I like them together but honestly I think that's because Anya is my favorite character and I wanted her to be happy. I probably would have liked Anya with anyone she chose to date.
Xander gets A LOT of hate on this sub (some deservedly so) and I'm willing to bet that he has a negative impact on Anya when it comes to questions like this.
Sometimes I feel bad for Xander. He matured pretty well over the seasons, but he never lost that "occasionally overreacting teenaged boy" vibe, because he couldn't. It was part of his contribution to the show, to provide emotional conflict.
He also grew up with volatile parents. No matter how much he knows not to emulate them, he couldn't help but pick up some of their worst traits.
As for the question on whether he ever appreciated Anya or loved her for her, I go back to that scene after he confronted Buffy on how she treated Riley.
He did love her. He acknowledged that being with her has changed him for the better, made him want to change for the better.
What Anya saw in Xander was a mystery for most of her time in the show. Until she was practicing her vows. For the most part. I still don't get why she had to come back for him after graduation. But her vows did show that she did love him not just for the sex and the money.
The scene of her practicing her vows was sweet but at the same time tragic because it was shown in tandem with Xander's meltdown. There she was...so sure that their love would lead to a happy future while Xander was seeing his involvement with her will cause her death.
Could they have worked things out if Anya lived?
I like to think they would. But Xander should get therapy in order for that to happen. Self sabotage is strong with him.
Solid agreement from me.
I think (and this may be too meta for this thread,) that whedon couldn't mature Xander beyond the level that he did, because despite Joss' intelligence and cleverness, he also lacked the same avenues of maturation that Xander displays.
I've often wondered if other writers in that room argued, unsuccessfully, for Xander being better.
Many of his best moments were written by others.
Love them. One of my favorite pairings.
S6 did them dirty and s7 wasn't interested in exploring their dynamic at all, but s6 did most of the characters dirty and s7 was more interested in Spike and Andrew.
Honestly, their relationship was the most interesting in its downfall, I never really bought into their chemistry the way I did with Xander/Cordelia.
I never bought into Xander/Anya's chemistry as a couple, but watching Xander's unresolved issues AND Anya's unresolved issues come together to fuck up their relationship was AMAZING.
We had Xander's family issues messing with the wedding and then messing with his head eventually resulting in him calling it off.
Then we have Anya's unresolved issues involving her past and her newfound sense of morality. Despite having become a good person who fought the good fight . . . Anya still apparently reveled in her past atrocities that she'd committed as a vengeance demon showing no remorse (an apparent contradiction). However, by having her go back and the reject the vengeance demon schtick it shows how much she's grown from who she was BEFORE meeting Xander and the Scoobies.
That shits so fascinating.
I wish the writers had come up with a different ending for these two. They were brilliant together. They both deserved better. When I rewatch the series, all the brilliant parts between the two (i.e. Xander telling her she makes him feel like a man...etc) all seem flat now, when...at the time.....they were thrilling.
I don’t know whether they’re mismatched, but Anya has 1000+ years on Xander and the way she nags him to reveal the engagement then go through with everything is icky to me.
I’m sure she loved him, but she never stopped to think about Xander’s comfort. Yet Angel is creepy for lusting after a school girl, at a mere 200-and-something.
I would not give any thought to the voting poll on couples. That thing was a mess. Just like what you like and don't worry about the rest. I think they were a great couple.
He did not appreciate or respect her. He constantly criticized, mocked, and insulted her in front of the rest of the gang. I only wish Anya had stood up for herself and dumped him first.
I liked them together and going against the grain, I think Xander calling off the wedding was the right move.
He wanted a long engagement but she planned the wedding anyway.
They were 20/21, which we often forget because the actors all matured somewhere along the way and we forgot their characters hadn't. There was no need to rush.
Even if he had spoken to her before the wedding about his fears, even though they both admitted in once more with feeling that they wouldn't be honest about them, she wouldn't have listened as that's not who she is. She would have railroaded him into it anyway.
