History Headscratchers / BuffytheVampireSlayer

** Also, the existing power structures come to mind. Pretty much everyone had reasons to keep the Masquerade up. The Watchers (the old ones, at least) had to avoid attention because of their [[AncientConspiracy not-so-faultless methods]] and not so limited assets (courtesy the aforementioned methods). A certain Mayor was native in the Masquerade and planned to stay that way. A big [[Angel evil law firm]] actually thrived on supporting the Masquerade and would find legal loopholes in the public dusting actions. And then there are friendly neighbourhood monsters like Harmony, who illustrated how not to perform the [[TheUnmasquedWorld unmasking]] by making the vamps and demons look like the victims. And then everyone with a secret Apocalypse scheduled would move the timetable. And so on. And with wierdness censores on, one of those would [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade take care of the talkative party]] before the message comes through.

** Also, the existing power structures come to mind. Pretty much everyone had reasons to keep the Masquerade up. The Watchers (the old ones, at least) had to avoid attention because of their [[AncientConspiracy not-so-faultless methods]] and not so limited assets (courtesy the aforementioned methods). A certain Mayor was native in the Masquerade and planned to stay that way. A big [[Angel evil law firm]] actually thrived on supporting the Masquerade and would find legal loopholes in the public dusting actions. And then there are friendly neighbourhood monsters like Harmony, who illustrated how not to perform the [[UnmasquedWorld unmasking]] by making the vamps and demons look like the victims. And then everyone with a secret Apocalypse scheduled would move the timetable. And so on. And with wierdness censores on, one of those would [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade take care of the talkative party]] before the message comes through.

* On the subject of the Initiative, the government learns of demons and so forth preying on the US population, sets out to study and control it, but it goes wrong and proves the demons and so forth are more dangerous than they thought. And then they do nothing. No more investigation, just cover it up and try and forget and hope like hell it doesn't come out, that nothing like Graduation Day happens live on national or international television? I call bullshit, having their asses handed to them in the way that the Initiative imploded would not make any even half sane government back off and leave it up to the mystical slayer, let alone a government as paranoid and controling as the US. They'd come back with more firepower, bigger facilities, better facilities and a lot more security.
** Who's to say they didn't? If security does their job right, you would never know they're there. Despite withdrawing from Sunnydale, they were still able to appear out of nowhere when Riley needed help as simply as Buffy talking into a phone with a dialtone, when Riley was pursuing that demon, and again when Spike needed his chip removed.

* Why is Warren seen as a mysogionist by most of the fandom. The two people he murdered were women but both of them were accidents and I doubt he would have hesitated any more if buffy had been a man. When he mind controlled his former girlfriend it seemed like he didnt fully understand how playing out his fantasies would hurt people.

* The psycho lesbian trope being used repeatedly in regards to Dark Willow. Dark Willow has been foreshadowed all the way from the first episode she did a spell, Becoming Part 2. Giles insists it will not end well to open that door, and in Lovers Walk, we already see Xander pointing out how immoral Willow is being by trying to fix everything with magic. I never bought the magic = drugs storyline, and I feel it was a cop out to make none of it Willow's fault. If they had continued with Dark Willow appearing because of Willow's own flaws and being power hungry, I would have loved it. But I digress, it seems like they were trying to lead up to Dark Willow from day one. It just so happened that she needed something to push her off the edge, and it had to be Tara's death. The Dark Willow storyline is not about a lesbian going psycho after having sex, its about a girl whose own flaws brought her down, and that girl just happened to be a lesbian. And the having sex bit is just Joss's way of screwing with us, making the characters happy before bringing them down. Remember Angelus?

**** The drug parallel was so blatantly obvious, you'd have to be blind not to see it.
***** I'm with the original troper. Willow and Tara's relationship was bound up in their magic right from the beginning of the relationship - and there's actually another example of Evil Willow = Lesbian (or Bisexual) Willow: Wishverse Willow. "I'm so evil, and skanky. And I think I''m kinda gay!" Magic as Willow uses it is deeply bound up in femininity and sexuality and mother goddessy stuff. "Wicca" was practically used as a euphemism for "lesbian" in season 4. When Willow goes off the rails it's definitely a case of psycho lesbian.
****** Not really. Vampire Willow is shown to be evil not because of her sexuality, but because she's a soulless vampire. And as a soulless vampire, she feels little guilt and fear, which makes her more uninhibited and thus more likely to experiment and become aware of her sexuality than Season3's Normal Willow. Season 3 Normal Willow's line never says that being "kinda gay" is evil. It merely shows how Willow thinks that Vampire Willow might represent sides of her she hasn't explored yet; at this point, she hasn't explored her vengeful side or her preference for women, but the two are connected because she hasn't gotten to know either of those sides yet, and not because being gay and evil are related. After VampWillow is long out of the picture, Normal Willow's relationship with Tara is far more romantic and less dangerous than, say, VampWillow's relationship with VampXander. Or Buffy's initial relationship with Spike. Magic does not equal "lesbian" since other characters like Giles and the Watcher's Council use magic without the sexuality symbolism. Willow's magic addiction represents drug abuse. If her addiction represented lesbianism, the show would've had Tara get (destructively) closer to Willow without breaking up with her in Season 6. Finally, Willow isn't the only character to snap when her lover gets caught in crossfire. Giles sets Spike's house on fire after Jenny died, remember?
******* Not even necessarily when a lover is caught in the crossfire. Just an episode or two before Willow snapped, Xander went after Spike with intent to murder when Spike and Anya had a mutual sympathy bang.

** Because she was a traumatized, pyschological wreck. Logic, reason, and rational behaviour should not be expected of someone who's just been through what she has. Wanting to die to make the hurting stop and get back to the happy place does not prevent her from having "Protect loved ones" hardwired into her basic behavioural patterns.
* Also, no one is quite sure where Dawn will go when she dies. Will she die like a human or return to being the disembodied key energy? When Willow is dark at the end of season 6 she seems to think the latter will happen.

** Sunnydale Syndrome: when you live in that town you get used to putting the random, inexplicable, and/or violent deaths of people close to you ''firmly'' in the past.
*** Is that a trope? It should be.
**** It was. Renamed to Weirdness Censor so that the name would have a more obvious meaning to people who hadn't seen Buffy (in a long string of renames to avoid very inside references).
** They're not gonna grieve forever, eventually they move on. After all, Joyce and Tara weren't talked about for long after their respective deaths. Of course, the real reason he isn't mentioned is because of writing. The audience barely knew him, and thus didn't really care when he died. The characters will care, but having them cry over somebody the audience doesn't care about usually results in Main/{{Narm}}. As a FanWank, presumably they do all crying off-screen.

*** [[AngstWhatAngst Angst? What angst?]]

* So, in Seeing Red, Spike tries to rape Buffy. This rape attempt goes on for a few minutes, during which time Buffy is shouting either "No" or "Help." The entire episode Willow is adamant about not getting up, and therefore she and Tara, two ridiculously powerful witches, are just a few rooms down. Given that they live in a town where someone shouting for help is very likely to be something ''very'' bad, why did they not come running to the rescue?

* Why did they never get around to dispatching uber-evil Drusilla? And then she showed up in Angel, also unstaked! Is Joss saving that for a comic or something? Kendra must be avenged!

*** Dru isn't uber-evil, just uber-crazy; there's a difference!
**** Still evil, still kills people, still a powerful vampire.
***** I think Buffy never actually had the chance to stake her. As for Angel... maybe he just couldn't bring himself to do it?
****** Neither Angel or Buffy saw her again after she was rejected by Spike. Angel was too busy with Darla to bother with her and Buffy had Glory, so she probably just slipped off.
******* Angel set Dru and Darla on fire fully intending to kill both of them. And then Drusilla never showed her face in Angel again. In the Buffy episode following, Drusilla literally just walked away while Buffy was acting all disgusted.

* Why didn't the Scoobies kill Spike in Season 4? He's still unrepentantly evil, he's done nothing to imply that he might ''stop'' being evil anytime soon, and he frequently said that he wants them all dead. Hell, as of Faith's return, he (a) had never actually helped them fight demons that we see, despite his "let's kill something!" speech, and (b) ''had'' declared his intention to sic Faith on the lot of them and then laugh.

*** Just because he couldn't rip anybody apart didn't make him harmless. He was a threat when he could help Faith find the good guys and kill them in their sleep, he was a threat when he helped Adam isolate Buffy inside the Initiative, he was a threat in Season 5 when he and Harmony held hostage the only person in the state who could save Riley's life., and that's just in the episodes I've seen so far. Also, it's not like they've never killed vampires just for being vampires.
**** Riley states that Buffy felt sorry for him in Buffy vs. Dracula. While it may not make complete sense, that's her stance. And actually, they've never killed harmless vampires before. Really, the only vampires that are harmless were Spike and Angel. All the others actually kill and eat humans.

** It's implied that Spike and Buffy loved each other since day one, they just didn't want to admit it/didn't realize it.
*** No it wasn't. Missed the "No you don't" moment in season 7?
*** Um, Day 1 was "School Hard". I hope to God Buffy didn't "love" the psycho vampire who launched a bloody siege on her school and tried to sadistically kill everyone in it, including her mother.
*** What WAS implied was that Spike loved Buffy from day one. Buffy learned to tolerate him because she wouldn't kill him when he was helpless and he kept hanging around. She just had a sexual relationship with him in season six and fell in love with him in season seven. (You can tell she was in love with him because she chose to spend her final hours with Spike when she could have spent them with Angel.) When she finally admitted it, Spike just couldn't believe she did and that's what lead to the statement "No you don't"

****** The Angel/Angelus "separate entity" stuff is more a result of bad writing in Angel's Season 4 than anything. Since the beginning of Buffy and in most Angel's seasons it is clear that Angelus is just Angel without a soul (which is not an entity itself). In many instances of Angel's series (especially in Season 2, 3 and 5) you can see glimpses of his darkness (Angelus) coming through, making it clear they are the same person/entity/character/whatever. Angel and Angelus personalities are not stark different as many people say. Angel in Season 5 shows this very well. If you compare Angelus in Buffy Season 2 to Angel in Angel's season 5 there isn't much difference, except that he is one of the "good guys" now. He also talks about his pasts deeds as Angelus as himself, sometimes in a very nonchalant way.
***** The ability to feel bad about it is ''all'' that separates a vampire without a soul from their human counterpart. If Spike had had a soul ''it wouldn't have happened.'' He is not responsible for the event at all. The reason he didn't change much is because, unlike Angel, he realized ''it wasn't his fault.'' Spike doesn't feel guilty for the crimes he committed when he didn't have his soul, so he doesn't have the same internal conflict that made Angel and Angelus separate entities. Ensouled!Spike is not the same person, simply because he ''can'' feel bad about it.

