RE: DISCUSSION; Finale(desperate attempt to see the glass as half full)

    To a certain extent I agree with this, but I see it too as something they will be able to use in S7 ... IF we're lucky enough to have things go our way a little . Because she never REALLY said anything to Will to try to make her stop, apart from basically 'STOP WILL , YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THIS !' they have left a plot element there that could be exploited later, 'I didn't do the right thing AGAIN Will when you were in trouble AGAIN, I didn't tellyou how much I love you!' I may be grasping desperately at straws (I'm good at that -  I usually do see the glass  as half full) but there's still hope for the B/W side to reveal itself. The one person who could save the world was the only one who had nothing magical, who was the only Scooby with nothing to offer but his love and friendship, so that's where ME grabbed their rationale from, that was purely a plot hook, only Xander was different from all the rest, Dawn IS magic, Anya is a demon, Buffy is The Slayer and therefore imbued with something beyond normal mortals, even Giles had magic powers as the watcher, even before he got this dose of major mojo off the coven in Devon.

    Buffy has already stated she left Will to ' ... drown, when she really neededme and I couldn't see it because I was toobusy with my own stupid life ...' or something akin to that. You'd tend to think she had learned something from that statement. Will  Buffy be back in S7  as Willow's best female friend, to help Will ow rehabilitate  and recover fromher loss and her own actions, or will she be off teaching Dawn tosee the world?  Can Willow recover, now that she's done what nobody else in the Scoobies has done, murdered someone? Or  ... is that really true? We seem to easily be able to rationalise murder in the show, we have been taught (by Joss and  Co .) that demons and vampires, etc. have no soul and are therefore expendable and worthless, that makes kind gentle wrinkly Clem expendable too and of no use or value, in spite of being entirely a good guy by all appearances. We are free to kill them without remorse or regret and with complete impunity, and that almost reduces US to the sort of human monsters that we for example, accuseof terrorist behaviour, you New Yorkers should feel this particularly poignantly. A human monster is still a monster, no matter the justifications they usefor their actions, murder is murder, no matter the life form that has its life taken away. So who are we actually (us humans) to determine who IS or IS NOT worth letting live? Has Willow crossed a line? By human definitions she has, we all know that. By the definition of all the countless demons and other creatures that the Scoobies have already dispatched, maybe they aren't really as clean-handed as they (or we) would like to believe, tothem the Scoobies are already bloody-handed murderers.

     I don't condone anything that Willow did, in fact I am horrified to see her so badly reduced to the caricature she became, she was a cardboard cut-out bad guy . By my own definitions, she has lost the things that stood her apart from almost everything and everyone else, her innocence, her sweetness, her goodhearted nature and her purity. She will definitely be a completely different person for what she has done, and I'm not at all sure of what ME is going to possibly be able to do to clean her of the 'taint' of murdering a human, and salvaging poor sweet innocent Willow.

    Having said all that, I will always love Willow, no matter if she HAS murdered . If she is is back to herself inseason 7 sometime, (soon I hope) then ungraciously I will almost be satisfied and will continue watching, because it IS Willow. To me it's akin to forgiving a close friend or family member a transgression, albeit the most serious one a human can commit. But we can never forget what she has done, she will forever more have a cloud in her heart. But I will take cloud-hearted Willow willing to repent and repair and love again, to no Willow at all, she's the one thing that helped me personally through a pretty bad period of my own life recently, so in spite of the appallingly bad treatment of the character by ME/Joss/Marti, she's MY Willow and I will continue loving her until the bitter end. It's all I can do, that's why I write my own Willow-based fic, because I love the character,and I want her to continue in my mind and in my own heart.

<<! I recall an interview with James
Marsters, he said something like, "I always thought that Spike was a nasty
sod even before he was turned." Somehow, I don't see him simply turning over
a new leaf and everybody being okay with him again. At least I hope not.>>

Well I've been hearing rumblings around the boards. Not spoilers, just some spec. Maybe they'll show Spike souled and he will STILL be an ass. Still be evil, soul and all. Now that could make for some interesting storytelling. Make him sorta the antithesis of Angel.

Any attempt to make Spike into a copy of Angel (vamp with a soul, not necessarily a good vamp) will be fraught with stupidity. Spike according to the snippet I saw of an earlier episode (I haven't yet seen season 4-5, but working on it), was a bumbling ass before he ever was William the bloody. Reduced to a souled vampire and having his old sensibilities back (do you get your old soul back or do they give youa brand spanking new, updated replacement one?) William will (or should be) about twice as useless as he was as Chipped Spike, only IF he remembers his past actions/transgressions the way Angel did his! And if they try to fob Spike off on us as Buffy's partner because he has a soul now, well she's stated in the bathroom, holding her gown together after he attacked her 'Ask me again why I could never love you !', I don't think they could be that stupid (hmm ... or maybe they could) to tell us that she would change hermind about him after that. The rationale that Dawn wouldn't be safe with Spikeis a little wrong, Spike's never shown himself to be other than a protector and friend to Dawn, Buffy let Spike into her life in the first place, and into her pants. There's a difference, and again I don't condone or even pretend to justify Spike's actions, any man attacking a woman (or anyone else for that matter) is purely an animal, maybe it's part of a deeper problem, but he's still reduced to nothing but bestial behaviour. But Spike never once tried to hurt or do anything else other than protect Dawn, so naively I will believe that Buffy would still consider him safe enough to take care of Dawn, misguided fool that I am. But for Buffy to even consider Spike as anything but a bad moment in her past, would really be an insult to all the loyal fanswho have put up with all the crap they have put us through in these manysad episodes.