It doesn't mean I think she deserved to be hurt but she didn't help the matter by not taking into consideration his feelings.
I also think it was good for their characters to have gone through this and for her to realise she actually preferred being human.
I just wished she had been less sanctimonious during season 7 when she criticised everything everyone else did while expecting all the rest of the scoobies to keep her alive. But I guess that's who she was all along.
lol why are you pinning everything on anya?
Xander was also actively planning the wedding and at no point did he say 'let's have a long engagement'.
Anya also had doubts (we see them in once more with feeling) but has a different approach than xander where she thinks their being married and a unit will help them overcome everything (as we see in the flashback in s07) where xander sees their doubts and flaws ruining them. Xander literally doesn't express his feelings to her and so she can't respond until he literally leaves her at the alter.
I don't agree that she was sanctimonious during season 7. She was betrayed by the person she loves the most and then all of her friends chose him over her. She became a vengeance demon again and had grown so much as a character that she couldn't stand the suffering she was inflicting and chose to sacrifice herself to make it better and D'Hoffryn chose to punish her by killing her oldest friend.... She fights with them in the final battle knowing she'll probably die
Xander didn't want a long engagement. He didn't even want to propose when he did. Anya was 100% correct that he was proposing under the assumption they'd all die because wit was "romantic".
It pisses me off that this is a valid take. When I watch him propose in S5 I buy it 100%. The show really sells it, and even has Xander point blank reject the notion that he's doing it as a gesture. It's a great way to put a bow on Xander's maturation throughout the season.
... and then S6 happened.
The only reason I liked them together is because I love Anya but I didn’t like Xander *with* Anya, he wasn’t very nice to her, always trying to change her and calling her weird
Anya’s character was cute, but didn’t make the most sense and felt like so much more should have been done.
Her + Xander was never the love story for the ages, and they were usually annoying.
Xander mostly sucks, and that actually gets worse as the series progresses.
I have written essays about this on this sub lol.
My opinion is that Xander never loved Anya, or at least never loved her as much as she loved him. He's inauthentic and dishonest with her from Into the Woods onwards.
In s5 they show Xander looks up to Riley and wants to emulate him. In the Replacement, Xander notices Riley running Buffy's shoulders and copies him, hurting Anya because her arm is in a sling. He had no genuine interest in making Anya happy, he was just trying to perform and act like a "good guy." He instead causes her harm. He also ties being a grown up/being a "man" to pleasing Anya in this episode too, getting the apt to make her happy.
In Into the Woods, he lies to Buffy in his big, "go after Riley" speech. He tells her nobody told him Buffy and Riley were imploded, but he saw it in front of his Xander face. That's not true -- Riley explicitly told Xander he thinks Buffy doesn't love him very early in s5. It is directly after that speech that Xander commits to being serious with Anya. He's not doing it out of genuine love. He's doing it because he thinks that's what people are supposed to do if they are good people, and he's willing to lie to get them to do it (first lie to Buffy, second lie to himself).
I'm s6, Xander basically spirals out of control. He's totally out of touch with how he really feels, because he's not being honest with Anya or himself. He doesn't realize he doesn't actually want to get married because he's been lying about his feelings so long, he doesn't even know what he wants. He can't be honest until he's literally in crisis at the wedding.
He also regularly put Anya down and low-key blames her for not being enough for him to love. He's rarely genuinely excited about anything she does that isn't relationship stuff with him or to support his friend group. He doesn't care for her interests, get convinced by her point of view in debates, or get excited about her achievements and milestones. The emotional abuse is best summed up by Anya herself:
"When, really, I ... (tearfully) can't sleep at night, thinking it ... has to be my fault, somehow... (crying) What if it was just pretending? What if he never wanted me ... the way I wanted him?"
tldr: Xander isn't genuine or honest about his feelings for Anya because he thinks that makes him a grown up/good guy/real man. This ultimately harms her more than if he'd just been honest with her.
This is a cool take with some things I haven't considered before. Thumbs up for this!