*** Bearing in mind that the Dru thing is a [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanWank Fan Wank]] to explain how Spike manages to strangle her into subconsciousness when she doesn't breathe. On the subject of massive misfires regarding vampires not breathing, lets look at how Angel can't do CPR, yet he can ''smoke''!

** The same magic that lets them have brain and muscle functions and avoid tissue necrosis without circulating blood also lets their "Vlad the Impaler" rise from the grave

*** Buffy is repeatedly stated in the early seasons to have had to "grow up fast". Her powers put her into incredibly traumatic situations which no normal person (and indeed, few Slayers) would have to deal with, including her own death and being ''dragged out of Heaven'', but she is ultimately able to power through and continue to care for others and do the right thing. She never gives up, and never stops fighting. Willow has much the same deal, except that she had to ''earn'' her powers. However, even before she had them, she possessed a great inner strength which allowed her to provide help and support to Buffy, maintain her loving relationship with Oz in spite of the dangers and difficulties, and was willing to stand up against evil in order to do what is right and help people (take note of her awesome HannibalLecture to Faith in "Choices", in a situation where she was otherwise helpless). Even Joyce shows (more subtle) strength when she learns Buffy's secret, disregarding her own feelings about the situation to continue being a loving, supporting, stable figure of normality in Buffy's life (the same goes when she learns about Dawn, who she never for a moment stops treating like her daughter). There is more than one kind of power, you know, and the women in this show display it in spades.

* What's with all the Star Wars references?
** Up to date geek references don't age well. Referencing Monty Python and Star Wars, you're good and don't seem TotallyRadical... however the then-current Anime references Andrew makes in Season 7 stick out like a sore thumb.
*** It's tricky because those things have lasted, so a modern geek would make ''some'' references to them... but having lots of them and few modern references I'd say ''is'' Main/TotallyRadical. It screams out "this is what someone the age of the writers, not the characters, liked as a kid". This goes double if more modern references are used to show that a character (Andrew) is uncool even by geeky standards. (And I missed the current references anyway. What were they?)

***** Oh, come on. There were plenty of things other than itself. Harry Potter. Any manga. Dragonball. Babylon 5. Hercules and Xena. Magic the Gathering. Everquest, Final Fantasy, and ''modern video games''. Some of these were actually mentioned... but very occasionally, out of proportion to Star Wars and anything else the age of the writers.
****** Harry Potter was mentioned... ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids by Dawn]]''. Manga was still very much a niche market, Hercules and Xena were old-school (and Xena is, in many minds, the only one of the two that made it to classic status) and more than the few Xena references they made would have seemed like an unsubtle lampshading of the idea that ''Buffy'' could be seen as an unsubtle ''Xena'' ripoff. Xander made a few ''Babylon 5'' references (at least I think they were Babylon 5, they could have been ''Battlestar Galactica'' or ''Battlefield Earth'' references), but nobody in-universe got them, whereas they did get the ''Star Wars'' references, so he kept making them. As for MagicTheGathering, I have no idea (maybe Xander just wasn't into collectible card games, [[CrackIsCheaper as many people weren't and aren't]]), but Xander really seemed like an old-school:general preference and modern:FPS fan without much time or money(<-important) for games and up-to-date system. Buffy didn't have much time for entertainment (so she tended to stick to the must-sees, b-movies, and new stuff that came through the Sunnydale theater), Xander was mostly into the sort of things the others didn't bother with, Willow is a reader/studyist, and everyone else is between forty and three hundred years old (the latter of whom can't exactly go to the matinee). Oz is really the only main character who would intentionally make the sort of references that only he and/or Xander would get, and they ''did'' have a few back-and-forths, and he also made references that would be popular at the time and music references that nobody else would get, but he wasn't on for two thirds of the series and the writers didn't feel comfortable using him for anything but things with gravitas.
****** The issue isn't that there weren't no new references ''at all'', but that they were vastly outnumbered by old ones. And a lot of those explanations are reaching, most of them being explanations of why characters wouldn't know ''any references at all'', not explanations of why they would know old ones but not new ones. (Okay, Buffy didn't have time. But watching an old show takes as much time as watching a new show.) And saying "nobody in-universe got the references" just restates the problem: why are the writers writing characters who get references from the writers' childhood instead of contemporary ones? Also, manga was indeed big at the time. The series went up to 2003 and manga was big starting in 2000 or so.
******* I covered that. When you're not seeing much, the "everyone's seen them" classics take precedence. Name one thing other than ''HarryPotter'', ''Twilight'', and ''Buffy'' that's more pervasive in current culture than ''StarWars'', even limiting it to people who were under twenty or 25 during the run of ''Buffy''. Especially since StarWars is more widely known (across the world) than at ''least'' Buffy and Twilight, and probably Harry Potter as well. And by 2000, they were nineteen and twenty (again, with age groups ramging as high as two hundred), [[WhjatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids in college]] or working, and had the whole world-saving thing going on. I bet that Anya and Spike (and Cordelia, if you count characters who moved to ''{{Angel}}'') were the only people with the time and money to even get started with anime and manga aside from watching the occasional show on television, and none of them are really the type to bother with it (I would love to see Spike's reaction to ''{{Hellsing}}'', though). The last point is emphasized by Andrew's contrast, because he's supposed to be a geek even compared to Xander (even compared to what Xander used to be like), and didn't really have much going on for him aside from a part-time super-villain job and all the cash he could keep Warren and Jonathan from calling dibs on.
****** You're still saying that since they don't have the time they wouldn't watch new series, but would somehow watch the classics. It's not literally true that "everyone's seen them"; everyone with the time to see them has seen them. "They don't have the time" may be a reason why they watch few things at all, but it ''can't'' be an explanation for why they watch few new things compared to old ones. Old series ''still take just as much time to watch''. The same goes for not having the money. And the answer to your question depends on what time period you are talking about. For now, I'd say that Naruto or Halo or Final Fantasy are more pervasive than Buffy. For back then there are plenty of things as pervasive including the ones I already listed. Heck, Pokemon and Power Rangers would be in both periods; they're kids' series, so the characters might not currently be watching them, but they should be aware of them to the extent that as geeks they'd make references.
******* I think the idea is that they watched all the old stuff before the show began, so that's why they had time for it. Xander and Willow have talked about their movie festivals and how they're old sci-fi buffs, and I'm guessing that's how they know their obscure Star Wars, Star Trek and Monty Python references - they're citing the stuff they grew up watching as children, on television marathons that don't cost anything. Ever since Buffy arrived, they haven't been keeping up with the pop cultural lexicon because they're too busy and they don't really have the money. Andrew, on the other hand, had been living a rather dull, adventure-free life until the Trio began, and he's kept up with otaku culture a lot more. Hence he was throwing out references to Dragonball and Homestar Runner that left everyone else just blinking in confusion. In reality, it's all because of AuthorAppeal and Joss Whedon and other similarly aged writers on the show sticking with what they know culturally (which was, in their defense, probably a safer bet than trying to be up-to-the-minute and falling into real TotallyRadical territory), but in-universe, I don't think it's too implausible: Xander and Willow are the main source for pop-culture references, and they're just not into the current stuff, that's all.

** As tempting as it is to assume as much, not character who makes references to StarWars is supposed to be stereotypical geek who's into every stereotypically geeky thing. Xander probably comes off as most geeky of the bunch, but his interests can just as easilly be explained by saying that he's a slacker who watches too much television, including movies that are rerun endlessly on basic cable (like Star Wars, and for that matter, ApocalypseNow). Keep in mind these characters grew up in the 80s and 90s, before the rise of the internet and instant netflix and tv-on-demand. Back in ye olde days of terrestrial broadcast, reruns and movie channels meant most people's reference pools extended backward for more than five minutes.

*** I'm sorry, did you just say that a gauntlet that can harness the primal power of nature at will is NOT a threat? Good sir, have you ever actually BEEN electrocuted? People don't tend to survive, and there is no limit on how far a lightning bolt could travel in a group. It definitely counts on the world-destroying scale and, I remind you, there was no other way to remove that gauntlet.
*** No, he said she was hardly world destroying. He never said she wasn't a threat.

*** A Slayer stands a good chance of surviving a house explosion. Then where would she hide? At least Caleb knows where his enemies are.
**** She does? How? Swords and stuff don't bounce off her. Shrapnel should work just as well.
**** This troper thought it was all part of some Xanatos Gambit? 1: Dig up the weapon. 2: Mock the slayers loneliness. 3: Watch as slayer makes an army of X Slayers. 4: Cackle as the new army of slayers trashes the rule of one good and proper, leaving the world without slayers for X generations and ensuring the rule of the First in a couple generations time.

