From: "macha" <macha@ntl.sympatico.ca>
To: "tea at the ford" <teaattheford@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 12:09 PM
Subject: triangulated shifts: blind inside forever coming home

triangulated shifts: blind inside forever coming home

It's a truly eternal triangle, which is not about love, though love is in
there somewhere. One end of it is fixed, static and set in stone: Angel is
gone, indeed in almost every episode they ever meet, from 1.01 on, he is
already leaving Buffy: they enact, they re-enact, that lonesome version of
forever. They even know they're doing it, whenever they meet. And then they
do it over, again. It's poignant, those repetitions. You can see it in
Angel's eyes, the moment the sequence starts. He's immortal, of course he
knows how it will end. He waits, patiently, for her to figure it out
herself, again, and then he walks away. One more time. Part of his curse,
that neverending story.

B: How did you find me here?
A: If I was blind, I would see you.
B: Stay with me.
A: Forever. That's the whole point. I'll never leave. (whispering into her
ear) Not even if you kill me.
(Buffy's dream in 3.01 Anne, written by Joss Whedon)

It's Buffy's dream. Outside the world. Which one is blind? Which one is
real? She dreams about forever because she wants to dream it back, her
innocence. She gave herself to Angel, and the curse kicked in, Angelus rose,
but Angel was the one she had to kill to save the world. She couldn't give
herself again, it hurt too much, it cost too much. The negative of that
dream fulfils itself in her future, which replays endlessly the scene at the
end of 3.22 Graduation Day, when after he drinks from her and claims her
(predator/prey) he finally gives up, gives over, and just walks away.

The darkest masterpieces in the bverse are the episodes 2.14 Innocence and
6.13 Dead Things. Angel staggers away from Buffy, after she gives herself to
him, into his eternity of alleys and there becomes Angelus, cursed, and she
cannot kill him; emotionally she becomes frozen in that moment. Blind. She
runs from Spike, who sees her clearly and can always find her and will not
leave her; he, not Angel, is the positive of that dream in Anne. In that
other alley in Dead Things Spike chooses to shift out of gameface so that
(literally) she can kill him. What is forever? Who is blind?

Okay, let's look at the text. In Dead Things neither party holds the high
ground. They love, but that means something different to them both. Spike
trusts too much; Buffy can't trust at all. They fail to understand one
another. He's trying to do what he's been trying to do all of sixth season,
save her, even if it means she kills him. He nurtures, she is The Destroyer.
What does she feel? The answer is she doesn't want to feel. She doesn't want
to live again. Everything he tries to give her backfires, because she wants
*nothing*, and he (remarkably, considering) never thinks to offer that.

Buffy has almost become the First Slayer at this time: "I have no speech, no
name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound. I
am destruction. Absolute... alone" (4.22R). Spike wants to show her she is
not alone. She wants, in predator terms, to eat him. Her dream in Dead
Things is really clear (6.13DT, wr SDK):

Voices: (whispering) What did you do... Buffy?... What did you do?...
S (appears behind her in the bed, kisses her shoulder): It's all right, luv.
Shh, it's all right. It'll be our little secret.
(She turns to him & embraces him, kissing him more urgently. It turns into a
Gone-type scene, with Spike manacled to the bed and Buffy on top. That turns
into Katrina on the ground, manacled.)
B: (to Katrina) Do you trust me?
(Katrina smiles, then cries out. Buffy's on top. That turns into Buffy on
the bottom, Spike on top. Buffy stakes Spike. Spike turns into Katrina who
opens her eyes. Buffy wakes up in bed. She gets up to talk to Dawn and turn
herself in.)

She loves him, he trusts her. But what she wants is to fuck him blind and
walk away untouched. "I didn't want to be loved" (7.07CWDP wr JE&DG). But
she can't. Spike can always find her. He won't let go. That's who he is. So
in her he is always and forever coming home. That's why she kills him,
practically, in the alley. She has already killed him (Katrina's dead
already when she has the dream.) The moment when she cedes control, see
(she's no longer on top, it's Spike on top), that's when she feels she has
to kill him. She loves him, she kills him. She doesn't want to feel. She
wants to walk away, to walk away. That's what you do with forever, as far as
she knows. You either get pulled out, or you walk away.

