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Date: 2014-07-18 12:26 pm (UTC)I think the first thing is that Doomed Love / Love against the Odds is Romantic. I mean, a huge traditional romantic trope. So you can say 'the idea that it's somehow "romantic" for a teenaged girl to have a relationship with a monster...That's not romantic, that's horrifying' but I don't think you can discuss it outside the wider trope of Doomed Love / Love against the Odds. Romeo falls for Juliet because that's where the Drama is. The Vampire Slayer falls for the vampire, because that's where the Drama is. There is no shortage of examples
So are you saying there is something particularly ikky about Doomed Love with a vampire flavour, or are you saying there's something ikky about Doomed Love in general? The latter is an interesting thesis. Often when there are good reasons for people to be apart, and the protagonists break them in the Name of Love because they're Speshul they're acting like teenage idiots. But there are lots of examples of Doomed Love where the love is Doomed for Bad Reasons, and the lovers acting against the odds makes good things happen (you could argue this about Romeo and Juliet uniting families having a pointless feud, and you could argue this about stories where someone very rich falls for someone very poor, and possibly even for stories where someone is married to an evil abuser and falls in love and escapes)
So assuming we accept Doomed Love as a sometimes-OK trope, and assuming we accept vampires in Buffy as mostly a metaphor for other things, I think the question is not 'is a vampire slayer being in love with a vampire horrifying' it's 'what is this being a metaphor for, and is that horrifying?' My answer would be that the Buffy/Angel storyline is mostly a metaphor for a high school kid being in love with an older guy that her family and friends disapprove of, but who she has All The Feels for. Is that horrifying? Maybe 16 year olds dating 20 year olds who want to sleep with them is just generally horrifying, but it happens a lot. Buffy-the-series depicts lots of bad things happening to Buffy because of her relationship choice, and lots of good things happening to Buffy because of her relationship choice, which feels kind of realistic. Maybe you feel that Angel is shown too positively in the series, that any older guy with that much knowledge and power trying to date a high school kid just finding out who she is is a douche, and shouldn't be being shown as sexy and kind and loving. I think that's a reasonable self consistent conclusion, but lots of 17 year olds do date older men, and I'm not sure society as a whole thinks it's always horrifying and abusive and should be stopped.
It's interesting trying to write this comment without spoilers, as I want to draw conclusions about what the Buffy-verse says about Buffy and Angels relationship, and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, based on what I know happens next and where they end up (obviously storylines like 'you date this older guy and then marry him and have babies' send a different message to 'you date this older guy and then decide you hate him and he was using you')