*** Yeah, but it wasn't Whedon who made Faith older, it was some guy called Robert Joseph Levy. Up until that random spin-off pretty much everything about Faith, from her desperate search for a parental figure (Joyce, Gwendolyn Post, the Mayor, even Angel) to her desperate attempts to get in with Buffy and her friends, right down to her over-use of make-up and her choice of reading material (and yes, I read comics as an adult. But still) seemed to be calculated to make her seem child-like. And then it's suddenly 'oh, by the way, she's actually the ''older'' sister in this relationship'. Even before you add in the Cruciamentum thing, it bugs the hell out of me.
*** Is it mere coincidence that Faith got it on with Xander in an episode shown very near Dushku's 18th birthday?

**** "Angelus kept on killing even after he got his soul", inaccurate. He was only killing bad people, and Darla called him out on it. When she tried to get him to [[IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten eat a baby]], he couldn't do it.

*** I'm inclined to blame RealLifeWritesThePlot here. If Angel hadn't been spun off, and his character had thus been around Sunnydale, Willow would probably have developed a better version of that curse in a few seasons. As it was, in-universe we have "out of sight, out of mind", combined with the assumption that Angel's destiny will take care of everything. Realistically, once the actor is working with another network, we need to make it ''very'' clear that Angel and Buffy have no chance of being a happy couple.

**** The thing is, the gypsies were royal {{jerkass}}es. Jenny even called her uncle and the rest of the clan out on it when they refused to restore Angel's soul even with Angelus running wild. The rest of the clan just doesn't care what happens to other people. They don't care if ensouled Angel redeems himself or becomes an even worse monster than Angelus, and they don't even care about the damage Angelus will cause if the curse is ever broken. All they care about is that Angelus suffers, and the best way they could think to do that was to trap Angelus inside a human soul and force him to endure everything Angel feels. Even that shows how completely amoral they are: they dragged Liam's soul out of the afterlife just to be the instrument of Angelus's AndIMustScream torment. The reason the curse's escape clause makes no sense as a strategy for reforming Angel or for containing Angelus is that the gypsies didn't intend for it to do either. Their only reason for cursing Angelus is to make him suffer, and once he stops suffering, the curse has run its course. If that sounds twisted, myopic and incredibly petty, well, it is, which is Jenny chewed out her uncle for it and refused to keep playing by those rules.

** Because he's not a Main/MarySue. Even good guys screw up, and let's face it, Angelus was a menace and nearly killed them all, hell he almost destroyed the entire world. Telling Buffy just to kick his ass and not hold was, in his eyes, the best plan, since even if Angel got his soul back, there'd be no guarantee he'd get it again.
*** I agree that non-Main/MarySue good guys screw up. However, they should expect to face some consequences when they do. Xander effectively decided that he knew better than not just Buffy, but Willow, Giles and even Jenny. So he proceeded to break a promise to Willow, and in the process make Buffy think that Willow wasn't in any more mood to help her than he was. Yeah, good guys do make rash decisions like that, but shouldn't he have at least gotten ''reprimanded'' for it? He suffered no consequences whatsoever.

* on the subject of the Initiative, the government learns of demons and so forth preying on the US population, sets out to study and control it but it goes wrong and proves the demons and so forth are more dangerous than they thought. And then they do nothing. No more investigation, just cover it up and try and forget and hope like hell it doesn't come out, that nothing like Graduation Day happens live on national or international television? I call bullshit, having their asses handed to them in the way that the Initiative imploded would not make any even half sane government back off and leave it up to the mystical slayer, let alone a government as paranoid and controling as the US. They'd come back with more firepower, bigger facilities, better facilities and a lot more security.

**** Not so, look a Firefly.

** Not directly Buffy related, but in the WorldOfDarkness, vampires tend to get "stuck" in the times they were turned, mentally. Which makes some sense : they're immortal, the human world is of absolutely no interest to them except for its Happy Meals on legs component, and their daily routine is stalk/corner/suck dry. That dynamic hasn't really changed since human society began, except maybe these days there are a lot more meals to be had (and, puzzlingly, a lot more people who would give everything they own to get sucked on by a vampire :)). The world happens around them, and so does history - the world changes, but not the vampire. The prop guy in the DVD extras says something along those lines as well, about vampires and demons being tied to archaic, medieval weapons because that's what they know. Of course, that doesn't explain why vampires turned yesterday don't use guns either... I guess the demon that takes over doesn't listen to the human part.

** Lets look at her most significant use of fire against vampires: It got her expelled, put a permanent mark on various records (both physical and hearsay), she had to move to a town where nobody knew her any more and the school was on top of the door to hell, nearly got her killed, and could easily have caused far more damage if there were a couple of unexpected factors. That might make her hesitant to use fire, except when it's being held on a conveniently pointy stick and the sharper end is already in use.

[[/folder]]

** The Master and Kakistos were (probably) cocky. Also, Kakistos was immune to stakes that aren't huge (like support beams)

**** WMG: The Third Slayer was Dana (the insane slayer who appeared in Angel Season 5). The Council found out, got her medical records, maybe even infiltrated the asylum the way they did with Buffy in ''The Origin'' so they could see for themselves, and concluded that Dana was too dangerous to be released. They might have considered offing her, but to do so could have sparked a war with the Scooby Gang, a war which the Council would almost certainly have lost.

**** Look, it can't go both ways. Either sexual preference is a Kinsey sliding scale subject to curiosity and restraint, and the fundy claim of "curing" gays is actually possible, or it's something that we're born and hardwired with, which means that both sides are equally hardwired. It's a contradiction to say that gay people can't choose to be straight, but that straight people could be bi if they'd just be more "open minded" about it. Personally, this troper tends to think it's hardwired, and that Buffy suddenly having a lesbian affair is just pandering to the Hollywood popularity of female bi "experimentation" (it's interesting how ''male'' bi behavior isn't equally vogue: imagine how the public would react if it was Shia [=LeBeouf=] crossing gender lines, instead of the usual hot, rebellious girl like Kate Perry or Lindsey Lohan?)

***** Well put.

**** (Other troper) Games, pranks, dares, and bets with sexual results and penalties that would sometimes be between between Ripper and one (or more) of his mates, yes. Sexual relationship, no.
*** I know people harp a lot on that whole Satsu thing, but I see many more things wrong with season 8 than that. Buffy not only stealing money to finance their operation, but doing it gleefully as well, the same Buffy who was so worried about abusing her powers in season 3. We have Willow's claim that when Buffy was brought back, the violence came back, but it never stopped. The buffybot was the only reason demons hadn't torn Sunnydale apart, and Willow claims they were happy, yet the opening of season six showed her to be very determined to bring Buffy back, and I got the impression she had been like that the whole time, but the comic seems to think that she was happier with her best friend dead and lover alive than she was with both alive. They throw out all of Faith's character development, and instead of wanting to make up for what she's done, she wants to just cut and run because it's too hard. She's made crazier than she was before, stabbing Giles in the arm just for touching her shoulder. And remember how they said early on that Dawn wasn't as strong proportionally as she was large? I like how they forget that just so Dawn can fight a giant mech. Because that's not totally out of place. This is only a partial list of things I find wrong with Season 8. I apologize, I know that ItJustBugs me is for actual questions, not just complaining, but I'm honestly baffled as to why I see so little criticism of Season 8, since to me, the flaws are blatant.
**** It's not Buffy who keeps Sunnydale safe, it's the demons and the vampires much larger than life image of her (especially with the beating a Hellgod thing).
**** Most of those 'flaws' are just you misunderstanding (or not paying attention). Willow: It stated, not that she was happier, but that she feels that she ''CHOSE'' Buffy over Tara. That if she hadn't brought Buffy back, Warren would never have gone after them, and Tara wouldn't have been killed. She's determined not to let that happen again. Not to be put in a situation where she has to chose between her lover and her best friend. She wants Buffy in her life, but she is never going to be forced to choose again, if she can help it. As to Buffy's robbing the bank, it's obvious that it is something that's going to come back to bite them in the ass in the future. And Faith DIDN'T "cut and run because it was too hard". She left because Buffy wouldn't give her a chance to make up for what had happened. It does seem they may have made a mistake with the whole Dawn thing, though. As to Buffy sleeping with Satsu, hello? Look up sexual experimentation, please.
***** You've got good points for all the issues, but the "Hello? Look up sexual experimentation, please" valley-girl talk isn't really helpful, particularly when the troper a bit above already gave a good explanation (I'm the one who was irked about the Lesbian subplot). I just took umbrage about the implied notion that me/people like myself with no desire to "experiment" are somehow closed-minded or the like. But, as I admitted up front, I'm ignorant about a lot of homosexual politics, and then the troper following gave a neat little rundown of it all. So cheers for that. More than likely I'm just finding issues that aren't actually there.
****** Not closed minded, just very close to or at the extreme "Straight" side of the human sexuality rainbow.
******* Incorrect. You glossed over several points. Willow DID say she was happy, and that the violence stopped, neither of which are shown to be true. The bank robbery, the point isn't that it happened, it's that it was out of character in the first place. It doesn't matter whether they'll pay for it or not, it still contradicts Buffy's character development. You also didn't pay attention during the Faith arc. The arc STARTS with her trying to pack her bags and go away before Giles catches her, and Buffy isn't said to have anything to do with it. Ironically, if all fans are willing to resort to weak justifications like that, it answers my question as to why it's popular despite its flaws.

** I rather resent the flat stating of "Season 6, 7 and 8 sucked." That's an opinion, not a fact. I loved season 6 and 7. I haven't read 8, but if I didn't like it I still wouldn't state that as fact. Remember: {{YourMileageMayVary}}
*** Agreed here. While they weren't the best of seasons, they certainly could've done worse. As for season 8...I dunno. Maybe AdaptationDecay but at the same time FanWank because so many fans wanted a season 8 that they're willing to make excuses for it anyway? Haven't read Season 8, so I wouldn't know, but that's my guess.
**** Some people found Buffy and Faith's interaction in season three to be at least slightly romantic, so that would do away with the problem of never interested in any women. Also Dawn was shown having enhanced strength. She was able to mess up the portion of the castle she hit. She just messed herself up to. Extra strength not extra durability. Considering the Buffyverse isn't exactly a place where Mecha are everywhere perhaps the MechaDawn(damn that was ridiculous) wasn't the most durable thing out there either.

