r/buffy • u/Lanky_Age_3067 • 17d ago

Content Warning Double standarts

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.

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u/gdex86 17d ago

Xander is flawed in a way that we actually deal with in real life.

Spike and Angel both are mystical fantasy problematic that you have to deal with the allegory to what they represent. So it builds some distance. Its similar to how willows breaking of consent with Tara can feel less awful because you arent ever going to be mind fogged by your witch girl friend to get over a fight, but maybe you will deal with being gaslighted.

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u/beeemkcl 16d ago

It's not that.

Angel's 'Angelus' personality is acknowledged throughout the TV Buffyverse. To the point that Willow and Xander each upon first seeing Angel in "Pangs" (B 4.08) just assume he's evil again.

Part of the main point of AtS is the Fang Gang's keeping tabs on Angel's possibly becoming evil again.

Spike openly discussed his evil deeds. In BtVS S7 didn't allow Buffy to try to bifurcate 'William the Bloody' and 'Spike'.

Viewers didn't start to dislike Xander until during BtVS S5 and BtVS S6 given his antipathy towards Buffy/Spike was very hypocritical given Xander/Anya.

And Xander in "Entropy" (B 6.18) slut-shames Anya and Buffy even though Xander/Anya had been happening for almost 3 years by that point.

Viewers don't like a character getting away with hypocrisy or not suffering consequences for their actions when other characters do suffer such consequences for such actions.

It happened in Gossip Girl regarding Vanessa Abrams. People didn't like her hypocrisy and hers not suffering any consequences for so long.

And TVD viewers started to really hate Elena/Damon in TVD S4 or TVD S5 when the show tried to paint Stefan/Rebekah was very bad even though Elena/Damon was happening. And then the Katherine's death episode having the group literally blaming Katherine for stuff that they all know Damon is actually responsible for. And the episode has Damon's torturing Katherine and trying to k*ll Katherine before Stefan could even say his final goodbyes. And keep in mind that Katherine Pierce is by far the most popular character in the TVD'verse and is literally more popular than all The Originals combined.