@selfihateyouithink / selfihateyouithink.tumblr.com
Faith/Buffy in Season 7 (requested by monstergagaholic who wanted fuffy edits)
Requested by effulgentlove23
As daft a notion as Soulful Spike The Killer is, it is nothing compared to the idea that another girl could mean anything to me.
Spuffy + Season 7 "I’m not ready for you to not be here"
“I know I’m a bad poet, but I’m a good man.”
spuffy in season 7 requested by unattainablebuffy
I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are.
Tough introspection & life lessons. When all else fails, this will always be my anchor.
And I don’t give a shit if I’ve made you a better man.
ppl in fandoms here on tumblr dot com are ready in a heartbeat to denounce twilight for romanticizing and promoting abusive relationships to a predominantly young and impressionable audience but the second you do the same about their fucking ships suddenly media exists in a vacuum and they’re not hurting anyone bc it’s not real
I don’t know about most people but my problem with Twilight wasn’t that it was an abusive relationship. (My first problem was that it was horribly written but let’s ignore that for now.)
The problem was that is wasn’t acknowledged as a abusive relationship to begin with and people tried to excuse it from being labeled as such when it clearly was. It was shown to young girls and romanticized to the point it became a huge phenomenon and young girls actually wanted to date men like Edward. That’s the part that is not okay. The fact that it was shown as something that was okay to idealize. If it was shown to be an abusive relationship in the first place there wouldn’t be a problem, and it would read as more of a cautionary tale rather than a romantic one.
I think people get caught up in this idea that we need to eradicate all negative things from media in general, like abusive relationships, rape, sexism, or racism. The problem with that type of thought process is that if we do that we will no longer be bringing awareness to those issues. It’s also a huge detriment to story telling as they unfortunately ARE a part of our lives in in one way or another and so should show up the stories we write and are told. Stories are really just ways to get a message across to an audience and taking away all the bad things in the world isn’t going to actually fix reality. I love ‘bury your head in the sand’ literature just as much as anyone else and when I need to read something that is lighthearted and escapist then I do. But that shouldn’t be all there is.
As far as shipping goes: it depends on the context. If you acknowledge that the ship is unhealthy and are aware of what it’s media impression is, then I don’t see why that’s a problem. I ship several unhappy/unhealthy ships and hate when fans try and take those and simplify them into something sweet and innocent. A part of enjoying that ship is knowing how messed up it is and being able to see the difference between wanting to copy that behavior and seeing the appeal in a fiction world where it’s not actually hurting anyone. Honestly, unhealthy ships are more real and interesting in concept then happy-go-lucky ones ever will be.
Now as for excusing a ship of being abusive because it is media and “won’t affect anyone”, no. No, media does reflect on the population and writers should take responsibility in what they put out there and how they put it out there. That said, Twilight in particular was marketed to young girls. Something like say Jaime and Cersei from Game of Thrones wasn’t targeted at a young audience with the intention of them buying into only the romance and emulating it. It was for older teens/adults and expected for those older people to know better. Because of the maturity of the story, a unhealthy relationship isn’t shown as an ideal but rather an asset to the story telling and a motive behind the character’s actions. That doesn’t excuse the abusive relationship but it does give it context.
In short, stories like Twilight should be told but only if they are taken in a serious context and acknowledged for what they are AND targeted at the proper audience that can get the lesson.
I agree with this, but the longer I'm in fandom or watching things with casual viewers, the more I realize that "mature themes" in things are missed just as much by older people (and normalized/romanticized just as much so their ship can sail!!!!), and you really can't, in true ageist/ableist fashion, act like older people won't buy into abuse culture's bullshit, or that anybody, really, won't use whatever they possibly can (including other ships that are abusive themselves but not as well-noted as such) to make a "healthy" (canon! mutual! x person would have said yes!) ship out of only abuse and rape and call people who argue with it using canon, including but not limited to survivors of those same things, unreasonable, if not slurs.
Abuse and rape cultures are too pervasive and normalized for it to be really anywhere without people acknowledging it's there (and, most helpfully, vilifying it) and of course not being apologist for it and NOT romanticizing/sexualizing it (esp. in the "ambiguous" victims' case) without caveats, without noting comparatively less harmful ships being better (in canon) for characters/people. That includes in fandom and everywhere else, freely, without being vilified for it and silenced with slurs, "be nice", "ship-/kink-shaming", etc. to try to get us all to assimilate into these cultures so they don't have to feel bad about what the reality of the relationship makes victims feel watching it and take responsibility for what they like out of consideration for other people.