**** Isn't the weapon in question older then recorded history? Maybe it preceeded the wordage, like the theory that the assistants for the Fowl family generated the meaning for 'butler'.

** She lacks some Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers, thus she isn't anchored to the ground like some super strong people. Vampires get the same treatment.

* I know, budget restraints, but plywood over the windows is not effective for the minions in Season 7. The -existence- of a window is good for vampires, but by then the Big Bad had lots more options.

* Also in Season 7, the beloved Giles returns and nobody gives him a hug? I was at least hoping for a handwave of the Big Bad saying 'I crafted a low level spell just to screw with your minds; I was bored'. But nothing.

**** You seem to have missed the parts where Buffy attempted to kill Anya and only stopped when Anya hit her Reset Button, Faith attempted to commit Suicide by Cop using Angel, and Season 8 is definitely building to something with Willow, given recent events.

******* One man's justice is another man's vengeance.

**** Are you telling me there isn't anywhere else with evil people trying to take over/destroy the world with dark whats-itz and who-zits? one person would never be enough to fight all the magical evil in the world.
***** No, but as we've seen she really isn't the only one to stand against the vampires, etc. That seems to just be theatrics on the side of the watchers council.(Drogyn being an example of someone else who can. Also most watchers are capable of fighting themselves if they have to.) The gift of prophecy guides them to the apocalypses that cannot be averted without their intervention.
**** Yeah but why aren't Faith and Kendra originally born near the Hellmouth? They eventually show up but what were they doing in their hometowns the whole time? Kendra and Faith were meant to be replacements and if Buffy had actually died and was therefore unable to kill ALL of those vampires and demons, Sunnydale would have become overrun with evil. I doubt their the evil was getting taken care of (which is unlikely, seeing as Kendra believed she was the only slayer). Shouldn't they have been sent to Sunnydale the second they were chosen to be slayers?

** It is implied that the watchers council have theit own agents around the world who deal with everyday threats, and the slayer would be called in when something major crops up. However, remember that Buffy is not a "normal" slayer. Kendra is an example of what a "normal" slayer is like, and with her we see that she is sent to sunnydale by her watcher when he senses that something big is about to go down. Once the apparent threat is taken care of, she leaves, only to be sent back once the true threat emerges.
*** Also, in "The Wish", we see an example of what Buffy would be like as a "normal" slayer. In this episodes alternate timeline, Giles has to contact the council to arrange for Buffy (who is on other assignments) to be sent to Sunnydale in order to deal with the threat there, with the implication that she would leave once done. The is how the council/slayer organization seems to be intended to work, only Buffy doesn't operate according to the council's orders and wishes to remain in Sunnydale. Luckily Sunnydale is on a hellmouth and is where most of the real bad stuff that a slayer would be needed for goes down anyway.

** Sounds more like a curse because as far as we know the slayer's parents have all been quite normal. And since most slayers die young, it's unlikely that its passed down genetically, especially since there is only one slayer per generation. How the girls are chosen is the real question. What happens if a slayer refuses to accept her duty? What if she physically can't? Is there a clause in the spell that makes the slayer physically able or are slayers chosen from those who are?
*** Until Joss states otherwise, I'm going to assume that Slayers are mystically chosen from amongst a pool of those who are physically able to do the job. What happens if the Slayer refuses the job? Well, Buffy tried that. Both the film and the show have her declining the job. Imminent danger and sense of duty changed her mind. For a better example, see Faith in the latter half of season three. She might be an extreme example, but of all the Slayers who've existed over the centuries it's not hard to imagine that one or two either ignored the call, or used it for personal gain. I'm guessing they didn't last too long.
*** Especially considering The Watchers Council's stance on Rogue Slayers, after a certain amount of leeway a slayer who ignored the call would be killed to call the next one.

* In the season 7 episode Potential, Dawn says that vampires 'feel pain, but don't let it deter them'. If this is true then how come Spike's chip can stop him from killing people.

*** Also, there are different components of how pain is processed in the brain. It's not just processed as a physical sensation but also as an emotional experience. It could be that vampires normally feel the physical sensation without the emotional reaction (kind of like someone on valium - they can feel pain but it doesn't bother them) but the emotional reaction part of the pain processing system is still functional and Spike's brain chip activated that system? (It could also be activated in situations where vampires feel pain from something that actually endangers them - after all, vampires seem to have a pretty normal pain reaction to being burnt by sunlight.)
** It could also be Dawn was just saying "Vampires are tough, and [[{{Determinator}} don't let pain stop them]] from trying to kill you." They feel pain, but have Demonic SuperStrength. It's not exactly complicated.

* This isn't really BtVS-specific, but applies to all vampires. Vampires die/dust if they get a wooden stake to the heart, right? But since vampires have no pulse, their heart doesn't actually have any biological function. So why doesn't some vampire get a vampire surgeon to cut him open and remove his heart. Then he'd be immune to stakes, right? Even huge great support beams. Throw a blanket over your head and it's as good as the Ring of Amarra.
** ...watch Angel. That actually happened in one episode. I can't remember the specific effect it had on the vampire though.
*** Invincible for a few hours, then inevitable death. Apparently vampires do need their hearts to live. Biology be damned, this is ''mystical''.
**** The canonical comic ''Tales of the Vampires'' had a vampire who replaced had his heart replaced with a silver one...which somehow let him go out in the sun and removed the inevitable death part of simply removing the heart, but still allowed him to be killed by decapitation and (presumably) immolation...it never really elaborated why it works like that or why more vampires don't do it.

** You seem to suffer from what I like to call "The Twilight Delusion" where you think love is a beautiful thing that always brings out the best in people and makes them happy. This is a completely untrue view of love. Love , like any other emotion, can be a bad thing. Some women who are beaten love their abusers, a stalker loves the object of his/her affection, etc. Just because two people are in love doesn't mean they are right for each other. And also, Buffy and Angel have a pretty unique situation. Under different circumstances, they might be able to make each other happy.
*** Lets let Spike sum it up: You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood — blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.
*** They don't always bring out the worst in each other - or no more than many of the other characters do when they fall in love. Eg: Xander and Cordelia, Xander and Anya, Spike and ANYONE he loves, and so on. I think Buffy and Angel's love was always complicated by the fact that they had sexual tension up to their eyeballs and no way to relieve it, and the way Angel was aware he was never going to be able to have her on a long-term basis. In Season 1 Angel had a guilt complex and Buffy was kind of immature, they were happy for a while in Season 2, but then when Angel went evil for a while both must have known that their relationship was a ticking bomb. It was complicated and difficult and was hurting them both intensely, so it's really no surprise that their love at that time was never going to work out. However, as Buffy says in S7, in the future... :)
**** Which isn't the point Buffy was making at all. Angel took the Cookie Dough speech to mean "Give me time and then we'll be together" when the point of it was that things change, people change, and there's no way of knowing who she'll be in the future or who she'll be with when she's become the person she's going to be as an adult. It was Angel that pushed the, "Who's going to enjoy cookie Buffy?" question, which Buffy answered with "I haven't really thought that far ahead."

*** And it's specifically Christian crosses. There was some episode where Willow made a reference to having to hide the crosses from her Jewish family, so obviously non-Christian symbols don't have the same effect. And it seems (unless Plot deems otherwise) that only crosses specifically invoked as a defensive measure worked (otherwise vampires would definately not be hanging around graveyards, Christian crosses are all over the place).
**** Unlikely. Spike seems to be harmed by a cross in a church in season 7, after he's resouled. I doubt that cross was put there for defensive purposes (although with sunnydale, you never know).

**** The watcher's council isn't a religious group. They are the direct descendants of the group that created the Slayer. They are (and always have been) truth seekers. The first thing you learn as a watcher is to separate fantasy and reality, remember? So when a watcher says something was created by the devil, I'll take them at face value on it. If it was made by an advanced demon, Wesley's response wouldn't be, "Yes, El Diablo Robotico," it would be "Yes, an advanced demon claiming to be the devil did indeed make a robot."

**** I'm just going to start by saying I'm an atheist and have been arguing just from an IU perspective. But this is TheDevil. A character that originally comes from Christian mythology. In other words the only proof the devil exists is from judaeo-christian writings. Even if you don;t think his existence proves beyond a doubt the existence of the christian god in the buffy verse, it goes a long way to show that he does exist. If there is no god but there is the devil that means there is ultimate evil without an ultimate good to balance it, and the balance between good and evil was a major theme of Angel.
***** The only evidence in our world is Judaeo-Christian writings. In the Buffyverse -- well, there's a bunch of luchadores who claim to have fought a robot built by the Devil (or possibly '''a''' devil -- their use of the definite article could have been due to familiarity with this individual). At the risk of repeating myself -- a being either claiming to be the Devil or assumed by the luchadores to be the Devil has made its presence known. You can only extrapolate the existence of God from ''that'' event if you accept Judaeo-Christian theology as fact

* This is probably the tiniest IJBM ever, but here we go: Season Six, Tabula Rasa. The gang loses their memory, Willow gets the idea of looking in their wallets for ID. But Buffy and Dawn ''don't have wallets''. Seriously? I know it's to set up the Joan/Umad joke, but come on. Dawn maybe, but Buffy's an adult with photo ID and bank-cards.

