See, I'm trying to decide who else is difficult. Is anyone Evil difficult? Or is it more complicated? I don't see anyone calling Gavin difficult, or Holland, or Lindsey for that matter (Lindsey got redemption, of a sort, by helping the gang and then being axed- but that's a whole other story.). Yet there's no question that within the context of the 'verse, Lilah is difficult in many senses- both that she makes life difficult for the good guys, and that she IS difficult, as herself. Which leads me to believe that "difficult" is one of those words helpfully thrown at women who no longer know their place in society.
The part that gets me is that Lilah's never really seen as a genuine threat to Angel. She does something evil, he threatens her, she stops doing the evil thing. Lindsey is thought of as a worthy adversary, and knows it; he's devastated when he's offed by Lorne rather than Angel. Lilah, on the other hand, despite being a worthy opponent to Angel, is rarely seen as such. Hell, in season two she's the occult version of the hysterical female; Lilah is obsessing and panicking constantly, and Lindsey's playing it cool- and Lindsey, not surprisingly, ends up with the Special Programs deal, leaving Lilah to be axed at the glass ceiling (were it not for that whole "evil hand" thing).
Of course, then you need to factor in the Wolfram and Hart version of evil. In Blind Date, Lindsey feels guilty not because of the evil but because small children are dying. In Untouched, there's at least a strong implication that Lilah is ostensibly working with Bethany not for evil but because she sees herself in the girl (and IN the girl... but that's a whole other slashfic story). And most Evil plots, as far as we've seen, are not focused on causing Good pain, but rather accomplishing their goals efficiently. That is to say, Evil is self-interested, and Good is downright Machiavellian with their ends-justify-the-means thing.
Evil seems to rely a lot more on personal morality, basically. Lilah is justified as Evil because she sometimes (usually) did evil and sometimes did good, and all for want of her pretty things rather than for a greater cause. Angel was Good because o his direct link to the Higher Powers, so no matter how much evil he did it was excused. Which is where the Good-vs-Evil divide loses me, because I agree that Lilah belongs on the Evil side, but so does Angel. Because otherwise... Good's just a name, dude.
Which the show itself had the bad habit of picking up and dropping like it was yesterday's episode of Shasta McNasty.
And when Evil and Good become just a name, and we need to rely on the good and the evil instead, then Lilah becomes a woman who does some good and some evil, and her difficult stops being "Because she sacrifices good people to the cause sometimes" (because, hey, Angel? Does the same thing) and starts being "Because she dared to talk back to the man" (Damn the man! Save the Empire!) and then "Difficult" becomes a synonym for "Woman not knowing her place."
All of which, in half-assed analysis, looks like an excuse for her behavior. Which it actually isn't. I find that I spend less time excusing Lilah for what she did, and more time realizing exactly how much of a fuckwit Angel is.
I don't know, doesn't intention count for something? I mean, I know Angel fucked up quite a bit and was not what one would call super-competent, but for the most part, he was trying to do good. Lilah for all that we love her, was trying to do evil for really no other reason that we saw other than wanting nice things. I'm not here to excuse everything Angel did (in particular I don't think he took enough shit for the reality shift after Home), but he was not the cause of Lilah's damnation. (He didn't help though, which is one of my beefs with him wrt Lilah. He only helped certain people.)
I think there needs to be a sliding scale of Evil, though.
I mean, Buffy and Angel, in the very least, exist in the same dimension (give or take a mindwipe). Which means that in this 'verse, there are demons attempting to eliminate the world as we know it... eh, at least once or twice a year, figure.
Wolfram and Hart funds bad guys. Wolfram and Hart, however, are rarely ACTIVE bad guys. Which is to say, Lilah has done evil things, and totally deserves to be condemned for them. She made her own bed, lie in it, etc. But the evil things that she's done have been less destructive, overall, than even what, say, Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew did.
Which is not to say that the nerd troika isn't currently roasting away in Hell. Although I guess maybe we can, if we assume that Jonathan was redeemed for his remorse, Andrew was redeemed by being a tiny girly-man, and Warren's been flayed and then used as an Object Lesson. Lilah, conversely, is actively burning, eternal hellfire, etc., for being a cog in a greater machine of Evil.
We know from s4 that she has no actual desire for Angel's death and dismemberment; she was for it when it saw W+H plans through, but she didn't seek it actively herself. (Of course, that in and of itself is conflicting directly with Loyalty and the infamous Count Me In of Badassery, which could in turn be seen as Lilah working with the SPs since well beyond the Summer of Smut... but I digress.) She wants her pretty things, and if we infer that in Untouched she was seeing a lot of herself in Bethany rather than just pushing corporate propaganda, there's a degree of salvation that she got from working at Wolfram and Hart. We know she has money- enough to send to her mother who's in some kind of home- and she has power, and I do think it's worth noting that, while she didn't stop doing evil (obviously; still at the job), in season four the only things we saw her do were attacking Lorne and stalking Connor, both directly related to the firm's goals of carrying out prophecy. Which makes her intent not for the act of doing bad things, per se, but for the greater good of her company.
