Category Archives: Monday Man
Evil Evoking Sympathy: How the Mayor Won Hearts
If there is anything that makes Joss Whedon stand out even more than he already does, it’s his ability to make complex antagonists who manage to create a laundry list of emotions in viewers. Being a huge fan of Buffy and Angel (I’ve even read all the comic continuations of the series), the Big Bad who stands out to me most after all these years is Mayor Wilkins.
The man speaks the truth. Image via buffyandangeltrainspotters.com
When we first meet the mayor (or hear of him, rather), there is an aura of mystery and danger about him. Whenever Principal Snyder mentions him, it’s in an almost reverent tone. When Mayor Wilkins comes on screen, we see that he has some serious quirks.
He hates germs. He regularly comments to his aide about cleanliness, going so far as to ask if one of them washed under his fingernails. He is also polite and friendly to almost everyone in a genteel, Leave It To Beaver sort of way. All of that is well and good, but his real moment happens when Faith turns to his side.
Faith Lehane is a troubled young woman. While some people might argue with this statement, I think her sexuality is the only part of her life that she has under control. She decides who she sleeps with and when, and it seems to be the only elective she has. Faith is a Slayer called after Kendra died, but Buffy is still head honcho. Though Faith is technically the continuation of the true Slayer line, she is forced to play second fiddle to Buffy. She has different methods and a very different background. No family, no friends, no real connections after she saw her Watcher murdered.
Until she meets the Mayor.
He sets her up in a fabulous loft apartment with exposed brick and a blue color scheme I can’t help but envy. Gaming equipment galore. For a girl from Southie who grew up in poverty, this is the big cahoona. One of their early exchanges begins to set the tone of their relationship when she thanks him for the apartment.
Faith: Thanks, sugar daddy.
Mayor: Now, Faith. You know I don’t like that. I’m a family man. Now, let’s kill your little friend.
Not her normal look.
From that moment, their relationship becomes familial. From the pink dress he gives her to wear to his Ascension to the glasses of milk he offers her to drink, his affection for her is clear even as he plots to become a full-blooded demon snake and eat Sunnydale’s class of 1999. Together they conspire to make Angel lose his soul, and the Mayor acts like Angel is a date coming to his house to take out his daughter.
He calls her his little firecracker and gives her gifts. Even though he’s evil, his love for Faith is evident — especially when Faith shoots Angel with a poisoned arrow and the only antidote is the blood of a Slayer.
Buffy goes after Faith with Faith’s prized knife as her weapon, and she manages to nearly gut Faith, giving her a beating that puts her in a coma.
The Mayor’s reaction to this makes you forget that he is evil. While standing in her ruined apartment, he repeats over and over, “She’ll be all right. Faith’s a good girl. She’ll be all right.” He finds her comatose in the hospital. Racked with crippling pain, he tries to smother an unconscious Buffy in the adjacent room, roaring at everyone, “Did you see what she did to my Faith?”
His love for Faith becomes his downfall, the humanizing element that gets him where Buffy needs him once he becomes the giant snake.
Their relationship is expounded upon in flashbacks in season four, dreams in Faith’s mind while she slumbers. You see more love and normalcy and Buffy painted as the villain who destroyed Faith’s family. When Faith wakes, she finds a video he left her along with the gadget that allows her to switch bodies with Buffy in “Who Are You?” Even later, in season seven, the First Evil is able to manifest to Faith as the Mayor, and you see that connection revived.
Through all the spider eating and baby tributes to demons, the Mayor is a fully-realized villain and one of the best I’ve ever seen. He evokes feelings of fury and pity alike, and if you’re like me, you ached for him when Faith was lying in that hospital. Their relationship is one of the show’s most poignant, and in spite of their poor decision-making, you relate to them.
For that, Mayor Wilkins is today’s Monday Man and the first in a series of posts about the Big Bads of Buffy. To a fascinating villain and a guy who loves his calcium and Little Women, this one’s for the Mayor.
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- Monday Man: Rupert Giles (emmiemears.com)
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Front Line Hero: One Man’s Battle for Women
There is an article I read several years ago that sticks with me even now like some viscous substance I can’t shake off. If you read the article, you’ll understand why.
Trying to figure out how to start this essay, I can understand Eve Ensler‘s words at the beginning of that article she wrote for Glamour magazine. I understand her hesitance, her fear that her words would make people shut off, shut down, stop reading. Again, I will start with a promise of hope before I delve into today’s topic. Again we will wade into darkness together before we come back out into the light.
