Daniel, maybe you shouldn't leave link out there in the open like that.

Hec, that's the official link Shrift posts here when she lets us know publicly that she has a new offering, so I felt confident to post that link and that link alone. It immediately presents the information that you must contact the address provided for access.

I never charged, and for the first half of my 21st year, lived within walking distance of the booze store.

I bought a lot of booze.

Most of it, sadly, was MINE MINE MINE.

(Cereal)

In fact, during my first senior year in college*, the grocery store STOPPED carding me.

*The second one was a short year, about a year after my originally scheduled graduation date. I had a couple incompletes that I let slide, you see. It really only took me 4.5 years of dicking around all told.

Hec, that's the official link Shrift posts here when she lets us know publicly that she has a new offering, so I felt confident to post that link and that link alone. It immediately presents the information that you must contact the address provided for access.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound bossy about it. Just mindful of protecting her rear. I'm sure you're right.

she did have good reason to assume Buffy was in hell since Buffy died jumping into the gateway to a demon dimension.

I still don't get this ... no one that's been to a hell dimension went there because they died. What's the good reason, again?

I bought into the assumption (once they suggested it), so it feels like there's some inductive reason to assume it. As logic goes, that's pretty peccable. I'll do better, Hec.

There is a parallel to Angel, who died (or Buffy "killed" him, at least) and went through a dimensional portal, and later turned out to have gone to Hell. Sean pointed out that his body disappeared, and Buffy's didn't. That makes it a stretch to assume she could be in Hell, but it turns out to be justified: having no body didn't prevent her from going to Heaven.

On one hand, it would be a weird opening that could send you physically to Pylea or spiritually to incorporeal hell, but then, it did connect to "all" dimensions, and remember that the Senior Partners don't have bodies in their dimension -- they just manifest in the form of a demon to move around in this dimension. (Sounds kind of like a demon rental-car business. "Hertz -- Doesn't It?")

(Aside on my research: as far as I can tell, Christian heaven and hell are places for both your body and soul. So "he's going straight to hell" and "your grandma is in Heaven now" aren't strictly accurate, because they both have to wait on their physical resurrection. And assuming Buffy went to either place makes even less sense.)

I'm still not convinced she was in Heaven either. I'm convinced that *she* thought it was heaven, which is good enough. But still, it was a place that basically lied to her so that she'd believe everyone she loved was safe.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound bossy about it. Just mindful of protecting her rear. I'm sure you're right.

No problem, we're all quite fond of Shrift's rear.

I always thought Willow was, if not explicitly, tacitly encouraging Dawn to investigate means of bringing Joyce back when she pulled out that book. It seemed an act of gross irresponsibility--and being of an age that tends to acts of gross irrepsonsibility isn't enough of an out for "let's show a grief-stricken teenager who's already dealing with the fact she was artificially created how to bring back the source of safe, unconditional love." And her dismay seemed more for her own sake than for the idea of Zombie!Joyce.

The look on Willow's face after she sacrificed the fawn also spoke more of "Boy, I hope I don't get caught." Guilt just oozed off of her. She may not have used the word "wrong" while thinking about the whole sacrifice, plus the resurrection, but she was sure heavily on the "People whose good opinions I have often courted might not think this is a good idea, best not tell them."

The two current interweaving conversations are making me picture Rack running a package store. Which, you know, would've easily been more entertaining.

(taste like a strawberry daiquiri)

Yeah, we know about package stores in the southeast, but the ones around here usually put higher emphasis on sales of cigarettes than of alcohol. A store that mainly sells alcohol will often just be called a liquor store 'round these parts.

Christmastime
Up on the sidewalk
*thump* *thump* *thump*

Mmm, Riunite Lambrusco, shades of my youth everytime I taste it.

Heh. Connie is my twin in underage drinking.

she did have good reason to assume Buffy was in hell since Buffy died jumping into the gateway to a demon dimension.

I still don't get this ... no one that's been to a hell dimension went there because they died. What's the good reason, again?

I bought into the assumption (once they suggested it), so it feels like there's some inductive reason to assume it. As logic goes, that's pretty peccable. I'll do better, Hec.

Part of the problem with this logic is that Buffy didn't jump into a gateway to a demon dimension. She jumped into the gateway to all dimensions, not to mention, she didn't get sucked in. (I know you mention this in your post, later, it's just that people keep saying it was the gateway to a demon dimension and so I keep saying it wasn't.)

(Aside on my research: as far as I can tell, Christian heaven and hell are places for both your body and soul. So "he's going straight to hell" and "your grandma is in Heaven now" aren't strictly accurate, because they both have to wait on their physical resurrection. And assuming Buffy went to either place makes even less sense.)

I'm still not convinced she was in Heaven either. I'm convinced that *she* thought it was heaven, which is good enough. But still, it was a place that basically lied to her so that she'd believe everyone she loved was safe.

Well this is completely out of the realm of Buffyverse canon now, but we have to remember that time is a human construct. And if there is a God (in the real world), and if that God is (as many think) eternal, and if that God created the world, day, night, etc., there's little-to-no reason to believe that God and his paradise are subject to human and earthy reckonings of time.

I'm not so sure that Nou's earlier point that:

'he's going straight to hell' and 'your grandma is in Heaven now' aren't strictly accurate, because they both have to wait on their physical resurrection,

looks at life, death and resurrection with an eternal eye. It's looking at it from the perspective of human/earthly time. I don't think there's any way for finite human minds to fully conceive the eternal, and this finite human mind is having trouble explaining what it means. But it seems possible to me that if everything else is true (i.e. God is eternal, there's a resurrection reuniting body and soul to live in the face of that eternal being - become eternal itself, etc.) it's fully possible that it's already taken place on (let's call it) the God!plane of existence, even though it hasn't taken place as far as we can tell here and now (in that you can go to the graveyard and exhume a corpse).

So to bring this back to the Buffyverse, in Buffy's case, where everyone was safe, etc., if she were in a heaven, in the presence of a beneficient Buffyverse God, she's been removed from Sunnydale!Earth!Human time, and what she felt wasn't necessarily a lie to her - as she was on an eternal plane. The Scoobies weren't yet there by their reckoning, but in an eternal place, a place where there is no time, where time has no meaning or power, it could already be true.

Does this make any sense, or do I need more coffee?