Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Headscratchers/General: Difference between revisions

*** I'm inclined to blame [[Real Life Writes the Plot]] here. If ''Angel'' hadn't been spun off, and his character had thus been around Sunnydale, Willow would probably have developed a better version of that curse in a few seasons. As it was, in-universe we have "out of sight, out of mind", combined with the assumption that Angel's destiny will take care of everything. Realistically, once the actor is working with another network, we need to make it ''very'' clear that Angel and Buffy have no chance of being a happy couple.

*** Because Willow doesn't know of any such spell. Ensouling a vampire is, by all accounts, unprecedented in the Buffyverse before Angel. The demon shaman Spike visited could do an ensouling without a vengeance curse, but it was this is because it's basically a wish-granting machine for people who can survive its trials. Apart from that, the gypsy vengeance curse is the only spell we've ever seen that can put a soul into a vampire, and Willow can't edit it to remove the Perfect Happiness breakdown for the same reason she couldn't, say, edit it to add "Also, Angel turns into a human" or anything else you can name; because spells are not modular.

** What I want to know is why the Gypsies never told Angel about the [[Curse Escape Clause]]. When you think about their agenda of making Angel Suffer, it actually works in their favor: First, now Angel would know that if he ever experiences happiness, he become souless again, which would make definitely make him suffer more, and secondly, it would have saved many more lives, because he would have been even less likely to become Angelus ever again. I mean, I know they were only interested in Revenge, but it would has really worked in everyone's best interest, not just Angel.

*** Fanwank: They couldn't assume he'd stop killing immediately upon getting the soul, or that the soul would be enough to stop him from taking vengeance on those responsible, so they would have steered clear. Angel was capable of serious violence towards humans when pushed far enough; having a couple of gypsies come up to him and say "ha ha, it's even worse than you realize" might well have been enough of a push.

** Besides the fact that "cursed until you find true happiness/love" is one of [[The Oldest Ones in the Book]], you can also think of it as a two-part curse. First, Angelus is cursed with a soul to spend eternity struggling with guilt and remorse for his crimes. Second, should he ever actually be able to move beyond his guilt and achieve true happiness, his soul is revoked, he reverts to Angelus, and any chance he has at maintaining that happiness is forever destroyed. As stated above the gypsies that cursed Angelus were not nice people; the curse was never necessarily about reforming or containing Angelus. It was about vengeance.

*** I think a soul is just a restraining mechanism, its your conscience. Before being a vamp you hold back, if you love someone but they don't love you you pine and move on. After, you just take them and force it. Look at Spikes mom, before hand she couldn't bear to hurt her son, after her conscience is removed who cares.

 

== Girl Power ==