Episode Poll: 5.18 Intervention

[gabrielleabelle]

Comments

[gabrielleabelle]

Hmmmm...interesting thought...

[gillo]

I've always said that there's no such thing as altruism - we always get a reward for doing things to help others or that we think are right, even if that reward is only a personal feeling of virtue. But Spike is as close as you can get to selfless here - he doesn't even have a moral sense to be gratified.

IOW, I agree.

[mcjulie]

So is possible that a vampire doing good is actually MORE selfless? Because they DON'T get a dopamine hit from it?

I'm fascinated by this aspect of Spike's character (and to a lesser extent Harmony's character). If the Buffyverse "soul" is mostly the conscience, which functions like a chip -- rewarding good behavior and punishing bad -- what does it mean when the soulless choose good behavior anyway?

I'm inclined to see it as a reflection of the fundamentally existential nature of morality in the Buffyverse.

[beer_good_foamy]

1. I'm trying to focus on why Warren seems a lot skeevier, if it's just that I know where he goes from here... part of it, I think, is in their motivation and attitude towards their robots. Warren builds the Aprilbot to be her master; she's an object that he can discard when he feels like it. Spike builds the Buffybot as a consolation prize for himself since he can't have the real thing, and then spends the whole episode trying to get her to act like the woman who spurned him. Not saying that that's not a creepy thing to do.

4. Well, for starters, a photo isn't sentient...

5. What green_maia said; depends on your definition of selflessness. In this case, he sacrificed himself so that someone else wouldn't suffer. There's definitely a degree of selflessness to that, even if there might be selfish reasons for him to act unselfish.

[gabrielleabelle]

1. I went back and forth on this one and finally decided to waffle it. I can see arguments for either answer.

5. *nods*

[kikimay]

1) I was pretty conflicted about the answer. At the end, I went for equally creepy, but I believe that there are two different level of creepyness and, maybe, Spike is less creepy, considering the fact that he was a soulless demon in love

[gabrielleabelle]

1. *nods*

Yeah. There's creepier and less creepy aspects to both of them. It's hard to say.

2. Hee! Yeah, that always makes me giggle.

4. "Skeevy" basically means "creepy". :)

[evangelin1202]

Warren is creepy cause of the horrible 'bonuses' April had. Spike is creepy cause Buffy is actually a real person.. so I'm not sure.

[gabrielleabelle]

Yeah, it kinda ends up a wash, doesn't it?

[gabrielleabelle]

2. Obviously. :)