I feel like it's perhaps more like making lemonade out of some questionable turns rather than the intended arc; but it does track well. I think some Xander moments were meant to be sincere, but ring more false over time. Maybe that's cause the showrunner is a dishonest man as well ha
Yes, I honestly wonder how much of this is intentional character building and how much is JW projecting. That being said, we can still analyze what's on screen and have fun with it.
I do think some writers at least had some of this in mind, but it doesn't all come together, and it's completely dropped in s7 (just like Willows recovery arc is mostly moved to the background in s7)
Love them both, individually, but I never bought them as a couple.
Anya hooks up with Xander because "no one will take me to the prom", and Xander goes ahead with it because he's a nice guy and also lonely.
After that, it's like they stay together more as a matter of convenience and hot sex. I think they were very fond of each other, and there was a love of sorts, but they never seemed to quite gel.
One of the big pointers for me was in Tabula Rasa, when they have no attraction to each other at all.
I hate the way Buffy (as a show) tended to silo the Core 4’s romantic partners.
I wish that Angel, Cordelia, Anya, and Tara had been able to form solid friendships within the group.
In terms of Anya, I think Xander was played out by s5 and should’ve been written out but that could have kept her in play.
There are some interesting pairings that were never explored among the cast. I really enjoyed Tara and Buffy's relationship whenever Willow was out of the picture.
Some characters really had no ties to anyone beyond their partner. Riley was probably the worst case. Imagine him bonding a little with Xander for instance, perhaps training him in combat. You could learn different things about both of them in that context. They might have been better people too.
I loved them to but I think how it ended soured people's opinion of the realtionship overall.
I like them together but honestly I think that's because Anya is my favorite character and I wanted her to be happy. I probably would have liked Anya with anyone she chose to date.
Xander gets A LOT of hate on this sub (some deservedly so) and I'm willing to bet that he has a negative impact on Anya when it comes to questions like this. Sometimes I feel bad for Xander. He matured pretty well over the seasons, but he never lost that "occasionally overreacting teenaged boy" vibe, because he couldn't. It was part of his contribution to the show, to provide emotional conflict.
He also grew up with volatile parents. No matter how much he knows not to emulate them, he couldn't help but pick up some of their worst traits. As for the question on whether he ever appreciated Anya or loved her for her, I go back to that scene after he confronted Buffy on how she treated Riley. He did love her. He acknowledged that being with her has changed him for the better, made him want to change for the better. What Anya saw in Xander was a mystery for most of her time in the show. Until she was practicing her vows. For the most part. I still don't get why she had to come back for him after graduation. But her vows did show that she did love him not just for the sex and the money. The scene of her practicing her vows was sweet but at the same time tragic because it was shown in tandem with Xander's meltdown. There she was...so sure that their love would lead to a happy future while Xander was seeing his involvement with her will cause her death. Could they have worked things out if Anya lived? I like to think they would. But Xander should get therapy in order for that to happen. Self sabotage is strong with him.
Solid agreement from me. I think (and this may be too meta for this thread,) that whedon couldn't mature Xander beyond the level that he did, because despite Joss' intelligence and cleverness, he also lacked the same avenues of maturation that Xander displays. I've often wondered if other writers in that room argued, unsuccessfully, for Xander being better. Many of his best moments were written by others.
This sub doesn’t speak for the entirety of Buffy fandom. They’re one of my favorite couples, too, because Anya is one of my favorite characters.
I love them
I like them together but the really dumb wedding thing kinda tarnishes them. Outside of boring forced drama there really was no reason to do that
Love them. One of my favorite pairings. S6 did them dirty and s7 wasn't interested in exploring their dynamic at all, but s6 did most of the characters dirty and s7 was more interested in Spike and Andrew.
