slowly switches sides, he's always clearly complicated and has the evilness too. And season 7 made clear that the attempted rape was bad.

On the other hand, canon ignores Xander's awfulness. And that's incredibly frustrating. So it makes sense, at least to me, that fandom spends more time talking about Xander's problems. Because canon never does.

[(Anonymous)]

Canon ignores Xander after season 4. Joss, the asshole, literally said Xander's storyline was done, so there was no narrative available to explore his faults even if Joss or the writers cared to.

But that's not my issue here. My issue is Xanderslander is everywhere, and since I don't actually hate the guy, and still like the fandom, I have to put up with constant negativity towards the character. When I just want to look back on a show that I love without having to listen to assholes go on and on and on about a character they hate instead of anything else.

God, I hope this was a joke secret because the idea that Spike is widely hated is fucking laughable.

[philstar22]

Oh I totally agree with the last sentence. Spike is adored in fandom. But I just think that Xander being disliked is understandable.

Also, season 7 glorified Xander, so I don't think he was totally ignored.

[(Anonymous)]

I disagree.

Xander never got an individual episode to himself in season 7 that explored with any depth his actions or his feelings unless they had to do with other characters who did have significant storylines. Even Anya got an episode that was all about her. Xander could have been written out of season seven and nothing would have changed because he had no real effect on the narrative.

Sure, he loses an eye, and people cry and feel bad, but he doesn't get to talk about what it means to him. The injury was about Buffy, which fair, the show is called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but nothing about what happened to Xander was strictly about Xander.

But again, none of that has anything to do with my issues with this secret, and I maintain anyone who claims Spike is hated in any significant way is a liar.

[(Anonymous)]

Anon, your reward for liking a character that's main-cast, that the rest of the fandom really doesn't, is getting to enjoy all the parts of the show that we suffered through and thought were boring as fuck. And there were a LOT of those, because Xander was basically Joss's self-insert character.

The downside, of course, is that you have to actively look for the people who feel similarly, instead of going anywhere people discuss Buffy and assuming your preferences will be catered to. You'd get more sympathy if you didn't try to hijack someone else's secret, though.

[(Anonymous)]

You can't hijack a secret. The thread goes where it goes.

[(Anonymous)]

You can certainly try. And saying "you're a liar and your problems are fake, but me, I've got the REAL problems" is a pretty transparent attempt at it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't need your or anyone's sympathy. I'm just here to speak up call out bullshit. It costs me nothing, and it is very cathartic, so I'm going to do it.

And make no mistake, this secret is BULL. SHIT.

[(Anonymous)]

I've interacted with fandoms over the long term. One of the more unpleasant shocks I got in the process came after being contacted by someone who shipped the juggernaut canon pairing in a canon, who was being mobbed and excoriated for their shipping preference on a platform I used to frequent daily. That seemed absolutely impossible to me, but I looked, and sure enough. The space had changed so much that you literally could not ship the most vanilla pairing in the series (they hug and kiss onscreen all the time) without being accused of pedophilia. And I'd been writing a much darker and more controversial pairing for the same series on the AO3 without having contact with the community at large for years, so I had no idea how things had changed, until someone new to the series contacted me because they enjoyed my writing and mentioned in passing that they were being bullied for their shipping preferences on Tumblr. And they were being bullied to the extent of "kill yourself," by a large group, with new PMs coming in every few seconds. It wasn't casual disgust.

In short, the fact that you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't there. And even if it would have been unthinkable a decade ago, that doesn't mean things haven't changed drastically.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

I know it exists. Buffy and Willow bashing exists, if you look for it. I was there from the start too and stayed long after the series and Joss fell out of relevancy. I'm still writing Buffy fanfic! So, I know there are people who hate every character on the show.

I KNOW.

I'm arguing that that hate is nothing compared to the hate Xander gets and how inescapable it is. I can go almost anywhere in Buffy spaces and maybe, MAYBE, experience Spike hate once a month, if that. That hate never invades spaces unbidden, unavoidably, the way Xanderslander does.

Again, I challenge anyone to watch any random Buffy video on TikTok. It will 100% be Xanderslander. Guaranteed.

Go on reddit and you won't have to scroll far to find at least one Xander bashing post. Xander's tag on Tumblr is a mess of bashing, and I had to delete it, so my dash won't be inundated with it every day.

Spike is not and has never been so hated in this fandom. He has haters, every character does, but it's insulting to even entertain that he's the fandom's whipping boy. He's not, and I'm going to call out the lie he is whenever I see it, so get used to it.

[(Anonymous)]

The OP's claim is completely different than what you're pretending it was. They got sick of feeling like the morally justifiable thing to do was be quiet, presumably because people presented Spike-hate as feminism or couched it in other "I'm a good person for believing this and you're a bad person if you disagree" terms. And now they're not putting up with that shit anymore, and they want Fandom!Secrets to know it.

First you come and yell about how they're lying and rant about how you have it so much worse, and when people point out that they are not lying, you fall back on arguing that it shouldn't matter, because you still have it so much worse. So "get used to it."

Nope. I think your behavior is egotistical and unacceptable.

Xander may well be a deeply unpopular character, and that might be a valid reason not to make a secret about how much Xander-bashing bothers you - a lot of the people here who remember Buffy may not remember him fondly. But that is not the OP's problem and it is also not their fault.

[(Anonymous)]

Egotistical and unacceptable? Maybe. But I'm right.

[(Anonymous)]

Another DA

You’re literally not. It’s hard to believe you’re not trolling at this point.

[(Anonymous)]

I am not a troll. I believe and can back every word I've written here. Every. Single. Word.

[(Anonymous)]

Xander literally gets in a relationship, gets engaged, and then leaves his fiance at the altar

[(Anonymous)]

NARYT but also like...the #discourse about Spike predates Tiktok and Twitter AND Reddit so I'm not even a little surprised AYRT doesn't see it these days. The Evil Rapist is a foregone conclusion of an argument, by modern standards, whereas the Nice Guy is an easy target where the comments will get nasty, sure, but not /sexual assault/ nasty.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

This is about what I was thinking, too.