I think "clean death getting your head chopped off by Lorne's relatives" beats out "having your soul eaten by a dead Old One, so it can walk around in your body and torment all your loved ones."

Hmm...yeah, it's debatable. By that logic Tara would have been better off going off w/ her family thinking she was a demon in "Family" and Anya would have been better off staying a vengeance demon in "Selfless" or even "The Wish", since neither would have died then.

And I think having loved ones that an old one can torment is better than having no loved ones to grieve (except her parents).

Is it about how you die, so much as how well you live before you die?

I came very close to dying a couple years ago. (Pulmonary embolism.) I decided that even if I just "wasted" the rest of my life sitting on my couch watching tv, I wanted every minute of it.

If Fred had died on Pylea, she would never have loved Gunn or Wesley, never crushed on Angel, never known herself as a hero, and never gotten revenge on her old professor. Instead of dying under a cleaver as meat, she died a hero, in her love's arms. Would any of them have traded knowing Fred for not being tormented by Illyria? I doubt it. Besides, Fred not being there would not have stopped Illyria from coming back. They'd have simply used another vessel.

And I don't buy for a minute that Fred's soul was really destroyed. Not in the Whedonverse. lalala

Is it about how you die, so much as how well you live before you die?

Sorry if I'm about to take this board to a dark place, but I had this discussion with DH before he left for Iraq. To me, even if he dies a horrible death (beheading, burned, etc.) it won't diminish how he lived his life which is the most important to me, the one who survives him.

Having said that, I think how you die is important too, particularly for the one dying. I would like to die in a way that is either beyond anyone's control, or within my control, but not in someone else's control. IOW, to me, both Fred's potential death (at the hands of the pyleans) and her actual death (at the hand of Illyria) were the kind of death I would want the least.

Woo-hoo! Ita and Zenkitty (sorry to hear about your near death a couple of years back, but way to bring in a real-life situation to back up your point) hit the nail on the head!

Has anyone seen the movie Shadowlands about C. S. Lewis's relationship w/ his wife who died of cancer? There's a line in there that goes something like "Love now. Pain later. That's the deal we make."

That's an awesome movie, WDC, I loved it.

I loved the part in Shadowlands where Lewis realizes he's never known the first thing about pain, for all he's been lecturing on how a Christian should face it, not until he loses his wife.

Great movie.

That's an awesome movie, WDC, I loved it.

Me, too. I've always had an intellectual crush on Lewis, and Hopkins made him so tender and sympathetic yet still sort of crusty, and stuffy and thud.

and thud

Oh, yeah. I've always had a bit of a writer crush on C.S. Lewis, so having Hopkins play the role (and he's one of my actor crushes) just made the movie that much more swoon worthy.