Thoughts about betrayal in the Buffyverse

[lostboy_lj]

To help with a new fic I'm writing, I've been doing a re-watch of both "Buffy" and "Angel" lately.  It has inspired a few random thoughts.  One of the thoughts that struck me is that the bad guys in the Buffyverse (and perhaps in all plays, films and TV shows) are largely marked by their instinct to betray. This is especially true amongst the show'

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[lostboy_lj]

Actually, just to tug out the thought a little more, a good benchmark for evil might be Angelus - who is often held up as the most evil of all vampires. After all, it is Angelus, not "Angel" who betrays of Buffy in the wake of their lovemaking. If he wanted to, he could have very easily and quickly murdered Buffy, since she was unaware he'd been awakened. That would have been the practical thing to do, but he decided to torment her first instead, the way he tormented and tortured Drusilla before turning her.

This is a good model for evil, because pure evil seems to defy all reason. The calculation in Angelus' mind had nothing to do with any mundane kinds of evil, like attaining money and power, or making his life somehow easier, or expressing rage or fear. He torments for the sake of tormenting, because he enjoys seeing others suffer. None of humans on the show, including Warren and Dr. Walsh, ever attained this highest level of evil.

(I just realized, neither did Giles or Wood, with their plotting of Spike's death. It would have been an evil act, but they had reasons for doing it, and the reasons weren't all bad ones.)

[norwie2010]

It is a shame i'm really not all that interested in the character "Angel" - "Angelus", on the other hand.... ;-)

Maybe, in the end, Angel(us) found his master in the First, which equally delighted in the torment for torment's sake.

It is with the character of Angel, that i feel BtVS and AtS loose common ground: While the cast of BtVS ultimately commit entirely human lies they also grow through them. The cast of AtS is ultimately doomed by the dichotomy of Angel/us, the tormentor and the tormented in the same mind. While all the little lies on BtVS add up to human behaviour and - when confronted - allow the characters to grow, on AtS all the little lies add up to complete doom. Because: Angelus, biting (team) Angel's ass through the backdoor, tormenting for torment's sake.

[lostboy_lj]

I agree it's a very different kind of show, and it has a lot to do with doom and damnation, as you say. But I think this is so much a failure as it is done by design. Unlike the redemptive arc of BtVS, Angel is about corruption and swimming in the moral murk. I think it's about how evil is always so upfront about itself, and how it disguises itself inside things that don't seem very evil.

By the final season of the show, most of the main characters have been corrupted in ways they never anticipated, and didn't even realize until they were neck deep in it. But in the end I think they realize that even though the fight against evil is a hopeless battle, what is important is the instinct to fight that battle at all (Not sure yet, though. I'm only about halfway through my re-watch, heh heh).

[norwie2010]

I agree that it is at least partially intentional, BtVS the upward spiral and AtS the downward spiral.

But in the end I think they realize that even though the fight against evil is a hopeless battle, what is important is the instinct to fight that battle at all

I don't know about that (and that might be because a loooong time went by since i last saw the show), to me, the point where the characters are at at the end is as much a product of their own choices than anything "evil" does.

The battle against evil becomes hopeless as the characters themselves become hopeless. They loose sight of what evil actually is - becoming slightly evil themselves in the process. And in that regard, the battle against evil is indeed hopeless, if you yourself become hopeless and evil (kinda evil ;-). Defeating yourself and all that.

I think this can be summarized with a comparison between Angel at his ropes' end and Buffy not knowing how to go forward: When Buffy doesn't know how to live in this world (season 5) she sacrifices herself in the name of the last "good" she knows: Not sacrificing an innocent (Dawn), but herself (saving her peers in the process).

When Angel is at the same crossroads, he turns towards the last "evil" he knows and carries on (dooming his peers in the process). Ultimately, they are both lost but Buffy keeps a certain amount of right, or hope (hope that Dawn gets to live) even if she herself doesn't know how to act and live anymore.

Buffy doesn't loose "evil" out of her sight, or, better: She doesn't let "good" out of her sight.

Team Angel gets hopeless and the hubris takes over, the worst parts of themselves. They are fixated on "fighting", while Buffy is fixated on "good" (or "right").

In the end, the fight against "evil" isn't hopeless - it is just unending. But to keep on to hope you actually need a definition of what "good" actually is. Angel/us never knows this, his motivation comes from a different place: doing something, to make up for what he did before.

