Oh welcome back! And thank you for the compliment and reply. I was going to send you a message and ask if you'd have a glance at this, so I'm delighted to see you back in action. And yes, egregious pimpage is always allowed here, esp when it leads to the good stuff.
I think of you as the "authority" on Willow, or her #1 fan - you certainly have examined her character more thoroughly than anyone I know of. (You wrote in one of your metas that you think you "woobify" her, I don't see that myself at all. Being sympathetic towards a character is not the same as rendering them somewhat pathetic, which you don't do at all. Anything you wish to write about Willow/Dark Willow is always welcome - I need to take time and return the favor with your metas, actually.
As to your post, 100% agreement. At the time I was first watching I couldn't see why Xander left Anya at the altar in HB (other than the plot device), but I was watching the show at a very fast clip so it's taken me a while to parse it out. (I think I am trying to understand the boy better and be a bit more compassionate towards him, as he's the character I connect with the least.) I'm not sure in hindsight if it was my failure to really notice what was going on, or the writers not handling as well as might have been.
I do think that it's the same for Anya, whose extreme materialism is representative of her need to collect and achieve in order to fill a gap that's missing inside;
Very much so. norwie2010's meta on Giles and the Wild Woman actually has prompted some thoughts about Anya, and how she fits into his thoughts ( he barely mentions her). I didn't add it here, but I think, following norwie's line of thinking re: Giles as tamer of Willow and Buffy, that Xander tries to do the same - not consciously, and not because he doesn't love her, but because she's not well socialized, she "owns" her sexual desires to an embarrassing degree, and because Giles is the closest thing he has to a positive male role model. So when Xander walks away from her in HB (as Giles left Buffy at the worst possible time, from her POV) it's particularly painful for me to watch, not only because she was so happy to be getting married, but because, like Buffy trying to be the Slayer, Anya had pretty much been "tamed" or "domesticated" - she had certainly been trying her best to fit in, and was going to get married, was part owner of a shop, etc. She was also doing all the "proper adult" things, following Xander's lead. And yet she's "punished" for it - damned either way - and unmoored from family/friends, from the extra income he provides, from home/apartment.
That his full commitment to Anya is bookended by Riley episodes (he commits more fully at the end of ITW and leaves her the episode after AYW) suggests the extent to which he is going through the motions of a ritualistic thing in order to define his self-worth
Good call! I remembered his speech to her in ITW (and his speech to Buffy before that being a "warm up act" that, like his lie to her in Becoming, has devastating consequences for her emotionally IMO). I hadn't even noticed the relationship of AYW and HB. Its interesting that Riley and Sam were giving Xander and Anya a "pep talk" about marriage; which might have been nice - finally a positive role model for marriage - except that Riley and Sam were depicted as almost impossibly perfect: Gary and Mary Stu.
Riley is the show's big symbol of issues related to authenticity, "following orders," traditional generally-well-meaning-but-still-kind-of-a-jerk patriarchy, IMHO
*Nods* The perfect summation of his character. I may have to quote this sometime if that's ok?
I also agree that Xander's flaws being closer to the surface actually works in his favour in some ways
Of the core four, the male characters don't undergo the same "psychotic break" that Willow and Buffy do in S6, although Xander comes closest in Hell's Bells. His is more of an extreme panic/anxiety attack, but it's pretty much what Buffy did at the end of Bargaining, leaving town. xander doesn't seem to have been criticized for it within the story in the way Buffy was, though - she and Willow accept him back with open arms- I'm not sure about fandom opinion.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-11-17 12:07 am (UTC)I think of you as the "authority" on Willow, or her #1 fan - you certainly have examined her character more thoroughly than anyone I know of. (You wrote in one of your metas that you think you "woobify" her, I don't see that myself at all. Being sympathetic towards a character is not the same as rendering them somewhat pathetic, which you don't do at all. Anything you wish to write about Willow/Dark Willow is always welcome - I need to take time and return the favor with your metas, actually.
As to your post, 100% agreement. At the time I was first watching I couldn't see why Xander left Anya at the altar in HB (other than the plot device), but I was watching the show at a very fast clip so it's taken me a while to parse it out. (I think I am trying to understand the boy better and be a bit more compassionate towards him, as he's the character I connect with the least.) I'm not sure in hindsight if it was my failure to really notice what was going on, or the writers not handling as well as might have been.
I do think that it's the same for Anya, whose extreme materialism is representative of her need to collect and achieve in order to fill a gap that's missing inside;
Very much so.
That his full commitment to Anya is bookended by Riley episodes (he commits more fully at the end of ITW and leaves her the episode after AYW) suggests the extent to which he is going through the motions of a ritualistic thing in order to define his self-worth
Good call! I remembered his speech to her in ITW (and his speech to Buffy before that being a "warm up act" that, like his lie to her in Becoming, has devastating consequences for her emotionally IMO). I hadn't even noticed the relationship of AYW and HB. Its interesting that Riley and Sam were giving Xander and Anya a "pep talk" about marriage; which might have been nice - finally a positive role model for marriage - except that Riley and Sam were depicted as almost impossibly perfect: Gary and Mary Stu.
Riley is the show's big symbol of issues related to authenticity, "following orders," traditional generally-well-meaning-but-still-kind-of-a-jerk patriarchy, IMHO
*Nods* The perfect summation of his character. I may have to quote this sometime if that's ok?
I also agree that Xander's flaws being closer to the surface actually works in his favour in some ways
Of the core four, the male characters don't undergo the same "psychotic break" that Willow and Buffy do in S6, although Xander comes closest in Hell's Bells. His is more of an extreme panic/anxiety attack, but it's pretty much what Buffy did at the end of Bargaining, leaving town. xander doesn't seem to have been criticized for it within the story in the way Buffy was, though - she and Willow accept him back with open arms- I'm not sure about fandom opinion.