If you’re ready, take my hand.
Far away from most of us, there is a country ripped by war. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC) has been vied over for centuries. Under King Leopold, her people were brutally oppressed as he rifled through the country’s hills and lush jungles caring only for the diamonds and other resources that flow so richly in that land. And for the last fifteen years, the DRC has seen another war. What started as an insurrection to oust Mobutu Sese Seko became something else entirely.
A war on women.
The Congo is the most dangerous place on the planet to be a woman or a girl.
While for the world, 1 in 3 women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime, in the Congo that statistic looks almost hopeful. 48 women per hour are raped in the DRC. That is 34,560 per month and 414,720 per year.
This is not confined to conflict areas. Once a minute, a woman is abused in her home. I would also like to point out that these instances are only reported rapes. The actual numbers could easily be much, much higher.
Women are the Congo’s most valuable resource. And that resource is being raped faster than it can recover. It’s hard to type these words. As I watch my screen, it swims through the standing tears in my eyes. For a moment I’m almost grateful for my own experience. Because in spite of the horror that exists in those statistics, it pales in comparison to the atrocious, violent brutality of those numbers.
These women aren’t just being raped. They’re being destroyed from the inside out. Stay with me and please continue to read. I promise we’ll get to the part with hope. I am sorry for having to show you this darkness, but it is a human darkness, born of the most poison parts of the human condition. And it must be acknowledged if it is to be fought.
Fight we must.
Women have been raped in front of their children, their families. Soldiers have forced women to watch as they rape the women’s children and kill them. Women have been raped with the barrel of rifles, have had rounds unloaded into their bodies where they destroy their internal organs, gut them inside. These women develop horrible infections. They cannot control their bowel movements or their urine and leak constant streams of excrement because their insides have been annihilated.
Worse, the victims are ostracized. Cut off from what’s left of their villages. Left too wander and suffer alone. I don’t know how many have died.
Dr. Denis Mukwege. Image via africansuccess.org
But I do know it would be far, far more if it weren’t for a man named Dr. Denis Mukwege.
Dr. Mukwege founded Panzi hospital. This is a place for women to go to recover. He operates on them. He patches their insides. Even the women who haven’t had rounds unloaded into their bodies often develop lesions, infections, and fistulae that fester and can cause death. He heals their bodies to the best of his abilities, and with the community of other survivors and nurses, he also helps heal their spirits.
Dr. Denis Mukwege is my hero. He sometimes performs up to 10 surgeries per day during his 18-hour working days. He has become the world’s leading expert on how to repair a woman’s body after she has been gang raped. Because of his tireless efforts, he has been awarded with a dozen different honors, including the Clinton Global Citizen Award, the Wallenberg Medal, and has been honored as a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in France. He has also trained many others to perform the surgeries. He has been called the Angel of Bukavu.
The women who come to Panzi hospital come broken in more ways than one. Rape, when used as a weapon of war, destroys not only the bodies of women but the souls of all people. Children forced to watched their mothers violated, spouses held down while their wives are gang raped — this creates a level of psychological damage that nothing else can compare to. These women, if they survive, bear scars. Scars within their bodies, deep inside.
And yet when morning dawns at Panzi hospital, you will hear their voices singing. You will hear them raise songs to God and praise him. Some women have rescued orphaned babies and pour themselves into raising the children as their own to start a new family.
These women have hope again. These women survive.
The hope for the Democratic Republic of the Congo lies in the women of that land. Dr. Denis Mukwege is helping to make sure that hope is not snuffed out.
Partnered with Eve Ensler, they have founded the City of Joy, which is a place women can go to recover more fully, to learn skills, and to become whole again. It opened last year, and its first class just graduated.
Tomorrow is V-Day. Tomorrow is the day to acknowledge that over one billion people on this planet have been beaten or raped. Tomorrow is the day to celebrate hope and the ability of women, of men, of humanity to overcome darkness. Please join with me to help share the message of hope. Please join with me to break the silence.
Tomorrow will be the final post of my V-Day series. I hope that this message has sobered you. I hope that it has shocked you. I hope that it has inspired you to take action, even if you think it is a small action. Even if you, like me, don’t have millions to help expand Panzi hospital and the City of Joy.