(P.S. Because of that last thing, note to large parts of SPN fandom,
"No, this fandom is not a family, because a majority of you are abuse/rape apologist heterosexist allonomative queerphobes supporting those parts of the show and fandom without a thought for helping this institution oppress the rest of us [or yourself included sometimes], and queer abuse/rape survivors resist that shit.
If it is an abusive family, y’all are like the trope of the mom who sees the father, his friends, and the brother abusing the daughter and silences the daughter with apologia, agreement, and teaching her it’s normal cos they do it to you too and you don’t have a problem with it.
So frankly, I don’t want to be part of your "family" while you all try to fucking silence me/us, I want to pull a Castiel in S9 and make it really damn clear that if you’d stop dragging me in with dangerous infighting and/or trying to better some of you and gain allies in a shitty world, and there was no central loyalty I have to the show we all like or people I do respect here and treat like family, I’d choose a far different ~family.")
I've been watching S6 of Buffy all day, and let me just fucking tell you.
Kind at times (the beginning) or not, Spike is controlling as fuck. He is abusive as fuck. And I don't care whether or not he loves her (I think he does, but in the damaging manner of a demon), whether or not she wanted to fuck him (she did/does), whether or not it's hot (it is, I'm negl), and whether or not he does other good stuff, he is. And as a result, his rape is completely predictable. Shockingly, demons can stop committing mass murder (WITH A CHIP IN THEIR HEAD THAT PREVENTS IT) and still do bad things to individual people, especially if their love is obsessive.
Maybe he's sweet sometimes when he's got the chip and can't hurt her, when they're just antagonistic allies/barely friends, but some people--some creatures--are not meant to be in sexual or romantic relationships because the way they obsess excludes respect and consideration. Spike is one of them; the more Buffy goes to him (cos she is sexually attracted, and after 6x09, she thinks he hates her but gets off on the self-harm, and thus it's safe to consent to fucking him--when he's lovesick she wouldn't cos she doesn't love him), the more he tries to control her feelings.
Every bit of abuse from her in that season is reactive. Her kissing him when she told him she doesn't want to, in weak moments (like in 6x07 after her pain is revealed against her will and in 6x08 after Giles leaves [something she outright admits was the reason and Spike refuses to take her word cos that's what abusers do, tell you what you think and make you believe it]) is not abuse, but his continuing badgering her that they have to talk about it and do it again and do more when she keeps telling him no is.
His excitement to hurt her when he finds out the chip doesn't work with her (and her visible terror when she finds out he can hurt her), his taunting her with the pain she shared with him as he beats the crap out of her (to which she responds with the same bile, cos he's goaded her into it), his answer to her regretful departure after that night being to force her down on his lap and force a kiss on her, his insistence that she'll crave him and he'll bite her if she wants to fuck him again without being loving about it (though the last sex she consented to was hatesex and she made it clear she wasn't interested in more), aka "if you don't stop being such a bitch", her "That's it, I want you out of my life" and his smug "Too late, you invited me in, and you need me to find Dawn" is.
Buffy has every goddamn right to treat Spike as an antagonistic ally after how he's treated her for four seasons, every right not to trust him, to remember how he defines love ("you'll crave me like I crave blood" a very nice callback in 6x10 to "love isn't brains it's blood" in 3x08) and specifically not trust him with that. She's not mistreating him because she only wants to fuck him without loving him and hates herself for it, repeatedly tries to stop, and he doesn't want to, but still punishes her for doing it without loving him (and you can fucking say it all you want, you fucking abuse & rape apologists, but the fact that she'll only hate fuck him does not mean he gets to force himself on her cos "that's the language she speaks" or what the fuck ever; their hate sex still involves consent.)
Spike tries to define Buffy's feelings--refusing to accept how she does, goads her into responding to his abuse with abuse, refuses to respect what she wants or what she says she feels (it doesn't matter--yeah, I'm serious here, it doesn't fucking matter--what she does feel; he doesn't get to tell her she's wrong to not want to love him, to not want to be with him in that capacity, no matter why, reputation or self-image or what-the-fuck-ever). Spike refuses to take no for an answer time and time again, uses her attraction to try to force more out of her, and blames her because she feels one but not the other. That's. abuse. And at the end of that abusive arc, after Buffy has stepped too close to the edge of not caring about/respecting how Spike feels and ended it quickly with an apology to him, he tries to rape her, force her with the act into loving him because his love, as I said, excludes respect.