** Season six was a good idea executed poorly. Willow becoming addicted to power: good idea. Willow taking magical hits from a magic drug dealer: lame in an after-school special way. But season six still had a number of wonderful episodes. Season seven is widely disliked for several reasons. At the beginning of the season, the writers were trying to make the Scoobies quippy and fun, just like they were in earlier seasons. However, they weren't the same people anymore, and the dialogue just made them sound blithe and callous. As many tropers above noticed, people who do bad things got off lightly - Willow in The Killer and Me never expresses regret for killing Warren, Andrew becomes one of the gang (he goes from Spike S4 to Spike S6 in the course of five episodes), and Buffy says she'll let Spike KILL Wood just because Wood wanted revenge for his mom. And then the biggest problem is Spike - he's kind of insane early in the season, but even after he mostly gets his mind back, he still just acts like a whiny baby. He never talks about his guilt, and in the one scene that the writers were planning on making him do just that, Joss came in and rewrote it to be about how Buffy used him in the previous season(!) Really, the show becomes all about Buffy and Spike - she repeatedly says he's the strongest one the Scoobies have got, which seems slightly ridiculous since every time they've clashed with him, he's never won, and their soapy scenes just have not been earned. Not to mention all the major plot hole in the ending - Buffy's plan, by itself, would've gotten everyone killed, if not for the MacGuffin that Angel delivers to them. (On the DVD commentary, Joss all but says outright he didn't really have a great idea to end the show, since he used his series finale at the end of season five.)

*** They are fighting a war. You can't have infighting in a war. The only threat that they could use was death, so she used it. Also, I though they sounded fine, and like I said elsewhere in this page, if you regret killing a murderer, you should be tortured to the brink of death, revived, and have this done to you until you die of old age. Oh, and if Spike turned on them, think of someone who is already Caleb level strong, and then give him a power boost. Game over. Also, Andrew only really became part of the gang at the end, they still treated him like shit most of the time. Oh, and the Scoobies ARE better than everyone else. They are the ONLY people who can prevent the end of the world. That INSTANTLY makes them better than everyone else. I still agree with Faith's Want, Take, Have idea, as the law shouldn't matter when you are trying to prevent the end of the world (again).

** My take. I quite like Season 6. As noted above, it should have been "power corrupts", not "drugs are bad", and it certainly isn't the * best* season, but a lot of it is quite good. Season 7 is just bad. There's almost nothing worth watching in it- the only episodes with any merit at all are Same Time, Same Place and Conversations with Dead People (and the latter solely for the Buffy/Holden bits). Why? Mostly I think because the writers forgot the series was supposed to be light-hearted and not take itself too seriously and tried to make everything much too dark. The focus on the potentials (most of whom are not well-acted) and Buffy herself (who has always been one of the weakest characters) at the expense of the rest of the main cast didn't help. Buffy's endless pointless speeches are a particular sore point. The plot is also stupid- actually not the main problem, I don't think, but it doesn't help. The First was a stupid idea for an adversary from the beginning. The ubervamps were not scary and completely dull. And if we're nitpicking, how about the idea that you could spend days in a crowded house with someone and not notice they were **** incorporeal***** !!!! (used * twice* , please)

*** According to WordOfGod, The Master is only about 6-800.

**** It's a question of semantics. There isn't a correct or incorrect name for him, whether it's Liam, Angelus, Angel, the magnificent poof, etc. When Buffy tells him that he isn't Angel and he insists that he is, they're not arguing a case of what name she should call him, they're talking about the person that name represents. A name is, ultimately, just that: a name. Spike refers to him as Angelus a few times while he still has his soul; it doesn't mean he IS Angelus while he has a soul, it's just a name, and with the exception of Jasmine, names don't hold any power over the individual wearing them. Ultimately, fans refer to the evil Angel as Angelus because it just makes it easier to differentiate between the two. The show also started doing this after Angel's series picked up; you never heard Angelus referred to as Angel on his spinoff. There isn't any right or wrong reason for it; it's just simpler than "The Good Angel" and "The Evil Angel who wasn't Angelus because he lost his soul after he had regained it but was basically Angelus going by the name Angel".

*** Dru's insane. Also, the reason for it is because it's how it's done in {{Angel}}

* The way I understand it, a Buffyverse vampire is essentially a demon possessing a human corpse. This would imply that Angel and Angelus are two completely different beings. So why does everyone act as though the reensouled Angel is responsible for Angelus’s crimes? I'm thinking in particular of Giles's attitude after Angel returned in season three and Angel's own periodic bouts of intense guilt.

** There's a bit of dialog between Holtz and Wesley in Angel S3 "Loyalty" that gets at some of the question nicely.

--->WESLEY: If it's a sacrifice you require, take me. Angel's no more responsible for the crimes of Angelus than I am.

--->HOLTZ: Really?

--->WESLEY: Yes.

--->HOLTZ: And was it your hands that held down my beloved Caroline as she was violated and murdered? That wrapped themselves around my son's neck and snapped it like kindling? Where yours hands that clutched at my daughter as she was turned into a creature damned for all eternity?

** In a major aspect Wesley is right, the modern Angel is disconnected from the entity that performed atrocities. Yet there's also a lot of common links, material and psychological. Plus, people that have been profoundly hurt by Angelus aren't always rational. It's like the same problem of seeing a friend/lover turned evil except in reverse.
*** In a way, it'd be even ''more'' frustrating, finding out that the vampire who tortured, raped and killed the people you love is now an innocent, good man. You're denied justice forever, you're not even allowed to hate him anymore because now he's a different person. I can see how some sufficiently enraged victims would just shift their rage onto Angel instead and keep going. And since we know from ''Orpheus'' that Angelus is [[AndIMustScream conscious and trapped inside Angel]] all the time, torturing Angel and making him suffer does make Angelus suffer too. It's just that such vengeance requires torturing the innocent human soul in the way (something Holtz, at least, had no problem with).

*** Buffy isn't always right. She was willing to let the whole world die if it meant protecting Dawn, she refused to stake Spike in seasons four and five on the grounds that he's harmless despite him repeatedly and consistently proving otherwise on several occasions, she unchained ensouled Spike as a demonstration of her trust in him season seven despite the First's trigger for him to go berserk and kill everyone having not yet been disabled, she pursued Faith to L.A. on a pure vengeance kick and gave Angel hell for daring to try and save her, she has a consistent personal tendency to, when under the influence of a spell affecting multiple persons, believe that she's been unaffected due to some mystical Slayer immunity to magic that doesn't actually exist (see: Something Blue, Him), Buffy has been wrong or done the wrong thing on countless occasions. She's not a perfect, flawless hero, and her opinion on a matter is not an absolute truth. It's true that Buffy, personally, doesn't hold Angel at all responsible for anything Angelus ever did, but there's no reason to assume that just because Buffy believes it, it's right. Angel DOES hold Angel responsible for everything Angelus did, and I think he knows Angel better than Buffy does.
**** No one is always right. "X isn't always right" followed by a list of things x did wrong isn't an argument against x being right in this instance. Also, Angel holding himself responsible for Angelus's actions doesn't mean he actually is responsible. After all, is someone who has survivors guilt after their family is killed in a random electrical fire responsible for their family's deaths? One of the the recurring themes with the caracter is blaming himself. To belive he actually is responsible is to miss one of the character's central arcs throughout both shows.

* Why is it that Willow seems to completely forget her sexual attraction to men? Now, I liked Willow/Tara very much, but this bisexual troper is annoyed by this oversight. (Also, Oz was cool. Way better than Kennedy, way more alive than Tara in Season 7 and later. But this is aside the point)

** I thought death by [=Vampire/Demon/Spell=] did count. But mortals bringing mortals back from the dead is incredibly difficult (since the universe is stacked against humanity), so Buffy was the only one the Scoobies bothered bringing back.

* Speaking of which : Giles cover is his librarian job at the Sunnydale school. That's fine. However, since the school is a public building, vampires can enter it (and the library) whenever they damn well please, and do so repeatedly, whether it's to steal Giles' books, attack the Scoobies and what have you. Why does Giles keep his occult books there instead of his own vamp proof house, and why don't the Scoobies hold their briefing and research sessions there either? It's like they ''want'' to be raided.

*** Except the raids happen at night, by definition. When the secret sessions also happen. Kids spend a lot of nighttime in the library with the weird English guy with his weird books (that he orders through the school system, apparently) ? Nooot suspicious at all ;)
** Giles doesn't have a house, he has an apartment. That didn't look large enough to hold all the books. As for anybody noticing the timing of the sessions in the school library, the laxity and selective obliviousness of the Sunnydale authorities and school system is legendary. This only gets even more pronounced during season 3, after Giles has intimidated Principal Snyder into their arrangement of 'You give me what I want and pay no attention to what I'm doing, and I don't beat the living shit out of you.'

* Why didn't the gypsies who cursed Angel do more to keep him from being happy? It seems to me that for all their supposed hatred of Angelus that they do very little to keep him unappy- the only gypsy who makes ''any'' attempt at all to keep Buffy and Angel apart is Jenny, and her 'efforts' amount to convincing everyone that Angel should be the one to take the Judge's hand to wherever he was taking it, keeping Buffy and Angel apart for a few months at the most.. Also, why didn't anyone tell Jenny about the clause in the curse until after it was too late? Talk about closing the barn door after the horses have bolted! And if keeping Angelus unhappy and cursed was that important, why do we never hear from the gypsies again after Angel lost his soul? No attempts to kill/recurse Angel (unless you count Jenny's actions, which seemed to be more as something she did of her own volition than something the gypsies told her to do. And after Jenny died that was it from the gypsies; never heard from or saw them again for the rest of the series. What's up with that?

* Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that the Buffyverse is now [[TheUnmasquedWorld The Unmasqued World]], it did take [[WeirdnessCensor Sunnydale Syndrome]] to ridiculous levels and it makes for an interesting direction for the franchise. What bugs me is that we don't know what caused it. Has it been since the destruction of Sunnydale? It seems unlikely given that Angel season five is set after that. Was it LA going to hell? Probably the most likely option but it really bugs me that we're never given an answer or actually shown it.

