Protagonist-Centered Morality: Difference between revisions

*** For that matter, Dawn could have ended the whole thing in the exact same way - by killing herself. Of course, she's fourteen, so it's much more understandable that she didn't.

**** Dawn also has very little ''opportunity'' to kill herself after being captured by Glory—in the one scene where she is left alone for any length of time, there's nothing lying around nearby she could do the job with, and several guards immediately outside the door in a position to intervene the instant they hear anything suspicious. Even at the very end, at the top of the tower, Dawn would have to physically force her way past Buffy in order to die in Buffy's stead. Which is pretty much the Platonic Ideal of "impossible", given that doing so would require an untrained, physically normal fourteen-year-old girl to defeat the Slayer in hand-to-hand combat.

** Another ''Buffy'' example in "Gone", where a social worker sent to look after Dawn sees legitimately suspicious activity. Buffy, who has turned invisible, sets things up to make it look like the social worker is insane in a way which could easily get her fired or sent to a mental institution. This is portrayed as a comedy routine and we are apparently supposed to feel sympathy with Buffy harassing an innocent person merely because she's frustrating a main character.

** Spike and Harmony are quite sympathetic in the latter series, mainly because they are both so ineffective as to be laughable, and because Spike is such a martyr for love. Meanwhile, Harmony is killing a whole bunch of people while Spike is completely unrepentant and cares so little for other's welfare that he helped a [[Big Bad]] bring on the end of the world at least once, and was selling weapons (demon eggs) - the sort which could kill entire cities - to the highest bidder.