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Date Posted: 15:12:10 03/21/02 Thu
Author: Rufus
Subject: Re: True, but ...
In reply to: Earl Allison 's message, "True, but ..." on 02:30:47 03/21/02 Thu

As for souls, I always figured they offered a moral compass -- one can always opt to ignore it, but vampires just gravitated towards evil largely because they didn't even have that compass/conscience/whatever.

It doesn't matter what we figure a soul does, but what Joss says a soul does for the purpose of his show. Joss has made a statement that leaves good and evil a more ambiguous deal for both vampire and human, which makes sense given the human talent for evil.

The Paley Festival, March 30, 2001

Audience Member: "I'd like to know what your definition of a soul is? And what distinguishes Angel from the other vampires, because it becomes clear from both Buffy and Angel that vampires have human emotions and human attachments. So is that a conscience? And then what separates vampires from humans if it is a conscience?"

JW: "Um, very little. (laugh) Essentially, souls are by their nature amorphous but to me it's really about what star you are guided by. Most people, we hope, are guided by, 'you should be good, you're good, you feel good.' And most demons are guided simply by the opposite star. They believe in evil, they believe in causing it, they like it. They believe it in the way that people believe in good. So they can love someone, they can attach to someone, they can actually want to do things that will make that person happy in the way they know they would. The way Spike has sort of become, an example is Spike obviously on Buffy, is getting more and more completely conflicted. But basically his natural bent is towards doing the wrong thing. His court's creating chaos where as in most humans, most humans, is the opposite, and that's really how I see it. I believe it's kind of like a spectrum, but they are setting their course by opposite directions. But they're all sort of somewhere in the middle."

Harmony is a good example of how a weak person, either a vampire or human, can gravitate to evil. Harmony as a vampire is more naturally bent towards evil, but shows the capacity to feel guilt over her actions. She may have decided that evil was the more comfortable end of the spectrum to inhabit, but it was still a battle that she had to fight internally.

Now, to Spike, I don't think his struggle is over by a long shot. I feel that he will unintentionally refind a place on the spectrum of behavior that leaves him capable of good, but it won't be easy. He doesn't feel guilt over what he has done so far, but if you read the spoilers he may be learning his lesson in baby steps over a period of time. I think a good start would be discovering he no longer wants to kill people.

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