botias | Joss Slaps His Fandom Jus' a Little

When Joss decreed that a freshly bereaved Buffy would spend her down time making doe eyes at morally dubious European playboys, it was greeted with a lack of enthusiasm that may be the most universal thing I have ever observed in this fandom. Some folks ran for the border, seeking asylum in previous seasons or alternate 'verses, but others stiffened their upper lips, rolled up their sleeves and made it work.

One explanation was simply that having a fling is what sexually liberated, well-adjusted young women do after saving the world and burying their latest star-crossed love. Buffy has her needs after all, and is long overdue for some frivolity.

Others explain the Immortal as a crisis of character brought on by grief and the vertigo of being cut loose from one's destiny and everything familiar. A phase quickly grown out of, sometimes even regretted.

Some folks, leaving themselves wide open to charges of shippyness, prudery or bizarre flights of fancy that could have no place in canon, didn't even follow Joss that far into the wilderness, but have Buffy working undercover, or half-heartedly dating the Immortal while yet faithful to lost love, or... have it not even be Buffy at all, but a double (triple?) that doesn't even really look like her very much. And here we discover the pain of being more royalist than the king. Better jossed than executed by the new regime, I always say.

It turns out that Joss, when he decides to dabble again in the Buffyverse (even though really, he does not have the time, insanely busy you know) he can't be bothered. With a couple of lines, the 'real' Buffy discards the storyline with all the ceremony of a used tissue. As if!

I think people can be forgiven for feeling a bit stung.