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[frelling_tralk]

Eek it’s been quite a few months now since I’ve properly visited LJ, I’ve mostly been on Twitter this year and really lost track of this site I’m afraid, but I came across this article today and thought it was interesting after the many fandom debates there have been on this question

Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator would make Willow bisexual in

Comments

[eiffels]

I don’t even think I have you on Twitter! What’s your handle? I’m wwonderstruck there.

[frelling_tralk]

I’m not particularly original, I use the same name everywhere online pretty much lol, so it’s FrellingTralk over there as well :)

[author_by_night]

... I just realized something. I've been reading your screenname as "frelling_talk" the whole time we've been friends.

[frelling_tralk]

I found out a while ago that a lot of people read it the same way actually! Idk it’s just a term from Farscape that I thought would be funny to use as my online handle around *gulp* 18/19 years ago, and I guess that it’s just sort of stuck because I feel like this is the name that I’ve established for myself online, even though I suppose it’s more the norm now to use your real names and real photos for profile pics

[author_by_night]

Hope that you're doing well! (Apart from everything going, although I hope you're doing okay in that area too.)

(ETA: Ignore my little spiel, I misunderstood something.)

I was a teen back then and the concept of bisexuality was understood, but it was definitely more common for people to just land on "confused" or "very very closeted" or "just a phase." I feel like that's unfortunately still a problem, if much less so with more and more media representation.

[frelling_tralk]

I was in the fandom from around season 5 time, and I do remember exactly the same discussions going on back then as well with people assuming at the time that New Moon Rising had portrayed Willow as bisexual, and so people definitely really picked up on the first time that Willow said, ‘gay now’. Huge debate has been going on since the beginning really on that topic, so it’s not like it would have been unheard of even in the early 2000’s to make Willow bi, but at the same time I can understand what Joss is saying here

It would have been a huge misstep to follow up a relationship as groundbreaking as Willow and Tara with Willow dating a guy in season 7, even if they also established that her attraction to women hadn’t gone away, so I can certainly understand why they felt it was important to establish once and for all that Willow was gay and end the series with her dating Kennedy, even if the execution of that left something to be desired imho

[author_by_night]

Oh, if that's what Joss Whedon was saying, I can see why they wouldn't have had her with a man. Especially not in the last season. I think it would be one thing if they'd shown her having an interest in both genders, but undermining Tara by having Willow be with a man... yeah, that wouldn't have gone over as well.

people assuming at the time that New Moon Rising had portrayed Willow as bisexual,

Yes. I rewatched that episode recently, and NMR definitely portrays Willow as really considering Oz or Tara. It's a real choice for her, and I love that about it. (It's also an example of love triangles that work.)

The other thing is that while Hollywood is very liberal and progressive in some ways, in other ways it's pretty far behind. I feel like media has always been like that, sometimes testing established societal boundaries, other times staying a decade or more behind. Having Willow in a same-sex relationship in and of itself WAS a pretty big deal, but apparently having her be bisexual was too big of a step?

[frelling_tralk]

I mean honestly I don’t know if the writers ever thought that much about are we saying that Willow is actually gay or bi before season 7. They had Willow quipping about being gay now, but was that just Willow making the point that she’s in a gay relationship? I didn’t feel like the writers had entirely figured out what they were trying to say until Him definitively stated that Willow would need to remove RJ’s penis and work around it, whereas in season 5 she is still expressing interest in both April and Dracula, in season 4 she is torn between Oz and Tara

[kazzy_cee]

Twitter got too political for me recently, so I've been avoiding it..... Nice to see you here :)

[frelling_tralk]

Thank you 😊 I try an avoid politics talk if I can tbh, Twitter is mostly just me reblogging fandom stuff really, although I have also found it a much more hostile environment than LJ sadly.

[infinitewhale]

Sometimes I wish I was less cynical. The way they went so overboard about the gay stuff makes me not buy this. It only reads to me like 'Oh, I totally would have done that if society could handle it!' Who was pressuring him? Certainly not the WB since they were worried about Will being gay, supposedly.

Then when he did those crappy comics, after the satsu publicity stunt, he again went out of his way to make it known Buffy is straight, y'all. Straight. Faith, who most see as bi, that wasn't explored in the comics, either.

[frelling_tralk]

For Joss to say that we weren’t ready for that back then doesn’t entirely make sense to me either, because most of the viewers were already assuming that Willow was meant to be bisexual and just fell in love with the person, the concept of bisexuality did exist back then and it wasn’t that big a deal. If anything it was the writers having Willow start to proclaim that she’s gay now that caused the most hated discussion and arguments from what I remember. The Kittens would have felt betrayed if season 7 had seen Willow go back to dating men though after everything, so I think that’s what Joss was thinking of when feeling the pressure to not make it look like they had meant for Willow to just be going through a phase and was back to dating guys after losing Tara in the way that she did

[infinitewhale]

the concept of bisexuality did exist back then and it wasn’t that big a deal. If anything it was the writers having Willow start to proclaim that she’s gay now that caused the most hated discussion and arguments from what I remember.

That's what I mean. It wasn't society. It was a certain part of the fanbase. Which, OK, I can understand that. W/T WAS a big thing for people, being one of the first lesbian relationships on US TV and all. I just don't like the wording used if that's what he meant. It wasn't society not being able to handle it. It was really just fan service when you get right down to it.

[frelling_tralk]

Yeah I don’t know, but surely if someone is homophobic then it won’t make much of a difference if Willow calls herself bisexual or gay, both would be equally unacceptable in their eyes? And wider society if you like were hardly clamouring for Willow to not be bisexual either, most viewers were far more bothered about how can Willow call herself gay when she’s obviously bi

I definitely think that Joss is thinking more in terms of not wanting to inadvertently undo the positive representation of Willow and Tara by having Willow go back to dating guys. People were already upset enough about Tara dying in the way that she did, so the writers must have felt a lot of pressure to end things on a positive note for Willow given that she was one of the earliest examples of a tv character coming out and dating another woman. Interesting really that Joss doesn’t mention the killing of Tara controversy at all when discussing their choice to make Willow gay instead of bi

[rogueslayer452]

Oh boy. This is going to fuel the fire even more with how contentious the subject of Willow's sexuality has been in the fandom throughout the years

[frelling_tralk]

I thought the same thing! It’s a subject that people can take very personally, so I’m quite surprised that Joss wanted to get involved in it after all these years to imply that Willow would have been bisexual if only audiences were ready for that. If that’s really what they wanted to portray, but were supposedly just worried about giving anyone amo to describe it as a phase, well then they could have just left it to the audiences imaginations and not had Willow say anything one way or the other about being gay or straight? Many viewers were already taking for granted that Willow was bi anyway, the writers were the ones who made the choice for that character to instead describe herself as gay on quite a few occasions.

Seems a bit disingenuous to now come out with well we would have made her bisexual if it was being made today. People were still aware of the existence of bisexuality in the year 2000...

[rogueslayer452]

well then they could have just left it to the audiences imaginations and not had Willow say anything one way or the other about being gay or straight?

Exactly. They should have just played it out as such initially, that they wanted to focus on Willow and Tara's relationship without adding any labels to it and allowing audiences to come up with their own conclusions. While I don't think it would've stopped the fandom debates, it wouldn't be as severely intense as it has been and it certainly would've been easier as an explanation that they didn't want to have any specific labels instead of flip-flopping now with this excuse, because that's what I'm reading this as. An excuse