OK...maybe my source was not so good for that.

While I regret that several you have been offended, I do not retract my statement. I believe that preachiness in all its flavors weakens storytelling. I understand that everyone is on a different place in the journey but, for me, my empowerment is fine and the only reason I watched those storylines was because I liked the show.

While I regret that several you have been offended, I do not retract my statement. I believe that preachiness in all its flavors weakens storytelling.

Gosh, I'm sorry that a woman coming to terms with her sexuality, coming out to her friends, and yet somehow still remaining a flawed and multi-dimensional character is preachy or an anvil to you.

An anvil would be Willow getting a buzzcut, getting her butch on, and banishing Xander and Giles to the World Without Shrimp so that Sunnydale could be all Wymyn World. And yet, that didn't happen.

By the way, I'm plenty fucking empowered. Any more empowered, and I'd probably vibrate and be sold as a sex toy or in Home Depot.

And I'm empowered enough to call bullshit. Because that's what your line of reasoning about Willow's sexuality is. By that line of reasoning, if you take it just to its logical conclusion, having Xander come out would actually make it so that the 'Verse was fine for men so long as they were non-threatening parent figures (Giles) or gay and therefore not a threat to the Holy Untouchable Cunt.

Bad taste in marketing

What the ...? I can't read any of the print. What's that supposed to be, other than a rendering of a sexual assault?

Season Six trading cards.

Well, I don't think I've ever seen trading cards, so I have no perspective from which to judge, but that's just ... not something I'd expect to see on them, I guess.

And I'm empowered enough to call bullshit.

One woman's bullshit is another woman's purely individual take on a TV show. Your outrage is your right and privilege. My opinion remains my own. Suffice to say I'm taken aback that my personal belief that the empowerment motifs were served a little heavy-handedly via Willow's coming out--in addition to half a dozen other things--has been interpreted so severely.

At least they are trading cards and not action figures. Is there any way to erase that scene from the S6 DVD's or is it too late?

Bad taste in marketing

Bad taste? Bad taste? Jssdfsdfsl Chrsdslsss! The Card's label reads "The Big Bad." WTF? Who is responsible for licensing at FOX? I've half a mind to send Tony Soprano over there, to have a little chat about the power of the image, and the written word.

Oh, wow. I can't believe I'm riled up over a trading card. (But I am.)

...

I understand that everyone is on a different place in the journey but, for me, my empowerment is fine and the only reason I watched those storylines was because I liked the show.

I'm reading here—and that very well may not be your intention, which is why I'm noting that here—the implication that enjoyment or defense of the show's mission statement somehow indicates where a given person is in her/his journey, or how (un???-"un" isn't said, but it's strongly implied)empowered that person is. I respect that you didn't like the execution of the mission statement. I respect that you might not even like the mission statement of the show, itself (and so therefore, the storylines that evolved from it). But this journey/empowerment statement is where I got really uncomfortable in this conversation. The comments about the Willow-anvil do strike me as ironic, given you'd just expressed desire for a Xander-comes-out story.

Granted, Willow's "gay now" Tourettes-like outbursts sometimes took me out of the story. I don't see that as an anvil, so much as I see it as one part clunky execution/one part interesting characterization (in other words, I waffle; I can see Willow being unsettled enough, and so strongly desirous of making Tara happy, and so uncertain of her feelings, that she actully would act like that).

In all, I appreciated the W/T part of Willow's arc. I respect that you didn't. I know I didn't expect to. When I first saw Hush, I already knew Seth Green was leaving, I had no doubt Tara and Willow would end up involved, but at the beginning, it felt forced, and out of character with this character they'd show us up 'til then. Then they let us get to know Tara, and it just seemed logical to me that these two people would fall in love. I will be eternally grateful we didn't get a "how Willow got gay" story, and instead, were treated to what rivals B/A as the (for me) most involving love story on the show (and much more love filled, warts and all). I thought Willow's magicks=drugs storyline was the real clunker, with all the subtlety of an anvil—much more so than her love story ever could have been. We didn't see Tara and Willow kiss on screen until how long after they were together? I wish they'd been able to treat her character as bisexual, but I fully understand why they decided against doing so, in the end.

Well, there's girl power, then there's "the only people who have any significant role to play in the last two years of the story are female--or dead." Being a guy in Sunnydale definitely seemed like a boring thing to be. The whole Slayer-empowerment montage in "Chosen" was one painful anvil after another. I saw Willow being gay as just another anvil labelled "Guys are occasionally fun to have around, but fairly irrelevant to our lives".

How do you see/deal with the fact of Spike, while formulating the "the only people who have any significant role to play in the last two years of the story are female--or dead" theory? What non-females were dead? Where does Xander's saving the world fit in? His engagement? His wedding? His blinding? Where does the Trio fit in? Caleb? Where does McHottie fit in? Don't get me wrong, I wish we'd had more Xander; actually I wish we'd had more Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander—together—in the final two seasons, and less of Dawn, Tara, Anya, Spike, yada yada yada. But I can't make your thesis jibe with what we saw onscreen. I adore the Spike character, but have to cop to the fact that he garnered the lion's share of the storyline. Even when the stories we watched weren't specifically about him (and they often were), they were frequently about Buffy's relationship with him.

I do think in the end, the Xander character got shoved aside, but not by Willow's "gay now" or even by any empowerment storyline. He was mostly shoved in a corner by Anya, who—ironically—was brought on to enhance his storyline. Didn't the Willow-Gay-Now stuff calm down by the end of season 5 (with the breast gal comment being the only one I can remember in season 6)? Giles left a gaping hole, granted, but I accepted it, because ASH had a desire to live his real life with his real family. I'm grateful they didn't try to replace him, just to keep some sort of artificial boy-girl balance on the show.