*** Non-relevant, but * person who painted their Spike Action Figure's nails*

** Besides, the Initiative was actually doing pretty well so long as it focused on fighting monsters [[spoiler: and not creating demon-cyborg supermen]]. Buffy's complaints aside, the lesson didn't seem to be "modern military sucks, old-fashioned slayers rule" so much as "EvilIsNotAToy, so stop trying to run tests on it and just kill it already". Or at least, the lesson was eventually toned down to that: when Riley returns later, he's still a government agent using high-tech weaponry to take down demons, and he seems to be doing a bang-up job at it.

* Dawn really got screwed over. Every other avatar of a primordial force in the Buffy universe can at least ''do something'' a normal human couldn't (see: Illyana, Glory, arguably Cordelia etc.). Dawn's blood opens a ''single particular portal'', and for some reason that also makes Buffy's blood close it. You think as a manifestation of the Key she'd at least have the ability to magically open and close any lock, door, portal, or gate anywhere at will or something along those lines.

*** At the beginning of season 6, Dawn doesn't believe she's the Key anymore. Presumably it was a one-time thing and she had exhausted all of the mystical energy. By the end of the show, Dawn was pretty competent in combat and could perform magic by herself.
** On a side note: [[XMen Illyana]]? You got the wrong primordial force, bro. Maybe you meant Illyria. ;)

**** well, Buffy did at least ask some of the local girls. But also if they actually used the simple act of creating a Slayer as a rape metaphor then Buffy, Kendra and Faith were all raped in the show and Kendra and Faith loved it. More likely it's just meant as an examination of the Shadowmen's mindset. Force the power on one girl. Hell they could have given Buffy the thing that contained the demon and sent her back. But they were stuck with the old way while Buffy came up with somethign new
**** The difference was that [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the potential slayers were already potential slayers]]. Making a random girl into a slayer is not the same as activating a potential slayer, which is an entity with some distinct mystical standing in the Buffyverse. Willow merely gave these girls access to something that was already theirs, and already a part of them. Further: since the state of girls and women has improved [[{{understatement}} just a bit]] since the stone age, these girls can truly ''wield'' the power of the slayer, unlike Sineya, who was ruled by it. Sineya didn't even have language, while the modern potentials had culture, community, and sense of their own personhood that made them stronger than their common spiritual ancestor. The first slayer's suffering, while tragic, is now a part of their heritage, and more than just something to honor and respect; heritage is something that can be made use of. Hence Buffy's remark about the Scythe, which was the physical embodiment of the slayerdom: "It’s old, it’s strong, and it feels like it’s ''mine''."
***** There are girls who would not have become Slayers if Willow hadn't made them Slayers. It's splitting hairs to say that this doesn't count as forcing the power on them because they "had it already". They didn't have it, not in the form that messes up lives. Forcibly activating a potential power that most would otherwise never see is ethically the same thing as just forcing the power on them--if one is rape, so is the other. It's true that Buffy made that statement, but she can't channel the feelings of the other Slayers. Not to mention all the third parties who are affected by the fact that she and Willow just gave a bunch of random people the equivalent of invisible guns with unlimited ammunition.

********** Sure, but if you want to take that approach, a ''dead'' slayer is better than a murderous, insane slayer, too. Not being catatonic constitutes an improvement in Dana's condition if we're at all worried about ''Dana''. Buffy and Willow didn't make Dana crazy, nor give anyone any nightmares, nor take away choice from any of the potential slayers in the same way that the Shadowmen did to Sineya. ** This was kind of lampshaded on Angel. Connor met Faith for the first time and said something along the lines of "So, Slayers, I've heard of you. How come you are always girls?" and Faith responds "I don't know. Maybe we're just better at it." Doesn't answer the question of course.

** Plausible Answer: Vampire Bait. Girls are stereotypically seen as the weaker sex and most vamps seem to be male. Could be that vampires underestimate her and see her as abnother easy meal, when BAM! she fights back and stakes them with her incredible strength.
It is Joss Whedon's unashamed AuthorAppeal.

*** Except that they were all active military.
**** Where was that mentioned?

* Am I the only one terribly TERRIBLY disturbed by the way everyone treats Willow in season 6? She took great risk to use the return spell on Buffy and was egged on by the other scoobies to do so, and yet Giles lays down the hammer on her...HARD. They would all be dead a few episodes in to season 6 if not for Willow's spell. Further, Willow's "problem" with magic only became an actual problem when everyone treated her like shit for harmless spells she cast for the benefit of everyone else. She pulled Buffy back at great expense to herself. She cast the decorations spell for Anya and Xander just to make them happy. We never see her just casting spells wily-nily for her own selfish purposes. Yes, she made the wrong choice using the forget spell (both times) but the way everyone treated her was wrong. Her forays into the magic drug at Rack's only happened because Tara treated her like shit because she cast the decoration spell. Am I missing something here?
** It's season six. After Tabula Rasa, Season six sucks, and everything the characters do is just to make excuses to pour more and more angst into the craptacular season. I think they were trying to lean on the success of ''{{Angel}}'' by making the show DarkerAndEdgier, without bothering to have decent CharacterDevelopment, the thing that made DarkerAndEdgier ''work'' in Angel.

**** I hated the way Willow was treated in season 6 and felt like a great deal of her problems were helped along by Giles and Tara's attitudes. For one thing they never offered any explanation of why what she was doing was bad. Tara was shown as to be upset by Willow's magic use before the arguement that led to the memory erasure. But she never tried to convince Willow is was bad. She just told her it was and expected Willow to give up something she plainly loved without further explanation. And Giles was an ass. He spends most of his time in season 6 ready to leave and when he isn't he's berating Willow. Who was the Scooby Gang's big weapon without Buffy and he certainly never expected her to be brought back.
***** In Tara's defense, she did try to tell Willow why her use of magic was wrong. Part of the proplem was, Willow kept erasing Tara's memories of the arguments. As for Giles, he had a point that necromancy was dark magic. If Willow couldn't see that, it really doesn't bode well for her.
****** Very dark. Committing a blood sacrifice in order to call upon the spirit of a god of the underworld (Osiris, to be precise) in order to tear a soul free from the Afterlife and bind it back into a mortal vessel is some SERIOUSLY black mojo. But it's not just the necromancy and the memory erasure. Willow's problem is something that's been hinted at way back in season 3, and remained consistent: it isn't that she uses magic, it's that she abuses it. It's her answer for every problem. It's her solution for any emotional turmoil. Need party decorations? Magic! Trying to find a friend lost in the spooky house? Magic! Boyfriend left you? Magic! Sexually attracted to a good friend who you don't want to be? Magic! The ensouling Angel spell opened a gateway to power she did not have the discipline to properly managed, and people have been calling her out on her abuse of it since way back at Xander telling her they don't need a love spell to not be attracted to each other. She just has never listened.

** I always thought that the cross and holy water and whatnot were made symbols of divinity * because* of their ability to repel vampires. How this explains why older religions don't have anti-vampire divine objects is beyond me.
* What I can't stop wondering is whether a lowercase "t" would have any effect. I just can't shake the thought of a vampire reading a book and wincing at every "t" he came across.

* Angelus' Irish accent and Angel's lack of said accent has always bugged me. Why doesn't he still have an accent, when Spike and Dru still have theirs?

*** Spike speaks with ''a'' British accent. Sepcifically the one living William spoke with in "Fool for Love." It's a subtle but noticable difference.

* Is it just me or is the Buffy/Spike house-destroying sex scene in “Smashed� the most spectacularly unsexy thing ever to hit television? It bugs me that people hold it up as the epitome of hotness - it just made me want to gag.

** A) Riley was a complete dullard when he was first introduced. It's hard to support a relationship when one character is so boring. B) He was an old-fashioned sexist who never really got over the fact the * gasp* a girl is stronger than him. C) He became a [[ReplacementScrappy Replacement Relationship Scrappy]] after the popular Buffy/Angel romance. D) As he was criticised for being to boring in season four, season five saw him going "dark" in a rather lame way. E) This "darkness" consisted of getting suckjobs from vampire whores. F) He whined repeatedly in season five that Buffy wasn't paying him enough attention while her mother was dying from a brain tumour and a hellgod was trying to kill her little sister. G) When Buffy found out, he acted like he did nothing wrong and gave her an ultimatum. H) The show started ShillingTheWesley, including Xander in a particularly OOC moment. So yeah, that's why nobody liked the relationship, or Riley himself.

*** Also, being Buffy's healthiest relationship [[MockTheWeek is like being voted Most Attractive Man.... in the burns unit]].
*** How does Buffy "bear half the blame" for her relationship with Riley failing? ''He'' is the one who couldn't cope with his girlfriend being stronger and more durable than he was; ''he'' is the one who decided to try and find what she saw so attractive in the night...by going out and getting suckjobs from vampire whores. And he bitches that he's not getting any attention from her when she clearly has a hell of a lot on her plate already, what with her mother being seriously ill ''and'' a hellgod being after her sister. Buffy, on the other hand...tried to hold back on her strength and act more feminine, to try and ease the concern she could sense from him. She was openly devoted to him and never cheated on him (despite her mixed feelings about Spike; in fact, her main argument when Riley admits that he's jealous after Angel breezes through Sunnydale is "have I ever given you any reason not to trust me?"). She tried to cut back on the slaying, to try and treat it as just a job (the way it was to him) but failed because it's ''not'' a job for her - it's a calling; she can't just roll over and sleep after hitting a quota for area patrolled and vamps staked for the night, she has to know that she staked all the vamps she could find and covered all the ground she could that night. And when her mom got sick ''and'' Glory started gunning for her sister? She acted the way she normally does under stress: she closed down and withdrew from just about everyone. Everyone else knows she reacts this way and refuses to let her withdraw from them; Riley...just sat around and moped and whined.
**** That was pretty much Buffy's problem. She was so busy withdrawing from the world that it never occored to her that all Riley wanted to do was be a good boyfriend and comfort her. Because he was pushed away, he felt useless and unloved. Also take into account the fact that Riley has to get used to get used to not being on that super-soldier serum. It's seen as unreasonable that he asks for comfort from his girlfriend because Buffy has problems of her own and as such cannot take the time to bother with him.

