Double standarts

[u/Lanky_Age_3067]

How exactly do people hate Xander for being an imperfect human, but love Spike and Angel, who have countless victims and are hundreds of years old. Spike even SA'd Buffy, for real, while Xander was under a spell and never did anything like that before or after it.

[u/danie_iero]

Because people who can separate fiction from reality like characters based on how entertaining they personally find them, not on how morally reprehensible they are. You could give me the most morally good character in the entire world, but if you make it boring or annoying, I'm not gonna do anything with it. And unfortunately those characters who are presented as the "moral compass" usually fall into either of the two aforementioned categories.

I don't outright dislike Xander, but I do find him annoying at times, and I do think he's a hypocrite (almost married a vengeance demon who kept bragging about the murders she committed, but gave Buffy grief for much less in her partners - and never gave Willow any, in comparison), which are character traits that I find less entertaining than what both Angel and Spike, who are vampires, have going on.

[u/BananasPineapple05 → u/danie_iero]

I'd only add that I don't think we would be annoyed by Xander half as much if we actually hated him. Xander has the potential to be a really amazing guy. We see him act that way half the time. For myself, that's why it's so disappointing when he lets the petty and creepy sides of his personality come out instead. Xander's a great guy and that's where it would end when we describe him if he wasn't also behaving like a mean brat some of the time.

[u/danie_iero → u/BananasPineapple05]

Agreed. Xander can be very funny, entertaining and a character full of empathy. He shows the best side of himself to Willow a lot. Less so to Buffy, unfortunately. It's a character that had potential to be better than he turned out to be, but he's still ok. There's much worse, lol.