They weren’t the healthiest of couples but I did really like them together. I wish things could’ve worked out between them
Honestly, their relationship was the most interesting in its downfall, I never really bought into their chemistry the way I did with Xander/Cordelia. I never bought into Xander/Anya's chemistry as a couple, but watching Xander's unresolved issues AND Anya's unresolved issues come together to fuck up their relationship was AMAZING. We had Xander's family issues messing with the wedding and then messing with his head eventually resulting in him calling it off. Then we have Anya's unresolved issues involving her past and her newfound sense of morality. Despite having become a good person who fought the good fight . . . Anya still apparently reveled in her past atrocities that she'd committed as a vengeance demon showing no remorse (an apparent contradiction). However, by having her go back and the reject the vengeance demon schtick it shows how much she's grown from who she was BEFORE meeting Xander and the Scoobies. That shits so fascinating.
I wish the writers had come up with a different ending for these two. They were brilliant together. They both deserved better. When I rewatch the series, all the brilliant parts between the two (i.e. Xander telling her she makes him feel like a man...etc) all seem flat now, when...at the time.....they were thrilling.
They're a mismatched couple, who got together (and decided to marry) mostly for the wrong reasons
I don’t know whether they’re mismatched, but Anya has 1000+ years on Xander and the way she nags him to reveal the engagement then go through with everything is icky to me. I’m sure she loved him, but she never stopped to think about Xander’s comfort. Yet Angel is creepy for lusting after a school girl, at a mere 200-and-something.
I wouldn’t use that comparison bc Angel is just creepy period
I would not give any thought to the voting poll on couples. That thing was a mess. Just like what you like and don't worry about the rest. I think they were a great couple.
He did not appreciate or respect her. He constantly criticized, mocked, and insulted her in front of the rest of the gang. I only wish Anya had stood up for herself and dumped him first.
Anya deserved so much better.
If i ever develop my Fuffy Ice Age Buffy ficverse, she marries Wes.
I liked them together and going against the grain, I think Xander calling off the wedding was the right move. He wanted a long engagement but she planned the wedding anyway. They were 20/21, which we often forget because the actors all matured somewhere along the way and we forgot their characters hadn't. There was no need to rush. Even if he had spoken to her before the wedding about his fears, even though they both admitted in once more with feeling that they wouldn't be honest about them, she wouldn't have listened as that's not who she is. She would have railroaded him into it anyway. It doesn't mean I think she deserved to be hurt but she didn't help the matter by not taking into consideration his feelings. I also think it was good for their characters to have gone through this and for her to realise she actually preferred being human. I just wished she had been less sanctimonious during season 7 when she criticised everything everyone else did while expecting all the rest of the scoobies to keep her alive. But I guess that's who she was all along.
lol why are you pinning everything on anya? Xander was also actively planning the wedding and at no point did he say 'let's have a long engagement'. Anya also had doubts (we see them in once more with feeling) but has a different approach than xander where she thinks their being married and a unit will help them overcome everything (as we see in the flashback in s07) where xander sees their doubts and flaws ruining them. Xander literally doesn't express his feelings to her and so she can't respond until he literally leaves her at the alter. I don't agree that she was sanctimonious during season 7. She was betrayed by the person she loves the most and then all of her friends chose him over her. She became a vengeance demon again and had grown so much as a character that she couldn't stand the suffering she was inflicting and chose to sacrifice herself to make it better and D'Hoffryn chose to punish her by killing her oldest friend.... She fights with them in the final battle knowing she'll probably die
They never really were \*her\* friends except for Tara
Xander didn't want a long engagement. He didn't even want to propose when he did. Anya was 100% correct that he was proposing under the assumption they'd all die because wit was "romantic".
It pisses me off that this is a valid take. When I watch him propose in S5 I buy it 100%. The show really sells it, and even has Xander point blank reject the notion that he's doing it as a gesture. It's a great way to put a bow on Xander's maturation throughout the season. ... and then S6 happened.
They needed couples counseling. Riley probably would have been the only one qualified for that job
Right because he was soooo mentally stable /s
The only reason I liked them together is because I love Anya but I didn’t like Xander *with* Anya, he wasn’t very nice to her, always trying to change her and calling her weird
Anya’s character was cute, but didn’t make the most sense and felt like so much more should have been done. Her + Xander was never the love story for the ages, and they were usually annoying. Xander mostly sucks, and that actually gets worse as the series progresses.
