Well, I think the message Joss has sent is that sex is bad, particularly if it's kinky. But I seem to remember somewhere I heard or read him saying something to the effect of, when it's all going well, we HAVE to mess it up, or there'd just be happyhappy and no drama. Or something more coherent than that.

I had a plot bunny once, which was really more of a rabbit's foot, small and disconnected, in which Buffy actually caught on to the rules of the Buffyverse – that relationships were always doomed, that nothing good lasts (which, ok, I'm all over impermanence as a philosophical concept, but stuff falls apart fast in the Buffyverse). And having realized what the rules were, she just gave up on trying to build anything, like a relationship. She wasn't despondent or depressed – she just didn't want to play that game anymore.

caia