Does Xander Get a Free Pass?

[sosa lola]

Mar 13, 2010 15:18:51 GMT -5 El Diablo Robotico said:

Hurt and betrayal toward Anya, sure, (even tho it's uncalled for, and he has no one to blame but himself), and anger toward Spike, but anger toward Buffy?

Buffy is a hero. Spike is their enemy. A currently soulless vampire. Someone who hurt them in the past and is willing to hurt them if he lost the chip. Buffy can do better than him. That's the way Xander is thinking IMO. I doubt it had anything to do with jealousy, it was about wrong and right. Dating soulless vampires is a betrayal, wrong and dangerous.

And I think the anger isn't really about Buffy sleeping with Spike as much as it about Buffy hiding that from Xander. As Xander told Buffy, it hurt that she didn't trust him enough to tell him about Spike even though he understands why she didn't.

[AngelFaith]

Feb 24, 2010 20:14:38 GMT -5 El Diablo Robotico said:

For starters, we're talking about a guy that left his bride at the frickin' altar!! I think that has to be possibly the worst thing one person can do to another without getting arrested for it (murder, rape, arson, etc., all being worse, obviously, but also against the law). In fact, an argument could be made that this might be the single worst act committed by any character on either show. Yes, others did things that, on the face of it, you could rank higher, but they either didn't have souls (Spike, and possibly Anya), were under the influence of something (Willow), or were doing it for a good reason, such as trying to save a life (Wesley). Xander has no excuses. He did what he did out of fear and personal weakness.

Others on the show have done worse with souls (Dark Willow anyone?) Or what about the abuse that Buffy puts Spike through in Season 6?

I have never felt the need to vilify Xander for leaving Anya at the altar. Yes, it was a horrible things to do and my heart just breaks for Anya, but let's look at this objectively for a moment.

Xander obviously loves Anya. He proposes under dire circumstances and then starts to have doubts and fears. You can see over the whole of Season 6 that he is trying to figure out if he's really ready for this kind of commitment. But he still charges through, right up to the ceremony. Then he is shown a future where everything he fears comes true. That's enough to scare anyone away.

And even when he finds out that it's not real, I think by this point, the fear has just been instilled too far. There is that heartbreaking shot where Xander looks at his parents and sees his father on the verge of hitting his mother and he realises that it would be a mistake to marry Anya. They just aren't ready.

So yes, he really could have handled things better, or called off the engagement earlier. But he never meant to hurt Anya. It's obvious just how much he loves her. He did make a mistake but there was no malice in what he did.

So that's bad enough that we could almost stop right there, but let's keep going. When he finds out that the girl he's just dumped has moved on and had sex with another guy, he reacts by taking out an axe and setting out to murder that guy. I don't know--is this a normal, acceptable reaction in today's society? 'Cause the last time I found out that one of my exes had a new boyfriend, I didn't go off and try to kill the guy. Am I alone in that? Did anyone else do what Xander did, and is now logging into SA from a state correctional facility somewhere?

I get why Xander is hurt and angry here. Yes, he left Anya, but he never stopped loving her. To see her having sex with someone so soon after a breakup is probably akin to her not caring anymore. And to add insult to injury, it's Spike, who, to Xander, is nothing more than an evil, soulless thing.

So going after Spike with an axe is understandable. I don't think Xander would have gone after a human with an axe. But Spike is (at this point) still just a demon.

And there are other things. The way he treats Buffy with regards to Angel--the argument in the library about re-ensouling him in "Becoming, Pt. 1"; and the infamous "Kick his ass," line one ep later.

I will completely agree with you here. I always hated they way Xander treated Buffy in regards to Angel. He was such an ass and when he says the whole "Willow says .... kick his ass." I wanted to crawl into the TV and kick him in the head ... several times.

That said, I really like how Xander grows over the series. He becomes such a good friend and a trusted ally for Buffy. There are aspects I don't like but overall I think Xander is a good guy.

[skywarp]

I think the op. just hate's xander it's ok i hate 'faith'

at the wedding xander didn't just take off .he told anya sorry he just couldn't go through with it. & after those visions i don't blame him. yes i know the visions were false but were they really? end of season 7 comes to mind?

when xander told buffy 'kick his ass' msg from willow it wasn't just because at that point he hated angel. buffy had several chances to kill angel but she wasn't ready & the result was ms.calender's death/Giles getting tortured & then the end of the world?
really want to tell the only person who can save the world from her only love that ohh' willow said she's working on a cure?? umm' no thanks..

spike/anya.. all xander knew was spike's past & that spike recently tried to rape buffy.
if you saw the greatest love of your life humping hannibal lecter on a live video feed you wouldn't grab an Axe & run over there? I know I would!!

