Actually - about s8, issue 35...

[elisi]

Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda - worked it out. If there is no great glorious end to all this, if - nothing we do matters, - then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. - I fought for so long. For redemption, for a reward - finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it."
Kate: "And now you do?"
Angel: "Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because - I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness - is the greatest thing in the world."
Kate: "Yikes. It sounds like you had an epiphany."
Angel: "I keep saying that. But nobody's listening."

♥

Comments

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

See above re the 7 billion dead. Angel doesn't think he's hypnotised (is it possible to know you're hypnotised, if the hypnotist is doing it right)? Angel thinks he's free, he's on a plane. Kingdom has come, the lion is lying down with the lamb and all that.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Buffy shows him everyone getting killed. He sees it. He can't claim ignorance. He agrees that it's the end. He tells her not to care, to leave that lower plane. That it's OK that it's the end for everyone else, because it's the beginning of him and Buffy. That the fact that it was planned by the sentient pervy universe makes it not only good, but inarguably so. Whether he's evil, insane, or just under mind control is moot; everyone dying violently isn't the world as it should be.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Word. Confronted with the world dying and realizing it's not as it should be, he says the only absolute for the world is that it will end. And he's okay with that 'cause he and Buffy are in Twilight. He rationalizes it to he and Buffy are as they should be, that the world was destined to die and they should give in.

I need a Cordy icon that says: "Whatever."

[next_to_normal]

Like this? :)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

He's shocked, he tries to rationalise it away, pretend they're not real, they're part of the old corrupt order, mortal doomed to die. It may well be mostly the Twilight talking, I don't think Angel is entirely himself and Giles expositions as much. My point is more that Angel has a deep rooted need for there to be a higher purpose, a great glorious end, even if occasionally (it was a Tuesday) he's forced to admit the possibility that there isn't one. That need, coupled to his difficulty in believing that the world as he knows it can really change for the better would have made him susceptible to the temptations of Twilight. It's not supposed to be a coincidence that he's the souled vampire the Universe chose and not Spike.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Even if that's true - and I would call it a radical interpretation of Jeanty's drawings, he looks pretty calm and collected to me - it still means, Twilight control or no, that he did everything he did over the course of Season 8, waged all-out war on Buffy, had thousands of people killed, etc, not for the sake of humanity or the abolition of magic or the shanshu but simply so that he and Buffy could be together. That's not "the world as it should be." That's not being a champion. That's not the greater good. It's cosmic sociopathy.

ETA: From Brad Meltzer's twitter Q&A:

Q: Angel is ok w/ killing innocents in pursuit of ascension? Only to give up at the last sec?

BM: See title. of last chapter.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Since we're quoting Brad:

Q: Did he kill 206 slayers before to make his Key powerful?

BM: They did die. Can't say he killed them.

The title doesn't specify the object(s) of love. People can love people. Angel loves Buffy (love is a selfish emotion). Buffy loves her friends. People can also fall in love with ideologies, with bright shining futures and rapturous new worlds. People can decide that the old world is so flawed, to put it out of its misery would be the truest act of love (Willow) or let it die from Natural causes (Angel).

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Can't say he killed them.

And I'm still waiting for an explanation how ordering soldiers to fire on people until they're dead =/= killing them.

[elisi]

It's just like how enhanced interrogation techniques =/= torture

(Angel is Bush, I guess? ETA: Just realised that this analogy would make the universe Cheney... *runs away screaming* ETA2: And now I'm picturing Cheney!universe sniggering like Beavis and Butthead whilst watching the Wtuffy porn. My head is a scary place.)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

When did you see Angel do that?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

#29-30, wasn't it?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

We see soldiers. We see Angel watch them. We don't see who gives them their orders.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

We see Twilight give orders to the general-or-whatever-his-rank-is twice. He asks to let his men withdraw. Twilight says no. The men stay. Which one of them is in charge?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Everyone calls him a General. The General defers to Twilight on the field and later describes him him as his erstwhile leader but also as a boy. Power, as we're finding out in the UK post election, is complicated and not as simple and hierachical as it might appear on the surface. That subtlety aside, say I grant you that Twilight outranks the General on the Tibetan battlefield. The only order he gives is not for the soldiers to shoot at the Slayers but to keep fighting the goddesses who they can't kill by shooting. Who gave the order to launch the war in the first place is not shown. Angel tells Buffy there were governments trying to take her out and her fellow terrorists. We never see Angel outranking presidents.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

That subtlety aside, say I grant you that Twilight outranks the General on the Tibetan battlefield.