In Dead Things, the ground is shifting. I think the demonic metaphor is the
most straightforward we ever see in all 144 episodes, and here's the
summation of it at the end (after the alley scene, but before the scene with
Tara):

Anya: Mm. The Rwasundi. Very rare. Um, its presence in our dimension causes
a sort of ... localized temporal disturbance.
B: So that's why time went all David Lynch?
A: Right. Uh, human perception is based on a linear chronology. Being
exposed to the Rwasundi for more than a few seconds can cause, uh, vivid
hallucinations. And a slight tingly scalp.
W: So that's it. These things just made you think you killed her.
X: She was probably dead long before you stumbled across her.
B: It wasn't the demons. It was Warren. He knew Katrina. He had something to
do with it, I know it.
W: How can you be sure?
B: You always hurt the one you love.

So let's see, time went all wonky. We left the linear. It wasn't the demons.
Buffy understands that you always hurt the one you love (killed Angel to
save the world) (she doesn't want to love) (she does love), and her friends
say to her about Katrina/Spike: "These things just made you think you killed
[him]. [He] was probably dead long before you stumbled across [him]." Dead
Men I Have Loved and Killed, by Buffy Anne Summers, Slayer Emeritus.

And after that she goes to talk, at last, to Tara the Mother:

B (whispers:) Why can't I stop? Why do I keep letting him in?
T: Do you love him? I-It's okay if you do. He's done a lot of good, and, and
he does love you. A-and Buffy, it's okay if you don't. You're going through
a really hard time, and you're...
B: What? Using him? What's okay about that?
T: It's not that simple.
B: It is! It's wrong. I'm wrong. Tell me that I'm wrong, please... Please
don't forgive me, please... (sobbing) Please don't... Please don't forgive
me...

She loves him, he trusts her. But what she wants is to walk away untouched.
"I didn't want to be loved". But she can't. Spike can always find her. Love
is his gift. He won't let go. That's who he is. So in her he is always and
forever coming home. The moment when she cedes control, see (in the dream,
in the bed, at the crypt, at the Bronze, in the alley), that's when she
feels she has to kill him. Death is her gift. She loves him, she kills him.
She knows it's wrong. She knows it's love. She doesn't want to feel. She's
dead. She kills. That's who she is. She wants to walk away. To set him free,
to give him *nothing* back.That's all she's got to give, to walk away.

S: What do you think you're doing?
B: The right thing. For once.
S: Sorry, luv. Can't let you do that.
((BtVS 6.13 Dead Things, written by Steve DeKnight, Buffy dB transcription)

It's clever, this bit. Sure, Spike's flawed 'demony' reasoning intentionally
echoes Faith's rationalizations to Buffy after the death of the deputy
mayor. And that's maybe the cerebral dampener part of the plot (hey, there's
always a writing commentary in any BtVS ep) because it looks like purposeful
misdirection on the part of the writers to make it seem like Buffy has the
high ground. And the demon in Spike doesn't understand Buffy's moral stance,
it's true. But it's also clear from the Faith affair that in this instance
Giles would also have prevented Buffy from going to turn herself in: so
Spike is specifically filling the role Giles abandoned, at this point in
time. Plus, as Dawn has already pointed out in the scene in her bedroom,
Buffy's got ulterior motives for choosing this stance, so the "right thing"
argument just doesn't play. She's abdicating. Kinda interesting in itself:
Spike, souled or unsouled, never lets her quit her job. Anyway, point is, on
a superficial level, you've got a demon unable to comprehend the moral human
issues Buffy asserts. But when you dig a little deeper, that's not what's
happening at all. It's not the right thing. Because she's wrong. She's
Wrong.

S: You're not going in there.
B: I have to do this. Just let me go.
...
S: You are not throwing your life away over this.
B: It's not your choice.
( 6.13DT)

Just let me go. She doesn't mean just into the police station. She means
stop finding me, stop trusting me, stop loving me. It's unbearable, to use
Angel's word (in AtS 1.08IWRY wr DG&JR). It hurts too much to feel. But
Spike won't let go, it's the very first thing they ever learned about him:
"Once he starts something he doesn't stop until everything in his path is
dead" (Angel to Scoobies, BtVS 2.03SH wr DG). He's not the oh-so-economical
Angel, brooding in the mansion while Buffy at 16 went down the Hellmouth to
her death at the hands of the Master. To stop Spike, you have to kill him.
He doesn't do walking away.

