When You Kiss Me, I Want to Die

[Emzzie]

hmmm. I like what Buffy Lehane said. Maybe she meant die as in become a vampire so her and Angel could be together? I'm sure they could have whipped up a soul for her somewhere 😀 I like your theory BL.

 

[Buffy Lehane]

Thanks alot Emzzie!!! 🙂

 

[PrincessBuffy16]

Yeah, that is one intersting theory.

 

[crazysoulless]

She did feel as if part of her were asleep or unformed and he was awakening and transforming something in her because she was experiencing passion and lust and longing to a degree she’d never known. She was the “Unawakened Female” to use a romance novel term. The male hero (Angel) partaking in an affair with the much younger physically chaste, emotionally naive ingénue (Buffy). She didn’t expect his kiss to lead to serenity and safety. She wanted the fire. She wanted to jump head first into the unknown with him and follow her heart because “that’s the way its supposed to be”. At this point in her life she believed in what Spike states in Seeing Red, “Real love is wild and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes.” She hadn’t yet been burnt by the flames of passion or had her heart broken and become weary of loving or being loved by someone. She thought she could handle the risks he warned her of because the way he made her feel seemed worth the consequences, she didn’t realize that she would lose her innocence and romantic idealism. She had already faced death once and came back stronger, it scared her, it opened her eyes to realities she shouldn’t have had to become familiar with for years, but that was part of her life, growing up quicker than others her age and experiencing things she may not be ready for. She wasn't stumbling blind with rose-colored glasses and thinking these adult feelings were fanciful clichés and "the stuff dreams are made of". If fairytales were real she knew what they had would be the original dark and complex versions.

 

[BibliophileAnn]

Here's my take on this. Buffy and Angel's kisses are intense and I think the intensity kind of hurts Buffy because she loves Angel so much and even though the kisses hurt Buffy she still enjoys them and hates it when they end.

 

[TheChosenTwo]

Even though I like Bangel, it was a horrible quote IMO.
It wasn't actually really what she said, but HOW she said it. I thought it was more weird and hilarious than cute or beautiful. But hey, that's just my opinion 🙂

 

[crazysoulless]

I liked the way she said it. He was misjudging her because of her youth and inexperience at matters of the heart. He was unintentially condescending and clearly too physically rough with her (the way he grabbed her up to him scared her for a few seconds). She was being firm and trying to make him realize she wasn't a little girl that needed him to make her tough choices or decide what is good for her. But at the same time he was overwhelming. I think of moments like that when Buffy tells him in Lie To Me that she loves him but isn't sure if she trusts him. He hid so much from her in the beginning (due to his own insecurities) while at the same time unleashing his inner demon and primal man. He was being protective and agressive at the same time. He scared her but excited her, made her feel safe but vulnerable, very conflicting emotions.

 

[Eleftheria]

^ oh my God! I like the way you express their feelings in that scene!

I think Buffy was scared of her emotions...she knew she hadn't felt that way before and the power of those feelings is enough to make her beign afraid. Same goes for Angel. He never loved a woman before and he doesn't exactly know what he is doing. He indeed thinks she is immature but grabbing her like that actually seemed sexy to me:biggrin3: Am I too weird for that?:embarrassed: The reason I like Reptile Boy is because I think Buffy and Angel started realising that their feelings for each other are beyong a crush or flirt...they felt much more. Being each others' first and true love scares them.

 

[Eleftheria]

chatwuann agrees: I agree. I don't think you're weird Eleftheria to see Angel grabbing Buffy as sexy. And when he does for a second you think he is going to kiss her. Just for a second.

oh yes! I wanted him to kiss her! preferably with passion!!! But I think his look and her look were enough to show us how they felt!:biggrin3:

 

[Flannen]

I liked the way she said it. He was misjudging her because of her youth and inexperience at matters of the heart. He was unintentially condescending and clearly too physically rough with her (the way he grabbed her up to him scared her for a few seconds). She was being firm and trying to make him realize she wasn't a little girl that needed him to make her tough choices or decide what is good for her.

I see what you're saying here BUT I think that Buffy, in some ways, proved him right by lashing out with 'When you kiss me, I want to die'. I agree that he was treating like she was naive and inexperienced and she was annoyed by that, but she did herself no favours by retaliating in a way that made her sound spiteful and immature.

