Buffy the vampire slayer, now season 3
Jul. 11th, 2015 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm up to Beauty and the Beasts.
Once again straight up domestic violence, once again I feel the need to sit down and turn it into words until I am less creeped out.
So this one is a compare/contrast on three couples, plus Scott Hope under the impression he's in a couple. Buffy/Angel, Willow/Oz, and the domestic violence poster children of the week.
First of all, all three men are under outside influence that makes them violent. I know the conclusion about the dead kid was he was under no influence but himself, but he'd actually drugged himself, he screwed himself up but there was chemical/magical influence there. And if the episode in any way excused their behaviour by that it would suck. But thankfully it just compares how they cope with it. They all have serious Stuff to deal with, they deal in varying ways.
Oz is most healthy, and most socially connected. He relies on his friends to keep him locked up until he gets his brain back. (Xander is a jerk in this one. A teenager, and a jerk. But Buffy falls asleep on watch too and Giles doesn't grrr at her about it. Does he assume she only slept after sunrise? Or is she just cuter?) Oz accepts responsibility for his wolf actions, more than his friends consider reasonable even, and he accepts restrictions on his liberty while he's a danger to himself and others. He's coping with his situation, facing it, asking for help. And it's successful. Despite worries, he's being kept safe, and has been for a while now. The teamwork is working.
Then there's Angel. He's really epically traumatised at the minute, and responding to it with violence. Buffy tries to cope alone, because she's scared how others would react. Can see why, given the 'kick his arse' message she believes came from her friends, and how he hurt them. Also her belief that ... pretty much her presence endangers others. She was accused of it in Anne, even though that was clearly backwards, she has felt that way before coming back from summer to find problems were quiet until she returned, she pretty much feels like trouble follows her rather than she follows trouble. So between trying to protect Angel from her friends and trying to protect her friends from Angel she's really, really stuck. So she goes to the school counsellor and asks for help.
There were tears and everything. And when does Buffy ask for help? Because people go for help to her.
Unfortunately for Buffy the guy she was asking was already dead, and she didn't notice because she was upset. In universe she probably internalises this and decides asking for help is terrible and gets in the way. Writer level... did they just want to block her for a while? Did they only set out to make things worse for her? Or is that 'feelings stop you noticing things' bit of blaming, like, deliberate?
And last there's jekyll/hyde guy. Creeptastic partner abuse archetype. Controlling, saying she's got no one but him, hitting. All of the bastard, right there. And he's not even a little owning it. He blames his actions on others. It's all her fault, the guys shouldn't have touched her, the pshrink shouldn't have... what, done his job? Creep view of the universe makes it never his responsibility and always other people's fault. And she ends up comforting him after he hits her. He makes the big eyes and explains how she shouldn't have made him angry and she ends up comforting him as he leans against her.
Like Angel ended up with Buffy.
See the contrast on that compare/contrast is... thinky thoughts, not grand highlighted lines.
Angel at this point isn't talky enough to own or disown his actions. He has in the past owned what Angelus did, but right now he's doing stuff and not talky enough to have opinions on it. He's not accepting the restraints, he broke out as soon as it was safe for him. And he killed a child.
Given they're in their last year at high school it's possible that kid was 18, but Buffy isn't and he's in her school year. That's a school child.
A violent child under the influence of drugs, sure, but that ... that's treating mental illness with a good being killed, again.
Because with the presence of pshrink and all the only thing this all maps to is mental illness. Three mentally ill guys, accepting or rejecting restrictions meant to stop them being a danger to others.
And the one that wouldn't stop gets dead.
It's always tempting to cheer when an abuser gets dead, it's power fantasy time, protect yourself and they'll never do it again. But. Dead is still of the bad.
So Angel's violence, however inarticulate he is, seems precisely targeted to the guy that was hurting Buffy. And Angel kills him. Which tidies up a number of plot threads, like that guy having seen Oz transform.
He was a murderer, yeah, but there's a whole process with law courts that should have happened. Not just Buffy and Angel deciding.
So Angel's violence is still on the dangerous creepy side, even if he then kneels and looks to Buffy for comfort. See earlier comparison. Doing bad things is still doing bad things if you feel really bad about it after.
But then there's the last person in the episode who does violence against their romantic partner, who in fact killed their romantic partner, though in this genre they get to confront them again afterwards. Buffy.
What she does can be filed as self defence. Usually pretty straightforward there. But she herself feels epic guilty about hurting Angel that way. And in this episode she hits him for his own good cause he shouldn't be running around growling and hurting people. And it's... compare, as well as contrast.
Especially since she's standing next to Faith, who was only briefly in this episode, but for long enough to hit Buffy on account of Faith not paying attention and being surprised. Faith's first reaction is definitely violence. So if that's a Slayer problem, solve problems with violence, even relationship problems... well, that needs keeping an eye on.
Buffy is the hero and gets the hero treatment where there's always an out, she uses force to protect others, she's very probably on the right side of the lines. But the comparisons draw attention to it and make thinking about it necessary.
Given the usual presence of violent men as romantic partners in this show, and indeed this genre, this episode really needed to be here.