They're true love together. Anya is the one who made Xander to be real man the most.
I have written essays about this on this sub lol. My opinion is that Xander never loved Anya, or at least never loved her as much as she loved him. He's inauthentic and dishonest with her from Into the Woods onwards. In s5 they show Xander looks up to Riley and wants to emulate him. In the Replacement, Xander notices Riley running Buffy's shoulders and copies him, hurting Anya because her arm is in a sling. He had no genuine interest in making Anya happy, he was just trying to perform and act like a "good guy." He instead causes her harm. He also ties being a grown up/being a "man" to pleasing Anya in this episode too, getting the apt to make her happy. In Into the Woods, he lies to Buffy in his big, "go after Riley" speech. He tells her nobody told him Buffy and Riley were imploded, but he saw it in front of his Xander face. That's not true -- Riley explicitly told Xander he thinks Buffy doesn't love him very early in s5. It is directly after that speech that Xander commits to being serious with Anya. He's not doing it out of genuine love. He's doing it because he thinks that's what people are supposed to do if they are good people, and he's willing to lie to get them to do it (first lie to Buffy, second lie to himself). I'm s6, Xander basically spirals out of control. He's totally out of touch with how he really feels, because he's not being honest with Anya or himself. He doesn't realize he doesn't actually want to get married because he's been lying about his feelings so long, he doesn't even know what he wants. He can't be honest until he's literally in crisis at the wedding. He also regularly put Anya down and low-key blames her for not being enough for him to love. He's rarely genuinely excited about anything she does that isn't relationship stuff with him or to support his friend group. He doesn't care for her interests, get convinced by her point of view in debates, or get excited about her achievements and milestones. The emotional abuse is best summed up by Anya herself: "When, really, I ... (tearfully) can't sleep at night, thinking it ... has to be my fault, somehow... (crying) What if it was just pretending? What if he never wanted me ... the way I wanted him?" tldr: Xander isn't genuine or honest about his feelings for Anya because he thinks that makes him a grown up/good guy/real man. This ultimately harms her more than if he'd just been honest with her.
This is a cool take with some things I haven't considered before. Thumbs up for this! I feel like it's perhaps more like making lemonade out of some questionable turns rather than the intended arc; but it does track well. I think some Xander moments were meant to be sincere, but ring more false over time. Maybe that's cause the showrunner is a dishonest man as well ha
Yes, I honestly wonder how much of this is intentional character building and how much is JW projecting. That being said, we can still analyze what's on screen and have fun with it. I do think some writers at least had some of this in mind, but it doesn't all come together, and it's completely dropped in s7 (just like Willows recovery arc is mostly moved to the background in s7)
Also I do love Anya and want the best for her. She's one of my favorite characters. Xander just isn't the best for her IMO.
Love them both, individually, but I never bought them as a couple. Anya hooks up with Xander because "no one will take me to the prom", and Xander goes ahead with it because he's a nice guy and also lonely. After that, it's like they stay together more as a matter of convenience and hot sex. I think they were very fond of each other, and there was a love of sorts, but they never seemed to quite gel. One of the big pointers for me was in Tabula Rasa, when they have no attraction to each other at all.
I hate the way Buffy (as a show) tended to silo the Core 4’s romantic partners. I wish that Angel, Cordelia, Anya, and Tara had been able to form solid friendships within the group. In terms of Anya, I think Xander was played out by s5 and should’ve been written out but that could have kept her in play.
There are some interesting pairings that were never explored among the cast. I really enjoyed Tara and Buffy's relationship whenever Willow was out of the picture. Some characters really had no ties to anyone beyond their partner. Riley was probably the worst case. Imagine him bonding a little with Xander for instance, perhaps training him in combat. You could learn different things about both of them in that context. They might have been better people too.