(no subject)

[frelling_tralk]

Give me a fandom and I'll give you, either in the comments or in a separate post, five unpopular opinions for that particular fandom.

Comments

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

I didn't insult you. I simply stated what you were doing, which IS what you were doing. Trying to equate a simplified version of S2/S3 BTVS with Wesley's actions. You just said that's what you were doing. *I* actually do sympathize with what Wesley did. But...

Buffy didn't have good intentions when she ran away. She was 1.) expelled from her second school in a year, 2.) wanted for murder, 3.) kicked out by her mom, 4.) left believing no one had her back after Xander put Willow with them, and 5.) just killed a newly ensouled Angel. She didn't have good or bad intentions, just nowhere to go.

When she didn't tell them Angel was back, she still had no belief any of them wouldn't attack him since Angelus tortured Giles, Xander wanted him dead and she believed Willow was with them. This is more equatable with Wes if all this transpired in BatB (and Angel was killing people, she knew about it and covered it up), but it didn't. It's not different because it all turned out OK, it's different because it was at most dereliction of duty, if that, since Oz and Angel are equated in that ep, not a betrayal.

As for Giles, he went to Buffy to say that and offered himself for judgment. Did we see Wes pursue his friends and try to explain himself? I don't think we did, though he may have been put off by the smothering. His stance was *they* should have come to him to get his explanation, but while I get what he was trying to do, that's on him if that's what he wanted. I wasn't comparing motivations for doing it--Giles obviously felt it was justified in some way or he wouldn't have done it--but the expectation of forgiveness.

Which, as the circle comes back around, is my beef with it and something I don't think all the yammering in the world will get us to agree on. It doesn't work for me because the guy who should at least understand (Angel), he seems to give a pass to vs the others who were always been rash and judgmental. Them, he wants understanding from. He puts himself in a non-win situation because like you said, Angel is different when it comes to his stuff. No win there. Gunn, Fred and Cordy. No win there, either. At least if he expected them to come to him to explain himself.

I do apologize if you felt insulted.

[sunclouds33.livejournal.com]

I was finding reasonable analogies, recognizing that nothing is perfectly the same. It wasn't the worst analogy ever and it wasn't the Wikepedia version of BtVS.

When she didn't tell them Angel was back, she still had no belief any of them wouldn't attack him since Angelus tortured Giles, Xander wanted him dead and she believed Willow was with them. This is more equatable with Wes if all this transpired in BatB (and Angel was killing people, she knew about it and covered it up), but it didn't. It's not different because it all turned out OK, it's different because it was at most dereliction of duty, if that, since Oz and Angel are equated in that ep, not a betrayal.

Just because Angelus tortured Giles doesn't mean that Giles would kill Angel. Just because Buffy believed that Willow wanted Angelus staked before he could raise Acathala (much like Buffy at the time because Buffy *was* off to stake Angelus and told Willow to not bother re-attempting the re-ensoulment) doesn't meant that Buffy had good reasons to believe that Willow would want Angel dead. Heck, there wasn't even probable cause to believe that Xander would kill a souled Angel. True to form, Willow and Giles never attempt to kill a souled Angel; Xander starts but abandons his effort because Xander would stake a Bad Angel without his soul or out to lose his soul again (since he didn't believe Buffy's arguments that Angel was good) but he wouldn't stake an Angel allied with good,.

However, I still get Buffy's paranoia that her friends would stake Angel, even though they didn't really indicate that they'd stake a fully good Angel. Buffy's paranoia had emotional validity because of the severity of Angel's rampage of terror in S2. It's not really anything Willow/Xander/Giles *did* against Angel. It's that Buffy is also shamed by Angel's actions and believed that there was plenty of motive to stake him even with a soul but Buffy loved Angel too much to surrender him to that fate.

To compare the two, Wesley was observing Angel who was high on Connor's blood (since W&H was spiking Angel's blood supply with Connor's blood). Angel acted unusually irrational and angry and lashed out at Connor for crying as babies do. Angel made an awful, scary joke about how it'd be OK if he was trapped in a burnt out room because he could eat Connor. In addition, to the prophetic warnings, big omens of fire and blood, the Loa's warnings, and Holtz's threats to wipe out the whole of AI if Wesley didn't take the baby to safety. Ironically, Buffy hadn't witnessed nearly as frightening dangers to a souled Angel from her friends as Wesley witnessed from Angel towards Connor in Loyalty and the start of Sleep Tight.

Buffy did betray the group by hiding Angel. If a family member of mine hid the murderer of the love of my life and someone who tortured me for hours, I'd feel damned betrayed. If someone lied to me for weeks about their whereabouts, I'd feel betrayed. Buffy actively conspired to avoid bringing Angel to justice to the some of the people that Angel recently hurt the most.

[sunclouds33.livejournal.com]

In the middle of Beauty and the Beast, Wolf!Oz had to be locked in a cage and closely watched by a slayer for the entire night. The gang was investigating to see if Oz was a murderer to then, further evaluate further action to protect the community from Oz in anything ranging from shame (certainly already from Cordelia) to tranquing Wolf!Oz. Meanwhile, Buffy just locked feral!Angel with some ultimately failed chains and left feral!Angel unguarded for large portions of the day. Angel was never treated like a suspect. Instead for a time, all suspect shaming was pointed directly at Oz which humiliated Oz even though Buffy knew of another viable suspect.

So, Buffy absolutely betrayed the group and especially, Giles. Ask Giles in Revelations, I'm sure he'd back me up that he was betrayed. Buffy did it with every intention of protecting Angel. That does make her equitable with Wesley. As opposed to Giles in Helpless who betrayed Buffy to save his career and betrayed Buffy to the point of putting her in lethal danger.

Wesley had lots of good reasons for not approaching the group. First, Wesley lost his voice and he couldn't really talk until the last three eps of S3 which I think represents a week in real time. Angel said before smothering Wesley that he knows that Wesley took Connor to save Connor's life....but that doesn't matter since Angel still felt that he can murder Wesley. Then when Wesley still couldn't talk, Fred came by to the hospital and re-iterated that they knew that Wesley took Connor with good intentions but Wesley can't come by the hotel or Angel will finish what he started and murder Wesley which is an unbelievably credible threat. And Fred tearfullly begged Wesley to stay away or Angel will kill him. Then when Gunn came to ask for Fred's cure, Gunn basically said that he doesn't want to hear anything from Wesley other than Fred's cure. "Look, I don't have time to get into
it with you. I don't even wanna be here."

So unlike Giles, Wesley physically couldn't say his side of the story at first, he was barred from coming to the Hyperion to explain on penalty of murder, and he had three members of the team say that his side of the story is meaningless. I suppose that Wesley could have opened up sometime in S4, but IMO, Wesley had every reason to believe that no one in AI (save Fred) wanted to hear from him on a personal level and he should just work with them to defeat the apocalyptic threats in a very cold peace. That is until Angel laundered Wesley's brain of all of it at the end of S4.