Arguments against Bangel that annoy you

[EarthLogic]

I’m otherwords the argument I hear a lot is that she chose the word “loved” because it’s not how she feels now. I think she chose the word “loved” because she is talking about a past tense event.

That's a good way of seeing it. I think I've grown more cynical due to the comics. Glad I have you guys to help keep things in perspective.🙂

Yes it’s s10 she says she is confused re Angel feelings. She gas never really chosen in as much as being with Spike currently is a choice but then again it’s not like Angel’s come to her and said: can we try this out?

Well if Angel did, Joss would probably have to sleep with one eye open from that moment on! But there was that hand-holding thing in front of Angel wasn't there?

 

[Buffy Summers]

There were some antagonizing posts about pro-Spike and pro-Spuffy as well as people using the arguments against Bangel that we were saying we didn't understand in a thread specifically about what arguments against Bangel bothers you.
I thought we could address certain things without involving mods as long as it could be handled in a civil manner, which I thought it was. I apologize if this assumption was wrong.
I have just seen so many posts in the Bangel section lately that are unnecessary and it's beginning to get grating to the point the Bangel section does not even feel like the Bangel section anymore.
Idk about other pro-Bangel people, but I know that I personally stay out of the Spuffy section out of respect even if I have something to contribute. I know that Bangel vs. Spuffy conversations are to be had in the Lover's Walk forum. At least this was my understanding.

I'm just saying let the mods handle it so you don't have to be put in the position of creating bad feelings. Please do report any posts you see in this forum that you feel contravenes the rules.

🙂

 

[crazysoulless]

If I had to pick who loves who the most I would say Buffy loves Angel more, but only because the AtS writers wanted to distance their show from BtVS and the producers and then later the writers couldn't understand why she was allowed to date but he wasn't, especially since he's an attractive male lead with a built in fangirl (ha ha it sounds like fang girl) base as a sexy heartthrob.

Buffy: You so don't get it.

I want to post every time Buffy proved post s3 to still be in love with Angel and all the times he was referenced but it'll be really long because it was all the time. She was hardly mentioned (outside of other female characters ripping her story off to spark with Angel) on AtS post IWRY.

 

[Taaroko]

From a character perspective, I think Buffy referenced Angel more than he referenced her because she had to endure a lot of crap from her friends about Angel, and she wasn't going to take that lying down. Angel feels all the same things she does, but he broods about it instead of talking to people. The few times he does reference Buffy are very telling, such as his speech to the creepy doctor in "I Fall to Pieces", when he says "The woman I love is dead," and the way he reacts to Darla's disbelieving jealousy. The mere memory of Angel's relationship with Buffy wouldn't rankle Darla so badly if she couldn't see how much Angel's feelings for her, even after 150 years together, pale in comparison to his feelings for "that cheerleader."

 

[Buffy Summers]

You can't hold Spike's actions pre-soul against him the same way you don't hold Angelus' against Angel.

Okay, so I would use that point too if I was trying to argue for Spike, however, the writers wrote Spike as very similar with a soul and without, and as a special vampire from the beginning, so if they're going to do that, then I can absolutely hold his actions without a soul against him. If Spike was as different with a soul and without as Angelus is to Angel, we wouldn't be having an argument about it. And this argument is only valid at all, if Spike doesn't get credit for any good he did without a soul. You can't have it both ways. We don't credit Angel with helping kill the Beast.

 

[Antho]

You can't hold Spike's actions pre-soul against him the same way you don't hold Angelus' against Angel.

Okay, so I would use that point too if I was trying to argue for Spike, however, the writers wrote Spike as very similar with a soul and without, and as a special vampire from the beginning, so if they're going to do that, then I can absolutely hold his actions without a soul against him. If Spike was as different with a soul and without as Angelus is to Angel, we wouldn't be having an argument about it. And this argument is only valid at all, if Spike doesn't get credit for any good he did without a soul. You can't have it both ways. We don't credit Angel with helping kill the Beast.

Exactly ! This ! You're completely right ! I'm so agree with you and you express it by far more better than me

 

[Mrs Gordo]

And this argument is only valid at all, if Spike doesn't get credit for any good he did without a soul. You can't have it both ways. We don't credit Angel with helping kill the Beast.

This! I've only been on the boards what 4 months and already I'm tired of this incredibly illogical argument I see on this topic. It goes like this:

- Spike is a story of amazing redemption, you saw him change even without a soul, and make the decision to go and get a soul, how commendable.
- Look at Angelus he would never have gone and obtained his soul for Buffy, that is how powerful Spuffy is.... it drove him to be a better man.
- But you cannot judge soulful Spike for the actions of his unsouled counter part because he was evil.

