Now you're dead to me. Sarah Connor is the most interesting female character, hell character period, in the history of interesting. Buffy I love like a daughter but Sarah is everything.
In the early seasons Buffy is only 16, her occasional reaching for protection and her complaints about her missing normal life seem to me to reflect a wish to go back to being a child not to become a damsel. Childhood is a biological state we grow out of, damselhood being a social construct not so much. Even as a child Buffy impresses Giles as the most capable one he's ever known. Even her relapses are ambiguous:
Angel's coat isn't a big woolen fatherly overcoat, it's a leather jacket - the very definition of bad boy. Halloween is about wanting to be the kind of girl she thinks he would have liked it's echoing his inferred latent desires not hers and her joyous relief when that particular spell ends "I'm back" is palpable. She goes to his place in WML part one to hide, not to be protected and in part two she saves him (because no-one messes with my boyfriend). In Suprise she goes to Angel's flat because she's afraid for him, he's the one that needs protecting. She's afraid again form him, of what will happen to him, when he's planning to take the arm on an overland trip.
Even in the earlier seasons and certainly by the later ones Buffy needs a man not to save her but for her to save. In S8 she gives into Angel when he plays the vulnerable card, when he admits to being terrified when all but begs her to try this thing because he can't be happy without her. In #35 when he offers her their own personal picket-fenced in universe, (safe, happy, no more deat,h no more fighting, just him) she immediately senses that it's a trap and can't get out of there soon enough. Brings him along because she's still trying to save him, give him a chance to redeem himself for whatever he's done. Buffy's problematic fantasy here isn't Angel the knight in shining amour, it's Angel the damsel, the man she has to persuade he might be worth saving.
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In the early seasons Buffy is only 16, her occasional reaching for protection and her complaints about her missing normal life seem to me to reflect a wish to go back to being a child not to become a damsel. Childhood is a biological state we grow out of, damselhood being a social construct not so much. Even as a child Buffy impresses Giles as the most capable one he's ever known. Even her relapses are ambiguous:
Angel's coat isn't a big woolen fatherly overcoat, it's a leather jacket - the very definition of bad boy. Halloween is about wanting to be the kind of girl she thinks he would have liked it's echoing his inferred latent desires not hers and her joyous relief when that particular spell ends "I'm back" is palpable. She goes to his place in WML part one to hide, not to be protected and in part two she saves him (because no-one messes with my boyfriend). In Suprise she goes to Angel's flat because she's afraid for him, he's the one that needs protecting. She's afraid again form him, of what will happen to him, when he's planning to take the arm on an overland trip.
Even in the earlier seasons and certainly by the later ones Buffy needs a man not to save her but for her to save. In S8 she gives into Angel when he plays the vulnerable card, when he admits to being terrified when all but begs her to try this thing because he can't be happy without her. In #35 when he offers her their own personal picket-fenced in universe, (safe, happy, no more deat,h no more fighting, just him) she immediately senses that it's a trap and can't get out of there soon enough. Brings him along because she's still trying to save him, give him a chance to redeem himself for whatever he's done. Buffy's problematic fantasy here isn't Angel the knight in shining amour, it's Angel the damsel, the man she has to persuade he might be worth saving.