In WttH, Buffy tells Willow to "seize the day," and Willow immediately goes out with a vampire and nearly gets herself killed. This is Willow's arc in a nutshell: Buffy (and Giles, and Jenny) open up a world to Willow that she could never have found herself, and Willow, emotionally and physically unprepared for it, gets in over her head and nearly dies. Buffy encourages the clearly upset Willow to be more like Buffy, and Willow wants to be more like Buffy (and with her later sexuality in mind, you can read some sexual attraction to Buffy in there as well). Buffy is not responsible for what happens to Willow, but when she says to seize the day I don't think Buffy realizes exactly how little Willow is prepared either a) for the world of vampires (because Buffy is the slayer, and can handle them), and b) the world of men (because Buffy is cool and popular and worldly, and can handle them). Willow isn't prepared, and doesn't have the Hero Cred of Buffy's instincts, which is why her gradual power-up both literally (with magic) and metaphorically (her increasing confidence) lead to disaster, because she doesn't have the inherent tools that Buffy does. The show deals with this difficulty (Buffy is an everywoman hero, and she is alone) again and again, particularly with Dawn, and Chosen is a response to it--but of course one that season eight is in the process of (perhaps awkwardly) deconstructing. Similarly, Xander (and this is more "The Harvest" than WttH) is smitten with and threatened by Buffy and what she represents (strong woman, hot, able to take care of herself!). Does a strong woman necessarily mean that men can't be strong as well? And what role do men have in a narrative with a strong woman? The different (partly because of gender, partly just because they are different characters) stories with Xander and Willow end (in the TV series) with Willow even more powerful than Buffy (though still not the Slayer and thus still not the icon/protagonist) and Xander accepting his role as being less powerful, but I think both of their arcs are interesting reactions to Buffy.
4. It's pretty hard to parse Angel right now. But even if he wasn't written at the time with much clarity, the fact that Joss et al. went there later on and were as willing as they were to trash Angel's stated motivations works well with their decision to make him the anti-hero they did. Joss knew in Becoming that he was going to restore Angel's soul and make us all feel terrible for him when he dies, so having Angel spy on Lolita-Buffy, and making a liar out of him for his previous statements, seems like a deliberate choice and not an insignificant one. It's a bit similar to your comments about Darla: from very little information an entire backstory was constructed which intensified the Darla/Buffy parallels. I like your brother's observation about Angel vs. Buffy--Buffy accepts her burden when she doesn't have to, and Angel believes strongly that he has to and still doesn't. Even in season six, Buffy still goes out and slays, even if you could say (less generously) that it's more about pretending to be normal and okay at this point than out of pure morality. (But that's okay--what is pure morality, anyway?)
5. Willow's presence also is probably part of the reason Buffy never considers Xander all that seriously, anyway--note that in "Prophecy Girl" Buffy brings up Willow when Xander's trying to ask her out, and in "When She Was Bad" Willow is granted equal focus in Angel and Willow reaction shots to The Sexy Dance. Buffy knows about Willow's feelings, and recognizes that Buffy has a lot more options than Willow does, and doesn't want to deplete one of the only ones Willow has. But I really like talking about the B/A/X triangle with Xander as the heroic one and Angel as the Bad Boy type.
6. Ha! Spike enters very early in Buffyverse overall (especially for me who more or less sees season one as preamble), but it's important that the stage was set for him.
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4. It's pretty hard to parse Angel right now. But even if he wasn't written at the time with much clarity, the fact that Joss et al. went there later on and were as willing as they were to trash Angel's stated motivations works well with their decision to make him the anti-hero they did. Joss knew in Becoming that he was going to restore Angel's soul and make us all feel terrible for him when he dies, so having Angel spy on Lolita-Buffy, and making a liar out of him for his previous statements, seems like a deliberate choice and not an insignificant one. It's a bit similar to your comments about Darla: from very little information an entire backstory was constructed which intensified the Darla/Buffy parallels. I like your brother's observation about Angel vs. Buffy--Buffy accepts her burden when she doesn't have to, and Angel believes strongly that he has to and still doesn't. Even in season six, Buffy still goes out and slays, even if you could say (less generously) that it's more about pretending to be normal and okay at this point than out of pure morality. (But that's okay--what is pure morality, anyway?)
5. Willow's presence also is probably part of the reason Buffy never considers Xander all that seriously, anyway--note that in "Prophecy Girl" Buffy brings up Willow when Xander's trying to ask her out, and in "When She Was Bad" Willow is granted equal focus in Angel and Willow reaction shots to The Sexy Dance. Buffy knows about Willow's feelings, and recognizes that Buffy has a lot more options than Willow does, and doesn't want to deplete one of the only ones Willow has. But I really like talking about the B/A/X triangle with Xander as the heroic one and Angel as the Bad Boy type.
6. Ha! Spike enters very early in Buffyverse overall (especially for me who more or less sees season one as preamble), but it's important that the stage was set for him.