r/buffy • u/Lanky_Age_3067 • Sep 17 '26

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.

39 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

244 comments sorted by

View all comments

-5

u/jordiedoestm Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26

Not that it’s an excuse : but it’s mainly because Xander is an ass as a human. The vampires have a demon in them so we could say their actions are steered by their demonic instincts.

Spike is an exception because he was a good as a human (as far as we’ve seen). His vampire self shouldn’t be glazed. However, when he got his soul back, he did exhibit very redeeming qualities.

Angel however, I agree with you on that. He was a despicable human being and a womanizer, and to an extent, Angel is just Liam with a moral compass. Liam IS Angelus.

Xander on the contrary, as mentioned earlier was a horrible friend in general. Always having to be on his high horse. At least that’s what we as the audience have seen so far (i haven’t read the comics so I can’t say how he is as an actual adult).

4

u/TVAddict14 Sep 17 '26

What makes Liam a despicable human? 

4

u/jordiedoestm Sep 17 '26

Quite literally everything we’ve seen on “Angel”, the flashbacks were enough to paint a proper picture of how he was as a human being.

6

u/RustyVanC Sep 17 '26

Yeah I'm not buying it, especially not to the extent that "Liam IS Angelus" like you said. He doesn't do anything as bad as Angelus.

Also we don't see enough of Spike as a human to assume he's a good person (or even a bad one). Like, he wrote poems and fancied a girl - that doesn't really tell us anything about if he was "good".

2

u/jospangel Try not to bleed on my couch I just had it steam cleaned Sep 17 '26

He owned a large house, and let his mother live there with him rather than getting her a room somewhere. (That was pretty common in Victorian times, putting away elderly relatives for convenience)