Further Adventures in Dash Commentary (sorta)

[madimpossibledreamer]

Under the cut: discussion of consent issues in Buffy, mostly Faith/Xander. Toxic masculinity. Very vague discussion of suicide--if you need help, please seek it!  Many resources are free and these are people who have signed up to help you.  I care if there's one less awesome human in this world!  (And no, I don't know you, but if you read my stuff that automatically makes you awesome in my books.)

While I’m meta’ing, I’ll go ahead and post a controversial Buffy opinion you might have noticed if you’ve read some of my fics: I don’t feel like the sex in The Zeppo was particularly consensual. (I just remembered: this is dash commentary, again, because I saw a similar post on reddit which I’ll link, but also I say new things too, so hopefully I’m not treading the same ground.) I could be wrong, because it’s been a bit since I’ve seen the episode, but the impression I got was that everything was happening so fast Xander didn’t have the time to think the words ‘yes’ or ‘no’, much less say them. (Also, if anyone’s internalized toxic masculinity, he did, so he probably wouldn’t even say it even if he felt it because guys always want it, right?) It could also be the context—Xander spends the episode powerless, pushed to the sidelines, out of control, and the thing with Faith is just one of those events that happen that is out of his control before the end, which is apparently a triumphant ‘look who’s got the power now’.

And don’t get me wrong, I love that moment, but—it’s problematic, too. It’s very nihilistic. The only way to take power back is to be self-destructive, self-sacrificing. Maybe it’s a commentary on the trap of traditional masculinity. Maybe it’s actually meant to be read the way most people read it, ‘this is good’, when in reality it’s the ‘this is fine’ dog meme. Maybe it’s just a bluff, and he wouldn’t follow through on his threat. That would be in character for Xander, and Jack doesn’t know Xander well enough to know that for sure. But the “I like the quiet” line sticks out to me. It’s canon that the Harrises have screaming matches on at least Christmas, which is why Xander sleeps outside in a sleeping bag. So it’s a quip, but it’s not a joke, and Xander doesn’t do that much. He doesn’t talk honestly about his messed up family life, so the fact he’s doing it now? That tells me that he’s at least in a bad headspace, if not slightly suicidal. He needs help, which unfortunately he never quite gets in the show. (If you need help, please, actually seek it! I care, because one less awesome human in the world is not okay with me.)

After that point, it seems like he’s desperate to say Faith is a good person, because if she’s a good person, then what they did couldn’t be bad. Very simplistic (and wrong) thinking, but Xander tends to think in terms of black and white and he can’t handle complicated here. And the scene in Consequences--you might consider it attempted rape, or not, but at the very least it’s assault coupled with sexual harassment, because she keeps trying to make it sexual and he’s very uncomfortable and keeps trying to redirect the conversation back to what he’s actually there for.

Which is mainly why the Faith/Xander ship squicks me. Maybe you like the ship. That’s fine. Maybe you write out/rewrite/gloss over canon. That’s fine. Literary interpretations are very individual, because we all bring different things to the table, and they’re all valid! (Some might have zero canon evidence, but hey, if it makes you enjoy canon more, you do you. For instance, I know that the authors have said Klavier Gavin is definitely not German, but I like German Klavier so much more, so I headcanon that.) I rewrite canon all the time, and I talked about how ‘oh yeah this thing actually happened in canon with Spike’ occurred to me as I was writing early chapters of Shadowed Suspicion. Maybe you can’t read it one way, even if you want to. That’s fine, too. It doesn’t help that the show has pretty realistic depictions of consent issues in the moment and completely glosses over them after the fact, as if such things wouldn’t actually have an impact on the people experiencing them. (Honestly, that’s one of the things that Buffy got majorly wrong, not that I’ve really seen many shows/movies actually work through the consequences of ‘I want to write this shocking scene!’) I think I mentioned elsewhere that there is actually vague consistency in Xander’s reactions later on, as the loud-mouth gets all quiet and doesn’t talk about Faith much after Consequences and isn’t really comfortable being around her, but that’s subtle characterization that can easily fly under the radar, and maybe it isn’t even meant to be interpreted. I just wanted to explain why I’m reading it the way I am and work through yet another literary analysis. Also, I might be missing English essays, which, however much I love English, I never thought I’d say.