 

[crazysoulless]

I don't think she was lashing out and insulting him. She wasn't saying that his kisses were gross and that they made her "want to die" in an "Oh my God, that was awful, I'd rather die than kiss you again" kind of way. I think she was jumping on the fairtyale imagery of his statement and said something very (yea Gods) Bella-esque.

 

[Flannen]

I don't think she was lashing out and insulting him. She wasn't saying that his kisses were gross and that they made her "want to die" in an "Oh my God, that was awful, I'd rather die than kiss you again" kind of way. I think she was jumping on the fairtyale imagery of his statement and said something very (yea Gods) Bella-esque.

I don't think that's what she was saying either. It may not have been an insult but, like you said she jumped on the fairytale imagery, in order to hurt him. I have always taken it as a spiteful comment. She was being malicious and like I said before, that only serves to show that she was being immature about it. Instead of trying to understand his feelings or talk about them like an adult she went with a petty insult, using his own words against him. There are obviously multiple interpretations of this scene but I have never thought that Buffy comes off particularly well in it.

 

[crazysoulless]

I'm not sure if I understand in which way her reply was malicious or spiteful. He knew she enjoyed their previous kisses and she knew that he knew it. I took it as her getting what he was saying but saying that she knows that what they have won't lead to the stereotypical "happily ever after" but that she still wants it anyways. I thought she was saying that when they kissed it affected her enough so that she felt willing to happily take the dark road with him over the kind of romances girls her age should be dreaming of.

 

[Flannen]

I'm not sure if I understand in which way her reply was malicious or spiteful. He knew she enjoyed their previous kisses and she knew that he knew it. I took it as her getting what he was saying but saying that she knows that what they have won't lead to the stereotypical "happily ever after" but that she still wants it anyways. I thought she was saying that when they kissed it affected her enough so that she felt willing to happily take the dark road with him over the kind of romances girls her age should be dreaming of.

Well this is the wonderful thing about interpretation. Just like when you have to analyse a poem at school or something, there's no right answer, it's just about what it makes you feel. Your interpretation is shared by others and I do think its a perfectly valid one. 🙂

I, however (and this is where I may fall down trying to explain it), have always interpreted it as her reacting to his insinuation that she thinks its some kind of Prince-Charming-happily-ever-after rubbish by trying to pretend that she doesn't see it that way because she doesn't see him that way. She's annoyed he's patronising her and assuming how she feels (and probably annoyed that on some level he's right) so she makes him feel that it doesn't actually mean as much to her as he's suggesting. Which I think was spiteful, maybe not unjustified but still mean.

 

[crazysoulless]

I felt that the conversation leading up to the quote made it clear that she did see him that way. She thought it was too late for him to be reading her warning labels because the romantic feelings were already forming and the fire was already burning hot.

 

[Eleftheria]

I really like every thought you express.

Maybe, Buffy was trying to be rude because she thought Angel treated her like an inexperienced girl but through this quote, she accidentally showed the power of her feelings for him.

 

[Flannen]

I felt that the conversation leading up to the quote made it clear that she did see him that way. She thought it was too late for him to be reading her warning labels because the romantic feelings were already forming and the fire was already burning hot.

I agree that she made it quite she did see him that way but she also knew that her words could hurt him. I'm not saying she was telling the truth, far from it. And I'm not trying to get you to change your mind, like I said earlier there's no right or wrong here, I was just trying to explain the way I see it a bit more clearly.

 

[redheadboi19]

my interpenetration is that his kiss is like finding heaven to her and she wants to stay in that heaven.

 

[BuffyElevated]

I always took it to mean that she loved Angel so much she could hardly stand it, and when he kissed her, she wanted to "die" 'cause that would mean she'd die happy... It was a really cheesy line, for me, though... I never really liked it that much. LOL

 

[Bungle Jerry]

The French call orgasm 'la petite mort': I think the extreme release of sexual energy is often compared with death (also a release), and I always presumed that's what she was getting at. A really, really good kiss makes time stop and makes your physical existence just 'slip away'. Comparing this to death doesn't strike me as weird - and it doesn't strike me as spiteful, either. I think SMG's strange delivery of those lines could reflect the fact that it's one of those emotions that are ordinary to feel but odd to verbalise.