Neoolong, what I'm most interested in by your argument is why you expect BUFFY to be upfront about her intentions, but not Parker.
I never said he shouldn't. However, he actually was fairly upfront with his intentions. He talks about living for the now, or "live for today" as he puts it. It really shouldn't be a surprise when he does exactly that.
It is entirely possible that Parker's intentions were innocent....but I don't buy that. Any college guy can go to any college party and hook up with a chick if they're just looking for a one-night stand.
Not necessarily, but it isn't that Parker was looking to have sex, but that he wanted to have sex with Buffy. Ergo, he wasn't going to go random completely.
That's not what Parker did, at all. He charmed Buffy, he hung out with her for extended periods of time, he gave her lines accompanied by puppy-dog eyes, all the signs were pointing towards him wanting a relationship. I'm sure most of us, when watching S4 for the first time, believed that Parker would be the romance of the season.
Despite him talking about living in the now? With the mentions of that, I would have expected friends with benefits at most. Hookup at least. Or somewhere in the middle since he was interacting with her beforehand.
Or, do you think that someone that expresses a desire to only live in the moment is honestly thinking about a relationship?
It's also possible that he was looking for a friends-with-benefits type relationship...but surely you can agree that friends-with-benefits is more unconventional than a regular relationship? And therefore Parker should have been the one to make his intentions clear?
Sure, but he basically did make his intentions clear. He says he lives in the now, and then he makes the approach of wanting to sleep with Buffy. Not that hard to figure out, and Buffy could have said no at any time.
Why should Buffy have assumed that he wanted that sort of relationship when he had never said anything about it? Yet Buffy should have said, "Just so you know, I'm looking for a long-term commitment"....when maybe she didn't even know what she wanted. That's possible, too. Perhaps she was just going with the flow of things to see where they went, while at the same time not expecting Parker to completely ditch her after he got what he wanted.
Or she freaked him out by being what he considered clingy or when she pretty much stated she was looking for a longer term thing. There's a number of possibilities, none of them are all him just ditching her without reason.
If she really wanted something more than "living in the now" maybe she should have mentioned something when he said that he was "living in the now."
Because that's what he did. You can make arguments all day long, but it doesn't get rid of the fact that directly after he had sex with Buffy, all contact from him to her ceased. And that's not a coincidence.
Because you say so? He says he's going to call her, without establishing a timeline. He could be planning a three to five day callback period. Who knows. She approaches him, which could cause him to back off. That's a maybe, but there's nothing explictly saying that he's going to just ignore her without further interaction. The way it's handled is that she implies she wants more, he says it was clear what he wanted, they want different things so it ends.
I don't understand, then, your argument that he didn't use her. I'll repeat, he could have had a one-night stand (and made his intentions perfectly clear beforehand) with anybody. He didn't. He chose to be vague, to lead girls on in an ambiquitous way so that afterwards when they confronted him he could say, "I thought we were clear on everything." He's a slimeball.
"It make me think about, you know, living for now...I mean, everybody says they get it. 'Oh, man. Me too. Live for today.' But what they really want is a reason to goof off. Not study for finals."
So, exactly where in that is he not being pretty clear about where he's coming from? That's not really vague at all.
If a guy was making out with a girl and was going to bring her back to his place, and then says that he's living in the moment and only thinking about tonight, do you honestly think that means he's looking for a real relationship?
But oh, maybe he was looking for something, and then got scared off by Buffy's clingyness? Tell me, where exactly between the time they had sex and the time she confronted him on campus did she act shockingly clingy? Was it clingy to check her voicemail or answering machine? Was that really so clingy? Because that's all she did.
Wrong timeline. The time she confronted him on campus could be construed as being clingy, but mostly that she implies a relationship. Where did he say he was going to call her at exactly a certain time? It's established that it's only been a few days, which isn't outside an acceptable range of callbacks.
She confronts him with the implication that she expected more, so he clears it up and then that's the end. Could he have done it more nicely? Sure, but he already prefaced it with the whole "living in the now" thing. Why should Buffy get a pass for not listening to what he was saying?
She didn't stalk him, I don't believe we even have evidence that she called him. She checked her messages. Oh, how creepy and stalkerish of her! Before the sex, they had appeared to be on the same page. Parker initiated communication and contact just as much as Buffy did.
Buffy : You had fun? Was that all it was?
Parker : What else was it supposed to be?
Buffy : It seemed like you liked me.
Parker : I do. But I'm starting to feel like you felt what? Some kind of commitment? Are you sure that's what you want right now?
Buffy : I just thought...
Parker : I'm sorry if you missed something. I thought things were pretty clear.
I think it was pretty clear too when he said: "It make me think about, you know, living for now...I mean, everybody says they get it. 'Oh, man. Me too. Live for today.' But what they really want is a reason to goof off. Not study for finals."
What part of that is commitment coming from?
They both got along well and there is no evidence to support that Buffy sought Parker out more than he did her. So that claim is pretty unfounded, if you ask me.
Except that she confronted him within a timeline that is still acceptable for him to have not yet called her. Sure, it's not a dealbreaker necessarily, but it's what she says about wanting more that ends things.
You can not dislike Parker, that's fine. But to not dislike him for assumptions with no ground in what actually happened, or to discredit Buffy's motives because she wasn't upfront about them without discrediting Parker's, isn't fair.
I think it's unfair not to address his dialogue about his intentions. Why else did he say that he was living in the now if he didn't actually mean it? What else would you think it meant? That he was looking for something that would be longer than the now?