In my interpretation of "Not fade away" it is that: Team Angel would rather do something, than be good.

(Insert rant about hyper masculine story telling on AtS: ACTION! uber alles.)

[local_max]

I agree with all of this.

One thing that's interesting is that Not Fade Away makes sense as being, in a sense, the exact wrong lesson from Angel's Epiphany in season two. There, he realized that one should stop trying to fight evil in hope that evil can be vanquished: that actions are meaningful in themselves, even if the ultimate end-end-end goal doesn't matter. And that is actually a good lesson. Mostly. But then while Angel initially tries to take this as "do small amounts of good where you can," by season five he has taken it to mean "the biggest actions are the best, regardless of consequences." Whereas the true lesson should rightly be, "it is good to make people suffer less in your environs, even if you can't end suffering." So there is a progression in the series and in Angel's character; he does learn things, it's just that every time he learns something, his ambivalence about actual good reasserts itself.

[norwie2010]

Oh, very good. Angel learns, he just learns the wrong things. "Epiphany" never sat right with me, concerning Angel's future actions (and even the actions in the same episode) - but you just made sense of them!

[local_max]

:)

[lostboy_lj]

This post makes me think of Groo's conversation with Lorne in S3's "Benediction" (which in turn makes me think that the writers wanted to kill Groo instead of Drogyn, but either met resistance of some sort, or were accidentally betraying their own philosophy because they were willfully blind to the problems inherent in it) :

Lorne: "Hey. Something troubling you, bubby?"

Groo: "Indeed. I am confused."

Lorne: "About what?"

Groo: "Angel. His inaction puzzles me. When Connor was taken from him he moved heaven and Tarkna to try and win him back."

Lorne: "Yeah, he sure did. Hence our weekly scrubbing of the lobby floor."

Groo: "But now that his son is here, he does nothing."

Lorne: "Well, sometimes nothing is the best something. If a thing is meant to be somethimes it is best to just let it happen rather than try to force it."

Groo: "But if a thing is meant to be then how can it be forced?"

Lorne: "Well, I guess it can't."

Groo: "And if a thing is not meant to be?"

Lorne: "Well, then it really can't. Just because someone hops a dimension or two is no guarantee that things will work out. - Well, aren't you just sneaky with the subtext?"

[local_max]

ETA: Though I do always wonder what would have happened in The Gift if Buffy could not sacrifice herself to save Dawn. I think that she would have let Dawn die to save the world -- which we know Dawn, bitty Buffy and heroic in her own right, would have (and was about to). And I think it may have killed Buffy. :( I have a hard time getting behind the idea that Dawn *should* be protected at the expense of the entire world though, which some fans hold to: I understand the impulse, but if Dawn hadn't died and Buffy hadn't come up with an alternative, a whole lot of other people's sisters would have died as well.

[norwie2010]

Real life isn't as clear cut as the end of Season 5: An analogy i could come up with is a Yugoslavian village in 1944 confronted with the occupation troops ordering the village to hand over the daughter/son/family of a presumed partisan leader or be vanquished. If the villagers hand over what and who is asked of them, they actively aid the enemy/monsters.

I think it isn't Giles' place to decide whether Dawn has to die or not. And it isn't even Buffy's. It is Dawn's place (and i agree that Dawn would have sacrificed herself). Buffy can defend Dawn's right to live - and that's what she does. (It is entirely possible that Buffy wouldn't have survived if Dawn had died. But that's another difference to Angel: Buffy wouldn't have become a monster - she would have rather decided to not go on at all, which sometimes is the only alternative. A good friend of mine had a grandfather who died in a concentration camp because he refused to partake in the great war of annihilation. In a very gruesome way, he shortened the war by not being part of it, by denying the Nazi system manpower for their war).

[local_max]

Ooh, yes, that makes sense. I do think though...well. I think the thing about the end of season 5 is this. IF there were a situation as clear cut as in season 5, I would not blame someone for killing Dawn there, to save not just their own life, or their own family's life, but the world's. And ultimately, while it's...horrible, I think if Dawn wanted to live, I think it would be right for someone to kill her for the good of six billion others. In the case of Dawn, Dawn's opening the portal is the thing that is aiding Glory, not what happens afterward. But that said: there are not real life situations as clear cut as in season five, and it can be dangerous to think of life that way.

[londonbard]

I wonder what would have happened if Buffy's sacrifice hadn't saved the world and the barriers between the dimensions had gone on breaking down.