There are many ways to help. Tweet about V-Day (#vday). Talk about V-Day. Have conversations with women and men about the cause. Open a dialogue. Break the silence. Blog about V-Day tomorrow. Share your own story, or a story of someone who has touched your life. Attend a V-Day event in your area. You can donate to the V-Day cause, or directly to work in the Congo. Be strong. Be hopeful.
Together we can affect change. Together we can break the silence.
Until the Violence Stops.
Read More:
An article in the Guardian about the statistics from the DRC.
The original article in Glamour by Eve Ensler “Women Left for Dead — And the Man Who’s Saving Them.”
Related articles
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- Congolese women graduate from inaugural rape survival class (cnn.com)
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Monday Man: Rupert Giles
Welcome to Monday! Before I get to Giles, I have a little announcement. You’ll be seeing a lot of me this week — even a bit more than usual. Waiting in the wings is a short story due out at the stroke of midnight tonight based on a prompt thought up in a rather silly conversation, and after that is something that has been in the works for a couple weeks now in order to raise awareness for a cause very close to my heart. It’s going to get personal, it might get a little deep, but there’s going to be hope and inspiration and a lot of love in there too. Do stay tuned!
Rupert Giles
Giles! Image via wikipedia.
When you first meet Giles, he’s all over tweed and big heavy books with VAMPYR emblazoned on the front of them.
I always liked that early introduction to Giles. He’s stodgy and a bit fluttery, and his contrast with bubbly and sassy Buffy makes it all the more fun to watch. Giles is a Watcher, which is more or less synonymous with stodgy and fluttery — as we see later on when other Watchers come onto the scene. As Buffy’s mentor, he tries to teach her, but Buffy needs show, not tell. It’s clear at first that Giles’s frustration mounts as he attempts to convince her to do her duty — and it’s not until she sees a darker side of him, a human side of him, that she begins to take heed.
Giles’s character is fascinating on many levels. Though he is significantly older than the rest of the characters in the core Scooby group, he doesn’t always have a fatherly dynamic with them. With Xander in particular, Giles acts like an annoyed older brother. It’s revealed in the early seasons that he never wanted to be a Watcher growing up — he wanted to be a “fighter pilot, or possibly a grocer.” Though the kids tease him about his tweed and disposition, they don’t know until later that Giles dropped out of Oxford and fell in with a dark magic crowd in his teens and twenties, going by the name Ripper.
This part of Giles’s history surfaces throughout the series. When he and his friends as young practitioners of magic raised a demon named Eyghon to have trip-like experiences, they got shocked out of their dabbling when Eyghon killed their friend Randall. This is shown to have had a massive psychological effect on Giles. He is someone who believes strongly in cleaning up his own mess, even when the conviction endangers others. When Eyghon shows up in Sunnydale a solid twenty years after Randall’s death, Giles fails to explain to the Scoobies what is happening, which leads to his love interest (Jenny Calendar) getting injured and Buffy getting tattooed with Eyghon’s mark by Giles’s old frenemy Ethan Rayne.
There are several instances of this behavior in Giles in the show. In season four, Giles meets up with Ethan to have a drink, and Ethan turns him into a Fyarl demon. Again, he chooses to ask Spike for help instead of talking to Buffy and the Scoobies, and as a result, Buffy nearly kills him because she thinks the demon murdered Giles.
In spite of that personality quirk, Giles has a strong sense of honor — that sense of honor is evident even within his desire to resolve things himself — and he struggles with choices he sees as immoral. When the Watcher’s Council has him inject Buffy with a serum to weaken her for a coming-of-age rite of passage, he rebels against the Council. He goes after Buffy when she is forced to fight an insane, misogynistic vampire while in her weakened state, trying to help her. This results in his being fired from the Council.
Giles needs purpose. Once he’s fired from the Council, he continues to work with Buffy even when they send Wesley Wyndham-Pryce to act as her new Watcher. When Buffy goes to college in season four, Giles feels even more useless until Buffy asks him to serve as her Watcher again. It’s clear throughout the seasons that he needs to feel useful. After he no longer has a job as a librarian or as a Watcher, Giles retreats into himself and ultimately fails at having a life outside the Scoobies — even his venture as the Magic Box owner is inextricably linked to the Scoobies — until he forcibly removes himself two years later.
