"Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after” (BTVS [Giles] “Lie to Me” 2.7). As a television show that intently interrogates and pushes back boundaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer engages many social, literary, psychological and philosophical issues with honesty and integrity. It should come as no surprise, then, that Buffy developed a positive representation of a monogamous, sexy, and serious lesbian relationship with Willow and Tara. Nor, perhaps, should it come as a surprise that when Tara was killed at the end of season six and Willow went on a path of vengeance, Buffy looked into the mirror--and the reflection was fuzzy. I propose to trace the intertwined paths of a particular history negative lesbian representation, the history of Buffy’s tendency towards darkness and emotional torment, the identity politics involved with a queer representation, and the author himself. These potent and ambivalent forces create the interpretive conflict that lies behind my reading of the death of Tara. It is not my intent to suggest that either side provides enough proof or moral justification and is therefore right; whether one agrees with social responsibility or the creative rights of the author, the dialogue between rights and responsibility reveals that it’s never “terribly simple.”