BtVS: Chosen, Spike, Faith, etc ramblings

[chicken]

Chosen. A small let-down in a way, but only because it is just impossible to top Becoming Part II, or The Gift. I did enjoy it a whole lot though, and the mix of genres was at its finest, just enough comedy to leaven the dough. One thing to wonder about now is whether fannish lust after certain characters might transmute a bit when a character changes as much as some of them have. For example, do I find Faith more or less lustworthy now that she's not so evil? Does her redemption and her increasing care for other humans make her attractive in more ways than one, or do they take away from the hotness of the bad girl persona? I find both theories have merit.

If I weren't a dyke I might ask them same about Spike. I might ask it anyway, actually. I mean, it's Spike... I cry every time I see Buffy treat him with any kind of respect. After the way she treated him like dirt so much before, it's just so heart-rendingly sweet. When she gave him the amulet, called him a champion, when she told him she loved him, even if she really didn't. In "end of days" when they had that last conversation, when he tilted his head just so ... yeah, it all made me cry. And it made him more than just a lust object, both for Buffy and for the viewer. It made him so ... human, so evocative of not just lust anymore, but emotion, emotions.

And it's similar with Faith. In season three, she was just this really sexy bad girl, this steer ya round the curves kinda slayer. And it was easy to hate her for the things she did to Buffy. But ever since "five by five" and "sanctuary", she's started to become more than that. The second she broke down during that fight with Angel, it became easier to sympathize with her, to understand her, and to like her instead of just lust her. And when Wood surprised her into actually kind of well, caring ...

I guess she and Buffy shared a slayer death wish. They cut themselves off from other humans and their own emotions in really different ways, but they shared an essential loneliness. At the end of "Chosen" you kind of get the feeling they might become real baked cookies some day, the kind other humans (not necessarily, in Buffy's case, vampires) might actually really enjoy in more than a one-dimensional lusty way. Not that there's anything wrong with lust. It just isn't all there is, buffyverse or otherwise.

Enough rambling for now. Four edits is really enough for now.

Comments

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

So Spike is a cover for William, then. Maybe that's why I get all teary every time Buffy calls him "William", like she's seeing through the act.

In the scene earlier in the season between the Spike and Faith, I wonder if any of their hidden or emerging personalities came out in that scene. Now I want to watch it again. They were expressing their bravado on the outside, all flirty and whatever (with the side effect of pissing off Buffy, when she kind of caught them), but if there was also an undercurrent of their other sides, too, I wouldn't be surprised. I wish I could remember that scene better. It was very interesting.

[keever.livejournal.com]

I think that's exactly it -- William wears Spike as a kind of protection. It's sort of like how if you keep pretending that you feel strong, eventually, you start believing it. I think that happened to him over time, but he's still the same at his core.

I really liked that Spike and Faith seemed to know each other immediately, and I think it made sense, since they both essentially created personas to mask their pain and give them strength against what they faced. It was definitely a scene that worked on more than one level, yeah.