I'm glad you felt there was a build up--I spent a loooong time determining the order of these snippets, and wanted the last one to feel just as real as the other ones.

artially because I usually think of that velvet jacked as wildly OOC (it always strikes me as something Oscar Wilde would wear), but this is making me consider the idea that the Angel that would wear that jacket--that ridiculous, twitchy, S1 Angel--is somehow less affected than the Angel of later seasons. Or is more real to Buffy, because that's how she first knew him.

crazydiamondsue is writing a funny parody fic, Welcome to the Wheels o' Rama, in which Buffy thinks Angel is ultra-cool in his velvet jacket because the fic is set in the 80's. I think the velvet jacket is great for S1 Angel because velvet has had several flings, especially 70s-80s, in which it was "cool" for certain groups. Not realizing it'd gone out of style, Angel carefully buys all kinds of velvet and garish pink lipstick (his make-up artist is always amazingly bad with his lips) and thinks he's gonna look all decked out for Buffy. Instead she thinks he's a little dorky, which turns her on more because he manages to be a total fashion reject and at the same time really hot (and the same can be said for S1 Buffy).

without flinching away from the reality of the fights show very simply that they're not deal-breakers.

Exactly what I was going for, thank you!