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[salinea]

I've been iconing like crazy for the last 3 days. Strange mood, I suppose it's because I'm starting to begin to almost like the result I get >_> Anyway, except an icon post tomorrow !

And I got blamed ! I got blamed by generalblossom for starting to like Buffy/Spike ! Go Teresa ! You're right, S6 is awesome, and this ship is very amusing ^_~. I got blamed by stanayitnuh for a wonderful masturbationnary Tokyo Babylon fic *plug*goreadit*unplug*; and I might yet get blamed by ariss_tenoh for threesome involving Seishirou, Subaru and Kamui with Seishirou being Kamui's father -_-;; (well, Link didn't want that bunny, so...)

I feel so proud and Pod-esque. (and one person on my flist will understand what I mean there), I like getting blamed ^_^

Comments

I really should have just e mailed this

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

The Demon in the Basement

The last few scenes of Normal Again are truly chilling. Buffy using all her Slayer strength to stalk and overpower the people she loves is a perversion of everything we've always believed about Buffy. She has sunk to some low points this year (beating Spike, for example), but this is the worst.

It is positive, though, that even without the antidote, Buffy manages to snap out of her delusional world in time to save her friends, after all. I think it's significant that it's the arrival of the one person who knows the truth about Buffy and Spike - Tara - that pushes Buffy to her realization that her delusions are false. Tara did not reject her. Tara has reassured her that she is not "wrong." Tara, the mature, alternate mother figure is the one person Buffy has been able to confess to.

The terrified Buffy under the stairs attacks Tara by grabbing her foot and sending her tumbling down into the basement, but Tara has already acted to free the Scoobies. As her spell releases their bonds, Buffy's delusional world begins to break up, too.

The point where she finally breaks through is when mom-delusion tells her "Your Dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We'll always be with you. We'll always be here for you." Only in a regressed, infantile world are mom and dad always there to take care of you; grown ups have to deal with loss and learn to live independent lives. But, in another sense, Buffy carries her parents (Joyce in particular) inside her, and she sees to realize this. Joyce's speech here, and Buffy's increasing clarity as she takes it in, represent her integration of the internal voice of her parents with her real, adult self.

Joyce: "I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you've got people who love you." That's not just her mother speaking - Buffy herself has spoken very similar words to Dawn. Joyce: "You've got a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself." This is true, and Buffy knows it. She is, after all, speaking to herself. As she finally begins to believe in herself again, she no longer needs her mother, or her delusions. She gives up the "heaven" of being safe in her parents' arms and returns to the harsh but real world of Sunnydale, where demons exist and she is needed to battle them.

Speaking of demons, Spike isn't in the climactic basement scene. Or is he? The second time I watched the moment when Buffy snaps out of it and fights the demon I had an eerie feeling of deja vu. It almost looked as if she was fighting Spike. If you ignored the disgustingly ugly head, the demon was dressed like Spike in this episode. Black shirt, black jeans, boots, and a long, floppy, black leathery garment.

Earlier in the episode, Buffy says, "I was checking houses on that list you gave me and looking for Warren and his pals, and then, bam! Some kind of gross, waxy demon-thing poked me."

Xander, with his subconscious knowledge and sex always on the brain, chimes in: And when you say 'poke-'"

"In the arm." Buffy clarifies. "It stung me or something, and then I was like-- No. It wasn't 'like.' I was in an institution."

Hmm, Buffy's crazy because she's "seeing" a vampire. And, what a coincidence -- it's because Buffy has been, er, poked by a demon's, uh, spike, that she becomes crazy in the first place.

Ze End

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Spike remains a very confusing figure for Buffy. On the one hand, he's an authority figure ("you were going to fix my life!"). He loves her with all the tolerance of a very patient parent, yet he's also her sex slave. He's the Vampire Slayer's natural enemy and yet he's her ally in the fight against demons, her best defender, and the loyal lieutenant who always has her back.

He's everywhere. Just as Buffy was for him in Out of my Mind right before he realized he loved her (and right after he'd tried unsuccessfully to kill her): "You don't understand. She's everywhere. She's haunting me, Harmony. This has got to end."

Spike has threatened to expose Buffy for what she really is. He's done it because his patience and tolerance are finally beginning to fray. While out demon hunting with Xander, Spike's anger breaks through:

Spike: "So, she's having the wiggings, is she? Thinks none of us are real. Bloody self-centered, if you ask me. On the other hand, it might explain some things-- this all being in that twisted brain of hers. Yeah. Thinks up some chip in my head. Make me soft, fall in love with her, then turn me into her soddin' sex slave."

He's running his own fantasy here. What if there were no chip in his head? What if he were the Big Bad again? And the ultimate: What if he didn't love her? (Don't you think I've tried not to?" he demanded in the alley in Dead Things). What if he were free of his sexual obsession with her?

Spike is thinking the previously unthinkable.

The demon in the basement has been chained there by Spike himself. And Spike has chained himself up where Buffy is concerned. His chip does not fire when he's with her. What if he were unchained? He could hurt her. He could bite her. He could rape her. He could kill her. Buffy is quick and strong, but Spike is very nearly a physical a match for her. He's bested her in several previous battles, only to have someone or something save her neck at the last minute (School Hard, Out of My Mind, Halloween). And now that she's dumped him, he's been rejected again. Spike hates rejection almost as much as Buffy does.

When the demon who dresses like Spike is chained up and poked with a barbecue fork by Willow, its "spike" comes out and is broken off and put in a bottle. Emasculated much?

While still deep in her delusion, Buffy herself, crazy Buffy, unchains the demon. Has she also symbolically unchained the real Spike? Or is she the demon herself? Like Spike, she has clawed her way out of her grave and now, with her Slayer/Destroyer impulses unchained, she is attacking her friends. The demon's power is in its hand, and Buffy is the hand, the manus, the physical manifestation of the Slayer energy.

In one sense, Spike has become her shadow self.

When Buffy finally decides to save her friends and take on the demon, she kills it the way she'd kill a vampire - she thrusts her arm into its chest in the region of the heart. Her hand - that deadly hand again - does the killing. I can't help finding this an ominous development for the Buffy/Spike relationship. She tears out his heart? She tears out her own heart? The death of love? She kills Spike? She kills the vampire part of Spike? She kills her own inner demon, the vampire part of herself? How will it all shake down?

There is a bright spot. We learned from Willow that the demon's "pokey stinger carries an antidote to its own poison." The very thing that made Buffy crazy, that poisoned her, is also the thing that can heal her. That darn spikey thing that Willow broke off and put in a bottle also represents the cure. What this may say about where ME is going with the Buffy/Spike relationship remains rather murky.
In the end, Buffy deals with Mom and Dad in her delusional world, but she still doesn't deal with Spike. In the final scene in the hospital, we're in her head, seeing the doctor and his flashlight poking at her (to which she does not react). The Doctor: "I'm sorry. There's no reaction at all. I'm afraid we've lost her." Has Spike lost Buffy for good now? Has she lost him? Will he lose himself?
Buffy has integrated her parents, but integrating her lover/mentor/watcher/friend/enemy is going to be a helluva lot more difficult, not only from her point of view, but also from his.