Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It is a violation of consent. But it's not a violation of sexual consent, and that's a big difference. If Xander put itching powder in Cordelia's clothes - or did basically anything to dick her over in revenge - it would be technically violating some sort of consent somewhere along the line.

Now, what makes Xander's actions significantly worse than that is that he's trying to mess with her mind, which is pretty serious, especially since his objective is to cause emotional pain.

But it's also drastically less worse than rape obviously. All three of these examples would involve "violation of consent" in some way, and that alone can't be used to equivalate their actions, obviously.

Plus, of course, as soon as Xander puts that revenge scheme into motion, he spends the rest of the episode receiving humorous comeuppance.

The original claim was equating Xander's attempt at magical revenge with Warren's deliberate mind control / attempted rape. There was an assumption made with that claim that Xander was trying to renew that relationship in an artificial way, as Warren did with his ex. If anything, his goal was to reject her the same way she rejected him.

Something like "Once More With Feeling" is less escuseable and more in line with Protagonist-Centered Morality. People DIED from that mistake.

People nearly died from this one too.

At least with Sweet, he just thought there were going to be dances and songs. There was no malicious intent when he summoned Sweet; he just wanted to live in a musical for a while. Of all the terrible things Xander's done, this one's one of the more innocent. He legitimately never meant to hurt anybody.

With the love spell, there was a clear malicious intent. It wasn't a rape attempt, but it was malicious. He had Amy cast the love spell because he wanted to hurt someone.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 5th 2018 at 11:38:24 AM

With summoning Sweet, the problem's less that he did the summoning and more that he waited so long after the dead bodies began turning up to tell anyone about it.

But that whole reveal was done as a gag, and as I mentioned earlier, the show isn't as big on moralizing with things that it intends as comic relief.

"Nearly died" versus "actually died" is a pretty big distinction. Your reasons for doing something doesn't matter as much as what the end result became. That's pretty much the linchpin to Protagonist-Centered Morality. "It was an act done in ignorance so it's okay people died" will always be worse than "It was an act of anger that got out of hand and was fixed with no real harm done."

So you're a big believer in Moral luck, then?

Not sure what you're implying by "believer", but when talking about which scenario is worse in depicting Xander's character, I would go with playing with magic where people died. The Love Spell happened early enough in the show before magic became a weapon in the heroes arsenal, and came with a lesson that you shouldn't mess around with it like that. In essence the message was that Xander still shouldn't have done it, but at least no one was hurt. By the sixth season Willow's reliance on magic was veering toward drug addiction, and she actually knew what she was doing. To be saying Willow is playing with magic too much but ole goofy Xander playing with magic is an okay accident is an inconsistent message.

Edited by KJMackley on Aug 6th 2018 at 1:04:27 AM

I think it comes down to whether intent matters more to you than outcome. To me, the worse offense is the one where Xander was deliberately, knowingly trying to hurt people. The error with Sweet was an honest mistake, and I peg Sweet as being responsible for the people Sweet killed more than anyone. The worst thing Xander did was unknowingly smuggle a murderer in Sunnydale.

But the love spell was a premeditated second-degree assault. He was attempting to drug a person in a conscious effort to cause them deliberate harm, and wound up accidentally drugging tons of other people instead.

Both of these are magical effects that went horribly wrong, but the difference is that with the love spell, there was a malicious intent to go with it.

Also, Xander is as much a Karma Houdini in the love spell episode as Sweet's. Not only does Buffy give him a pat on the back for not raping her, but Cordelia finds it charming that he tried to drug her and publicly declares him to be her boyfriend in front of her friends. The love spell fiasco works out great for him, all things considered! Feminism!

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 6th 2018 at 6:36:54 AM

For me, both are bad for different reasons. The summoning of Sweet may have been an accident but it's damning because

a) This was the second instance of Xander screwing around with magic and both times were because of issues with his love life.

b) It's not until the final moments of the episode til Xander fesses up to this by this time numerous people are dead. Yes Sweet was the one killing people but he still wouldn't have been able to if Xander hadn't summoned him.

c) Xander faces no admonition for it.

