Issues in Buffy

[famicommander]

It's utterly staggering the lengths to which some people are willing to go in order to justify sex with an underage girl. Pretty disturbing.

 

[KaitKat]

Why does it always have to come to this? Do we really need to insult or question or attack people’s character over fictional ships?

 

[thetopher]

If some people have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality then I guess that's their (very serious) problem.
I don't even ship Bangel, but I understand that a 17 year old in not 'a literal child'.

The vampire/mortal thing is a common trope in 20th century fiction so I don't think it is a 'Buffy issue' necessarily, it is tired and played out though.

 

[KaitKat]

I don’t even ship them either but agree that Angel is an interesting character with more to him than him sleeping with Buffy. It’s just silly because I truly wouldn’t assume that anyone who did ship them would be okay with people in their mid 20s sleeping with high schoolers in real life and proceed to judge them.

 

[garfan]

I don’t even ship them either but agree that Angel is an interesting character with more to him than him sleeping with Buffy. It’s just silly because I truly wouldn’t assume that anyone who did ship them would be okay with people in their mid 20s sleeping with high schoolers in real life and proceed to judge them.

Honestly, looking at the Boom books, I've found that while I'm cool with Angel as Buffy's ex Angel with no connection to Buffy doesn't do a thing for me

 

[TheMaster666]

What Buffy did was self harm out of a trauma response, she knew it was wrong, and stopped doing it of her own volition.

What Angel did was harmful to Buffy, he knew it, vocalized it, and then did it anyway. Then stalked her after they broke up.

It's not allegorical at all. It's explicitly selling the idea that "perfect happiness" is having sex with an underage girl.

And there is no moral inconsistency at play here. Statutory rape is not in any way comparable to the situation you described, and your conception of sex being an implicit endorsement of everything your partner has ever done in life is narrow and frankly puritanical.

I'm not "portraying" Angel as anything. The show portrayed him as a guy who declared himself in love with a 15 year old girl who didn't know he was there, then followed her around, then peered into her bedroom and bathroom windows at night, then moved to a city to await her arrival, then followed her some more, then vocalized it would be wrong to have a relationship with her, then kissed her and began a relationship with her, then committed statutory rape against her, then broke up with her when she turned 18, then stalked her sporadically up to the end of Angel the series.

I have no idea why you're so dead set on justifying statutory rape, but it seems to be your favorite thing to do. You quite literally just said that an adult having sex with another adult of poor character is worse than an adult having sex with an underage kid. Get a grip.

It's pretty disgusting to see people treating Angel, like the Romeo and Juliet love story of the show is somehow pedophilic. Speaking of, how old do you think Romeo and Juliet actually were? (I think she was 13 or 14.) Are you going to crusade about how morally abhorrent Shakespeare is next? In some places in the civilized world and in some states age of consent is 16. Some it's 17. Many it's 18. The whole thing is rather arbitrary and capricious in my view. Is a teenager at 18 substantially different from one at 17? Or 19? Are they really that much more of an adult? They still call people at 20 "college kids." The boys who were conscripted to serve and likely die in the second World War or Vietnam were very often just that--boys. Technically of age, but... How bizarre is it that in one state an act can be considered "sex offense" and the next one over the exact same act is totally okay. The law in this matter just has to pick an explicit number somewhere, and we all largely agree around a similar vicinity, but each locality sets its own specific boundary at a different place. It is a little arbitrary to me.

Man even on the Buffy fan forum are there people who are criticizing and whining and bitching about arguably the most powerful narrative the show offered? The Buffy/Angel romance and subsequent tragedy is one of the most memorable parts of it for me, anyway.

As I'm sure I'm not the first to point out, the age old story of the Vampire--an old, distinguished, but alluring man, seducing the young, chaste, pretty woman is the oldest story around. Not just dating back to the original Dracula from Victorian times, but really all the way back to Genesis in the Old Testament. The serpent, the demon, temps Eve with the Apple, the fruit containing the "Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" (Van Halen heheh) that good little daddy's girls shouldn't know of. The Father God forbids his sweet little daughter from anything dirty, but the seductive demon tempts her into sex.