S: I can't. I love you.
B: No, you don't.
S: You think I haven't tried not to?
B: (punches him) Try harder.
( 6.13DT)

This is the key we'll use on Chosen later. He says he loves her, and she
knows it's true, but she denies it anyway. We can all agree on that, I
think. Even Tara, later, already knows he loves her. But at this moment in
time, under the rugs, on the other side of the crypt door, she's gone and
let him in, her cure for the Cancer of Living, just for a moment. Two
moments. Now she's afraid. So: crit technique du jour, invert the speakers.
There's a pattern here. She loves him. She's tried not to. She can't try any
harder. It's unacceptable. *She* doesn't have a soul. There is nothing good
and clean inside. She. Can't. Feel. Anything. Real. And she is not his girl.
There's no girl there. Death is her gift. "A Slayer really is just a killer
after all." (Buffy to Giles, BtVS 5.22 The Gift, wr JW)

B: You can't understand why this is killing me, can you?
S: Why don't you explain it? (she keeps hitting)
S: Come on, that's it, put it on me. Put it all on me. (She kicks him)
That's my girl.
B: (yelling) I am not your girl! (knocks him to the ground, keeps pounding
him, he takes it) You don't ... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean
in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never ...
be your girl!
S: (face swollen, voice slurred) You always hurt ... the one you love, pet.
Buffy? (she gets up & walks off, Spike tries to stop her but can't) Buffy...

And this is why she needs to turn herself in. Because she's a killer.
Because she's killed him. Because she's wrong, and cannot be forgiven. Must
not be forgiven. Because she can't stop letting him in. Because she can't.
He can't. Let. Go. Because you always kill the one you love.

 So let's invert speakers in the whole sequence now. That way, it's Spike
who's doing "the right thing for once". And it's Buffy who tries to stop
him, because she "can't let him do that". Buffy does love him, not that it
helps, even though she tries hard not to, but at this time Spike would never
believe that to be true: 'What is this to you," he dares to ask her, under
the rugs, "this thing we have?" "She was so raw", he says later in 6.18
Entropy. "Never felt anything like it."

And carrying the inversion consistently through the whole exchange, just so
you know  i'm not finessing this even one little bit, there's one
interesting exchange to think about: this would give Buffy instead of Spike
the line "You are not throwing your life away like this", and Spike instead
of Buffy the response "It's not your choice".  In this version, then, she
knows she's destroying him, and so she wants him to let go; and he chooses
to try to save her anyway, no matter what it costs.

It works, of course, this weird inversion thing, because that's the way it
was written to work in the first place. Triangulation. Angel forever the
point of stasis. Spike eternally becoming, coming home. And Buffy between
them changing across seven years, first caught in Angel's static dream of
forever, frozen, then gradually turning to Spike, the chaos figure that she
gradually begins to read as home. It's a beautiful setup. Three
protagonists, three born predators who long for more, for meaning, their
interactions, past, present, and future, drive the Buffyverse. They are
strictly speaking, in the writing, patterns, exactly paralleled universals.
But when they change, the whole dynamic changes, even Angel's end, though
he's no longer there. He walks away, assembling his art of death. Spike
dives right in, fist and fangs, creating his art of living. And Buffy
hesitates between the two models. Born to die, wanting to live. Condemned to
live, wanting to die. Love, oh yeah love, that's the least of it.
Triangulated.

Either way you read it (kinda like mirror reading, isn't it?), it's a
crossroads for both of them. The birthday episode follows, in which Tara
puts herself bodily between Spike and Buffy, to give her an opportunity to
make a choice. And then the Riley episode, at the end of which Buffy walks
away from Spike as William, for many of the same reasons Angel left her long
ago. At that time Angel said to her:

You deserve more. You deserve something outside of... demons and darkness.
You should have someone who can take you into the light.
(Angel to Buffy, BtVS 3.20 The Prom, wr MN)

And now when Buffy leaves Spike, we can parallel the two arcs further by
imagining Buffy saying the same thing to Spike. He deserves more than she
can ever give him. She is dark, and she cannot protect him from the darkness
in her. And he needs someone who can take him into the light. So she walks
away.

Does she understand all this about the Spike thing in the explicit? The only
sentence that's doubtful is the one about the light. After she leaves him,
she does treat him like a man, not like a monster. She doesn't need to
objectify him, demonize him, any more. She stops him from coming home, and
she begins to walk away. But she remains damaged. Still lost in her own
misery, it's not clear she realizes how much he has changed, for her. He is
still, in her mind, part of her story (shh. she doesn't know there are three
protagonists. <g>). The trust they share is on one issue only: they both
trust that unsouled Spike would never hurt Buffy (BtVS 6.18E, wr DZG).