One of the best and most complex aspects of Giles’s character is his relationship with Buffy. From early on, she redefines his ideas of what the Slayer should be, and as the Head of the Watcher Council Quentin Travers tells him (as he sacks him), he has a father’s love for Buffy. He maintains this role throughout most of the show, reacting as a father would in many instances. When she lies to him or disappoints him, he responds by scolding her — and in one instance, shutting a door in her face and telling her that she has no respect for him or the job he performs.
This is also evident in how he tries to perform tasks that he believes necessary when he doesn’t want Buffy to have to do it. Giles has killed humans for the greater good when he didn’t want Buffy to have to cross that line. He takes on enormous weight at times throughout her development, but ultimately decides that she has to stand on her own when he leaves Sunnydale in season six.
Giles’s pragmatism eventually becomes a breaking point in his relationship with Buffy when he conspires with Robin Wood to murder Spike. He believes Spike poses a threat, but Buffy is confident in both her need of Spike as an ally (and on a personal level) and in Spike’s redemption. When Buffy discovers that Giles lied to her and was stalling her in order to give Wood time to kill Spike, she mirrors that earlier scene of Giles’s disappointment and shuts the door in his face, telling him that he’s taught her all she needs to know.
From the early picture of Giles as a tweed-covered librarian to the image of him holding his hand over Ben’s face to kill him and destroy Glory, Giles runs the gamut of a complex character. Father figure and occasional killer, he is one of the grittier people on the show, housed in a stodgy shell. For his tough decisions and heart, Rupert Giles is today’s Monday Man.
What do you think about Giles? Do you think his actions are justified? Are they pragmatism or folly? What motivates him in his relationship with Buffy?
Ripper-reverted Giles. Can't mention this guy without mentioning Band Candy! Image via jetwolf.com
Monday Man: Rupert Giles
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Monday Man: Wesley Wyndham-Pryce
After some thought and a facepalm, I reckon I should say that THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS! SPOILERY, SPOILERY SPOILERS!
Consider yourself warned.
Another little PSA: Today I defy the laws of physics by being two places at once! That’s right, gentle viewers, you can have a second dose of Emmie over at the lovely Kourtney Heintz’s blog!
My husband and I are watching season three of Angel right now. It’s been a while since I’ve watched it, and one thing that is coming across like someone’s blaring it in an earhorn is how impressive Wesley‘s development really is.
When he first appeared on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as her replacement Watcher when Giles got sacked, he was — in a word — a doofus.
Do I mean doofus? Hm.
Yep. I mean doofus.
From slavering over Cordelia to his horrifically botched handling of Faith when she went rogue, it’s safe to say that he became the utter Emperor of Doofonia. This quote from Giles just about sums it up:
“For god’s sake, man! She’s 18, and you have the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone, so would you just ask her to dance and stop all this fluttering about?”
At the end of that season, Wesley and Cordelia shared what was, in my humble opinion, the single most awkward and embarrassing kiss in television history.
Bleeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuurgh.
With the squishing, and the awkward — ack. No more. No more.
Wesley shows up in season one of Angel ready to prove himself as a rogue demon hunter. He is a man on a quest to redeem himself after being sacked, he is a man chafed by leather, he is…a rogue demon hunter. To which Cordelia responds, “What’s a rogue demon?”
At first, it seems that he will retain his position of comic relief with all his bumbling about. He shares another awkward kiss with Cordy, who unbeknownst to him is just trying to rid herself of the visions passed to her by Doyle, fumbles around, and falls down a lot. He also shows a tendency for slime.
As the show progresses, however, Wesley begins to take initiative. When a couple mobsters show up and demand to see an absent Angel, he plays the role of the vampire with a soul and manages to save a young debutante from being sacrificed to the goddess Yeska by her father (and I thought I had daddy issues). Wesley sustains a couple serious injuries — more than a couple when Faith gets her implements on him — which begins to alter his persona in many ways. He smiles less. He bumbles less. He takes a turn for the serious.
In fact, he begins to become downright dour until the group lands in the demon dimension of Pylea at the end of season two. When they bring back the lovely, zany, wonderful Fred (who is a woman, by the way), it sparks a change in Wesley. His attraction to her is immediately evident. His smile returns when he looks at her, and with the help of the beneficent Cordy, he starts to woo her.
Until, in typical Joss fashion, a misogynistic young man named Billy shows up on the scene who has the power to turn any man into a woman-killer simply by the touch of his hand or blood. When Wes comes into contact with Billy’s blood, he turns on Fred and tries to murder her. Not the best start for a budding relationship.