In which case he could have ordered them to not attack in the first place, or to hold off until he'd had a chance to talk terms of surrender, or at least to fight with the Slayers against the goddesses. He doesn't. Slayers are shot to death by forces that are unequivocally under Angel's command.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

He's a field commander. He gets to decide how they achieve their politcally determined objective but not to override said objective, which appears to be to take out the magical terrorists and not to negotiate with them.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

He's a field commander.

Fanfic is nice. Where's the text?

He gets to decide how they achieve their politcally determined objective

And his decision is to open fire and gun down Slayers. Not to call and warn them. Not to order his soldiers to hold off until they've had a chance to negotiate (even Pizarro did that much). Not to say "Screw the unseen orders, I'm in command here and I won't have you gun down my friends." Not to lift a finger to stop Warren from bombing the castle where Dawn and Xander are. Not to try and counter-act the idea that all Slayers are evil witches. Etc etc etc. At best, his defense is "But I only followed orders!" This from the guy whose entire arc is centered around feeling guilty for things he's done?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Fanfic would be more your department. Did you ever write one where world governments handed their authority over their miltary forces to a man in a mask? The text never says exactly what Twilight's role is or what authority he has. It does show him having to justify his tactics to his demon and military allies rather more than you'd think was necessary if he were as powerful as you assume.

Angel's defense is that if he hadn't intervened things would be much worse. Instead of (or, if he negotiates, as well as) attacking Tibet by tank they'd be sending in the airforce and bombing the Tibetan Slayers to kingdom come. Or sending in the demon armies Buffy's people already lost to when they had magic or nuking the Scottish castle instead of letting incompetents like Warren and Amy play make your bomb.

This from the guy whose entire arc is centered around feeling guilty for things he's done?
And yet he keeps doing them (because otherwise he'd have no arc). But imagine how a man with Angel's sense of all that's wrong in the world being offered a chance to move on from all that. "After all these centuries - no more fighting- No more failing- no more dying." Wouldn't he be tempted?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Fanfic would be more your department.

I write fanfic, yes, I hope that doesn't automatically invalidate my opinion of supposed canon. What I was referring to was that when you introduce assumptions and backstory that either isn't in the actual text or outright contradicts it, you're telling a different story than the one Joss is. That's fanfic.

Did you ever write one where world governments handed their authority over their miltary forces to a man in a mask?

Of course not, because it makes no sense for them to give him any sort of power over even the lowliest Private. But that's the text. Where does it show him taking orders from anyone? Come to think of it, there aren't a whole lot of times Angel has ever been shown taking orders without question, or without trying to disobey orders he didn't like. He's destiny's bitch, yes, but that's why he's always been shown fighting against it. Where does the text actually show him stopping something even worse from happening?

And I would argue that we don't need to speculate whether he'd be tempted. He answered that question at the end of s4.

*sigh* We're never going to agree on a single aspect of these comics, are we? That's probably as it should be. Apologies to elisi for dragging this dead horse another lap round her track.

[elisi]

No need to apologise, I've been following with interest. Also I was about to bring up the Jasmine arc myself - I even went and looked up the scene in question to make sure I wasn't misremembering.

Jasmine: And how many will die because of you? I could've stopped it, Angel. All of it. War, disease, poverty. How many precious, beautiful lives would've been saved in a handful of years? Yes, I murdered thousands to save billions. This world is doomed to drown in its own blood now.
Angel: The price was too high, Jasmine. Our fate has to be our own, or we're nothing.

Anyway you're right, it's a pointless debate. And Doctor Who is on in... ooooh, 2 hours and 10 minutes! Comics schmomics, let Joss have his fun since obviously they make him happy. :)