Joyce and Giles

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Sacrifice

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Was anyone else rooting for Joyce and Giles to get together properly? I thought they would have made a nice couple.
 
There's a reason I'm using the Band Candy skin. 😀

YEP!!!

Love the idea of them. At the very least, I'd have liked to have seen more of them together in general. They went from barely being able to look at one another to being awfully chummy, and I'd like to know how that happened. At what point did they decide to just let it go and start being friends? Did they actually talk about it? ARGH! Even non-romantically, I just like them being on good terms. But romantically? Oh yeah. It would've been awesome to see them together as "them" and not their teenage alter egos.
 
I don't really know. Sometimes I feel like it'd be weird, you know? But I still wish they had more of a friendship. After Joyce's death and Giles is seen listening to the record they listened to in Band Candy, it was really touching. It made me wish we saw more of them together, in a relationship or not.
 
Hmm, not really.

I loved that they covered it a bit in "Band Candy", that was a really fun episode, but in the long run I don't think they needed it. I liked the father/daughter dynamic between Buffy and Giles a lot, and it would have been pretty on the nose if they'd had Giles in a relationship with her mother.
 
Sacrifice said:
Was anyone else rooting for Joyce and Giles to get together properly? I thought they would have made a nice couple.
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I'm of two minds. Part of me would love to see them together - they're both such lovely people, and they obviously hit it off in Band Candy. But part of me sees it as weird - Giles is a mentor to Buffy and really shouldn't become romantically involved with her mother. Plus the fact that it never happened, after Band Candy, suggests that neither of them wanted it. Giles's grief for Joyce in listening to Tales of Brave Ulysses was for a friend, not a romantic partner.
 
B
BlessedLunatic
The realist in me agrees with this completely. The shipper in me just goes "shhhh, logic -bah! Look at how cute they'd be!" :p
Yeah i think it would have been a great thing to see them together.
Like most people have said, even just to see them together more (romantically or not) would have been sweet.
 
Yes!

Okay. At first, I thought the idea of Joyce and Giles was repulsive. Hysterical, but repulsive.

I never, ever thought it was a good ship at all.

But then, a few months ago, I had a change of heart. Like my opinion completely turned around.

I ship them so, so hard now.

We all remember in the scene in 'Band Candy', when Joyce and Giles are sitting in Giles' house listening to his records. Well. When they're listening to the song called 'Tales of Brave Ulysses' by the Band Cream, they're chatting about it and they go one with the rest of the episode.

It was a great episode and is for sure, one of my top favorites.

I realized that in the Season 5 episode 'Forever' the one right after the iconic episode 'The Body' this episode shows Joyce's funeral. After the funeral, Giles is seen sitting alone in his house listening to the same song that I mentioned earlier. When I found this out, I changed my opinion completely.

I think that his listening to that song was no coincidence. I think, he was listening to the song because he remembers the short lived relationship he had with Joyce, and he is clearly heart broken at her death. I honestly think Giles has always been secretly in love with Joyce, and Joyce with him. Giles never mentioned it because he didn't know how it would affect his and Buffy's relationship, and he didn't want to risk it.

But after finding out that about the two episodes, I started shipping Joyce and Giles 100%
 
Oooo...I THOUGHT there had been another thread about this. Here's what I wrote there:

From the get-go, I liked them as friends. I know they never had much interaction, but I liked to imagine that behind the scenes they were meeting to have tea and talk about Buffy. When she expresses her sympathy over Jenny's death and offers help if he needs anything during the hospital scene in Killed By Death, she won me over as a character. Honestly I'd be perfectly happy with them just getting along as friends, but I like the thought of them together in a romantic sense as well.

I imagine they met a few times over the summer between seasons 2 and 3, before she lashed out at him and blamed him for Buffy's leaving. I do like to think that at some point she apologized, but it's not known whether or not she ever did. When he shows up to remove the cat in Dead Man's Party, there's a little bit of awkward tension between them, but they seem to mostly be okay around each other. He comments on the mask, trying to make polite conversation (and that's another reason I like them together...they share some similar interests, I bet, since he's into ancient cultures and what not and she owns an art gallery that often deals in primitive art).

Then Band Candy. You'll never convince me that there wasn't at the very least a basic physical attraction between them that led to them pairing up while "under the influence." I've heard it said that Giles as Ripper was interested in anything female and willing, and Joyce was definitely willing, and while that may be a part of it...I also think they acted much too sweet around each other to just be after a quick shag. He was so adorably protective of her, even while being a "bad boy." He could've just skipped off and found anyone else after the police car episode, but he didn't, he stuck by her, stood up for her, and sweetly reassured her. All those little kisses...awww.

The awkwardness afterward didn't seem to be "regret" to me so much as just plain old embarrassment. I'm sure they thought the other regretted it, and I don't know if they ever even talked about it.

But, at some point, that awkwardness just disappeared. We don't really see them together much at all really until "Restless," and they suddenly seem to be on perfectly friendly terms. He's all "sure you won't join us?" and snatching popcorn from the bowl she's carrying, and she smiles back at him, and the first time I watched it I was thinking "wait, where did this sudden chumminess come from?" And then the flashback Christmas dinner scene we get in "The Body" had them kidding around with each other...almost flirting, even. They seemed to have gotten over their awkwardness and moved on, and that's the time period that I actually ship them in. Season 5.

While I agree that it would've made things odd with Buffy, especially when she was still in high school, I think shipping them later on would've done away with that issue. Because in season 5 we have Dawn, and Dawn represents both of Buffy's lives - the slaying and the home life. I could understand it being weird to try to combine those two facets of her life earlier on, but with Dawn already complicating things in her life, and with Buffy and Giles mostly operating independently from the Council, I don't see how a romance between her Watcher and her mother would really be that big of a thing. Especially since Buffy was away at college most of the time and not really giving either of them much time. Of course, this only works if "The Body" never happened. *sigh*

The main thing I can see against it (other than that they probably didn't actually want a relationship since we never had that clearly spelled out either way and they obviously didn't pursue it) is that Giles is responsible for making sure Buffy does her job. A very dangerous job that could potentially get her killed. I could see Joyce having a problem with that, even though she'd accepted Buffy's role as the slayer. I know she respected him, and trusted him, and thought of him as a friend of the family, more or less, but a deeper romantic bond might complicate things if Buffy had to do something really dangerous and Joyce knew he was encouraging her to do so because of their responsibility to their roles.
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That's the short version (yes, really!) of why I ship them. I know it's not likely to be true, of course, but I like to believe that they both harbored a certain level of attraction and affection for each other under the surface...they just never acted on it because of a multitude of reasons. Or, you know, they were just friendly. But a girl can dream, eh?
 
I definitely wanted Joyce and Giles to get together. Ever since "Anne" and Joyce told him she blamed him for Buffy leaving, I wanted them together. They made a lot of sense; Giles was Buffy's father figure and Joyce was her mother. "Band Candy" definitely teased us, and I always wished we would have gotten to see a little fling between the two of them.
 
I would have found it a bit weird, as a number of others said, but I am always open things that lead to character and story development and it could have done that if handled correctly. I am certain it must have been discussed at some point in the writers' room.
 
Oh yes, I'd have loved to see them as a couple. The chemistry between them is good - and not having to keep secrets regarding Buffy, vampires and whatnot from their significant other would make being part of a couple a lot easier on both of them.
 
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