“That both Riley and Warren are attracted to independent young women is an interesting contradiction that serves to valorize the agency of the "girls" and to underline the static macho masculinity of those guys- they cannot or will not change, therefore they cannot keep the girl.”

“Good partners offer the "reward" of romance, but these girls cannot have power and a successful relationship, partly because of the demands of serial narrative, but partly because they seek agency in their romance relationships”

“...the new man cannot exist without the old monster masculinity. All the new men are aware of how masculinity is constructed and therefore how they differ from its traditional form...new men do not have to "lack" the attributes of real men, and therefore make them more appealing to viewers, but it also closes down some of their potential for a revisioning of masculinity.”

“I suggest that across the seasons of Buffy there has been an increasing exaggeration of bad girls...In some ways, instead of challenging these stereotypes of bad girls, the show has emphasized them. This matches the development of the show's good girls.”

“The show tries to offer its young female characters postfeminist identities that break down gender boundaries and hybridize gendered characteristics to produce new versions of power and heroism...being a woman involves work, work of constant self-(re)construction. Buffy's female characters are represented as always working in this way, whether to come to terms with power, or to maintain a "successful "good-girl" identity...”

“Transgressions is the attraction of any dead boy, but as with openness of other more minor characters, this functions both to enlarge and restrict their potential as alternative gender representations. Dead boys exist through binary opposition; they are always already Other”

“...the character's failure to move with the times leads to death, suggesting the anachronistic nature of this [hyper/stereotypical] type of masculinity.”