I'm fairly sure that Dawn would have jumped but - I wonder what would have happened to everyone else?

[lostboy_lj]

The battle against evil becomes hopeless as the characters themselves become hopeless. They loose sight of what evil actually is - becoming slightly evil themselves in the process.

Yes, I agree. That is what I meant when I said they didn't realize it until they were neck deep in it. The funny thing is, they were suspicious of Wolfram & Hart from the very beginning - they knew the whole point of the law firm's offer was to corrupt them... and it still happened! That's sort of like someone shooting a bullet at you that only moves one inch per hour and still getting shot because you forgot what a bullet is.

In the end, the fight against "evil" isn't hopeless - it is just unending.

I agree with that, too. I also partially agree with your interpretation of "Not Fade Away" (or, at least, I did the first time I watched it; we'll see what changes this time). It is very much about doing "something", and about action being better than inaction or reaction. I think (or, again, thought) in this way, the story of the show was about this question: If we accept that there is no God, and that good and evil are completely relative, subjective concepts, then what is the purpose of doing something that is "right" or "good"?

In other words, Angel has been searching for redemption by doing good deed. But what if there is no "redemption", because there is no God to redeem him? And even if there were a God, how can an immortal vampire know if he was actually ever redeemed? How does he calculate his redemption? Does X number of good deeds do the trick, like a real debt being reduced to zero?

I think the answer of "Not Fade Away" is that good and evil do not vanish without a God to redeem or damn us. Angel acts (in morally murky ways) because he comes to realize that in the absence of redemption and absolute good/evil, he was free to choose. He accepts that there could be "greater goods" and "lesser evils", and that he had to act pragmatically in order to defeat his "more evil" enemies, even if it meant doing a terrible thing like sacrificing The Groosalag - which the old Angel of BtVS would have never done, fearing he would destroy his attempt at redemption. There is a certain courage in the calculation, because Angel now bears the guilt of his own crime, and knows/believes he will never be forgiven for it.

The Angel of "Not Fade Away" is a bit like the pragmatic Giles who murdered Ben and who plotted to kill Spike, accept that Giles still has faith and Angel doesn't. Maybe that's the concept behind them doing the "Angel & Faith" comic: Angel getting his faith back. But then again maybe not. I haven't been very impressed with any of the comics I've read, and I doubt this one will be any different (probably, they'll just have them have space sex).

Now, all of that said, what did I think of Angel conclusion? That's a whole other subject, and probably worth a separate post of it's own. Suffice it to say, I prefer the BtVS answer to this question of good and evil, but still think Angel's answer is an interesting one and one that describes the way a lot of people view moral choices.

[norwie2010]

because Angel now bears the guilt of his own crime

...while other people (Drogyn) bear the consequences of his crime(s).

one that describes the way a lot of people view moral choices.

I agree - i think that's the reason a lot of people blurt out the nonsense of "AtS being the more adult/mature show" of the two.

I'm not a follower of Immanuel Kant, but his ideas have certain merits when considering our actions and what they do - to us, to the world.

But what if there is no "redemption", because there is no God to redeem him?

Well, to Angel the answer is clearly "becoming a god himself" - at least he arrived at 19th century philosophies after just 8 seasons... - some kind of "vulgar Nietzsche". ;-)

Oh, i know what you did there!

I haven't talked so much about AtS in a very long time! Naughty lostboy! :-P

[lostboy_lj]

Well, to Angel the answer is clearly "becoming a god himself" - at least he arrived at 19th century philosophies after just 8 seasons... - some kind of "vulgar Nietzsche". ;-)

Oh, i know what you did there!

HAHAHAHAHA!

Exactly, Norwie. You got it. I'm not saying I agree with the conclusion reached on Angel, only that this is an interesting way of describing a certain kind of competing philosophy that I actually disagree with for a variety of reasons. I was thinking of doing a post about this, but I'd much rather save it until after my re-watch, and explore it in my new fic rather than in essay form.

[lostboy_lj]

Weird... I just now realized I typed "the Groosalag" above when I really meant to say, "the Battlebrand." I think this was me having a classic "Freudian slip", because I remember thinking at the time that the message would have been far more effective if Angel had killed Groo (or Gunn, or Wes, or someone else the audience was more invested in). There was a sort of cowardliness about killing the Battlebrand that I think belied the point the creators were trying to make. They chickened out.