(no subject)

[itsnotmymind]

Day #01: Favourite season
Day #02: Favourite episode
Day #03: Favourite song used in an episode
Day #04: Favourite female character
Day #05: Least favourite female character
Day #06: Favourite male character
Day #07: Least favourite male character
Day #08: Favourite friendship
Day #09: Favourite romance
Day #10: Least favourite season
Day #11: Least favourite romance
Day #12: Least favourite episode
Day #13: Favourite potential slayer
Day #14: Favourite female villain
Day #15: Favourite male villain
Day #16:Episode you like that everyone else hates - Favourite piece of monologue
Day #17: Character you relate to the most
Day #18: Character who didn’t get enough screen time
Day #19: Character you like that everyone else hates
Day #20: Best Spike-centric episode
Day #21: Best Willow-centric episode
Day #22: Best Xander-centric episode
Day #23: Two characters you wanted to get together that never did
Day #24: Favourite example of 90s special effects
Day #25: Favourite Buffyverse saying
Day #26: Favourite Scooby moment
Day #27: Cutest moment
Day #28: Character you love to hate
Day #29: Episode you hate that everyone else loves
Day #30: What you think made Buffy so great


Day #11: Least favourite romance
Buffy and Angel. For so many reasons.

1. The lack of chemistry. I hear they have chemistry, but I've never seen it for myself.
2. The stalking. Which of course makes me a hypocrite, since I love Buffy/Spike, but shush.
3. Buffy's age. I don't really have a problem with twisted relationships, but I prefer them to be between equals. Not a very experienced man and a teenage girl.
4. The over-the-top one true love romance. That even as late as Selfless Buffy is claiming that she loved him more than anyone else (I mean, come on, if nothing else, she loves Dawn more).

On the bright side, I, like everyone else, did love the Angelus arc (but Buffy's kiss right before she killed has got to be one of the grossest kisses I've ever seen in a TV show or movie, and then it was put in the credits!), and I actually warmed up to the pairing a bit after they broke up. I like their scene in The Yoko Factor, and their scene in Forever, and I have no problem with the kiss in Chosen. I have a soft spot for stories about exes who still love each other.

Comments

[kikimay]

Exes who still love each other is one of my favourite things. <3
I understand the soft spot for the scenes post definitive break-up - I understand less that ridiculous kiss and dialogue in Chosen, but the Dawson reference is fun all the same. XD
I shipped Bangel when I was a kid - fourteen years old and first Buffy watch - but now I can't stand the saccharine romance and the fact that they don't talk about anything. In S3 there are all these Bangel scenes ... that actually don't bring anything new to the story.
S4 - and I'm talking about The Yoko Factor - is sweeter and better.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I've heard that before, that a person liked Buffy/Angel when they first started watching the show when they were young, but disliked it later. I watched the show at the ages of nineteen and twenty, but I think I would have always disliked Bangel, even when I was younger. Over-the-top romance didn't do it for me.

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

I guess you guys are like the opposite of the fans who were, like, BANGEL FOREVER and hated Spuffy sooooooo much.

The only points where I didn't like Buffy and Angel are a few places in Season 2 and 3 where they're trying to emphasize how cozy they are together -- in both cases, it's a setup to separating them. So I think in a way I'm supposed to see them being all cozy and think, "that can't be right" if only on a subliminal level.

The only Buffy romance -- show and character -- I didn't much like was Riley, but that's because I thought it was boring. Sure, boring was kinda the point. But I still thought it was boring.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Buffy/Riley is not my favorite, but I thought it was OK. I actually find Riley's storyline to be interesting, so that helps.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Pretty much agree with all of your points here. I watched it last year as a 40-something so yeah, lots of eyerolling - the angelus arc was great but S3 was almost unbearable for me.

I didn't mind the kiss in Chosen either btw, especially because 20 seconds later she's all business "Ok, I'm done basking, what are you doing here?" She's more mature throughout that entire scene.

I don't mind her statement in Selfless because it's finally bringing the Xander's Lie arc full circle (that ep is as much about Xander and Buffy as Xander and Anya) and she's making a very specific point to him because he's slut-shaming her and judging her again. So I get where she's coming from there.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I don't mind her statement in Selfless because it's finally bringing the Xander's Lie arc full circle (that ep is as much about Xander and Buffy as Xander and Anya) and she's making a very specific point to him because he's slut-shaming her and judging her again. So I get where she's coming from there.

Fair point, and I actually don't mind that moment too much, but in the greater context of how Buffy/Angel is portrayed it's sort of one more time their romance is portrayed as the one true love.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

but in the greater context of how Buffy/Angel is portrayed it's sort of one more time their romance is portrayed as the one true love.

Yes, from Buffy's perspective at that moment. ETA: She's an unreliable narrator, just as all the characters are. No one is totally objective about their own experience. She's describing the past, she's trying to get her point across as emphatically as possible, but she also has nothing else of that magnitude to compare it to right then. How many of us have said "I'll never love this way again" or "I'll never love anyone the way I love you"? I remember Ada in the movie Cold Mountain (but not the book) swearing in voice-over that she would never love again at the end and I thought "How do you KNOW? None of us knows the future" but we make statements like that all the time.

Obviously I'm disregarding what fandom does with the ship, or the opinions of Sarah or any individual writer, including Joss (who seems to go whichever way the wind blows as it suits him.)