Well, when you get right down to it I'd say it's a lot healthier to have an inappropriate relationship with an older mentor figure than with a clammy reanimated corpse that's going to turn evil and try to kill you. Yet, Buffy/Giles still seems ickier than the canon romance.

Let's face it, Buffy/Angel is not so squicky because he LOOKS like a reasonable age for Buffy (or did at the time). Appearance counts for a lot, unfortunately for some of us.

I don't think age is a squick, unless one party is too young. I don't believe in too old, but I do believe in inappropriate interactions, and those have to do with relationships rather than age differences.

Also, Angel didn't act as old as Giles.

And yet, Giles/Xander? Not squicky at all.

Though I get that Giles really only had a quasi-parental relationship with Buffy. (I just wanted to see "Giles/Xander" on my screen.)

Giles really only had a quasi-parental relationship with Buffy

If she'd had a father in place, I could agree with the "only" and the "quasi." As it played out, he was more like a stepfather that just never had a Relationship with her mother, I think.

The thing is, Giles isn't and never was Buffy's father. And someday, she's going to be 30, 35, and the gap between a mature woman and an older man is not going to be as wide as it is between a teenager or young 20s and an older man.

And they have much in common, much that no one else on earth knows or shares, a uniquely shared POV in many cases.

Honestly--and I don't lay this out often because it's not the popular view on the board--slash simply for the novelty or the manipulation factor squicks me far more than an age gap. I think the age squick belongs to a very young POV. The squick isn't wrong, it's just one end of a spectrum. The other end runs to, as in toward, or perhaps through, pairings or groupings of entities regardless of species, gender, age, number of appendages, or lack thereof. And physical sex is (a very hot and enjoyable, granted) only a single way of expressing a multitude of emotional states.

Hrm. Sorry. Rant over.

I think Steph's "only" was meaning yes-with-Buffy, no-with-the-others, rather than a qualifier on the B/G relationship. Or am I reading that wrong?

It's because of the type of relationship they've had, that it squicks me. Giles was an authority figure over Buffy (as well as a father type, and that, granted is a squick for me too, but that's not because of age, it's because of roles), and for him to get romantically entangled with her takes away something lovely from his character that I don't want to go missing.

I think Steph's "only" was meaning yes-with-Buffy, no-with-the-others, rather than a qualifier on the B/G relationship. Or am I reading that wrong?

You are reading it right.

But I didn't need to say it twice.