Soulful musings.

[elisi]

It's funny, but the recent storyline in the Spike comics (both moscow_watcher and rahirah have posts on it) has had precisely zero impact on my view of the 'verse. And not just because I don't see the comics as canon. Thing is - I've been there, done that, and written both an essay and a fic on that very topic, and from what I can tell, the comic does not contradict anything I've said. (This is what comes of having been around for ages. I've got nothing new to say...)

Links for this interested:

Essay: Souls and redemption in the Buffy verse. (tl;dr in the extreme. No really. It's the longest essay I've ever written.)

Fic: Lost Soul. (Written for the second summer_of_spike. Spike loses his soul, AtS S5. Some wackiness ensues...)

Either of these will explain my views perfectly (although the fic is shorter). Very briefly, however, then yes, of course a soulless vampire can choose to do good (see S5-6). But... a soulless creature doesn't really understand good and evil. It's like life is one of those 3D pictures, and without a soul you can't see the hidden picture. (Or something. I know exactly what I believe, but I can't explain it succinctly. Hence the lengthy writing.)

Comments

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Also I am mildly bemused at all the pro-soul Spike fans who apparently would rather have had him go on a killing spree the moment it was removed, Just To Prove A Point.

Do you have links to where that discussion was going on? I've been following the convo on IDW, BF and SlayAlive but I must've missed that.

[elisi]

It's funny, actually, because the discussion that sparked my essay showed that pro-soul fans thought the soul less important than the 'anti'-soul fans. (This is very bad phrasing, I can clarify if you like? Well, later. I shouldn't be here...)

[rahirah]

I'm employing hyperbole. I don't think anyone used those exact words.

[rahirah]

What many people do seem to be doing is expressing deep disappointment that Spike would ever, under any circumstances, claim that anything he did without a soul was good, when he did so many bad things without a soul as well. They're offended by the fact that Spike is making an active choice to try to keep doing good even without his soul. That baffles me. Always has, always will.