On Sun, 25 Mar 2001 15:01:22 +0100 "Fiona Moore" nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk writes:
----- Original Message ----- From: Ellynne G. rilliara@juno.com
I am really annoyed with the creators of the Buffyverse for
making
Willow a lesbian.
And the _way_ they did it. One season, Willow was very
conservative
sexually - finding out her vampire double was bi disturbed her considerably.
I didn't have a problem with it myself, and in some ways that was why-- I know several gay people who, when they first became aware of their sexuality, were troubled by it and as a result swung to the other extreme-- either becoming very heterosexually active or becoming very morally upright, as a panic reaction (remember, too, that the vampire Willow *was* Willow-- and a big red flag that Willow wasn't all straight).
Oh, agreed on that point. Actually, I saw what was coming the first episode Tara showed up. In that sense, it was telegraphed. This is a side complaint not so much on the issue bur for how it was handled. That's why I compared it to the Blake episode. Avon made a choice I didn't agree with, but I saw how he made it. Willow made a choice I, personally, didn't agree with. However, unlike "Blake," there wasn't an episode where I felt I'd seen her deal with the issues she should have been dealing with - a point where she said, "This is what I used to think, but-" In the end, I felt it had more to do with the actress' complaints that Willow wasn't perceived as sexy (she was alledgedly very upset when she was left out of a 'Babes of Buffy' article Rolling Stone did) than with anyone sitting down and trying to develop the character.
Let me use a more positive comparison. In DS9, Gul Dukat originally went from villain to sympathetic character (then back again, but let's skip that). It didn't work for me because they never dealt with the all the negative things they'd established about him. In the context of fiction, it _could_ have worked for me (I'm willing to be far more credulous to unlikely sounding scenarios in TV than I am in real life, so I _might_ have bought a story that tried to excuse what he'd done [unlikely, but possible if it was written well enough] but I think a better way to go would have been to more clearly show that Dukat, whether you liked him or not, was the only one who could do the job - and to show him _changing_, realizing what he had done and realizing he wished he could undo it).
Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.