Following this episode, Wesley’s remorse and grief cripple him. He doesn’t leave his dark apartment for days and almost doesn’t answer when Fred comes to see him. It takes him a very long time to begin to trust himself again. I should mention here that Wesley has a very abusive father who constantly puts him down and denies him any sort of approval or fatherly pride — which clearly plays into his behavior after the Billy episode.
To make matters worse for poor Wes, when he finally does get up the nerve to go for Fred again, she’s already fallen for Gunn. For me, that scene is a little devastating, as much as I adore Gunn and love the dynamics of him with Fred. Wes continues a downward spiral (like every other character on the show, Fred being the possible only exception — Angel went to a much, much darker place than did Buffy). The capstone events are set off when he abducts Angel’s infant son, destroying Angel’s trust — all for a false prophecy that was fed to him.
If there is any time whatsoever that I’ve wanted to screech at my television, this season does it. But ah, the plight of the helpless viewer. Back to Wes.
Wes is betrayed the moment he tries to give the child to Holtz, and he gets his throat slit. Left to bleed out in a park, he realizes his error. Far too late. With Angel’s son whisked away to an unassailable dimension, Angel takes out his fury on Wesley and tries to kill him.
I think I can safely say that this is the lowest point of Wes’s arc.
Wes has a keen conscience and a tremendous sense of moral obligation — it’s exactly that morality that drove him to take Connor from Angel when he feared for Connor’s safety, however sorely he was misled. When faced with the consequences of his actions and the estrangement from his friends and colleagues, Wesley still tries to do right in his way.
Alienated from everyone he loves, he still tries to fight evil and ends up beginning a sexual relationship with one of the lawyers from the Big Bad Law Firm Wolfram & Hart — someone he comes to care for and eventually mourn.
Wesley eventually returns to the team at Angel Investigations after rescuing Angel from his sea-grave where his son imprisoned him (reading this makes me realize just how convoluted that whole plot arc really was), but everything about Wesley’s makeup has changed.
I can’t think of another character on this show whose development is so deeply moving, arresting, and ultimately painful. Through the seasons, Wes was the character I came to care most about. I remember the first time I watched the show, I had to stop partway through season three or four because it hurt too much to watch Wes’s life get decimated.
His actions in the face of such extreme diversity are truly heroic — and for that, Wesley Wyndham-Price is today’s Monday Man. To the underappreciated and beloved bumbler-turned-hero, I salute you.
What do you think about dark characters, gentle viewers? What characters’ transformations have become pivotal to you? Who have you felt for? I wanna know! 
Mrow.
Monday Man: Wesley Wyndham-Pryce
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Monday Man: Spike
It had to happen; you know it did.
At least for me, you cannot discuss the men of the Buffyverse without mentioning Spike. Perhaps without a dissertation on Spike. So dig in, get cozy, grab a cuppa (or a cuppa blood with some Weetabix), and get ready for some serious Spike discussion.
Aside from Buffy, Spike is my all-time favorite character in the series. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a spectacular character development or transformation occur on television. (And Joss Whedon agrees with me — at least that Spike is the best-developed character of the show — so there.)
Born with the name William and later known under the rather ignominious alias of “William the Bloody” — ignominious because it referred to his “bloody awful poetry” — Spike gained his more punkish nickname after Drusilla sired him, showing a proclivity for torturing people with railroad spikes. As the show reveals, even as a young vampire, Spike demonstrates fierce loyalty and protectiveness, as well as a tendency to fall deeply in love. He also attempts to cure his mother’s tuberculosis by siring her — but that unleashes all sorts of mommy issues when she turns on him with some propositions that would make even Oedipus blush. His back story is explained through several seasons in flashbacks, from his lovelorn life as a human poet to how he managed to kill two slayers over the course of his existence.
When Spike entered the scene in Sunnydale, side by side with Drusilla, he was well and truly evil. He came to Sunnydale to get a third slayer notch on his headboard…er, headstone.
Spike became Buffy’s arch nemesis – and later an ally when Angel went the way of the uber-evil and tried to end the world. This shaky alliance paved the way for the events of season four.
If you’ve never watched Buffy, you might be a little glazy-eyed right about now. So I’ll perk up your glazed eyes with some sugary Spike-candy.
