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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kahuna Burger" data-source="post: 1142706" data-attributes="member: 8439">So I have insomnia, and I'm thinking about the two buffy episodes I watched on FX today. They are the one where Riley leaves after being discovered at a weird consensual blood drinking vampire nest, and the one just after. And they are reminding me of this philosophical problem I have with the morality of the buffyverse. (yeah, yeah, its a TV show, how can you waste your energy on philosophical thoughts on it, I just said I have INSOMNIA, right?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  )Basically, soul = being deserving of life and capable of good and fluffy bunnies everywhere. No soul = target, being without any rights to even exist. This was brought home in the first episode where buffy kills a vampire as she is running away. A vampire who as far as buffy knows exists purely by consensual feeding, and may have never killed anyone. A vampire who Buffy let run, then stabbed in the back to get revenge for drinking from Riley at his request! This has no consequences, even emotional. Contrast this with the next to last season where Willow kills a guy who murdered at least two people, including her love, tried to kill herself and buffy, consorted regularly with demons and dark powers, but he was HUMAN! *gag*In the second episode Spike draws attention to the fact that he is not taking a taste of blood from the many open wounds at a disaster (and is in fact actually comforting a victim). Buffy basically says he's disgusting for expecting credit for it... But why not? The guy is building a conscience from the ground up and making a deliberate choice to do the right thing out of social pressure even when his chip wouldn't punish him for it. I was very disapointed at the plot twist to give him his soul back, rather than continue his evolution, which I found much more interesting...Anyway, I guess this worldview/morality is actually pretty apealing to the stereotypical rpg mindset ("spitting baby goblins is a GOOD act" - "No, its morally NEUTRAL!") but I find it causes me to root for the demons.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> Kahuna Burger</blockquote>

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