But - WHICH ONE IS IT??

First of all, Bangelus =/= Bangel so lets get that out of the way right now. I don't ship Buffy with a monster. That's, incidentally, why I could never support Buffy with Spike without his soul, because he is still a monster (have any doubts about that - see when Spike thinks his chip is deactivated and he goes off to try kill a woman pretty much right away). So by all means continue to insult Angelus, I give 0 craps about him.

But furthermore, while we as the audience may not hold Angel responsible for the crimes he committed as Angelus - Angel sure as hell does. He constantly grieves and atones for these things. He places his life on the line for people on the daily to atone for the sins of his demon - even when he knows that there may never be forgiveness or pay off (See Epiphany). Now THAT I do find incredibly commendable.

 

[Taaroko]

Yeah, that argument has historically been one of the most annoying ones to fight. They want Spike to have all the credit for the good stuff he's done and none of the blame for the bad. It's pretty much how Spike feels about it himself, and if they've bought into his super skewed perspective of everything, then it makes sense they'd think that way, but oh boy is it aggravating.

I don't hold soulless Spike's actions against him once he has a soul, but that doesn't mean none of that stuff happened. He's walking around amongst people soulless Spike hurt, shoving his feelings in the face of the girl he hurt the most, and deliberately maintaining the same swaggering personality. At that point, it becomes harder to get a free pass for the soulless behavior. The most galling example of that is in "Destiny," when Spike not only refuses to accept responsibility for what he did without a soul (while at the same time crassly taunting Angel about how many times he slept with Buffy), he *blames Angel* for all of it. If he's not responsible for his own soulless actions, then Angel isn't freaking responsible for Angelus's actions either, let alone soulless Spike's! I've argued about that scene with Spuffies, and they still managed to stay on Spike's side, which made me want to throw things.

 

[Mylie]

My take on this is I have no problem not blaming soulful Spike for what soulless Spike has done. But don’t come praising him for the good things he’s done while soulless if you don’t want people to consider him accountable the way souled characters are. You can’t have it both ways.

I think the difference is people root for souless Spike in a way they don’t for Angelus so I get that it is tempting to defend him in that way. But you still can’t go around asking for the same treatment between the 2 characters when you only want to take the good from it.

 

[Antho]

Actually this argument is the one that bother me the most !

 

[RomanticSoul]

Funnily souled Spike is no different than Angel or Darla in regards to the soul. NONE of them chose to get a soul, it's been forced on all 3 of them. Angel via the curse from the gypsies, Darla by carrying Connor and souled Spike via soulles Spike going to the cave demon.

If they give credit to souled Spike for getting the soul, then soulles Spike and souled Spike are the same person and to be considered as such. Hence all the evil of soulles Spike should count for souled Spike as well. Because either souled Spike is a new person deserving of a chance which means NOTHING he did pre-soul counts, including getting the soul. Or everything he did pre-soul counts for souled Spike and that includes all of his evil acts as well. Simple really.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

What more people should be annoyed by is the inconsistency in the soul canon which leads to such arguments.

The soul is meant to be a punishment to a vampire. It's why the gypsies cursed Angelus with it, they didn't want him to be a better man, they wanted to punish him. Angel accepts the punishment for Angelus' crimes and doesn't want Angelus to be released again. That's why I have problems with Spike going to get the soul for Buffy in order to be more "acceptable" to her. As a vampire, he is punishing himself (eg self-flagellation) all so that he could be loved by someone else. That's unhealthy.

 

[Mrs Gordo]

Bangel was full of melodrama but not Spuffy.

Alright - whatever you say...😉

 

[Grace]

The one I saw recently that really made me angry was the argument that people who ship Buffy/Angel don't understand adult love. But even writing out all the arguments against that feels like a waste of time. 🙂

 

[MarieVampSlayer]

The one I saw recently that really made me angry was the argument that people who ship Buffy/Angel don't understand adult love. But even writing out all the arguments against that feels like a waste of time. 🙂

I agree, anyone who says that Angel and Buffy are some kind of teenage love is stupid. I have been in a relationship for more than 10 years and I still ship them together so that argument is stupid!

 

[BuffyBot22]

The one I saw recently that really made me angry was the argument that people who ship Buffy/Angel don't understand adult love. But even writing out all the arguments against that feels like a waste of time. 🙂

Yes, because hate sex, manipulation, stalking, and abuse is the adult love we should all strive for. *rolls eyes" so hard they went into the back of my skull lol.