But then he sleeps with Anya, and Buffy sees. He didn't mean to hurt her,
but it hurts. Why does it hurt? Then that shaky trust is shattered for them
both by the bathroom scene in 6.19 Seeing Red. She is horrified, but
interestingly there is no indication that she sees Spike's actions as in any
way the equivalent of the emergence of Angelus: she does not once again
think of him as a monster, as she chose to do when she was having sex with
him, but still considers him a man. So Seeing Red does not parallel
Innocence as Dead Things does. She knows there was no intention in him. She
doesn't denounce him. We even know she knows it is a consequence of their
private twisted signals, because she still trusts him to protect her sister.

Spike, on the other hand, takes decisive action to make her safe from him,
to "give Buffy what she deserves". In his judgement, he has behaved like a
monster, and so he goes to earn himself a soul. Notice how he here echoes
what Angel said to Buffy: "you deserve more. You deserve something outside
of... demons and darkness." Now we have another inversion: as Angel left
Buffy, as Buffy left Spike, so SpikeUnsouled has now left Buffy. But his
solutions have very different colouring: chaos figures are never static. He
gains the soul, and returns with it. He doesn't walk away, he finds
solutions and brings them home. He does it "for her". "You should have
someone who can take you into the light."

During the seventh season, they regain trust, and faith. "You risked
everything to become a better man." They do not resume their physical
relationship, but instead learn to touch again, and from mid-season on
(Buffy's rescue of Spike at the end of 7.11 Showtime), all their
interactions read more intimate than desire. Each always knows where the
other one is in a room. In the house. In the town. In the state. They are
two, they are one. They intuit when to hold on, and when to let go. They are
separate, but equal. In the fort that is Revello Drive, they are home.

So we come to 7.22 Chosen. And Angel comes to Sunnydale to wear the Bauble
and act as Buffy's champion at the End of Days. And, in a new permutation
for the Three, Buffy sends Angel away and chooses Spike to be her Champion.
So Angel leaves again, as he is doomed to do. And it is Spike instead who
stands beside her, Chosen for the first time. Now there are more inversions
to be reckoned with, in the text, especially with the conversation in the
alley in Dead Things:

S: Go on, then.
B: No, you've done enough. You could still --
S: No. You beat them back. It's for me to do the cleanup.
F (on stairs:) Buffy, come on.

This time he tells her to let go. This time she argues against what he has
chosen to do, and loses. This time he has, unlike her in Dead Things, done
"the right thing". This time they both understand that.

S: Gotta move, lamb. S'fair to say, school's out for bloody summer.
 B: Spike.
S: I mean it. Gotta do this. (The pit is collapsing inward.)

We're back to 1.12 Prophecy Girl, before Spike's arrival in Sunnydale. When
Buffy went down the steps to the opening Hellmouth, in her long white dress,
a virgin sacrifice, alone. While Angel brooded impotently about the prophecy
in his empty mansion. In my father's house, there are many rooms, and all of
them are empty. To the Master waiting for her there, Spike's
great-great-grandsire:

You still don't understand your part in all this, do you? You are not the
hunter, you are the lamb.... You're the one that sets me free! If you hadn't
come, I couldn't go. Think about that.
(The Master to Buffy, BtVS 1.12 Prophecy Girl, written by Joss Whedon)

Okay, let's think about that. In Chosen Spike has replaced the Master,
perched on the Hellmouth, mastering the Dark, this time in the name of, in
the body of, light. Lucifer the fallen Angel. Buffy is not  the Hunter (as
she was in Dead Things), but is again The Lamb (as Spike in Dead Things was
The Lamb). This year's new master of the House of Aurelius, Spike ensouled,
also calls her the Lamb, and he believes she set him free. If she hadn't
come for him, he couldn't go. Think about that. The first one made of her a
sacrifice, and so she died, alone, fulfilling prophecy: but this one stands
with her and empowers her, then he sets her free and sends her out to live.

B (she laces her hand into his and he grasps it tightly. Flames come from
it.): I love you.
S: No you don't. But thanks for saying it.
(BtVS 7.22 Chosen)

So here we are, at the heart of the matter. What does it mean? The sense of
it is clear because of all those other inversions, that proved out.
Patterning. It's an echo of that moment in Dead Things:

S: I can't. I love you.
B: No, you don't.
S: You think I haven't tried not to?
B: (punches him) Try harder.
(6.13DT)

This time it's her that tells him that she loves him. Just like the last
time, they both know it's true. This time it's him that chooses to deny it.
He gives her the World, he sends her back to the world. "Live, for me"
(Buffy to Dawn, 5.22G wr JW). "So one of us is living" (Spike to Buffy,
6.07OMWF wr JW). They both know what it's like inside that soul. He gives
the gift of light. Love is his gift. He uses it to set her free. He offers
not forever but the more precious gift of today. "I *don't* understand."
Buffy says to Giles in 5.22 The Gift. "I don't know how to live in this
world, if these are the choices, if everything just gets stripped away. I
don't see the point. I just wish... I just wish my mom was here." So Chosen
is a replay of The Gift, in which the Slayer this time is not the sacrifice,
because of the choices they all make: hers with the Slayer power, his with
the light he brings. She comes home to him, and he chooses instead to create
with the light inside him a world she can live in, and then he sends her
back. Home. The Gift. It's his Gift, Too.