I'm not saying Spike isn't possibly dark grey instead of black with other things (though a lot of that is the chip, up until the soul returns). I'm saying that regardless, there is nothing out of character or badly written or unfairly vilifying about the rape (unlike Castiel's S6, though Meg/Cas [& Crowley/Cas] do share a lot of the coercive, abusive elements of Spike/Buffy, if not textually the mutual attraction before coercion), and I'm also saying that those who call it an "interspecies miscommunication" should fuck off, because Buffy makes her feelings very, very clear, repeatedly and Spike not being able to take "no" for an answer, whether to sex or love, does not incriminate her whatsofuckingever in what he does.
I'm also still fucking saying that his redemption ends when he cages himself by getting his soul back, and everything in S7 is love from a soul, William, not a demon, Spike. Considerate, respectful, much more sincere and less violent and destructive. Which is good, because much rather a better creature in the same body comfort Buffy for another's crimes than the same creature who abused and sexually assaulted her do it.
Now, please, try and argue with me in a way that doesn't vilify anyone who fucks a person they hate, anyone who relies on someone as an ally but can't trust them with romantic vulnerability specifically because they love destructively, anyone who only feels sexual attraction but not love and acts on the former, anyone who copes with their depression by seeking a self-destructive sexual relationship (with someone who grooms them to want one and who will literally not leave them alone about it) and upon realizing for sure that the other party is not doing the same thing, breaks it off. Please try and argue with me in a way that doesn't defend an abusive rapist and victim-blame like mad. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Something I was thinking about, reading this, getting sour and sick memories of this, and having to self-soothe with this.
Fandom can perpetuate abuse culture in a lot of ways, no doubt, but one of the most prevalent ones I think of is stuff like those Asks in the first link:
"Mature" relationships do not require acceptance of abuse and loss of self. It is not "denial" to want some semblance of normalcy in a dark world, to want a relationship that's "innocent" (for the value of innocence that means not evil, full of respect and love and cutesy happiness, full of consideration, full of being valued instead of just desired, full of being aware and wary of each other's past wrongs but not letting them infringe on your cutesy happiness or consideration), to want to retain your sense of morality, commitment to righteousness and optimism in a dark, destructive universe.
If you believe that the ideal "mature" relationship is one where you both just go "who cares if we're dark and hate each other and ourselves, that's cool, just let that whole struggle for morality and happiness and respect go cos we 'want' each other" and you position those who would prefer the "innocent" kind as "naive" or "in denial";
if you position being depressed and having that depression being taken advantage of in a mutually-destructive manner that says "be with me, be dark with me, accept that you're just like me, evil and hateful and self-loathing" and does not take no for an answer as "maturing" because you didn't get the fuck out believing you deserve more;
if you stand on the side of Spike as he laughs at Buffy (and Angel) for wanting a relationship based upon striving for goodness internally and externally, interdependence instead of pathological need, and consideration and respect, as though those things are mythical and astronomically impossible, rather than very fucking important;
you are perpetuating abuse (and rape! in the case of demons like Spike, Meg, Crowley, Ruby, and others) culture and telegraphing that the best thing to do to "grow up" is accept that your relationships will abuse you and destroy your sense of self and erode your morality and your self-esteem, cos they may turn out all right in the end (which that's another point of contention for me--seeing as "the end" is William, not Spike), accept that nobody is ever good enough if they've ever done anything wrong (another point, because the "wrong" is largely Angelus, not Angel) no matter how well they treat you unless you're "naive", but also nobody is too bad for you to not want if you're "mature".
Maybe I'm naive, but I think, after being in several abusive relationships of various kinds, that that's fucking bullshit. Maturing is understanding that you deserve the best fucking relationship on offer (whether or not you're in a place of privilege to demand it and survive), walking the fuck away from abusers and going "I'm not doing this shit anymore, I am more important and the way I act when I'm not with them is more important", giving the ones who actually try to change or who have changed by the time you encounter each other, instead of claiming it with a false ring, a chance, but being careful with your trust and watching for mistreatment. Maturing is understanding that "good and bad" in a relationship is not a balance sheet, and if the scale isn't weighed so hard it breaks with good, bad like (ESPECIALLY CONSCIOUS, WILLING, AND REMORSELESS) attempted rape (sexual assault), emotional and physical abuse, and other forms of mistreatment are not fucking worth it, because you are.
