I chose to believe that was her choosing not to convince herself she wasn’t really the Slayer because there was evil to fight, because I don’t think I could have handled it all being a fantasy haha.

He definitely did, and I want to believe it was intentional because he was the only one who didn’t have powers and was therefore jealous, and jealous 16 year old boys don’t act like very nice people. Contrasted with the relative maturity of the others though, it gets grating after a while.

Yeah, The Zeppo is great.

Oh god the first time I watched that episode I was inconsolable. She was such a great character (and I think I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed Illyria), and the other people on the show did a phenomenal job acting out that loss.

I feel an Amazon order coming on...thanks for the info!

Eh, I think it’s reasonable to have doubts though. And by the time they were actually getting married it was clear that her doubts were more “what if he doesn’t actually love me enough to marry me,” which Xander roundly proved when he chose the fear of a fake future over the person he said he wanted to be with for the…

Oh, I cry during that scene EVERY TIME. Xander was a flawed person and he did a horrible thing to Anya but you always knew he was one of the good guys. And, honestly, as an adult, him being a Nice Guy dickhead at 17 isn’t all that surprising. I thought that Season 7 Xander was a really good portrayal of someone who …

Yeah, and she was so young when she was doing it that I’m sure it’d be like talking about your childhood in front of hundreds of strangers, which would be so uncomfortable and invasive.

Thank you for this! That was a great read. He’s always struck me as a pretty good guy and you can tell watching that scene that he really struggled with it.

That episode of Angel is so intense. You can see him saying “It’s gonna be ok, Sarah” during it because SMG herself was so upset.

It’s less “being a Spike apologist” and more “explaining a pretty crucial plot point that a fan of the show would be aware of.”

It’s clear the the writers love Anya, too, and I think the show does a really good job of showing that people make mistakes in their alliances when they’re forced to choose sides and how that can be a driving force behind group dynamics as people age.

Yeah, thanks, I’ve watched the entire series multiple times.

He also barely even apologized, if he did at all? I’ve watched Season 6 less than the other ones (too much real-world sad for me) so I could be misremembering.

I think that was treated with an unbelievable amount of nuance though. Like, they had had a sexual relationship, he took that to mean that her withdrawing consent was false (happens all the time), and then the look on his face when she forces him off of her and he realizes what he did was just very well-acted.

The representation of the first Slayer bothers me too. I’m wondering if they were (perhaps erroneously) trying to draw on the concept that humans as a species started out in Africa and the Slayer has basically been around since the beginning of the human species? Still not great though. I thought though that…

I’m doing nothing of the sort.

Perhaps you shouldn’t make assertions which have a historical context of favoring certain people over others then.

It’s cute how condescending you are but no matter how you slice it, people in their mid-20s are not “kids.”

Pretty sure you wouldn’t be calling them “kids” if they were non-white. They’re grown-ass adults. I’m 26 and I’m not running around threatening 8-year-olds for being black and if I were to do so it would not be a childish “mistake.”