| Subject: Re: A changed man spoilers (long, sorry) |
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Date Posted: 09:26:11 03/16/02 Sat
In reply to:
alane
's message, "A changed man spoilers" on 06:39:33 03/16/02 Sat
What strikes me about the A/S sex incident is the tremendous ego hit Xander and Buffy are likely to take upon witnessing this. Xander has consistently demonstrated overwhelming insecurities regarding his personal abilities, harking back to Angel. I've long believed his antipathy regarding Angel and later Spike is due to a sense of physical and sexual inadequacy as much as it is due to a hatred of vampires as a species. He delights in Spike's inability to fight humans and has, on many occasions deliberately baited Spike, as well as more recently hitting him. So, I can only think that seeing Spike succceeding sexually with Anya will push even more of Xander's buttons and make him even more aggressively hostile toward Spike.
Given all of the other spoilers, I can't see this additional source of shame and anger for Xander being anything but a way of increasing the danger and craziness, too.
Add into this stew Buffy's compensating hostility toward Spike and her comments to Xander at his wedding, about missing her chance with him, and I can see a weird kind of convergence between these two happening. I believe that Buffy doesn't love Spike and has only been using him for her own gratification, but she now feels 'virtuous' because she's stopped the relationship. However, I think that she is quite capable of turning around and doing the exact same thing to Xander, too. While this is unlikely to be the way ME would take their lead character, she has definitely shown the level of selfishness necessary for her to do something like this to her friend. She appears to have already excused his treatment of Anya at the wedding.
As you can probably tell, I find both Buffy and Xander's behaviour generally abhorent since they externalize all of their insecurities - shoving them onto the the targets least able to respond effectively. I've seen little evidence that either one of them has learned from their experiences, especially sincethe ME way is to give the 'good guys' get out of guilt free cards regardless of what they do. I really want Xander, Buffy and Willow to pay for their bad behaviour this season.
So, a scenario where Xander and Buffy have some kind of angsty fling holds some appeal, especially if they are finally confronted with the flaws in their illusions about relationships. Perhaps she would learn something if she found herself treating one of the 'good guys' in the same way that she treated Spike - as a sexual convenience. Then she might not be able to rationalize her behavior so conveniently.
It doesn't appear as though the Xander/Anya relationship is on the recovery path, but this just may not be surfacing in the spoilers. I'd personally prefer to have Spike's redemption be the main focus of his character path for the remainder of the series. I so totally loath Buffy that I can see no reasonable strategy by which she can be redeemed enough to deserve him. I'm in the ABBB Camp - AnyBodyButBuffy.
Sorry for the rant. Can I balme it on the new format!?! >;-) Anyway, back to lurking.
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