VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [9], 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 11:47:03 11/02/05 Wed
Author: Finn Mac Cool
Subject: Re: Our difference is just too fundamental I guess
In reply to: manwitch 's message, "Our difference is just too fundamental I guess" on 05:25:03 11/02/05 Wed

Considering Riley was unaware of what the Initiative was up to and left it because of all that stuff, I don't think you can blame him for that any more than you can blame Buffy for the actions of the Watchers' Council. Also, as I stated in another post, Riley had no way of knowing that looking after Dawn was anything more than babysitting duty for Buffy's convenience.

Now let me ask you something: replace Buffy and Riley in a number of their scenes. Riley gets wounded fighting a vampire alone, only surviving because Buffy saved him from, and, while he's healing, he insist that Buffy not go patrolling alone. Wouldn't that come off as rather patronizing to you? Wouldn't it seem to indicate that Riley didn't respect Buffy? So why is it not patronizing for Buffy to do it to Riley? I think part of what the Buffy/Riley relationship showed is that relationships where one person has more power than the other, where one person cares about their partner more than their partner cares about them, and where one doesn't entirely respect the other, problems arise. Just because the genders of the people in each position are the opposite of what they typically are in real life doesn't change the dysfunctionality of it (I'm not saying that's all the relationship was about, but that's part of it).

Finally, Riley said that he'd only stay if Buffy gave him a reason. While I agree with you that he was wrong to cheat on Buffy, he viewed her as being at least partly responsible for driving him to that in the first place. As Riley saw it, Buffy was at least as responsible for ruining their relationship as he was. He wasn't talking about forgiveness with his ultimatum as he was a promise that Buffy would change her ways so they wouldn't be led to a situation where one of them would want to cheat on the other. You say Buffy shutting down wasn't conveyed very well, but wasn't that one of the main points of the season, as Buffy stated to Giles on more than one occasion? That she felt she was "turning to stone", that "a Slayer really is just a killer", and a bunch of other stuff about her feeling disconnected from the world?

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.