You're welcome. Image via nerdreactor.com
What I love about Spike is that he is a demon in a man-suit at first — it takes time and several seasons for the demon to choose to be a man with a demon within. In season four, Spike is caught by the Initiative, a military organization that did experiments on vampires and demons to try and harness their powers to use. The Initiative implants a chip in Spike’s brain that prevents him from biting humans — or even hurting them.
As Spike slowly discovers that he is in love with Buffy, this chip is what plunks him into the role of Dawn’s protector in season five — a role that spawns no little bit of conflict between Buffy and her friends. Spike is still a vampire. He’s still evil at his core — a demon. But he begins to show signs of the man he once was.
His earliest moments of tenderness often involve Dawn. He looks out for her — even if his methods vary from what Buffy finds acceptable. He helps her figure out who she is and where she came from, and he stands up for her when Buffy berates her about it.
Spike’s evolution fascinates me — he is an icon among bad characters who go good. He is the beast who becomes something nobler.
Spike’s interest in Buffy is brought out into the light when he commissions a robot (er, sexbot) made to her likeness, and the Buffybot comes in contact with the Scoobies. Though this is unhealthy and frankly, disgusting, Spike’s emotions for Buffy are real.
He genuinely mourns her when she passes, and he continues to try and fulfill his promise to her to keep Dawn safe. He’s also one of the only people to see the truth of the matter when Willow performs the spell to bring Buffy back. Through season six, their relationship is dysfunctional — he’s the only one at first who understands why she has such a hard time adjusting to being alive again. This relationship hits rock bottom when she leaves him and he attempts to rape her.
If you’re anything like me, you blanched when you read that. For a while, I thought that would be the end of Spike for me. I couldn’t get past it for a time. The scene is traumatic and horrific — and it’s what comes after it that challenges every bit of lore the Buffyverse has about vampires.
Spike is a vampire. By definition in the Buffyverse, he has no soul, no conscience. He is evil. A demon in a man-suit.
But when he tries to rape Buffy, his memory tortures him. He flashes back to it over and over again. He cannot live with what he has done to her. That right there is the utter beauty of his transformation — and why I disagree with assertions of Spike’s selfishness. Following this moment, he travels across the world to seek out a legend. He goes to find a demon who holds the power to restore his soul.
Spike's choice. Image via buffy.wikia.com
I’ve heard people say that Spike did this solely to get Buffy back, but I disagree. He did it because of the guilt he felt after hurting her, to be a better person. He never expected her to want to be with him after what he did to her, but he needed to be a better person. To prove he could be a man instead of a monster.
Spike proved over and over again why he is a worthy character. When it comes to love, I believe he’s better for Buffy than Angel is. Angel at his heart is a man cursed to decency, but his beast is always straining to be free, where Spike’s beast chooses to be decent. In many ways, Angel is a picture of an abuser more than Spike is. When Buffy does the wrong thing (sleeps with him), he turns evil and murderous. When he comes back, he “didn’t mean to hurt her.”
Spike knows he meant to hurt her, believes it because he didn’t have a soul to stop him — and even without a soul he tries to be a better man, even though he often flounders. His speech to Buffy in Touched describes why I love this character’s transformation so much. It shows that he risked everything to be a better man, to give the world the best of himself — and succeeded.
I’ve been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine, and done things I’d prefer you didn’t. I don’t exactly have a reputation for being a thinker; I follow my blood, which doesn’t exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes. A lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred plus years, and there’s only one thing I’ve ever been sure of. You. Hey, look at me. I’m not asking you for anything. When I say I love you, it’s not because I want you, or because I can’t have you – it has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try… I’ve seen your kindness, and your strength, I’ve seen the best and the worst of you and I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You’re a hell of a woman. You’re the one, Buffy.
I could probably write an entire dissertation on Spike and still have more to say, but this describes why Spike is today’s Monday Man. And forever one of the most phenomenal characters I’ve ever seen.
Monday Man: Spike
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Monday Man: Xander Harris
The last few days have seen me curled up in bed alone after long days of work with only a book for company. I’ve been sick and sniffly and generally full of snot, so my husband has opted to sleep in the living room, where it’s more quiet and he doesn’t have to wake up with his face in one of my dirty tissues — the living room is also free of the pirouetting raccoons that live in our ceiling.