She did bad things. She deserves to be punished. But the intention is muddled here, and that's making it hard for me, at least, to formulate an argument either way.
Agreed on the sliding scale. Nobody's hands are clean here. And yeah, I'm having trouble formulating an argument one way or another as well. Which is cool with me, actually, cause I prefer the moral questions to have messy answers. (Hmmph. Maybe *I'm* difficult.)
See, I'm trying to decide who else is difficult. Is anyone Evil difficult? Or is it more complicated? I don't see anyone calling Gavin difficult, or Holland, or Lindsey for that matter (Lindsey got redemption, of a sort, by helping the gang and then being axed- but that's a whole other story.). Yet there's no question that within the context of the 'verse, Lilah is difficult in many senses- both that she makes life difficult for the good guys, and that she IS difficult, as herself. Which leads me to believe that "difficult" is one of those words helpfully thrown at women who no longer know their place in society.
The part that gets me is that Lilah's never really seen as a genuine threat to Angel. She does something evil, he threatens her, she stops doing the evil thing. Lindsey is thought of as a worthy adversary, and knows it; he's devastated when he's offed by Lorne rather than Angel. Lilah, on the other hand, despite being a worthy opponent to Angel, is rarely seen as such. Hell, in season two she's the occult version of the hysterical female; Lilah is obsessing and panicking constantly, and Lindsey's playing it cool- and Lindsey, not surprisingly, ends up with the Special Programs deal, leaving Lilah to be axed at the glass ceiling (were it not for that whole "evil hand" thing).
Of course, then you need to factor in the Wolfram and Hart version of evil. In Blind Date, Lindsey feels guilty not because of the evil but because small children are dying. In Untouched, there's at least a strong implication that Lilah is ostensibly working with Bethany not for evil but because she sees herself in the girl (and IN the girl... but that's a whole other slashfic story). And most Evil plots, as far as we've seen, are not focused on causing Good pain, but rather accomplishing their goals efficiently. That is to say, Evil is self-interested, and Good is downright Machiavellian with their ends-justify-the-means thing.
Evil seems to rely a lot more on personal morality, basically. Lilah is justified as Evil because she sometimes (usually) did evil and sometimes did good, and all for want of her pretty things rather than for a greater cause. Angel was Good because o his direct link to the Higher Powers, so no matter how much evil he did it was excused. Which is where the Good-vs-Evil divide loses me, because I agree that Lilah belongs on the Evil side, but so does Angel. Because otherwise... Good's just a name, dude.
Which the show itself had the bad habit of picking up and dropping like it was yesterday's episode of Shasta McNasty.
And when Evil and Good become just a name, and we need to rely on the good and the evil instead, then Lilah becomes a woman who does some good and some evil, and her difficult stops being "Because she sacrifices good people to the cause sometimes" (because, hey, Angel? Does the same thing) and starts being "Because she dared to talk back to the man" (Damn the man! Save the Empire!) and then "Difficult" becomes a synonym for "Woman not knowing her place."
All of which, in half-assed analysis, looks like an excuse for her behavior. Which it actually isn't. I find that I spend less time excusing Lilah for what she did, and more time realizing exactly how much of a fuckwit Angel is.
Stupid Angel.
*kicks him*
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I mean, Buffy and Angel, in the very least, exist in the same dimension (give or take a mindwipe). Which means that in this 'verse, there are demons attempting to eliminate the world as we know it... eh, at least once or twice a year, figure.
Wolfram and Hart funds bad guys. Wolfram and Hart, however, are rarely ACTIVE bad guys. Which is to say, Lilah has done evil things, and totally deserves to be condemned for them. She made her own bed, lie in it, etc. But the evil things that she's done have been less destructive, overall, than even what, say, Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew did.
Which is not to say that the nerd troika isn't currently roasting away in Hell. Although I guess maybe we can, if we assume that Jonathan was redeemed for his remorse, Andrew was redeemed by being a tiny girly-man, and Warren's been flayed and then used as an Object Lesson. Lilah, conversely, is actively burning, eternal hellfire, etc., for being a cog in a greater machine of Evil.
We know from s4 that she has no actual desire for Angel's death and dismemberment; she was for it when it saw W+H plans through, but she didn't seek it actively herself. (Of course, that in and of itself is conflicting directly with Loyalty and the infamous Count Me In of Badassery, which could in turn be seen as Lilah working with the SPs since well beyond the Summer of Smut... but I digress.) She wants her pretty things, and if we infer that in Untouched she was seeing a lot of herself in Bethany rather than just pushing corporate propaganda, there's a degree of salvation that she got from working at Wolfram and Hart. We know she has money- enough to send to her mother who's in some kind of home- and she has power, and I do think it's worth noting that, while she didn't stop doing evil (obviously; still at the job), in season four the only things we saw her do were attacking Lorne and stalking Connor, both directly related to the firm's goals of carrying out prophecy. Which makes her intent not for the act of doing bad things, per se, but for the greater good of her company.
She did bad things. She deserves to be punished. But the intention is muddled here, and that's making it hard for me, at least, to formulate an argument either way.
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