[Note, I'm not trying to argue with you in a 'you're wrong' way, I'm really enjoying your deconstruction and how it's making me think, I'm just pushing back at bits that don't quite sit with me yet.]
"vampires are inherently evil."
It's hard to discuss this without spoilers, but I think the Buffyverse is genuinely inconsistent and confused about this, and spends a lot of later seasons playing with the idea and seeing where it goes. I _think_ it's a mission creep thing - it was cool to have a Slayer fighting Evil Vampires, it was cool to have a Doomed Love plot, but that needed a notevil!Vampire, so we get the universe canon that isn't 'vampires are inherently evil', just 'things without souls are inherently evil'. And as more of the evil vampires in Buffy become recurrent cool characters, you can see the authors wrestling with 'ok, this character is supposed to be Evil, but they have friends and things they love and care about, and complex motives, and lots of the fans adore them, hmm, bother'. I think it's not too spoilery to say 'is slaying always good' and 'are vampires always evil' are themes that at least get played with in later seasons.
[I think Jack's right, "Angel being an evil monster, even if he's an evil monster with a soul" is just a misunderstanding of the Buffyverse - _all_ people in the Buffyverse are potential vampires + soul, and it's the losing of the soul that makes people the evil monsters. So by that argument Buffy shouldn't date anyone in case they get turned into a souless-vampire (although OK, Angel's set of things likely to turn him into a souless-vampire is different than most of Buffy's boyfriends, and he should have warned her)]
"I think 16-year-olds dating older men is... a situation I'm really, really wary about"..."I'm annoyed with Buffy for going along with what I think is a dangerous trope rather than challenging it." Yes, I have sympathies with this. Although I think *gah, can't have this argument transparently without quoting later things than you've watched and spoilering you, but it boils down to 'some bits of Buffy glamourise the Angel-Buffy relationship and show it as a great thing, and other bits show it as a less good thing and engage with the problems that Buffy is young and Angel is dead'*. I mean, 90% of Buffy is metaphoring teenage insecurities through vampires, and the whole of Season 2 is a heavy handed analogy of 'if I give in to my boyfriend's pressures for sex he'll change and not really love me any more', which I think isn't just buying into the 'sexy older men, yay' trope.
Miscellaneous. Eclectic. Random. Perhaps markedly literate, or at least suffering from the compulsion to read any text that presents itself, including cereal boxes.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-18 02:32 pm (UTC)"vampires are inherently evil."
It's hard to discuss this without spoilers, but I think the Buffyverse is genuinely inconsistent and confused about this, and spends a lot of later seasons playing with the idea and seeing where it goes. I _think_ it's a mission creep thing - it was cool to have a Slayer fighting Evil Vampires, it was cool to have a Doomed Love plot, but that needed a notevil!Vampire, so we get the universe canon that isn't 'vampires are inherently evil', just 'things without souls are inherently evil'. And as more of the evil vampires in Buffy become recurrent cool characters, you can see the authors wrestling with 'ok, this character is supposed to be Evil, but they have friends and things they love and care about, and complex motives, and lots of the fans adore them, hmm, bother'. I think it's not too spoilery to say 'is slaying always good' and 'are vampires always evil' are themes that at least get played with in later seasons.
[I think Jack's right, "Angel being an evil monster, even if he's an evil monster with a soul" is just a misunderstanding of the Buffyverse - _all_ people in the Buffyverse are potential vampires + soul, and it's the losing of the soul that makes people the evil monsters. So by that argument Buffy shouldn't date anyone in case they get turned into a souless-vampire (although OK, Angel's set of things likely to turn him into a souless-vampire is different than most of Buffy's boyfriends, and he should have warned her)]
"I think 16-year-olds dating older men is... a situation I'm really, really wary about"..."I'm annoyed with Buffy for going along with what I think is a dangerous trope rather than challenging it." Yes, I have sympathies with this. Although I think *gah, can't have this argument transparently without quoting later things than you've watched and spoilering you, but it boils down to 'some bits of Buffy glamourise the Angel-Buffy relationship and show it as a great thing, and other bits show it as a less good thing and engage with the problems that Buffy is young and Angel is dead'*. I mean, 90% of Buffy is metaphoring teenage insecurities through vampires, and the whole of Season 2 is a heavy handed analogy of 'if I give in to my boyfriend's pressures for sex he'll change and not really love me any more', which I think isn't just buying into the 'sexy older men, yay' trope.