I think it's part of the (screwy) world-view that a lot of people have: that the only lessons worth learning in life are taught through pain and suffering.
I think that's what it is, and that's what I have such a problem with. Within the Buffyverse, we basically saw pain take a bunch of well-meaning children and turn them into cold cruel heartless unpleasant nasty adults. Even Spike, who one could argue grew through suffering, really (IMO) grew despite suffering. If he'd gotten positive reinforcement instead of abuse during S6, he never would have had that mental breakdown or "needed" that stupid boring soul.
And even for pure dramatic purposes, constant pain just isn't all that interesting. If there aren't genuine happy periods to contrast with, the painful stuff doesn't have much impact. Constant pain is just as boring as it would be if everything was happy all the time.
have conspiracy theories dancing through my head in which Joss forbade/threatened/blackmailed Benson and Busch so their relationship had to be concealed from the public so as to not undermine the lesbo-wicca-womyn-power-twoo-wuv message of Willow/Tara.
LOL! See, I doubt it, because as much as Joss loved to bask in all the accolades he got for W/T, he really personally didn't give a crap about the lesbian/womyn power message. As he made abundantly clear in Seeing Red.
Re:
I think that's what it is, and that's what I have such a problem with. Within the Buffyverse, we basically saw pain take a bunch of well-meaning children and turn them into cold cruel heartless unpleasant nasty adults. Even Spike, who one could argue grew through suffering, really (IMO) grew despite suffering. If he'd gotten positive reinforcement instead of abuse during S6, he never would have had that mental breakdown or "needed" that stupid boring soul.
And even for pure dramatic purposes, constant pain just isn't all that interesting. If there aren't genuine happy periods to contrast with, the painful stuff doesn't have much impact. Constant pain is just as boring as it would be if everything was happy all the time.
have conspiracy theories dancing through my head in which Joss forbade/threatened/blackmailed Benson and Busch so their relationship had to be concealed from the public so as to not undermine the lesbo-wicca-womyn-power-twoo-wuv message of Willow/Tara.
LOL! See, I doubt it, because as much as Joss loved to bask in all the accolades he got for W/T, he really personally didn't give a crap about the lesbian/womyn power message. As he made abundantly clear in Seeing Red.