buffyversetop5 | Five interesting essays

Caught in a Bad Romance....a meta of Buffy's Romantic Relationships by

shadowkat67
http://shadowkat67.livejournal.com/506872.html
Spike is S6 reminds me a great deal of that metaphor. Their dance feels like a dance between life and death. Buffy wants to die, she is literally dancing with death, over and over again she throws herself into its arms, but death can't take her - because in doing so, death extinguishes the very thing he wants to possess. It's a bad romance - both characters can't have what they want. Buffy wants death. Spike wants life. She wants the fire, but doesn't want to be burned. He wants it to, and seems not to care if he gets burned. This can't end well.

Angel's Case of Humanitis (That Wasn't) by

gabrielleabelle
http://gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com/216347.html
From "Prophecy Girl" script: "Buffy enters slowly, Xander and a now-human Angel following. Everyone gathers in the middle of the room, a bit dazed". A discovery and a discussion of a shanshu that never was.

BtVS Season 8: Please Mind the Gaps by

elisi
http://elisi.livejournal.com/574578.html
There is a gap between expectations and actual story. As I'm sure you know, most, if not all, fans have an agenda of some sort - a favourite character, or relationship, or story line, or theme, or subject, and they all (oh so very eagerly) looked to Season 8 to settle long standing arguments, fine-combing every issue to see if they could find a line that suggested support for their character's importance, their couple, their interpretation. In short, they wanted Joss to tell their story. This was never going to end well, because Joss has never given people what they want. Whether Season 8 is what we 'need' - well that's a completely different question.

Who is Angel? by

angearia
http://angearia.livejournal.com/191028.html#cutid1
Where BtVS ends with hope for the future, AtS ends in despair—Buffy smiles at the prospect of life while Angel grimly plans to fight till he dusts. These two finales set up the collision of Angel and Buffy's narratives in Season 8, Angel's despair diminishing Buffy's hope until Buffy submits (#34 is Buffy's desire to lose her soul in Angel and feel something besides the cold—only she does so by believing in a fantasy love) and then she's called back by her ties to humanity (she hears Xander's call).

Thoughts on "Crush", season 6 and Buffy/Spike by

marketchippie
http://marketchippie.livejournal.com/80164.html#cutid2
Spike's characterization predates his romance with Buffy, develops outside of her like crazy, we see so much more of him and his history than we do anyone else's—I mean, debates about s7-which-I-haven't-seen aside, I feel like no one can deny that he has an arc and that said arc is meticulously crafted throughout the trajectory I've followed. Which means that when the narrative gets to the-Buffy-and-Spike-show place, neither of them gets subsumed in the other.