Well, no more than the usual "Oh, that Xander! (laugh track)" reactions. It falls apart if you look at it too hard, but any joke will. If you're looking at the show that hard, you're kind of missing part of it. The show isn't about consistency so much as juggling all the different moods it's made up of.

Xander is the Jimmy Olsen of the Scoobies — that is his crime, and also his punishment. He gets something of a pass because he screws up, but the others trust him enough to assume he didn't mean any real harm. Someone else in his same position might have given in to dark temptations, but Xander doesn't really have that in him, and the nature of magic in the Buffyverse is so fickle and Outer Limits-ish that anything you do, magic or not, could result in summoning a murderous demon or the spread of a town-destroying mind control plague. The idea of being the universe's Butt-Monkey was introduced for and by him for a reason. He doesn't get yelled at because he kind of exists in a pre-yelled at state.

That's kind of the line I'm trying to find the edge of, I suppose — Xander is at the heart of some unfortunate tendencies in media, but he's also a product of the times, at a point when a lot of those tendencies were still protoypical — things that later became commonplace and seen as acceptable behavior that weren't really intended to set the bar, necessarily. A lot of the Cool Loser, Dogged Nice Guy qualities which once made him kind of downtrodden and sympathetic in the '90s are now used as the collective Freudian excuse of many a geek-elite the-world-owes-me alt-right jagoff, but it was done in earnest rather than manipulatively. And insofar as he was Joss Whedon's self-insert character, there's definitely a bit of live-to-see-yourself-become-the-villain at work as well.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 6th 2018 at 10:50:12 AM

Certainly the love spell was not a good thing to do either, I'm defending it mostly to counter the claim it was attempted date rape. But it was also a Xander focused episode where he knew his mistake, grew a little as a person and the characters acknowledged some good attributes (he wasn't expecting a Wants a Prize for Basic Decency, he was more embarrassed by the situation he instigated).

For Buffy she knew Xander has a crush on her and that's why she appreciated his refusal. For Cordelia I may have to rewatch the episode, but I thought it was more about Xander coming to her rescue than the "You tried to cast a love spell on me, you really do care." Like I said, I think the metaphor got away from them in this episode.

"Once More, With Feeling" suffered in making that revelation tacked on at the end. The episode didn't even really need a reason why Sweet came into town.

Edited by KJMackley on Aug 6th 2018 at 9:39:36 AM

It served as a humorous way to get rid of the villain quickly. Sorta like the fear demon that was "actual size".

No, it's explicitly, "You tried to cast a love spell on me, you really do care." The only thing she ever says about why she changes her mind is in this exchange.

• Cordelia: If we die in here I'm gonna kick your ass! I mean it!
• Xander: None of this would've happened if you hadn't broken up with me. But no, you're so desperate to be popular!
• Cordelia: Me? I'm not the one who embraced the black arts just to get the girls to like me. Well, congratulations, it worked!
• Xander: Would've worked fine, except your hide's so thick, not even magic can penetrate it!
• Cordelia: You mean the spell was for me?

In that last line, she raises her voice and uses that, "Aww, that's the sweetest thing ever!" kind of tone. And then in her next scene, she publicly declares Xander to be her boyfriend, telling Harmony where to shove it. That Xander tried to cast a rape spell on her melts her heart and convinces her to make this a thing, and she didn't even need the context that he actually was just trying to break her heart, not make her a sex slave.

Even Twilight isn't that bad.

Only somewhat related but an interesting note while I have the transcript up: Buffy explicitly calls the spell "invoking the great Roofie spirit" in her talk with Xander, while she's patting him on the back for not raping her. Xander also admits that he considered raping her.

• Xander: C'mon, Buffy, I couldn't take advantage of you like that. Okay, for a minute, it was touch and go there...
• Buffy: You came through. There might just be hope for you yet.