 

[RachM]

This thread is very cool, I like everyone's lists, all points which I agree with. My personal pet peeves when it comes to anti-Bangel arguments (some of these have already been listed):

• The pedophile argument/age-difference, which fails to take into account Buffy's maturity, the supernatural setting of the show and the fact that she never loses her agency within the relationship
• In a similar vein, the claim that Angel raped Buffy ie. when they slept together in Season 2 it was statutory rape because Buffy was under 18 (the legal age of consent in California), while technically true, you'd then have to also go after Buffy for necrophilia and this also doesn't take into account Buffy's maturity, the fact that she chose to sleep with Angel without coercion and the societal difference when viewing this scene (for example, I am from Australia where the legal age of consent is sixteen country-wide, so I never even considered Angel sleeping with Buffy as statutory rape; if BtVS were set in Aus we'd never be having this argument)
• That Buffy and Angel were "puppy love"/"high school"/"too teenage-ry", as others have pointed out, Buffy is not your average teenager, she is more mature and adult due to the world she lives in and therefore her emotions and relationships run deeper
• -That any time Buffy and Angel reunite it's "fan-pandering", which on the one hand I can kind of understand but I don't actually think it's the case. Buffy and Angel have always been presented as a transcendent love, a relationship which is more intense and more connected than other relationships and so their reunions post-Season 3 always felt very natural to me, because it's made clear over and over that they will always love one another and always want one another (and I don't think that this diminishes their other relationships in any way).
• That Bangel is too melodramatic, because while, yes, it's definitely got its drama, no other relationship the two have outside of each other is any less dramatic (except maybe Buffy/Riley but that's mostly because it's just so boring). Darla and Angel are a complex, hot mess, vampire, human, souled-vampire, non-souled vampire, share a son, tried to kill one another, had a centuries-old foe stalking them across time etc. etc. Spike and Buffy have just as much drama as Bangel, what with all the hatred, abuse and sexual assault, then the whole soul debacle. And as for Angel and Cordy? She slept with his son and the three were embroiled in what can only be described as a supernatural soap opera. So yeah, not sure why this argument is only used against Bangel.
• Spike sought his while while Angel's soul was forced on him. Others in this thread have already detailed why this doesn't hold up.

 

[Taaroko]

Somehow I never even thought about how all the other ships are equally and sometimes more ridiculously melodramatic than Buffy/Angel. I just sort of took that argument and decided that whatever melodrama there was in Buffy/Angel, it didn't faze me at all. But holy crap, now that you guys mention it, it really *doesn't* make sense that Buffy/Angel gets singled out as being the melodramatic ship. Even on their own, Spike, Cordy, and Darla are already more melodramatic characters than Buffy and Angel.

I feel like Inigo Montoya. "You keep using that word..." I'm pretty sure melodramatic isn't even the word to describe Buffy/Angel. Soulful, profound, aching, and star-crossed? Yes. (I hesitate to use "epic," but only because Stefan/Elena ran that into the ground on TVD until it kind of ruined the word for me.) Maybe "star-crossed" is the one people actually mean when they say melodramatic, and for them that's a negative.

 

[Jam]

Somehow I never even thought about how all the other ships are equally and sometimes more ridiculously melodramatic than Buffy/Angel. I just sort of took that argument and decided that whatever melodrama there was in Buffy/Angel, it didn't faze me at all. But holy crap, now that you guys mention it, it really *doesn't* make sense that Buffy/Angel gets singled out as being the melodramatic ship. Even on their own, Spike, Cordy, and Darla are already more melodramatic characters than Buffy and Angel.

I had never thought about it either until last year during a rewatch but oh my gosh Buffy and Spike are so melodramatic in season 7. The church scene at the end of Beneath You; Buffy constantly informing people that he's changed; "I have come to redefine the words pain and suffering since I fell in love with you."; when The First is torturing him and says, "What makes you think you will ever be any good at all in this world?" and he replies "She does. Because she believes in me."; the look on his face when he sees Buffy and Angel kissing; this exchange: "Were you there with me?" / "I was."

There are definitely more but I only went through some of my old tweets to find these examples.

 

[Mrs Gordo]

But even Season 6, their first kiss was super dramatic there may as well have been a wind blower on them. I thought their first time with the crashing house was overly dramatic - punch punch kiss and then Buffy breaks through the wall behind him. And the A/R was well - it is what it is - but it was played like something you would see on a soap opera. So yeah I don’t buy this argument that Bangel was melodrama and Spuffy was not. It’s just Bangel wasn’t your personal brand of melodrama and that’s fine but let’s call a spade a spade.