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?

Makes sense to me Cindy, even without my coffee.

I watched "Love Walks" last night ... where Spike comes back after being dumped and kidnaps Willow and Xander. Great to see them all together again. Was that the first time Spkie called himself 'Love's Bitch'?

Makes sense to me Cindy, even without my coffee.

(I wonder what the caffeinated people will think of us.)

I watched "Love Walks" last night ... where Spike comes back after being dumped and kidnaps Willow and Xander. Great to see them all together again. Was that the first time Spkie called himself 'Love's Bitch'?

I'm pretty sure it is. It might be the only, unless he referred to it in Crush.

Makes sense to me, too.

Though I'm so tired, I thought it was Cash posting, and found myself going "man, Cash is sounding just like Cindy this morning."

Makes sense to me, too.

It's kind of like what we talked about in LJ once, when I had that (orig) fic plot bunny, and you mentioned what time (or lack thereof) must be like for God.

Though I'm so tired, I thought it was Cash posting, and found myself going "man, Cash is sounding just like Cindy this morning."

I do that all the time. I misread someone's name, and think they sound so much like someone else, go back and check, and it was the someone else, the whole time. It's funny how you know someone's voice after a while.

Note that Shrift is away this weekend, so she may be slow about answering her mail with passwords, et cetera.

First, on the Willow front. Lots of good posts here. Without going into too much detail, I've always felt that Willow knew she tended to use her magic for the wrong (selfish) reasons. The first time it becomes glaringly obvious was in "Lover's Walk" where she wanted to do the delusting spell and lied to Xander that it was a chemistry experiment. The next big bouncer was "Something Blue." Then "Forever" (even though it wasn't her magic, she instigated it.) It's a recurring theme that while she is extremely intelligent, she's also very emotionally immature. She very rarely thinks through the consequences of her actions (spell-wise). Plus, she's always looking for the easy way out. In many ways, I think that's part of why she resurrected Buffy. Willow very much did enjoy being the side-kick, responsibilty scared the bejesus out of her. By resurrecting Buffy she could resume the role she felt safest in. It's not until she gets super-juiced with dark magic that she starts spouting how much she didn't like being Tonto. I've always got the feeling that was the magic talking, not Willow.

Okay, I lied, there was a lot of detail there.

On to package stores. The only place I ever came across that term was when I was in the Navy. That's what we called the liquor stores on base. Out in town, a liquor store was still a liquor store. I always thought it was just a Navy term. So, now I know it's not.

Also, one of the most Gott Verdammt things that Wisconsin (actually, I think it's only Dane county) has done is made it illegal to sell packaged liquor (any kind, beer, wine, etc.) after 9pm. If you want to booze it up after your private reserve has run out, you have to go to a bar or resteraunt and drink it there. I found that out when I moved into my apartment when I first moved back to Madison in '96. Finished arranging everything around 9:30, ran down to the 7-11, threw a 6 pack up on the counter and they said, "Nope." Said I was 40 (expletive deleted) years old, what was their problem. And that's when I found out, if you forget to pick up the necessaries before 9, you're screwed.

(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.)

Giles stresses that it connects to Glory's hell dimension, among others, and what we see of it is mostly a portal to Hellish stuff. We needed a mini crossover with Pylea, to stress that it was every dimension. I bet Joss would have worked that in if he hadn't been so stressed over the move to UPN.

GILES: The energy ... would flow into that spot, the walls between the dimensions break down. It stops, the energy's used up, the walls come back up. Glory uses that time to get back into her own dimension, not caring that all manner of hell will be unleashed on earth in the meantime.

It's nice to think that Buffy's feeling that her loved ones were safe may be true from an eternal perspective.

Also, one of the most Gott Verdammt things that Wisconsin (actually, I think it's only Dane county) has done is made it illegal to sell packaged liquor (any kind, beer, wine, etc.) after 9pm.

Milwaukee County, too, so maybe the whole state. It used to drive me nuts.