* Okay, ''Band Candy'' ... adults regress to age 16 on eating magic chocolate. Granted. So why does Giles become Ripper? He didn't become Ripper until he went of the rails as an undergraduate - given that he was take up to Oxford in the <quick calculation> Sixties (or earlier, depending how old he was meant to be) he would have needed to be a fairly well adjusted and studious public schoolboy.

** YourMileageMayVary. Personally I thought that Buffy was being a domineering bitca that was jumping into stupid plans out of fear of Caleb. Her last "plan" had gotten Molly killed, and many other girls injured. The next plan she suggested was exactly the same, yet she wasn't willing to listen to anyone else's suggestions. She needed a great big slice of humble pie.
** Not just Molly. Buffy's rushed plan got two girls killed and many injured. And Xander lost an eye... not that this stopped him from following her for the rest of his life (despite not wanting her to take the lead in that particular not-too-clear-minded moment).

* A Buffy/Angel combination: when the Master, aged about 600-800 according to WordOfGod, died in season 1 of Buffy, it took him at least 15 seconds to go poof in a long process of shrieking and vaporizing (as opposed to the usual 2-second drill). And even then, a skeleton remained which had to be crushed later. In season 5 of Angel, however, a ''freakishly'' ancient vampire called The Prince of Lies, who was a play on Nosferatu and was reportedly as old as darkness itself, got dusted by Angel and turned to ashes just as easily as any other vamp. Not even a skeleton or anything. CanonDiscontinuity, anyone?
** It's never been directly stated that a vampire's durability is affected by his age. While it's almost certainly a factor, there are probably many other elements. The Master, for example, was steeped in magic, and had spent the best part of a century testing the magic of the Hellmouth. Besides that, who knows the truth of the Prince of Lies' reputation? I rather like the interpretation of (the similarly Nosferatu-inspired) ''Shadow of the Vampire'', in which the vampire himself can no longer remember his origins or age.

** We don't know that all of Anyanka's wishes were made using that specific amulet. Perhaps their power fades over time, or they're only good for a certain amount of wishes, and Anyanka needs too keep using new ones. Indeed, since Giles got this info from a book, it's implied that his might have been done before.

** It always made sense to me that the amulet caused a snap-back in "The Wish" because shifting between potential time-lines wasn't just a one-shot spell. It required a constant will of effort to prevent the timeline from snapping back into place (And indeed, into time; once the spell ends, no time is seen to have passed). It wasn't a standard wish, and therefore the amulet was essential to its continued effectiveness.
Of course that theory hinges on Anyanka never having granted a wish like it before, which is highly unlikely ("I wish I'd never met him" seems like a likely request) and it's also sort of implied that she'd done it before ("I had no idea how much of a difference ''this'' spell would make" or something). On the other hand, that might also explain why this spell was different to the previous ones and required so much more effort to maintain; this one changed massive swathes of lives, not just two.
Hell, considering how much changing the past is A) frowned on and B) stated to be really freaking hard if not actually impossible (Albeit not in those exact words, but they make reference to "changing the past" when they talk about resurrection) at other times in the series, it seems strange that Anya gets a free pass to remake history as she sees fit. It's possible that any reality altering spell would only be temporary/would only last until the spell was terminated (i.e. by destroying the power center).
As a final possibility, the spell might not have been complete when Giles destroyed the power center. Possibly it takes a certain amount of time for the new reality to take prescience over the old one; once that time is up, destroying the power center does nothing. As an added bonus, this would explain why Cordy still remembered the old timeline (Seeing as the usual point of wishing you'd never met someone is that you wouldn't remember, surely). Once reality finished asserting itself, she would have forgotten along with everyone else, leaving aside the point that she would also have been dead.

** The school wouldn't work. A season two episode has Angelus explicitly state the schools motto invites anybody in. It also doesn't work on public places, as you don't technically own them. If you mean the magical protection spells willow uses occasionally, they take a sustained effort against force (one was beaten down in season 7)

*** In the episode of Angel where he fights a blind MonsterofTheWeek, it's shown that vampires create heat when they move.

* In ''Normal Again'', Buffy says that she had gone into an asylum for a few weeks after she met her first vampires. When was this? It oughtn't have been between the movie and her move to Sunnydale, because she had already been in Slayer Mode for some time and there were many witnesses to the whole thing, and it would be an incredible coincidence if she was attacked by vampires and survived prior to becoming a Slayer. I've read the canon version of what happened, but I don't have it to check if there were any fewer witnesses to the attackers actually being vampires (and no undusted bodies were in the ruins, or she would have been imprisoned, or at least not allowed out of the mental hospital). However, even in the canon version she had been training with Merrick for some time, and while it would be possible that she had a small breakdown after [[spoiler: Merrick died]], she would have had to have been completely ostracised by the people who had been terrorized by the vampires to not have ''any'' confirmation, if any who had been near them during the attack (as opposed to cowering in a corner far from the "gang of PCP addicts") had survived.

In ''Enemies'', how did [[spoiler: Giles get the Mayor to call on a soul-stealing demon sorceror that owed him a favor, or contact the exact demon that the Mayor had called upon]]? The former would have been a huge XanatosRoulette with some seemingly unaccessible knowledge, the second would be a huge coincidence with some seemingly unaccesssible knowledge.
** Unless he just turned up one day in the Mayor's office and said "I heard you had a problem..." BTW, Angel was frickin' awesome pretending to be soulless. Definitely a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.
** Here's how he could do it without it being XanatosRoulette: [[spoiler: Giles being the smart guy that he is, he has a lot of connections that just seem to keep popping up that are well outside of what the Watcher's Council apparently has access to. He probably starting keeping his ear to the ground for anything the Mayor might be planning regarding Angel after Angel came back, since he knows when Angel is Angelus that's really bad news for everyone. As soon as he heard the Mayor was looking to flip Angel or something similar he called in the favor of the soul-stealer to offer its services to the Mayor.]] Which also makes the whole episode one of Giles' [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Crowning Moments of Awesome]].

* So in The Gift Buffy's suicide closes the dimensional portal even though Buffy is (as far as we know) not a Key and Dawn is still bleeding. Isn't that case of YouFailLogicForever? Even if Dawn is made of Buffy, a conclusion that Buffy pretty much pulled out of her ass, this still wouldn't have made Buffy a Key, would it? Isn't Dawn a combination of a mystical Key energy and a human? Presumably the Key part comes from her energy days, not Buffy. In other words, the cause and effect chain is in the opposite direction - if Buffy was made of Dawn she would have a case but not vice versa. And even if Buffy was somehow a Key, the blood of Dawn was still flowing when the portal closed. It would have been nice if Buffy had tried to, you know, put some bandages on Dawn first and see if that wouldn't close the portal...
** I like how Anya lampshaded the confusion in a later episode, remarking that she never really figured it out either. But here's my take on it. Since Dawn opened the portal while she was still in human form, with her blood, the portal was attuned during its opening to Summers blood (had the Key been in its energy form during the opening, that wouldn't have been the case - it happened only because Dawn stayed human through the process). So Buffy's blood resembled Dawn's enough to either work and close the portal, or to at least make the portal go haywire and collapse. Either way, the world gets saved. As for how Buffy thought of it, it was just a crazy guess, like "hey, if it wants her blood and she's my sister now, maybe mine's close enough". She wasn't going to kill Dawn, and the world as we know it was about to end, so she didn't have anything to lose by giving it a try.

Even if crosses work as a repellent based on their representation of the sun (as listed later on this page), or as representations of pure, unselfish, self-sacrificing goodness (explained as that in some other series, this troper forgets which), holy water should not work. Granted, we never see vampires getting splattered with water from the Ganges, but if holy water provides specific protection from evil, and is one of the few things that can harm a vampire or other demon, then Catholic Christianity (or perhaps Eastern Orthodox - Protestant holy water is used in baptisms, rather than for an amulet effect) must be presumed to be the correct religion, as it is the only one that can destroy evil with items that their priests have blessed.\\

* This might be a case of AuthorOnBoard with Joss Whedon's personal opinions on religion. The only character in the Whedonverse who is portrayed as being a Christian is Kate Lockley from Angel.

--> '''Buffy:''' You got here fast.
--> '''Riley:''' Actually, I'm just late for church.

* What happens to vampire food? I [[NoBodyPoops didn't think the vampires' digestive systems worked properly enough to let food go all the way through their system]], but that they only absorbed the blood and a few easy-to-absorb chemicals like alccohol and (debated) nicotine. They don't breathe, and their blood doesn't pump (which means drunkeness should be more of a psychological or mystical thing, such as a psychosomatic effect or a libation to the dead), and I thought it had been stated that vampires' digestive systems basically acted as a tank in which to store blood until they could absorb it. Do they purge their stomachs once it gets too full of stuff that isn't blood, like the vampires who eat but don't digest in some other works? Do they absorb everything, and the normally unusable stuff that can be digested is just burnt for calories or mystical energy? Does their demon poof it away? [[ImprobableFoodBudget Why does Angel even need a food budget if they don't]] ''[[ImprobableFoodBudget need]]'' [[ImprobableFoodBudget to eat]]? It makes it more confusing because Spike (possibly in addition to Angelus) has been shown urinating, but that was mostly to show respect and could have been completely voluntary, and it works completely differently, anyway (stomach to blood to kidneys then expelled, instead of just being pushed through a glorified tube while being broken down, with little bits absorbed along the way). Mostly, I just want to know what happened to Spike's Wheatabix.
** Spike has, on one occasion, mentioned how emaciated vampires look(though that was pleading for blood, so I dunno if it's true), so I would guess that what they eat is just converted into energy. Also, Angel does need to buy blood, so I'm not sure about that one. He doesn't go around killing people, or rats, and I think that even if they don't /need/ to eat, it's at least more comfortable to.