So. Like. It's explicitly identified as a date-rape drug in the episode. They knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote this.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 7th 2018 at 8:38:47 AM

Just a quick note, Buffy doesn't technically congratulate Xander for not having sex with her, but for not taking the opportunity to see her naked.

Also, Cordelia thinks the love spell is romantic, but just a few episodes earlier, she also thought Buffy (seemingly) killing an ordinary guy shouldn't be such a big deal, since as the Slayer she should be above those pesky anti-murder laws. When told that's how things would work in a fascist society, she responds, "Why can't we have one of those?"

Edited by RavenWilder on Aug 7th 2018 at 9:49:42 AM

Fair enough, but I think Rescue Romance is supposed to be at least some of the subtext there. Even that bit quoted shows that it didn't come in a vacuum, she initially thought he was trying to get someone else to love him, and was surprised it was intended for her. The metaphor was supposed to be "I didn't think your cared" but the Power Perversion Potential is why it gets uncomfortable.

"He cared about me so much that he tried to roofie me! What a sweet gesture! I should go out with him immediately."

Said no woman ever.

Yes, but call it a love potion or have it be a vampire mesmerizing you with his eyes and suddenly it has a very different connotation — in fiction, and only in fiction. That's kind of the problem.

Horror movies are date movies for a reason, right? Power is an aphrodisiac, so is danger. It is uncomfortable, not to be emulated in real life, but the problem is not knowing where to draw the line. The show seems to know it's got a hold of something problematic, hence the "great roofie spirit" line, but never really calls Xander on it. The show brings back Amy, years later, and does sort of delve into the skeevier aspects of mind control/brainwashing with Warren and Spike/Buffy-Bot, but with Xander it pretty much leave it on a note of "Well, as long as you didn't mean it and don't do it again..." Which isn't really enough, even at the time.

I suppose that's what you get with the show's mix of horror, sitcom, and not-yet-fully-serialized adventure series — some actions have consequences, but not all of them. I think I get what they were going for, in that Cordelia still has feelings for Xander, her shallowness has always been a major character trait, and her reaction wouldn't have been the same with just anyone. But it's carelessly done on a show and in an episode where it seems like the writers knew better.

I'm trying to remember if "Superstar" had Jonathan explicitly have some female friends hanging around. That is the standard "I'm rich and famous" cue.

There was a pair of sexy twins shown living with Jonathan in "Superstar", but it's unclear if they were normal women whose minds were messed with by the spell, or if the spell just magicked them into existence.

In the absence of evidence you would generally assume they were real people. The spell warped memories and gave Jonathan some superhuman abilities, but other than the demon didn't appear to summon/conjur anything outright. In that particular case, the spell didn't seem to remove agency but was more like a widescale glamour. The end result would be that he still had to work to manipulate people, it was just easier because they saw him as a hero. Kind of like Barney Stinsons playbook moves, convince people you're someone famous and they are more pliable.

But the spell did conjure up physical objects to support Jonathan's superstardom. There were Jonathan billboards all over the place, the Jonathan calendar, magazines with Jonathan's picture on the cover. And, I assume, if anyone watched The Matrix while Jonathan's spell was in effect, they'd see Jonathan, not Keanu Reeves, playing the lead role.

And given the monster that was created to balance out Jonathan's good fortune, the spell is clearly capable of creating living creatures, too. So creating a pair of adoring bedmates to help sell people on Jonathan being a stud? Seems in line with the spell's Reality Warper nature.

Like I said, it could have been a glamour. Those billboards, magazine covers and so forth had different people on them and everyone was tricked into thinking it was him. Both Buffy and Xander had an almost orgasmic love of him as well as other obsessive fans, so it's not as though he would have needed a lot of effort to get anyone in bed.

Not saying it couldn't have happened that way, but given that the spell obviously does have the power to create living beings (hence the monster), the alternative seems probable as well. Magic in the Buffyverse can do some high grade reality warping when the writers want it to. Just think of all the things, not just memories, but photographs, school transcripts, and personal possessions, that had to be changed or created out of whole cloth when the monks made Dawn.