Still creepy to watch though.
Once again straight up domestic violence, once again I feel the need to sit down and turn it into words until I am less creeped out.
So this one is a compare/contrast on three couples, plus Scott Hope under the impression he's in a couple. Buffy/Angel, Willow/Oz, and the domestic violence poster children of the week.
First of all, all three men are under outside influence that makes them violent. I know the conclusion about the dead kid was he was under no influence but himself, but he'd actually drugged himself, he screwed himself up but there was chemical/magical influence there. And if the episode in any way excused their behaviour by that it would suck. But thankfully it just compares how they cope with it. They all have serious Stuff to deal with, they deal in varying ways.
Oz is most healthy, and most socially connected. He relies on his friends to keep him locked up until he gets his brain back. (Xander is a jerk in this one. A teenager, and a jerk. But Buffy falls asleep on watch too and Giles doesn't grrr at her about it. Does he assume she only slept after sunrise? Or is she just cuter?) Oz accepts responsibility for his wolf actions, more than his friends consider reasonable even, and he accepts restrictions on his liberty while he's a danger to himself and others. He's coping with his situation, facing it, asking for help. And it's successful. Despite worries, he's being kept safe, and has been for a while now. The teamwork is working.
Then there's Angel. He's really epically traumatised at the minute, and responding to it with violence. Buffy tries to cope alone, because she's scared how others would react. Can see why, given the 'kick his arse' message she believes came from her friends, and how he hurt them. Also her belief that ... pretty much her presence endangers others. She was accused of it in Anne, even though that was clearly backwards, she has felt that way before coming back from summer to find problems were quiet until she returned, she pretty much feels like trouble follows her rather than she follows trouble. So between trying to protect Angel from her friends and trying to protect her friends from Angel she's really, really stuck. So she goes to the school counsellor and asks for help.
There were tears and everything. And when does Buffy ask for help? Because people go for help to her.
Unfortunately for Buffy the guy she was asking was already dead, and she didn't notice because she was upset. In universe she probably internalises this and decides asking for help is terrible and gets in the way. Writer level... did they just want to block her for a while? Did they only set out to make things worse for her? Or is that 'feelings stop you noticing things' bit of blaming, like, deliberate?
And last there's jekyll/hyde guy. Creeptastic partner abuse archetype. Controlling, saying she's got no one but him, hitting. All of the bastard, right there. And he's not even a little owning it. He blames his actions on others. It's all her fault, the guys shouldn't have touched her, the pshrink shouldn't have... what, done his job? Creep view of the universe makes it never his responsibility and always other people's fault. And she ends up comforting him after he hits her. He makes the big eyes and explains how she shouldn't have made him angry and she ends up comforting him as he leans against her.
Like Angel ended up with Buffy.
See the contrast on that compare/contrast is... thinky thoughts, not grand highlighted lines.
Angel at this point isn't talky enough to own or disown his actions. He has in the past owned what Angelus did, but right now he's doing stuff and not talky enough to have opinions on it. He's not accepting the restraints, he broke out as soon as it was safe for him. And he killed a child.
Given they're in their last year at high school it's possible that kid was 18, but Buffy isn't and he's in her school year. That's a school child.
A violent child under the influence of drugs, sure, but that ... that's treating mental illness with a good being killed, again.
Because with the presence of pshrink and all the only thing this all maps to is mental illness. Three mentally ill guys, accepting or rejecting restrictions meant to stop them being a danger to others.
And the one that wouldn't stop gets dead.
It's always tempting to cheer when an abuser gets dead, it's power fantasy time, protect yourself and they'll never do it again. But. Dead is still of the bad.
So Angel's violence, however inarticulate he is, seems precisely targeted to the guy that was hurting Buffy. And Angel kills him. Which tidies up a number of plot threads, like that guy having seen Oz transform.
He was a murderer, yeah, but there's a whole process with law courts that should have happened. Not just Buffy and Angel deciding.
So Angel's violence is still on the dangerous creepy side, even if he then kneels and looks to Buffy for comfort. See earlier comparison. Doing bad things is still doing bad things if you feel really bad about it after.
But then there's the last person in the episode who does violence against their romantic partner, who in fact killed their romantic partner, though in this genre they get to confront them again afterwards. Buffy.
What she does can be filed as self defence. Usually pretty straightforward there. But she herself feels epic guilty about hurting Angel that way. And in this episode she hits him for his own good cause he shouldn't be running around growling and hurting people. And it's... compare, as well as contrast.
Especially since she's standing next to Faith, who was only briefly in this episode, but for long enough to hit Buffy on account of Faith not paying attention and being surprised. Faith's first reaction is definitely violence. So if that's a Slayer problem, solve problems with violence, even relationship problems... well, that needs keeping an eye on.
Buffy is the hero and gets the hero treatment where there's always an out, she uses force to protect others, she's very probably on the right side of the lines. But the comparisons draw attention to it and make thinking about it necessary.
Given the usual presence of violent men as romantic partners in this show, and indeed this genre, this episode really needed to be here.
Still creepy to watch though.