I’ve taken three books to bed with me this week: Kushiel’s Dart, the Buffy Omnibus, and a deliciously sturdy hardback compilation of Tales of the Slayers and Tales of the Vampires, just called Tales. The latter two are graphic novels, so I’ve had Buffy on the brain.
Which brings me to today’s Monday Man: Xander Harris
There's two of him. But only sometimes. Image via Wikia.com
Xander is the very first of the Scoobies that Buffy encounters at Sunnydale High. He subsequently sticks his foot in his mouth, where it remains on and on for the next seven years. Xander’s character has always fascinated me. Of all the characters on Buffy, he is the one who most noticeably lacks any superpowers. It rankles him that he gets told to stay behind when Buffy and Giles and Angel (and progressively, Willow) go off to fight the baddies, and for much of the first few seasons, you can see him poking around looking for a place to call his own.
Xander is that awkward guy with an uncomfortable home life who the cool kids like to pick on, then pick on more when he stands up for himself. In other words, he’s me at age 13. He’s not super-student, nor is he into sports or anything that might make him stand out. The one thing that does make Xander a cut above the rest of the guys in Sunnydale though, is that he is an intensely loyal friend.
He saves Buffy’s life at the end of season 1, and he defends Willow when he thinks anyone is putting her in danger — even herself. He does discover his strengths later in the series and puts them to use, settling himself nicely with a career and a new home even though he didn’t go to college. He slowly evolves into a patient sort of person you want around after a crazed monster attack.
Xander also has some serious weak spots. He loathes Angel (founded a lot on jealousy), and he has a few big hypocrisies that he somehow manages to keep a blind spot about. (No pun intended.) Though he dates and almost marries Anya, an ex-vengeance demon who murdered hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people for pleasure for a thousand years, he remains staunchly critical of Buffy’s choice of men, to the point of insulting her about it and bringing it up whenever he has a chance. When Anya turns demon again, he berates Buffy for the choices she has to make until she has to remind him of the massive sacrifices she made to protect the world from the people she loves. It’s a fun little irony, his griping about Buffy dating demons — because throughout the seasons, it’s Xander who’s the real demon magnet in Sunnydale (in one episode, literally).
In spite of his prejudices, Xander sticks by Buffy and the Scoobies to the end, risking more than the rest of them because he lacks the power and experience that his friends have. In one of his shining moments in season 7, he tells Dawn that he sees more than everyone else does because no one is watching him. He is the heart of the Scoobies, and that’s why he is today’s Monday Man.
Xander: Yeah, I get that. It’s just — where else am I going to go? You’ve been my best friend my whole life. World gonna end – where else would I want to be?
Willow: Is this the master plan? You’re going to stop me by telling me you love me?
Xander: Well, I was going to walk you off a cliff and hand you an anvil, but it seemed kinda cartoony.
Xander Harris, I salute you.
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- 30 Days of Buffy Day 8: Favorite Friendship (essaysonbuffy.wordpress.com)
- Wednesday Woman: Dawn Summers (emmiemears.com)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Then and Now (omg.yahoo.com)
- Thrilling Thursdays: A Buffy Halloween (thedilettantista.com)
- 30 Days of Buffy Day 6: Favorite Male Character (essaysonbuffy.wordpress.com)
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Monday Man: Jenks
Good evening, gentle viewers! I confess it took me a wee bit of time to get around to you today, but I blame Tin Tin. And my sore muscles. And a nap. Nevertheless, here I am, and you look so charming today. Do you have snow? I don’t have snow. More’s the pity.
I was thinking around through the various fantasy series I read and have read, and I decided to go a wee bit unorthodox with today’s Monday Man — I opted to choose a pixy.
Jenks is way more badass than this. Thanks to pixie.wikia.com!
If you haven’t read Kim Harrison‘s series of books about The Hollows, I daresay you should put down this blog and go track down Dead Witch Walking and read it. They’re fun, quirky, and like to play with stereotypes before they eat them and stuff them into the Ever After.
Jenks is introduced in the first book — and the first imagery I recall of this introduction involves him sitting on Rachel’s hoop earring, muttering in her ear. He’s her backup (the only pixywho would even agree to take the hazard pay for such a job), and he sticks.
One of the things I find most interesting about Jenks is that in spite of his size (around 4 inches tall) and the bluebells and daisies sort of image pixies put off and the fact that he is only about 16 years old, his role is most assuredly that of a father figure. He looks out for Rachel and Ivy in the field and personally. He takes great pains to ensure that Rachel knows his opinions on her various suitors, and he is responsible for getting them out of more than one very tight and uncomfortable place.
