A Time for JW to Speak About Consent Issues in Buffy S8
Spike arrives at the end of #35 of Buffy with the words "You want to put an end to this Twilight crap?" If only there'd been a Spike to stop it before it started, but sadly, he is only a character in Jossverse.
Buffy, however, within s8, did try to put an end to it, by leaving the field of battle & accepting de-empowerment in an attempt to save the Slayers from the overwhelming odds in a world where sentiment had turned against them in favor of vampires, tho' she knew that Twilight would probably still be pursuing.
Some who've claimed that Buffy did consent to spacesex in #34 point to the panel where she lunges for Angel to initiate sex, while others saying she didn't point out that she's propelled by the glow-meta-Natural-force propelling her to be with Angel. "She went for me first, so she must've consented."
But Buffy tried to get out of the situation she'd been placed in by Twilight, or by Angel's collaboration with Twilight, all through the season, even going to an extreme to safeguard the lives of those she'd put in danger through the Scythe spell to begin with. Even though she decamped -- the equivalent of leaving a party, say, with your friends when you feel violence brewing & suspect that you & they are targets -- Angel continued to pursue her, in order to amp up the degree of her powers, in order to have them ascend to all-powerfulness together.
Angel pursued her after she'd left, after she was trying to shake him off, and continued the battle in order to get her metaphysically drunker.
It remains guesswork how JW, so absolutely sensitive to problems of sexual assault that he didn't want Buffy and Spike shagging for fear of the spectre of a soap opera character marrying her rapist, miss this? He still hasn't addressed the concern in any manner, which is making the problem worse.
A month has gone by, and four months will pass, before even the first installment of an answer is given. This is far too long, and the line-crossing has been far too explicit and far too transgressive, for Joss to say "Wait and see how I resolve it." If he reserves his right to stay silent & not to offer any more spoiling of the last issues of the season, nothing can jar him from that, but apart from following Buffy's example and leaving the rest of the season alone, I don't see an alternative.
Meanwihle, the most feminist section of Joss' audience is radically uprooting & re-examining everything that even contains a whiff of what happened with this story arc.
It's time for Joss to speak.