From: Murray mjsmith@tcd.ie
What about the Vampire Willow-- that seemed to be a big hint, esp. when Angel pointed out that people's personalities don't change when they
become
vampires (contrary to what Xander thought).
Well, Buffy said in the relevant episode that a vampire's personality had 'nothing' to do with the person it was. Angel replied 'Well, actually...' before being stoped by her from going further. My own take on the exchange is that a vampire's personality has _something_ to do with the human whose body it uses; but it still isn't the human.
But still, certain aspects of the human linger, and why shouldn't this include the orientation? We don't know what Angel was going to say, or why she stopped him (possibly he was about to say something about orientation?) Furthermore, the fact that he did say something also seems to be a writerly hint. If Vampire Willow was meant to be totally divorced from our Willow, then why did Angel leave room for doubt-- and why did he leave room for doubt on the sexual-orientation front as opposed to any other?
Obviously, the vampire has the memories of the human, looks like and acts like the human, and can pass itself off as that man or woman; but that doesn't mean that it subscribes to that person's code of conduct.
"Code of conduct" is IMO a different thing to sexual orientation.
It appears that _all_ vampires deliberately went out of their way to mock the ethics of the humans who supplied their bodies, including their sexual ethics. Due to this, and being immortal, my opinion is that _all_ vampires get up to all kinds of sexual behaviour, including bisexuality.
I don't particularly know the Buffy canon well, but where do Angel and Spike get up to bisexuality (OUTSIDE of some viewers' slash zines-- down guys :)!)?
But what we've seen of the vampires we know before and after seems to suggest that there's some link between the two lives, and not just a tenuous or mocking one either. Angel, for instance, is recognisably the same person before, after, after getting his soul back, and when briefly human in Angel S1. Angel went back to kill his father, whom he hated in his former life; if there had been no connection between Angel before and after, why would he have bothered to take the trouble (or if he had wanted to mock the earlier Angel, why not spare the man he hated)?
Similarly the vampire Willow and Xander were both visibly Willow and Xander in other ways-- Vampire Willow still used Willow's quirky speech tags, for instance, and in the episode where VW winds up in the real universe, her attitude to the football jock is the same as our Willow's-- VW is just rather more uninhibited about displaying it :). Also, VW and VXander were together, as they were at the time in the real universe, suggesting that at least some of VW's sexual tastes stay the same. Why shouldn't bisexuality be one of those things?
The vampire that looked like Willow might be bisexual; but that didn't mean that Willow Rosenberg was bisexual, any more that the vampire's torture and murder of people meant that Willow was a torturer and a murderer.
Ah, but IMO people, even the best people, have the potential to become torturers and murderers under the right circumstances; sorry to keep banging on about Nazis (I'm currently reading a lot about them) but quite a lot of people who were perfectly decent under other circumstances committed horrible acts under Hitler. The AU depicted was sufficiently horrible that *Buffy* had become amoral; why not Willow as well? Now, not to imply that torture and bisexuality are in any way related :)-- but if the AU was less inhibited about bisexuality than ours, VW might have discovered her bisexuality earlier than our Willow.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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Addressing Murray and Fiona: I'd say that Alternate Willow precisely displayed potentials within Willow, and that Willow is far more willing to express those potentials when they result in a loving relationship with another young woman than when they result in violence. Actually, I thought the development of the Willow/Tara relationship was very well handled, including Tara's being kind of dorky--an important part of growing up is having relationships with people your friends don't quite approve of and vice versa.
-(Y)
Dana,
I'd say that Alternate Willow precisely displayed potentials within Willow, and that Willow is far more willing to express those potentials when they result in a loving relationship with another young woman than when they result in violence. Actually, I thought the development of the Willow/Tara relationship was very well handled, including Tara's being kind of dorky--an important part of growing up is having relationships with people your friends don't quite approve of and vice versa.
I personally thought that Tara in the fourth season was rather insipid. She was nice, but like a bland version of Willow in the first season, without the latter's wit and humour. At least (having watched the first half of the fifth season so far) she's getting better as a character, the same for Anya.
Murray
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Dana Shilling -
Fiona Moore -
Murray