(She's crying. More stuff falls. She takes her hand back.) Now go. (to
himself:) I want to see how it ends.
(Btvs 7.22 Chosen, written by Joss Whedon, my transcription)

Spike's gift was life. The OneStory, with Angel, always and forever ended in
death for her. It was a given; that's the only way you get to forever, if
you are mortal. Angel is dead. She was the sacrifice. But Spike gave her
life, he brought her back, he made her whole. Chosen he chose (so human) to
come to her as home and not as his, to wish her joy, to make her safe, to
help her live, and to set her free.

B: How did you find me here?
A: If I was blind, I would see you.
B: Stay with me.
A: Forever. That's the whole point. I'll never leave. (whispering into her
ear) Not even if you kill me.
(Buffy's dream in 3.01 Anne, written by Joss Whedon)

It was Buffy's dream. It's a static dream: nothing happens there. She was
very young. Easy to write, not very interesting to watch. Outside the world,
where they could be free, and stand in light. Immortality that promised an
end to endless loss. An end to having to kill the Other. Which world was
real, Angel's sterile forever or Spike's always everyday? She dreamed about
forever because she wanted to dream it back, her innocence. She dreamed
about forever because her time was already up.

But Spike was never dead inside. What he offered could be lived inside this
world. Which was the fairy tale? Which one was blind? He met the world
headon with those impossibly clear blue eyes. She looked right into them,
and buildings fell around them. It was not a dream. He spoke not of forever
but of expiration dates. His version of the world was messy, but it was also
true. No curse came in with him; the soul he fought for was his own. He
chose to give himself, and never counted up the cost. He never drank or
claimed her, never left her, never made his love conditional. And though he
died he never gave up, never gave in, never let her give up on life, and
never ever chose to walk away.

I dreamed of killing you. I think they were dreams. So weak. Did you make me
weak, thinking of you, holding myself, and spilling useless buckets of salt
over your ending? Angel, he should've warned me. He makes a good show of
forgetting, but it's here, in me, all the time. The spark. I wanted to give
you what you deserve, and I got it. They put the spark in me and now all it
does is burn.
(Spike to Buffy, church scene wr JW, in BtVS 7.02 Beneath You wr DP)

This is how it goes. It isn't linear, the OneStory. It is eternal. They
enact it in constellations. The Slayer negotiates her labyrinth with string.
Finding a path through the text, some days, so dense it echoes up on the
eighth dimension, requires a table, three thimbles, and one seed. The Three
follow one another's tails, sorry tales, around the buffyverse, and the only
hope we have in crit is to grab a thread and pull, see what comes down with
it.

The Buffy and Angel 4Ever thing is eternal, true enough: cause Angel's
caught in a loop, and he is immortal, and every time he doggedly wades in,
no matter what angle he chooses, no matter what weapon he chooses, the
result will always be the same: where Buffy is concerned, he is doomed to
endlessly, eternally, walk away. Angel and Spike, on the other end, that end
of the triangle's practically unknown, unfinished business all over the
place, and chaos figures don't respect the Old Man's bloody boundaries too
well, so a season of playing that one out is bound to yield new
permutations, echoes, colours in their dance at the end of time. And Buffy
and Spike are free, that chaos thing, set free by the text, no less, that
allows them to change, to grow, to feel, even to escape the story when the
floods roll back.

Is this then the end of the OneStory? It's the end of Buffy's seven-year
classic journey. But when Angel walked away, because of the patterning
written into it, the story was able to continue. And Angel and Spike both
are, or were, immortal. Plus, the story always has a life of its own. "The
writers reserve the right to have a better idea." There's always more story
possible: scribble scribble, says the Gibbon, and it's only when you pick
the sheets up off the floor that you find out what you've got to play. Till
then, we are all blind: the players, the writers, the audience. The
characters, now in the offseason. There's none so blind as those who cannot
see. Trying not to blink. Playing the odds. Dreaming both death and life, in
the neverending and the today. Choosing between forever and coming home.

macha
macha@ntl.sympatico.ca

written 24-25 June 2003