It's just a more modern interpretation of the age old archetype.

Edit: The funny part is, isn't Angel supposed to be hundreds of years old? He could look like Buffy's gramps and that would still be a fraction of his true age. Why should Boreanaz's age scare you? Would it be more morally acceptable in your eyes if the 200 year old vampire looked like he was 15?

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

Angel stalking and claiming to be in love with a fifteen year old girl comes to mind…

 

[NoShip]

@famicommander - It's almost like statutory rape and an adult woman sleeping with a bad person because she hates herself are not in any way comparable situations. Or something.

You have an interesting moral hobby horse. In 1997 Buffy Summers was legal in like 40 out of 50 states and all of Europe.

I am curious why the age gap between Buffy and Spike is not mentioned. That relationship is every bit as disgusting as Buffy and Angel.

 

[hoponlilmama]

You have an interesting moral hobby horse. In 1997 Buffy Summers was legal in like 40 out of 50 states and all of Europe.

I am curious why the age gap between Buffy and Spike is not mentioned. That relationship is every bit as disgusting as Buffy and Angel.

And Spike doing some legit creepy stalking too. If we're talking age gaps, a 20 year old sleeping with a 128 year old doesn't look very good on paper either.

 

[Bop]

@TheMaster666 I think Romeo was 16 and Juliet was 13.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Eh, Joyce tried to console Spike, and never seemed like his junior. As I've stated earlier, Spike isn't two hundred years old, he's been a vamp for two hundred years.

 

[nightshade]

I first watched Buffy at age 12ish and can't say I thought about the ages at all. Outfits definitely, especially some of the promo outfits! Maybe if I watched the show as an adult I would have taken issue with Buffy's age, but not when I was her age or younger.

 

[NotASlayer]

I first watched Buffy at age 12ish and can't say I thought about the ages at all. Outfits definitely, especially some of the promo outfits! Maybe if I watched the show as an adult I would have taken issue with Buffy's age, but not when I was her age or younger.

I think when you are younger, you just go by the real visual age of the actors, rather than diving into anything deeper about how long the characters are supposed to have lived, and appearance-wise, there are no issues.

 

[Tome]

Honestly, my list would go something like this:

- Too many toxic/questionable relationships and not enough good relationships
- Lack of racial diversity
- Lack of good parental figures aside from Giles
- Shoddy/conflicting lore about souls
- Terrible werewolf costumes 🤣
- Not enough Halloween episodes
- Not enough Christmas episodes

 

[RachM]

- Not enough Halloween episodes
- Not enough Christmas episodes

I don't understand how BtVS didn't have a yearly Halloween episode, I mean the show is ripe for Halloween shenanigans and we only got three Halloween eps? Lame.

Also, more Christmas episode would also have been great, especially when you consider that Christmas actually has a lot of creepy lore surrounding it and many ghost stories to tap into!

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

The producers were hoping for money on Foreign Sales and Syndication. Holiday episodes usually cause problems with reruns.

December wasn't a big time for American television. Ratings aren't collected for half the month and preemptions are everywhere. Buffy only had 1, maybe two in that whole month. You need 12 episodes for Sweeps Week in November, February and May. For a 23 episode season, that leaves 11 episodes. You want 4 in October to give the series a solid launch. That's seven episodes, to be distributed over four months. That leaves one for December, two each for January, March and April.

 

[NoShip]

The producers were hoping for money on Foreign Sales and Syndication. Holiday episodes usually cause problems with reruns.

December wasn't a big time for American television. Ratings aren't collected for half the month and preemptions are everywhere. Buffy only had 1, maybe two in that whole month. You need 12 episodes for Sweeps Week in November, February and May. For a 23 episode season, that leaves 11 episodes. You want 4 in October to give the series a solid launch. That's seven episodes, to be distributed over four months. That leaves one for December, two each for January, March and April.

Dude..... You are scary accurate on the 90s industry knowledge! 😃

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

P.S. I would also contend that I Will Remember You is a Thanksgiving episode. Thanksgiving is the time when college freshman return home, and will invariably deal with the remains of their high school relationships, and I think the episode would have a special resonance for viewers going through that.

