It really, really does hold up well. In some ways better than at the time for me, because at the time is colored by the, shall we say, intensity of the fannish climate surrounding it.
Like, particularly on the subject of Angel and Spike and the respective Buffy ships it was like armed camps, where even if you were me and didn't have any desire to 'choose sides' the vitriolic rhetoric colored how I saw things.
Liking Buffy/Angel meant buying into the whole soulmate, 4-Evah stuff, even if only by proxy...and liking Buffy/Spike meant buying the whole surrounding Redemptionista school of thought. And while neither really fit how I felt about either relationship, since I always had more affinity for Spike/Buffy for various reasons, and a more severe distaste for the 4-evah stuff, I ended up throwing up a lot more defensive walls against Buffy/Angel.
no subject
Like, particularly on the subject of Angel and Spike and the respective Buffy ships it was like armed camps, where even if you were me and didn't have any desire to 'choose sides' the vitriolic rhetoric colored how I saw things.
Liking Buffy/Angel meant buying into the whole soulmate, 4-Evah stuff, even if only by proxy...and liking Buffy/Spike meant buying the whole surrounding Redemptionista school of thought. And while neither really fit how I felt about either relationship, since I always had more affinity for Spike/Buffy for various reasons, and a more severe distaste for the 4-evah stuff, I ended up throwing up a lot more defensive walls against Buffy/Angel.