Re: Mad Hamlet's post

["sharp_nosed_fish" <g.nisbet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In buffywantswillow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "ebailey140" 
<ebailey140@a...> wrote:

> Riley was miscast, I think.

He was a plank!

>    Given that Joss knew this would be the last season, I think the
> dynamic between Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles was what needed the
> attention, as that was the heart of the entire series.  Not that I'm
> saying Willow's sexual orientation wasn't an important part of her
> character, but it wasn't the MOST important, to me.  I never got why
> she couldn't have especially close friendships with guys or another
> girl she wasn't sleeping with.  It's as though being especially 
close
> to Buffy was somehow a threat to her lesbianism.

Or that her explicit lesbianism was a threat to Buffy's (always kind 
of tenuous) straight-gal cred. Or both. I agree it's sad; as I think 
another poster pointed out recently, once the "and I think I'm kinda 
gay" subtext becomes text, all the mutually supportive touchy-feely 
stuff between Willow and Buffy in particular gets put on indefinite 
hold. It's only allowed to come out on special occasions, usually 
cliffhangy in nature (abseiling into the Initiative, off to cast the 
big potential brain-frier in 'Chosen'...). Previously the friendship 
had been continually reinforced by lots of nice scripted and/or 
improvised business: hand-holdings, eye contact, etc, plus all the 
badinage. Why can't we be allowed subtext *and* text, dammit?!

On a character-development level you can, if you like, read the 
change as the characters growing up and carving out separate 
identities -- becoming less touchy-feely-teenage-girly. This hardly 
seems a fair trade from their POV; their lives are kind of sucky. 
(Willow was coming along nicely until her identity and sense of worth 
self-destructed in late S6; the end of S7 seems to promise both of 
them opportunities for actually Having Lives, but this is a bit late 
in the day). But in any case, purely from the point of view of viewer 
pleasure, I did miss the perkiness of intimate Willow-Buffy 
interaction. All of a sudden their guards were up, and it was all a 
bit less fun.

(Willow-Xander goes a bit of the same way -- at the end of S6, with 
world-saveage overdue, we have to be told, told and told again that 
he's Willow's best buddy. Why weren't we being shown it?)








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Willow: "It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
Buffy:  "I kinda love you."
                     'Choices'

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