 

[burrunjor]

I don’t even ship them either but agree that Angel is an interesting character with more to him than him sleeping with Buffy. It’s just silly because I truly wouldn’t assume that anyone who did ship them would be okay with people in their mid 20s sleeping with high schoolers in real life and proceed to judge them.

To be fair Angel sleeping with Buffy when he was in his mid 20s was a retcon. Originally Angel was meant to have been turned when he was like 17. I know David doesn't look 17 in his first season, but Sarah doesn't look 15 either. They are both "hollywood teenagers" This is borne out by people frequently mistaking him for a student at school in the first two seasons, or at most someone from first year of college. Joyce calls him a boy frequently. You wouldn't mistake David from Angel season 5 for a boy or even a first year college student.

However the problem is David Boreanaz wasn't a real vampire LOL and he aged, and by the time we get to Angel season 1, never mind 5 then saying Angel was turned when he was 17 wasn't feasable in that show, so they changed it to his mid 20s in flashbacks. Sadly however this had unfortunate implications for his relationship with Buffy when you put it all together. To be fair though it's not like when they did Buffy season 1 they thought David would still be playing this teen vampire in like 8 years. Vampire characters are easier to do in literature in this respect, as obviously if it were a series of books, then Angel would continue to look like a 17 year old, you'd have people at Wolfram and Hart talk about why is a boy running the company, he wouldn't have adult women lusting after him. For instance Lilah technically comes over as a cradle robber if Angel was turned at 17 and she a woman in her late 20s and 30s wants to **** him. To be fair morally I can believe she'd do that LOL, but once again it's never commented on because with David you obviously couldn't do that as he looks like a man more than in season 1 of Buffy, but at the same time technically in universe you had to imagine that Angel in season 5 shagged a 15 year old Buffy as he hadn't aged in universe which made him look very creepy. Again in retrospect for a possible remake you'd definitely have to be mindful of that and make Buffy and Angel early twenties, but back then it did kind of happen by accident.

 

[burrunjor]

Sorry NileQT87 I thought Angelus is let loose on her 16th birthday? Must have been mistaken. Still doesn't really affect my point much as it just further demonstrates what I'm saying. Angel isn't creepy in that way in season 1 as he was meant to be a 16/17 when turned and so he was dating another 15/16/17 year old, but because David Boreanaz ended up playing the role for 8 years (an almost unprecedented time for a genre lead BTW. Longer than Sarah as Buffy, Lucy Lawless as Xena, any starship captain or Doctor.) Then yeah he aged and as a result they had to age up the character and make it that he was turned in his late 20s on the flashbacks on Angel the series to make it believable, which sadly led to unfortunate implications for his earlier relationship with Buffy.

You'd NEVER pair season 5 Angel with season 1 Buffy. That would be gross and ultimately the writers didn't pair a guy David's age that year with Buffy in season 1, but technically in universe, he is meant to be the same in season 1 of Buffy as he was in season 5 LOL which as I said has led to the whole Angel is a groomer argument. Ironically the reverse in terms of being a cradle robber is true for Angels female love interests in Angel the series, Cordelia and Nina in season 5 of Angel are technically lusting after someone who was meant to look like a 17 year old boy, and they are in their mid to late 20s, but again obviously we don't think that and the writers didn't because David had aged.

It's why vampires can be hard to do in live action like I said and you just have to view it as an acceptable break in reality and imagine that Angel is 17 when he's turned, but has a more timeless look to him (to be fair people did look older back then) meaning that Cordy in season 5 isn't such a cradle robber (As he's also 200) whilst Angel isn't re Buffy as he was still frozen as a teenager. Indeed it also demonstrates why vampire teenagers are harder to do, as Spike doesn't run into this problem as he presumably was turned in his mid to late 20s and his love interests are all age appropriate (okay Buffy's a bit younger than him, but not a virginial teen.) It's easier for a guy to pull off being a vague late 20 something for ten years than a teen.