Livre d'Or

I think this is a lot of my complaint, really, that Angel behaves in ways that I would consider morally bad even when he's supposed to be "good" according to the plot. Normally I wouldn't mind that, I expect characters who are presented as "good guys" to have some moral complexity, like Cordelia who is basically awful but sometimes does brave things, ie she is a flawed teenaged girl rather than an Evil Demon. But when there's this whole plot point about how Angel is "good" and Angelus is "evil", there ought to be more contrast between the two sides of the character!

I am not sure how I feel about the idea that Buffy was a product of its time. I was alive and politically aware in the 90s, this isn't like reading something written in the 30s which has a throwaway line about those awful money-grubbing Jews. I think on gender issues it was pretty progressive in some ways, the way it reverses the typical genders of the Chosen One, the nerdy sidekick, the dumb but pretty love interest etc. And the arc about Willow's sexuality had almost no parallels in 90s TV. Still, I don't think I needed to have gone through lots of social justice conversations on mid-2000s LJ to notice that having magical Gypsies putting a curse on someone to revenge their ancestors is, well, kinda racist.