And the appeal of Tumblr continues to bewilder....and the Buffy/Xander pairing raises it's ugly head

[shadowkat]

The appeal of Tumblr continues to bewilder me. I think if the only way you engage in social media is via a smartphone, in which case it must be very appealing. But it's wickedly hard to follow. Nor do they appear to say anything.

Example? Topic: "Why isn't the Buffy/Xander pairing more popular?"

Here's the insanely interesting and thoughtful responses:

nikiiwi likes this
mcgani reblogged this from luscious2 and added:
Oh, I think that was a miscommunication in my wording. He spies her kissing Angel, but I didn’t mean it in the sense...
tennyo-elf likes this
luscious2 reblogged this from mcgani and added:
Correction: Xander never spies on Buffy in Revelation. He noticed Angel walking inside his home and Xander peered...
transparently-uncreative likes this
electricsbananas reblogged this from restfield
buffydale likes this
katzenschlafs reblogged this from apprenticebard
ilikemyshipsnotyours reblogged this from thirteenthblackbird and added:
Lol, I’m not entirely sure if that’s true but I do know that season 7 was supposed to have Buffy/Xander but than the...
thirteenthblackbird reblogged this from restfield and added:
In a LiveJournal thread I recently read that Buffy/Xander was supposed to be the romance of season 1 but that Angel was...
azzthetix likes this
piggiesftw likes this
thatsnothowitworks likes this
protoneoromantic reblogged this from restfield and added:
Personally, I don’t ship them much because of how deeply I appreciate the beauty of their canon narrative which is so...
sweet-poisoning reblogged this from restfield
torrilin reblogged this from ilikemyshipsnotyours and added:
Keep in mind I didn’t say “Xander never treats Buffy like a person”. I think he doesn’t do a good job when he’s busy...
hndwrttn reblogged this from shutupthatswhy
antisocialit3 likes this
connivinglittleshit reblogged this from shutupthatswhy
hndwrttn likes this
mollymollymay likes this
uranussatellite likes this
shutupthatswhy reblogged this from spikeghost
spikeghost reblogged this from world-comes-to-an-end
world-comes-to-an-end reblogged this from teenageantichrist
teenageantichrist reblogged this from world-comes-to-an-end and added:
^^yesAnd not to mention the fact that Xander was overly controlling with all of his girlfriends. With both Cordelia and...
cyclops likes this
frelling-tralk reblogged this from ilikemyshipsnotyours and added:
To me Xander is a “nice guy” because high school Xander never got over Buffy turning him down. He didn’t handle it...
tinyspacekitty likes this
yusgi likes this
cosmic-moon-power likes this
butyoucanttaketheskyfromme reblogged this from drusillathekiller
parsnippletickle likes this
robotthatscreams likes this
magicboxprompts reblogged this from drusillathekiller and added:
Great post!
cloverover-dover likes this
liberiangirl85 reblogged this from ilikemyshipsnotyours and added:
I wish the show didn’t have such an open ending when it came to Buffy’s relationships, it would have been nice to see...

Or in summary: I love this post, reblog, reblog, I don't know why they didn't, reblog, reblog..

Now doesn't that just make you want to drop everything right now and go join Tumblr??? I do. Not like emails at work aren't head-ache inducing enough.

The most interesting bit? Not to mention creative? The names people have come up with to call themselves on tumblr. I'm particularly fond of robotthatscreams, parsnippletickle, cloverover-dover and cosmic-moon-power. (Oh I adore this sentence: robotthatscreams like this.) And ilikemyshipsnotyours is clever and honest. LOL!

My response to the question at hand?

Why isn't the Buffy/Xander pairing more popular?


1) Doyle Response:
Whedon nixed it because it was boring. (He wasn't wrong.) [That's actually a true story - they pushed it in S7, he nixed it. The rumor: He wanted to do a Wood/Buffy romance, but Gellar talked him out of it apparently...because he was planning on killing off Wood - which she also talked him out of. (I'm not sure I buy that one, Gellar had no clout the final season. If he wanted to do it, he would have.) But the Buffy/Xander bit was true.] Note - when you do a television series that has a superhero and two or three sidekicks, you never ever put the superhero with one of the sidekicks, because after a while its boring, there's no romantic tension. They never put the sidekick with the hero...you'd have to either kill off the sidekick or have some huge problem happen.
In Buffy they avoided it for three reasons, 1)boring. Happy relationships in teen horror drama soap operas are boring because the writers don't know how to create conflict that isn't melodramatic 2) what I mentioned above, and 3) the series writers loved doomed romantic relationships or romantic conflict. The heroine and her friends weren't permitted to be happy in love - their relationships were doomed to failure - because that's how the writers built conflict.

2) Watsonian Response:

The characters don't work together. They are too similar. Both are judgmental, with serious Daddy issues, and quippy. Opposites work better in drama.

I wrote a long essay about it - go here: http://www.oocities.org/shadowkatbtvs/bx_monsters.html

3.)Fandom wise? I was a Xander/Willow shipper until S4. Then I shifted to Willow/Tara, Xander/Anya.

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Hey, I cheered for Xander to date Buffy in season 1. But Buffy so firmly put him in the friend zone then, that I don't think there was any believable way to bring them together as young adults in the last few seasons. A fling maybe, but it couldn't last more than a handful of episodes with it clear from the start it wasn't going to last.

[lusciousxander.livejournal.com]

I have read some Xander/Buffy set during S7 and post-show and found them enjoyable - however, I would have liked those fics much more if they were friendship-focused. I'm at the stage where I don't really want to ship characters, I just wanna read a meaningful fanfic about two characters understanding each other and overcoming their differences without the middling of sex that ruins all the beauty of the fic.

I've been reading a lot of Xander/Giles lately because I enjoy how fanfic deals with that friendship that canon didn't pay much attention to, but when it starts to take a slash direction, I stop reading. I just want friendship/gen fics!

Right there with you...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you there. I've fond in television serials like Buffy that the friendships, sibling relationships, and family relationships are far more interesting than the romantic ones. Currently at the stage - in which I prefer to ship friendships over romantic relationships.

In part, because the conflict isn't sexually based. (ie. will they or won't they?) The problem with romantic conflict is it tends to be fairly conclusive or it goes in a circle, break-up, get back together, break-up. (UGH). Serial writers, for some reason, don't tend to be that interested in writing romantic relationships between people who are also friends, and depicting conflicts that aren't just sexual in nature. It shouldn't just be about the sex.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

They did try in the comics. It didn't work. Although the comics didn't work in a lot of ways...and aren't really canon to the series, so doesn't matter.

At any rate, I agree. There was a smidgen of a possibility between Season 1 and Season 2, but after "Prophecy Girl" it was clear that Buffy/Xander weren't going anywhere. I think that was the episode where he asks her to the Prom and she says, really not into you that way, Xander. Which of course sets him up perfectly to be the hero...by saving her from Angel.