>
>>> will hate this ... as if buffy is being punished for being
>>> tempted by faith, and faith for being faith E.G. being the
>>> only female character on the show who A)EATS b)openly digs
>>> her own aggression c)digs other grrrls d) really digs sex in
>>> general...
>>
>>Well, I understand your fear, but I don't really share it.
>
>I'll second that. Think back to last season, with the heartrending
>Buffy and Angel have sex/ Angel turns back into evil nasty vampire plot.
>Now, in lesser hands, that WOULD have been a punishment/transgression
>thing - "Look what happens when you let lust take over, missy!" But it
>wasn't. I can't even explain why it wasn't, but somehow through the
>whole arc - Buffy agonizing over killing Angel, Angel taunting her with
>the deaths of her friends, Buffy sending him to hell just as regains his
>humanity - there was not a moralistic note.
I think this is a really good parallel. Because the Buffy/Angel sex thing did look--at first-- somewhat retributive when it was happening, BUT the plot as it unfolded revealed things to be much more complex. So maybe that's what's happening now. that would be great.
of course, that event was also fabulous psychological parody of how young girls often experience or imagine sex (your partner is abruptly and chillingly transformed into something quite different from what you thought, something quite unpleasant) -- an allegory so elegant and psychologically accurate it far outweighed the potential moralism anyway.
to paul and james: I'm sorry I was snippy and oversensitive. I attribute it to: a) my own E-mail Tone Issues, one of the many reasons I generally avoid lists b) though I am lucky enough to have a loose community of fellow hyper-analytic Buffy fans, I do,like James, feel like it's not an area of expertise I get to use nearly enough. probably we all feel this way and are just offensive about it in different ways.
Liza