I really love this comment! I love the point that Willow wants to earn power, not have it handed to her. It's interesting, because Willow also shows a lot of signs of wanting to cut corners, and do things the "easy" way etc. But this comes from Willow's being convinced that the rules are silly and don't/shouldn't apply to her, not that she is actually short circuiting any genuinely necessary steps.
Your point is also taken about Willow not being taken seriously and how that contributes to her increase in power. Giles in particular actually does pretty badly by the kids at times, I think; you can see it in, e.g., Anne, when he's off hunting Buffy and leaves Willow, Xander and Oz to do the slaying, or in Something Blue when he talks about how terrible it is for Willow to be blowing off her "responsibilities" by not coming up with a spell to loosen Spike's tongue, which she is doing for Giles entirely pro bono. I think this comes from a lot of the same unconscious assumptions that most of Giles' crappy behaviour comes from: he's a Council man, and the cognitive dissonance of including civilians in when they shouldn't be involved compels him not to take them as seriously as he should, even when, on a personal level, he likes them (Willow especially, who is definitely his non-Buffy favourite). Giles really doesn't try very hard to stop Willow from doing magic: I'm looking forward to tracking exactly what the ratio of "Willow, th-this could open a door you can't close" to "Willow, y-your responsibility is to do a very dangerous spell for us right now" is for Giles (and of course, it would never occur to him that he's sending mixed signals!).
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Your point is also taken about Willow not being taken seriously and how that contributes to her increase in power. Giles in particular actually does pretty badly by the kids at times, I think; you can see it in, e.g., Anne, when he's off hunting Buffy and leaves Willow, Xander and Oz to do the slaying, or in Something Blue when he talks about how terrible it is for Willow to be blowing off her "responsibilities" by not coming up with a spell to loosen Spike's tongue, which she is doing for Giles entirely pro bono. I think this comes from a lot of the same unconscious assumptions that most of Giles' crappy behaviour comes from: he's a Council man, and the cognitive dissonance of including civilians in when they shouldn't be involved compels him not to take them as seriously as he should, even when, on a personal level, he likes them (Willow especially, who is definitely his non-Buffy favourite). Giles really doesn't try very hard to stop Willow from doing magic: I'm looking forward to tracking exactly what the ratio of "Willow, th-this could open a door you can't close" to "Willow, y-your responsibility is to do a very dangerous spell for us right now" is for Giles (and of course, it would never occur to him that he's sending mixed signals!).