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).
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Kat, Dana, Jennifer, Fiona, and Ellynne,
I personally have no problem with Willow being bisexual or being involved in a lesbian relationship with Tara; my problem was (and still is) that how this came to pass was, to quote Oscar Wilde 'badly written'. Like Fiona, I love the way the Buffyverse characters grow and change; so one can look back at the episodes and see what they once were, and how they have become what they are at present.
The problem is that I didn't see anything like that happening regarding this aspect of Willow. For example, there wasn't any evidence that she had fantasies involving or was attracted to members of her own gender, or that she felt 'unlike' other girls. It was, to some extent 'dropped on' fans, unlike other aspects of the characters. Indeed, the fact that it began so soon after Oz's departure could lead people to conclude that the relationship with Tara was to some extent a rebound one, like Buffy's with Riley Finn.
Sadly, I have to conclude that this aspect of Willow was introduced in order to boost the ratings. If not, I feel that a better job would have been made of it.
Murray
-
Ellynne G. -
Murray