** [[LyricalDissonance Lyrical Dissonance]]. This troper [[YourMileageMayVary loved this]], and thought that in this case this dissonance had a dual function: first, it conveys Buffy's desperate attempts to pretend that she is glad to be back from the beyond (when actually she is miserable). This struggle is crucial to early sixth season until Buffy reveals at the end of OMWF that [[spoiler:she was in heaven, not hell]]. She may appear happy, but actually listening to her or paying attention to her will reveal that she's pretty disturbed (just like this song). I think its second function (though this may just be me) is as a reference to such musical theatre greats as [[StephenSondheim Stephen Sondheim]], who I believe Whedon is a fan of. Sondheim uses the happy music/sad or angry lyrics technique to great effect with some frequency. For example, a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gyl8a140Tc song about murdering people and baking them into pies becomes a cheery waltz]], or a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuTtl0cetAA cynical look at marriage becomes upbeat]]. More examples of this trope can be viewed on its page, of course, but I think a good example of its success is the acclaimed musical [[AvenueQ Avenue Q]], from after OMWF, which used this effect throughout most of its score-- [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIJJxL9utow&feature=related starting with its opening sequence]].

** The show does actually say that the vampire personality is related to the human personality - explicitly in one case, in Doppelgangland, when Willow is freaked out about Wishverse Willow being so evil and skanky and gay. Someone tells her not to worry because the vampire personality has nothing to do with the human personality, and Angel goes, "Well, actually..." Buffy shuts him up, but it's actually been pretty clear from the first episodes. If vamp!Jesse has nothing to do with real Jesse, why does he go out of his way to get Cordelia? Vampire personalities are shaped by the personality of the body they get stuffed into, just with extra added evil and a rejection of social norms that allow them to express repressed elements of their personality. For people who are basically good, this involves a rejection of their despised previous persona (Jesse, and Spike, although it takes Spike awhile.) For people who are already evil or borderline bad or just plain mean, like Liam or Harmony, they just get extra more so. Wishverse Willow is a lot like real, souled Willow after she becomes dark. "Bored now", anyone? With Drusilla, she's already crazy when Angel finally kills her, and she's not repressing anything. So Vamp Drusilla is still crazy but with extra bonus obsessing over dead things, blood, etc. -- This is all basically FanWank, I guess, so YMMV.

** Also, Spike wasn't capable of being good until he regained his soul. Everything he did up to the end of season six was completely selfish, either because he loved Buffy or he needed the money or protection. Which was why Buffy trusted Spike in The Gift the most, as everybody else had the lingering doubt of whether it would be better to kill Dawn to save the world, while he had no qualms about the world being destroyed. Vampires can't choose good, the soul allows them the possibility to choose good. Without the soul, they're just purely evil. If Spike didn't love Buffy, he wouldn't have searched for a soul. So it wasn't rehabilitative therapy,

**** And I thought the reason Buffy trusted Spike to protect Dawn is because just a few episodes prior to the big blowout, Spike almost gave his unlife against Glory's interrogation in order to do exactly that. Not because "Oh, he's evil, so he's cool with the apocalypse," but because he's already PROVEN he'll die for her.

* Maybe someone else he knew owned the gun so it was the only one he could get his hands on.
** It was probably his dad's hunting rifle or something. Also, it should be noted that rifles and shotguns are a lot easier to get than a handgun. Handguns usually require special permits and registration, but rifles don't.
* The meta reason is so that we (and Buffy) would suspect him of being a mass murderer. Neither of us would suspect him if he went to the tower with a handgun, since that's not gonna kill anybody up there. With a rifle though, it seemed definite that he was gonna start picking people off.

* In ''Conversations With Dead People'', The First Evil uses the image of one-shot character Cassie to talk to Willow, claiming to have messages from Tara. Why Willow can't talk to Tara directly is Hand Waved early on, but we know that The First is lying at that point. So why can't it impersonate Tara? The First was only trying to [[{{HannibalLecture}} mess with Willow's head]] after all, surely it would have been more successful if it did.
** The easiest explanation and one which explains pretty much all of The First's actions in season seven is that The First is simply a moron who wouldn't know what a good plan was even if it came and hit it on the head.
** The meta reason is that Amber Benson declined the offer, but in-universe, maybe because denying Willow the joy of seeing Tara again, and tying it to her being a murderer, was deliberately meant to add to her sense of despair: if it wanted Willow to kill herself, dangling the opportunity to see Tara again like a carrot on a stick must have seemed like a good strategy. And using someone Willow didn't really know gave the First more leeway to say things that Tara herself wouldn't say (that Willow eventually saw through it anyway shows how quickly the First might've blown it if it'd tried to impersonate Tara).

* I looked through the Chronology of Buffy and Angel, and Cordelia was on vacation with the Groosalugg at the same time that Xander and Anya's wedding. Why wasn't she invited? I couldn't even find a meta example for that.

** Anya already knew about Xander and Cordy. The fact willow broke them up was one of the reasons Anya and Willow didn't initially get along. That aside, Cordy wasn't invited for two reasons: 1) She is his ex and it would be weird. 2) As far as we know no one has even bothered talking to cordy in over a year. (in Disharmony). What would be the point in inviting her. On a related note, Angel wasn't invited because Xander hates him, and Wesley wasn't invited because ''everyone'' still hates him for the Faith incodent.
** Has Cordelia ever forgiven Xander, anyway?'

** Hm. In "Band Candy" and "Gingerbread," the adults of Sunnydale have been magically driven insane. Given that Faith is both mentally unstable and older than the rest of the cast, maybe she was part of the problem rather than the solution. Faith on band candy is a terrifying concept. In ''Lover's Walk,'' as I recall there really wasn't a point where it would have made sense to try to contact her.

* In season six, Buffy takes a gun away from a bank teller and says, "These? Never useful." Bullshit. The Initiative used ordinary guns to great effect. But guns are evil, and, in his own words, "Magic kicks science's ass." This contradicts the end of season two, in which MugglesDoItBetter. The Initiative is a big, fat case of DesignatedVillain. Whedon, please. Could you try to be subtle? And your "Magic > Science" bit is a [[BrokenAesop Broken]]SpaceWhaleAesop.

* The Buffybot was built to be a sexbot. While it makes senses that it can fight well, because Spike wanted it to resemble the real Buffy, it does not make sense that a sexbot lacks nipples.
** She doesn't have nipples? I can't find anything suggesting she doesn't have nipples.
*** First episode of season 6, when it is destroyed.
*** She's not barechested. She's wearing a shirt.

** Angelus: This '''super evil''' and '''sadistic''' vampire can enter the Slayer's house. Oh my god, What's the worst thing that could happen? Will she die? Buffy doesn't do the reasonable thing she could do (moving to someone else's place, someone who didnt invite Angel in), but that's totally OK, because the most evil thing our sadistic super-strong villain could come up with was to ''draw her while she slept''. Furthermore, Angel lost his soul right after he slept with Buffy. And she was still there when he came back. He had an opportunity to kill her, instead, what did this sadistic, '''devoid of humanity''', killing machine do? ''He behaved like a jerk!''

*** You just aren't thinking like a sadistic 200-year-old vampire with a quasi-romantic obsession. Angel's plans did include killing Buffy eventually, but torturing her psychologically wasn't a just means to an end. It was his idea of ''fun''. If he rushed to close the deal, then he'd have to go find something else to do for next few weeks/months/years. If Acathla hadn't come along and changed his plans, he'd probably have slowly escalated his tactics until Buffy [[BreakTheCutie was driven madder than Drucilla]] and ''then'' killed her, unless she dusted him first. A girl like Buffy only comes along once a lifetime. You kill her ''right''.

** Glory. Partly justified, as she's insane, doesn't have full control over her body, and doesn't know who or even what the key is. Still, once she's tortured Spike without results, why didn't she try someone else? Couldnt she get her mooks to abduct someone else among the slayer friends until she gets the information she wants?

** Warren: Why did he have to come up with all sorts o'wacky plans to get rid of the slayer, instead of doing what he, you know, [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim ended up doing anyway]]? Why, if he couldnt just shoot her didn't he build some sort of killingbot, which he was perfectly able to do?

[[/folder]]

<<|JustBugsMe|>>

* Leaving Anya at the author for an absolutely BS reason, no one, AT ALL, calling him out on this, and then Xander having the unmitigated gall to judge Anya for having sex with Spike in the immediate aftermath? W.T.F? This was the exact moment when I got turned well and truly off BVTS.

** Besides the fact that "Cursed until you find true happiness/love" is {{OlderthanDirt}} you can also think of it as a two-part curse. Angelus is cursed with a soul to spend eternity struggling with guilt and remorse for his crimes; should he ever actually be able to move beyond his guilt and achieve true happiness, his soul is revoked, he reverts to Angelus, and any chance he has at maintaining that happiness is forever destroyed. As stated above the gypsies that cursed Angelus were not nice people.

******* Not even necessarily when a lover is caught in the crossfire. Just an episode or two before Willow snapped, Xander went after Spike with intent to murder when Spike and Anya had a sympathy bang.

* I'm with the original troper. Willow and Tara's relationship was bound up in their magic right from the beginning of the relationship - and there's actually another example of Evil Willow = Lesbian (or Bisexual) Willow: Wishverse Willow. "I'm so evil, and skanky. And I think I''m kinda gay!" Magic as Willow uses it is deeply bound up in femininity and sexuality and mother goddessy stuff. "Wicca" was practically used as a euphemism for "lesbian" in season 4. When Willow goes off the rails it's definitely a case of psycho lesbian.