& as for all the xander was mean/cold' in s1/s2'ect
he was a teenage boy and we all know how nice & sweet they all are right?? lol'

I'm new to these forums & am so happy there's an awesome outlet for the greatest series of all time. thank you.

[The Girl In Question]

^^Yeah, but the love of his life was also a mass murderer, who I think did much more bad than Spike ever did. I love Xander, but I will never get over his hypocricy. I think he does get a free pass in the way no one calls him out on it. Willow doesn't care too much for Anya at first but not for the right reasons (like Anya trying to kill Willow in season 3 for instance).

And actually I would have told Buffy Willow was working on a cure, lol.

[El Diablo Robotico]

skywarp, I know that this has turned into a very long thread, but did you read any of it (even just to skim thru it), or just the original post? 'Cause I'll say it yet again: I don't hate Xander. He's not one of my favorite characters, but I don't hate the guy. For me, his really good moments and really bad moments pretty much cancel each other out, leaving me just on the 'mild dislike' side of neutral towards him. My original reason for starting this topic was because I'd never seen him called out on any of his many far-from-shining moments, and think he's gotten a close-to-sparkingly-perfect reputation over the years that he doesn't deserve. Over the course of this discussion, I've found out that some of these things have been brought up, and apparently he has taken some much-deserved heat for some of them--I had just never seen it myself.

TGIQ already made the point that I would have, which is that Anya has a far worse history than either Spike or Angel. Since she's a lot older than either of them, she's probably killed more men than both of those 2 put together. But Xander just kind of shrugs that off, while continuing to be majorly hypocritical to Buffy about her evil, murdering vampire boyfriends.

As for seeing his ex "humping Hannibal Lecter", his reaction had nothing to do with Spike. It was all about his anger toward Anya, which was completely out-of-line, considering what he'd just done to her. (He didn't have any problem with "Hannibal Lecter" babysitting Dawn all those nights while Buffy was dead, did he?) He was pissed off at Anya for doing something that hurt him, and Spike being a soulless, evil monster just gave him an excuse to take his anger out on something, since nobody's going to complain much about him killing a vampire, whatever his reasons might be.

His attitude toward Angel... Why was he so against re-ensouling him? After all, Angel had done a lot of good in that first season-and-a-half before turning evil, right? He'd fought on their side, helped save the lives of all of them at some point or another, and had never hurt anyone. If Xander was trying to justify it, I suppose he might argue that, "If we give him his soul back, how long before he loses it again and goes on another rampage?" Yet isn't that exactly what eventually happened with Anya? She became a vengeance demon again, and he walks into a frat house and sees a dozen bloody corpses that she's directly responsible for, and his reaction is to try to save her, and argue that no, she's just made a mistake, and we can help her. I think it was actually very nice of Buffy there not to lash out at him with the same sort of bitter, hurtful attitude that he would've used in that case ("Re-ensouling Angel seems to have been Jenny's last wish"; "Yeah, well, Jenny's dead!"). When Anya first lost her powers back in S3, why didn't he push for them to kill her, anyway, with the reasoning that she might get them back again and someday become a threat? Wouldn't that have been consistent with how he felt about Angel? But no--because he thought she was hot, and she was actually interested in him, all those centuries of murder and torture were forgiven, just like that.

But hey, welcome to the forums, and I'll give you karma just for using your very first post to disagree with me!

[sosa lola]

Apr 13, 2010 16:04:53 GMT -5 The Girl In Question said:

^^Yeah, but the love of his life was also a mass murderer, who I think did much more bad than Spike ever did. I love Xander, but I will never get over his hypocricy. I think he does get a free pass in the way no one calls him out on it. Willow doesn't care too much for Anya at first but not for the right reasons (like Anya trying to kill Willow in season 3 for instance).

And actually I would have told Buffy Willow was working on a cure, lol.

I've written an essay on why Anya was more accepted as a Scooby than Spike. It's probably not fair, but it's understandable.

[The Night Lord]

Any chance we would be able to read that essay? Pretty please?

[Eric]

slayaliveforums.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=btvs&action=display&thread=10670

[The Girl In Question]

^^Everything in that essay makes perfect sense, but I still have to wag my finger at Xander for being a hypocrite