Come away, Come away!

| poem by William the Bloody Awful Poet

withoutpassionwedtrulybedead:

Wow Willow, I can’t imagine why Buffy would be overwhelmed. She split at the end of the previous year because of the stress of killing Angel. She returns on her own because she realized that she wasn’t nobody and that she did have people in her life who reciprocated her feelings for them. But then she comes back and just wants to have  small dinner with these people, an intimate meal with her family, and Willow turns it into a large house party filled with people who don’t know Buffy, loud music, too much going on, people ignoring her, etc.

I don’t think I could disagree with the above more. This is my major problem with Buffy: her ‘self-involvedness’. Yes, it was tragic that she had to kill Angel just as his soul was restored, but that is what friends are for. They can’t be expected to just know things or just understand. They didn’t even know that the spell had worked, so how can they have known what Buffy had to do and what she then had to suffer through? Telepathy ain’t exactly a common trait.
Buffy never really seems to grasp the whole ‘friendship is a two-way street’ concept; she complains that they don’t understand, but refuses to talk to them (which might enable them to at least sympathise, if they can’t empathise). She blocks everybody out and then wails because they aren’t there for her. She doesn’t think; she just runs away because she can’t deal with it and it doesn’t occur to her that not only might her friends be able to help, but they might need help, too. She doesn’t see anybody else’s plight, because hers is always worse: ‘oh woe me, I’m the Slayer; I have to fight for the safety of the world and risk my life’. What she’s forgetting is that her Scooby Gang fight right alongside her, but without her demon strength, her quick healing, her far superior motor and coordination skills etc. They are in more danger than she is, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
She’s self-involved and self-important and so I have no sympathy for her in this episode (and many others besides).

Doppelgangland, 03.16.

This is the only one that might challenge the previous. I don’t really care what actually happened in the series; as far as I’m concerned, the story finished with I Will Remember You and they lived happily ever after as humans. Nothing will make me believe otherwise because it’s just too sad. None of Buffy’s relationships could ever be what she had with Angel - as impossible as it may have been and the whole Twilight thing kind of sickens me and I hate that the two might be associated - what she and Angel had was unbeatable. She and Riley were never a decent couple and the whole thing with Spike (as far as I’m concerned, though I know many people believe otherwise) was just a coping mechanism, a crutch; it wasn’t real love.

Buffy and Angel are probably the only couple I actually, really, truly give a whole-hearted shit about.

The Prom.