Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 10 #11: "Love Dares You, Part One"

[superboyprime]

Comments

[jlbarnett]

I utterly HATE them pairing Willow with that demon

[icon_uk]

Is there any member of the Scooby gang who HASN'T been paired with a demon of one sort or another over the years? (Or is she still full blown EEEVIL Demon?)

[chrisdv]

Maybe Dawn or Tara?

[donnblake]

Dawn went out on a date with a vampire on Halloween in I wanna say Season 6, although to be fair she didn't know and totally wasn't okay with it. She also crushed pretty hard on Spike for a while, although I don't recall him ever being seen to reciprocate. And she hooked up with I wanna say a Thricebreed or something in the comics? I don't read the comics, but I understand that had something to do with her being a giantess for a while.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, she had the crush on Spike, which to his credit, I guess, he absolutely did not reciprocate, looking on her nothing more than a little sister.

[jeyl]

I like it.

:)

Serpent ladies are grossly underrepresented.

[icon_uk]

Some interesting idea here, but Andrew apparently coming out as gay (as opposed to at least bisexual) has all the dramatic impact and shock value of being bopped lightly on the head with a helium balloon. Hope there's more to it than that.

[angelophile]

Don't be silly. The B Word doesn't exist in the Whedonverse.

[donnblake]

Sure it does- it's just generally preferenced with 'depraved'.

(Or Inara, I suppose, but to be fair we never saw her with a woman off the clock, so YMMV)

[angelophile]

Oh, characters can be bisexual as long as they don't call it that. They're either straight or gay, depending on who they're dating at the time. There's no middle ground. It's either 'straight', 'gay now' or 'straight again, let us never speak of this again'.

This also differs from Buffy proper because male homosexuality isn't a punchline.

[icon_uk]

Showing my ignorance here, but was that ever a thing beyond Willow? Her I'll give a pass on because, y'know, a woman realising she is, and self-identifying as, gay after being in a relationship with a man is perfectly legitimate thing to happen.

Andrew's sexuality was so... vague that anything seemed possible. Gay would be no surprise, Bi would be no surprise, Ace would be no surprise,

And in terms of male sexuality being a punchline, as a gay man I always thought Spike's rooftop fandub of Angel talking to a woman he's just rescued was perhaps the funniest scene in both series' history, so at least it was a GOOD punchline.

YMMV of course.

[minervasolo]

They do it with Buffy too in the comics. Briefly dates a girl, is straight forever after.

[jlbarnett]

that's called experimenting isn't it?

I mean if you're only bisexual enough to notice "hey that person that's the same gender as me is attractive" but find out you have no interest in them beyond that is that actually bisexual?

Willow not identitfying as bi to me seems to fit her personality, because Willow goes all the way into things and she'd probably feel bisexuality is indecisiveness.

[minervasolo]

On the one hand, Buffy's relationship (which, I should point out, includes them having sex multiple times) is very much portrayed as experimentation, and I know there are people out there with similar experiences who define them the same way. Sexuality is a spectrum, and there's as much space on it for experimentation as there is for straight, gay and bisexual.

On the other hand, referring to experiences like that as experimentation is a very common form of bisexual erasure. Many bisexual people who end up in a long term relationship with a member of the opposite sex have their attraction to people of the same sex dismissed as experimentation or curiousity (or vice versa for gay people, though much less commonly). Contradicting a person about their own feelings has the potential to be extremely damaging to them psychologically. Experimentation is also linked with ideas about 'growing out of it' and 'only doing it because they're sick of the opposite sex' and of 'being indecisive'. Without alternative example of openly bisexual characters, vulnerable individuals can take these messages as gospel and it can make it much harder to come to terms with their own sexuality. They feel obliged to 'decide' or wait to 'grow up' and stop being 'curious', and it doesn't happen.

The problem with the Buffyverse is that multiple characters have opposite-sex-to-their-defined-preference experiences brushed aside in order to stick to a sexual binary. Andrew's sexuality has for a long time been the source of humour. First, the gag was that he wasn't aware he was gay. Then, in Angel, that everyone assumed he was gay but actually he wasn't. The joke only works if everyone in universe and out assumes sexuality is binary. If Andrew could be bi, then it's not a joke. Equally, if Willow feels obliged to decide on a sexuality (rather than, say, explain it with her concluding that her desire to sleep with Xander and Oz was more about a teenage desire to simply have sex without focusing on who it was with), she's a victim of bi-erasure herself. And Buffy's experimentation is just plain bad writing; it's practically a box-checking exercise of bi-erasure. Girl sex for titillation purposes, tired of the men in her life, curiousity about Willow's sex life (without being attracted to Willow, because that would be too complicated), stress of the circumstances, just this one woman and never again... I am so glad the writing has improved since then!

[miramira]

If that revelation isn't followed up by several rounds of "oh, sweetie, we thought you knew," I for one will be surprised.

[icon_uk]

True, he makes his big reveal to the Scoobies, and we pan back to their completely unshocked faces, possibly a tumbleweed blows past...

Followed by Buffy's slightly awkward, trying to sound surprised "Well, that's... umm... really good to know. Well gone... Go gay Andrew!"

[shadowpsykie]

or some one going "FINALLY!!!!" my money is on Anya.

[tugrul]

Spike with kittens ♥

[chrisdv]

SAVE THE KITTIES, SPIKE! SAVE THEM ALL!


Also, Andrew wasn't gay to begin with? I just assumed he was & it was just unspoken.

[icon_uk]

It was left somewhat uncertain, he had a crush on Jonathan, and possibly Spike,,, but was also seen taking women out for a night on the town too (In the Angel episode where they go to Italy)

[shadowpsykie]

that came to me as "trying to hard" and was seen by MANY people, including some of the creators, as out of character for him. i think the writer of that episode didn;t know andrew very well.

[lyricalswagger]

It would be great if Loki sat down across from her while speed-dating!

[veleda_k]

I would have done some ridiculous things to make that crossover happen.

[miramira]

Me too. Dear deities, reality warpers, and/or fanartists who may be listening, I'm willing to bargain.

[big_daddy_d]

The one drawback of being turned into a kid again.