Jenks has a massive family — something around 20 children — and a wife named Matalina whom he loves to distraction. He is fiercely protective and defends his land and their lives throughout the book series. At a couple points in the series, he is changed to human size, which has some serious and unintended consequences.
Jenks is highly motivated by his loyalty to those he loves — his family (both natural and adopted). His primary driving force is to see his wife and children safe, as well as Rachel and Ivy, though his dynamic with the living vampire often shifts based on his perception of her threat to Rachel. Jenks risks himself more times than he has children in order to perform his role. He is a bona fide hero, a diverse and interesting character, and — let’s be honest — quite the stunner.
Jenks, you are…
Even heroes are sometimes very, very small.
Related articles
- Every Which Way But Dead by Kim Harrison (caughtbetweenthepages.wordpress.com)
- Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison (caughtbetweenthepages.wordpress.com)
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Monday Man: Constantine
to Monday! To lighten the fact that you’re likely back at work and I’m not (come on, you get weekends), I bring you Monday’s new feature: Monday Man.
I'm sure Con will be happy about this.
The idea is simple. On Mondays, I will pick a male character in the urban fantasy (or sometimes other fantasy) genre to dissect. But not really dissect, because I don’t think I could even catch this one if I tried, let alone get him to hold still.
You could buy this for yourself for SolstiChristmaKwanzukkah! The image links to Amazon for your convenience!
I’ve just finished reading Sunshine by Robin McKinley, so it’s only appropriate for me to pick one of her characters to begin, no? If you haven’t read the book, I would get on that. I’ll try not to include any excessive spoilers, but a couple might slip in. Ready?
We first meet Constantine shackled to a wall with a warded anklet. He’s a vampire. Right off the bat, I loved that Robin McKinley’s vampires were not pretty. Their skin is grayish and dead-looking. They have no heartbeat and irregular breath. They move without humans being able to follow it, and when they nab Sunshine at the beginning, she doesn’t hear them coming.
Right away, it’s evident that Constantine doesn’t really have any desire to hurt Sunshine, which is already a nice contrast to her assumptions about suckers. He helps her stay untempting, and I liked the twist that humans have to invite the suckers to drink their blood or otherwise enter their bodies. (Ahem.) Granted, if you look into their eyes, they’ll be able to persuade you to give that invitation, but I am a sucker (mua ha) for anything that gives supernaturals a human-accessible weakness.
The situation in which Sunshine finds herself shows a lot about Con’s character. One of her captors makes the remark, “He likes old-fashioned things” right before making her dress in a red ballgown. It’s evident from Constantine’s careful positioning that he is trying to minimize any possibility that he would hurt Sunshine, both for her sake and because he has no desire to succumb to Bo’s game.
At one point, Con informs Sunshine that there is more than one way to live the life of a vampire. Though he never goes into detail about this, it’s inferred that they can survive on animal blood and that taking human lives affects not only their personality and level of evil, but their ability to age well. Con, it seems, has been very careful.
He’s also described as passing-ugly. Sunshine makes mention several times of his blatant Other-ness, differences in his body shape and movement that make him almost abhorrent, even though she is intrigued by him. It’s clear early on that he views their sort of forced bond as both necessary and a curiosity.
I love gray areas, and Constantine is a great gray area. He goes against the stereotypes of vampires in that world, and he makes his own rules, though he’s not overly aggressive about it. He also represents a darkness Sunshine fears and challenges her assumptions about what that means for her character. He has a lot of roles that don’t seem to fit, such as healer, though again it falls outside the lines of expectation, both for the reader and for Sunshine. Con is in many ways a contradiction, and I think that’s why I liked him so much. He managed to do all of that without being broody or maudlin, and I always appreciate a good self-actualized vampire. Above all things, Con knows his place in the world and doesn’t waste his time wishing for the sun or fat grandchildren.
I’ll close with a bit of fan art of the two of them. Con looks a little bit more ogre-y than I imagined him, and less stringy and lean, but it’s cool to see them depicted anyway. I give you: Monday Man!
Mmm, gray skin in the sunlight. How attractive. Image via fanpop.com
Related articles
- Chalice – Robin McKinley (booklolly.wordpress.com)
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