Ted was really strong and that pinged something on her radar.
Agreed. Emmie and pocochina have already expressed this idea quite well, but you know that. Buffy realized that he was stronger than a normal man should be and had to up her game; combine that with the heightened emotions of defending herself against a man who has threatened her and tried to terrorize her psychologically, hits her twice and doesn't respond to her blows as a normal man would, I'm 100% ok with her not then stepping back and saying, "Whoa, what's going on here, exactly? Are you, like, some kind of robot? Can we talk about this?" or "I'm going to take a step back and revisit my tactical strategy, ok with you?"
Because that wasn't going to happen here, and doesn't in RL, not in the heat of the moment. That's part of the abuse dynamic, as opposed to someone who is able to say, "Wow, I'm starting to get angry here, I'd better go for a walk before I hurt someone" or "I don't have the right to corner someone and frighten them, that is not cool".
I'm NOT saying that you are saying that, btw, quite the contrary! But I think there are a lot of people who have a very abstract idea of how someone in the situation (in this case, Buffy) "should" behave; and that very much keys in to the messages that have conditioned people such as myself that it's not ok to not protect themselves from abusers or to even speak out, because our perceptions that we are in danger are "wrong" and we're not "really" being abused.
One of the unintentionally saddest scenes in the show is when, in Fear Itself, Joyce talks about how when she came to Sunnydale she didn't have any friends, but now she has a wide circle of friends. It is sad because it is so unconvincing, based on what we see throughout the rest of the series. I think that the line was meant to be played straight, but it just reads to me as Joyce outright lying to Buffy in order to encourage Buffy to think that things are going to get better for her, which is heartbreaking. Well -- that is when I don't feel like laughing because the line seems so disjoint with everything else.
THIS, 100%!! I heard that line as well and wondered, wait, what? We haven't seen the evidence. It reminds me SO much of my mom's intense loneliness and isolation, her untreated depression, which she masks in public behind a cheery, gregarious false front (the opposite of the dark demon mask). There was work and home and taking care of husband and kids and little else. I wish that she had a circle of friends to chat with, have coffee with. As a teenager I was her best friend oftentimes, heard her confessions in dark hours; which makes me pretty well equipped to listen to other people but it was hard then. Her loneliness and isolation started in childhood, and is difficult to overcome if you don't know how to do so. I see it in my mom still today and in my S.O.; myself to a lesser degree.
Going back to the 'verse itself, it's tricky for the reasons you mention. Maggie is right when she said that Joyce gets used as a plot device most of the time; they don't bother to build a convincing life for her beyond being "mom". And that's something that our culture does with mothers, ignores them, and I wanted them to explore it here, there was opportunity to do so. They actually end up doing so more through Buffy in S6, which is probably wasn't deliberate from the get-go but I'm starting to come around to the idea that it works: the idealization of your parent and the world vs learning the hard truths of surviving as an adult yourself.
Whatever the writers' conscious intentions, Joyce has a pattern of covering the truth to avoid unpleasantness, via denial, delaying tactics, silence or soft language. School Hard: "I don't want to be disappointed"; FFL: "Oh, I was hoping to put this off. but...I'm staying overnight at the hospital for observation. I'm getting a CAT scan." (Um, it's already nighttime, how much later was she intending to put it off?)
I think that there's a lot more of Joyce in Buffy than fandom generally acknowledges: "And why I froze, not one among them knows / And never can be told" Heartbreaking, indeed.
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branchandroot
You give me SOOO many THOUGHTS and FEELINGS!
Date: 2013-03-26 02:33 pm (UTC)Agreed. Emmie and pocochina have already expressed this idea quite well, but you know that. Buffy realized that he was stronger than a normal man should be and had to up her game; combine that with the heightened emotions of defending herself against a man who has threatened her and tried to terrorize her psychologically, hits her twice and doesn't respond to her blows as a normal man would, I'm 100% ok with her not then stepping back and saying, "Whoa, what's going on here, exactly? Are you, like, some kind of robot? Can we talk about this?" or "I'm going to take a step back and revisit my tactical strategy, ok with you?"
Because that wasn't going to happen here, and doesn't in RL, not in the heat of the moment. That's part of the abuse dynamic, as opposed to someone who is able to say, "Wow, I'm starting to get angry here, I'd better go for a walk before I hurt someone" or "I don't have the right to corner someone and frighten them, that is not cool".
I'm NOT saying that you are saying that, btw, quite the contrary! But I think there are a lot of people who have a very abstract idea of how someone in the situation (in this case, Buffy) "should" behave; and that very much keys in to the messages that have conditioned people such as myself that it's not ok to not protect themselves from abusers or to even speak out, because our perceptions that we are in danger are "wrong" and we're not "really" being abused.
One of the unintentionally saddest scenes in the show is when, in Fear Itself, Joyce talks about how when she came to Sunnydale she didn't have any friends, but now she has a wide circle of friends. It is sad because it is so unconvincing, based on what we see throughout the rest of the series. I think that the line was meant to be played straight, but it just reads to me as Joyce outright lying to Buffy in order to encourage Buffy to think that things are going to get better for her, which is heartbreaking. Well -- that is when I don't feel like laughing because the line seems so disjoint with everything else.
THIS, 100%!! I heard that line as well and wondered, wait, what? We haven't seen the evidence. It reminds me SO much of my mom's intense loneliness and isolation, her untreated depression, which she masks in public behind a cheery, gregarious false front (the opposite of the dark demon mask). There was work and home and taking care of husband and kids and little else. I wish that she had a circle of friends to chat with, have coffee with. As a teenager I was her best friend oftentimes, heard her confessions in dark hours; which makes me pretty well equipped to listen to other people but it was hard then. Her loneliness and isolation started in childhood, and is difficult to overcome if you don't know how to do so. I see it in my mom still today and in my S.O.; myself to a lesser degree.
Going back to the 'verse itself, it's tricky for the reasons you mention. Maggie is right when she said that Joyce gets used as a plot device most of the time; they don't bother to build a convincing life for her beyond being "mom". And that's something that our culture does with mothers, ignores them, and I wanted them to explore it here, there was opportunity to do so. They actually end up doing so more through Buffy in S6, which is probably wasn't deliberate from the get-go but I'm starting to come around to the idea that it works: the idealization of your parent and the world vs learning the hard truths of surviving as an adult yourself.
Whatever the writers' conscious intentions, Joyce has a pattern of covering the truth to avoid unpleasantness, via denial, delaying tactics, silence or soft language. School Hard: "I don't want to be disappointed"; FFL: "Oh, I was hoping to put this off. but...I'm staying overnight at the hospital for observation. I'm getting a CAT scan." (Um, it's already nighttime, how much later was she intending to put it off?)
I think that there's a lot more of Joyce in Buffy than fandom generally acknowledges: "And why I froze, not one among them knows / And never can be told" Heartbreaking, indeed.