30 days of Buffy, Day #28

[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 #28: Character you love to hate
I don't hate any characters on Buffy. Warren probably comes the closest to a love-to-hate sort of character. But I actually do love him, just in an irredeemable bastard kind of way.

Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I found Warren personally and physically loathesome when I was watching IWMTLY, so I hated having to put up with the character in S6 and then MY GOD, where they took him. I'd have never imagined it. And Adam Busch's performance in TKIM nearly breaks me ("I'm sorry, I'm sorry come back!") He's using Willow's body and she's the vessel through which he tries to alter the past and repeat his mistakes before coming to a terrible understanding, but there is no redemption for him. He and Katrina are both dead, so there is no "second chance", like Willow gets with Kennedy. (But still at a remove - she can't make amends to Tara, the way Buffy and Spike can make amends to each other *sniffle*)

The closest I come to hating a character lately is Riley in S5 & 6 (I liked him in S4, btw, even when for his patronizing and "speciest" tendencies) in terms of how the writers conceived what what going on (that Buffy drove him away. HUH?), that he gets to come back after having cheated on her with vamp whores to be THE representative of mental health and stability in AYW, and Buffy has to apologize to him. *gets stabby* If it'd been played ironically, that would be one thing but it's not.

I used to hate Cordy watching the early seasons, or rather I disliked her intensely. In part because I was more of a Willow/Marcie/Jonathan in high school myself, so I had a lot of trouble summoning interest in her. Just when I was beginning to like her, Xander cheated on her with Willow, she got impaled and my sympathy for her shot sky-high. I was hoping they'd develop her character more after than but they didn't until AtS.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I don't consider Warren a favorite, but I do love him. I've always wondered what the fannish reaction to Warren would have if he was played by a more attractive actor.

I continued to mildly like Riley in S5 & 6, even as I was frustrated by the way the narrative blamed Buffy for the break-up. Cordy was my favorite in early S1--I didn't consider her a nice or good person, but I liked her.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

FYI - I'm at a "foreign" PC away at home and it's not letting me type in the italics html tags.

//"I've always wondered what the fannish reaction to Warren would have if he was played by a more attractive actor."//

I think that's really an excellent point. I didn't like Warren from the first time I saw him - in fact, I was repulsed by him (but not when I see photographs of Adam taken since. He was smarmy and creepy and bug-eyed - and gave an absolutely perfect performance, when I thought about it afterwards. I should have a strong reaction to him, I think.

And honestly - other characters do things that are nearly as bad as he does: Willow, Angel (even with a soul he mindwipes Buffy w/out her consent, and that's just the tip o' the iceburg), Riley...and Spike. I'm not saying that "fangirls are only thinking with their hormones" but I do think that his attractiveness (and his performance) help a lot to ameliorate our reaction to his "crimes"? Of course we also get to know him much better than we do Warren.

//"even as I was frustrated by the way the narrative blamed Buffy for the break-up."//

And also the way the show was subtly framing it that way long before ITW: lots of shots of Riley with frustrated, puppy-dog expressions (we see the same with Dawn in S6 &7) and I thought "uh-oh, I think I know where they are going with this" even when objectively, his reactions are mostly unreasonable and he's lost touch with reality at that point.

But framing it as Buffy's fault is something that the show continued to repeat over and over, even into the comics (which I don't consider canon but still color my reactions in some ways) Buffy is blamed for what is probably a rape by "Twangel", for Giles death, - basically for everything, and I just read that in the last ep of S9, she is ONCE AGAIN apologizing to Xander. It's a pattern where Buffy is the one who takes the blame upon herself, and nothing in the story indicates that she is wrong to apologize or forgive those wrongs. But people apologize to her much more rarely.

I think that's part of the reason I love Buffy&Spike, and Buffy & Faith in S7 - the sense that amends have consciously been made and accepted on both sides.

//"Cordy was my favorite in early S1--I didn't consider her a nice or good person, but I liked her."//

I admit part of my reaction to her was also physical/visceral - I didn't like her appearance. She's objectively attractive but - something bugged me, I can't put my finger on it. That vanished eventually though.