Joss makes me think. This is a good thing.

[innerbrat]

"All [his] actions were selfishly motivated.Everything he did, he did out of a love for a woman who could never love him back. Plus, you can tell it's not going to have a happy ending when the main guy's all bumpy."
- Tara, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 5.14 Crush
I'm re-watching Buffy and Angel at a slow-but-sureish rate, and this quote suddenly jumped

Comments

[flynnacatri]

STILL haven't seen Buffy.

OR they make the list because of a one-off for-the-shock/drama/lulz situation in which someone shocks other characters by sleeping with someone not of their 'preferred' gender.

...I'm thinking of Inara in Firefly here. Except she states/agrees that "sometimes it's nice to be with a women..." (and she's a courtesan, and very open about sexuality) implying that she's probably bisexual. But it only happens in that one episode and isn't referred to any other time...

[ashen_key]

The 'either or' attitude to sexuality is also one that really, really annoys me. Like you said, people are rarely at each end of the scale, or dead in the centre.

Actually, it's interesting - I have a series of books that...don't actually have a series name and I forget who is writing them as I am lame. Anyway. The main character, Rachel, is living with a vamp, Ivy, who is bisexual. And also in love with Rachel and the whole dynamic is really, really interesting.

But I'm not sure if vampires count.

[mpoetess]

It's Kim Harrison! ... And damn, it doesn't seem to have a series-name. And also I now need to buy like, 5 sequels OMG.

[gao]

I always thought Willow was bisexual, too. But I think Willow was not comfortable with seeing herself as bisexual--she wanted a clean break with her previous self, and has some capital I Issues, as anyone who eventually flays a man alive has.

Coupled to that, we see her blow off the Wicca support group almost immediately for not being awesome enough. I suspect she didn't really plug herself into any kind of community to learn... anything. She just went GAY NOW and plunged ahead.

[innerbrat]

Well, yes, that's a great analysis and fitting with Willow's character- it just wasn't ever presented as a forced thing, just accepted that her opinion was right.

I mean - Willow says a lot of things I consider untrue, but which not only the characters accept as true, but the writing implies we're meant to. The unrelated example being that 'Buffy is THE Slayer' and Faith's an extra, when in fact I'm sure the mythology only works if Faith's THE Slayer and Buffy just someone who won't retire when they're meant to.

So if Willow says OH HAI GAY NOW, the writers in general fail to show that she's flawed in saying that.

[majingojira]

Just in regards to Willow, she's definitely either a Kinsiean 3 or 4.

Why? Because Dialogue means Dick in terms of figuring out the truth of anything in a medium such as film and television. What a character says and what is shown on screen can be completely different things.

Willow may call herself "Gay" on occasion, and may think of herself as such, but the visual evidence speaks otherwise.

[mpoetess]

*holds up lighter, sways, sings along*

I loved Willow and Tara as a couple, I loved that Joss went there when so few shows had done so, and I never thought that discovering she was attracted to Tara was out of character for Willow-as-established.

If Willow had been presented as truly discovering an attraction to women and realizing she was not physically attracted to men and had been denying something, I would have bought "Gay Now."

But... not so much. Instead she presented all the signs of someone who fell for a person, who happened to be female and yes this was a big discovery for her but it didn't come with 'so this explains why I've been sneaking looks in the girls' locker room all these years.' And she had to move on from her previous love, who happened to be male, not because he was male, but because he'd left when she needed him, and she'd developed a deep connection with someone else.