What’s the point of tormenting Angel for things a demon did while it was possessing his body?
I’m sorry if this has been discussed before. I tried searching but the old threads are full of spoilers and I haven’t watched past season 4 of Buffy yet, and I haven’t started watching Angel yet.
In the Buffy universe, when a person becomes a vampire he loses his soul and is possessed by a demon. The demon retains memory of the human’s past life but not necessarily his human characteristics. For example, Xander and Willow are very gentle people yet their vampire personas were especially vicious.
So it seems unfair for the gypsies to curse Angel by restoring his human soul so he could feel guilt. It’s not like the human Angel could have done anything to stop the demon that posessed him, right?
My opinion: it didn’t matter to the Gypsy clan that cursed him. The soul that was returned to him was Liam’s (who became Angelus who became Angel), and Liam, while not necessarily an upright citizen, wasn’t a murderer, wasn’t the vicious killer that Angelus was. But Liam didn’t know what Angelus was doing while the demon had control. Once the gypsy curse took effect, Liam’s soul became aware of all that his body had done while he was Angelus.
At the same time, the demon that made him Angelus was still there and could feel the soul/humanity in Angel once that soul was returned. Look at the episode I Only Have Eyes For You - Angelus, at the end is disgusted by the love - something that Angel felt but Angelus couldn’t. Since the demon is always present in Angel, even when he’s ensouled, the demon sees what Angel is doing and is pained/disgusted by it.
The gypsy curse was a punishment for Liam/Angel and for Angelus - but for different reasons.
Oh, and I tried to be very, very careful about avoiding spoilers in there. For more on the background of Angel/Angelus, I suggest watching Angel - season 1 corresponds with season 4 of Buffy, and there are some crossovers that are nice. It’s not necessary though. I avoided Angel (and I still don’t like it as much as Buffy) until this year, but working my way through the seasons did give me some insight.
Here’s the thing: the demon that possessed Liam after he was vamped was not expelled by the return of Angel’s human soul. Instead it remained in the body, tormented by the presence of the spiritually-incompatible soul that had been Liam in life. The gypsies didn’t care that Liam would also suffer in the process, possibly because some part of a human’s personality influences the vampire’s nature.
Jenny Calendar’s dad (played by the recently deceased Vincent Schiavelli) described the curse as “vengeance, not justice.” Sure, it’s not fair. That’s not the point. They wanted someone to suffer for their loss. So Angel suffers, just because he was the most convenient target.
One thing I never understood (spoilers for season 2 of Buffy)
Why is the sould removed when he experiences perfect happiness? I have half of the theory down. The idea being that without a soul, one cannot experience true happiness, so if Angel does experience it, then the soul, which was meant as a punishment, is now acting opposite to that effect. But why then have the soul removed so that he can once again be Angelus and ravage the country-side? Couldn’t they have worded the curse so that he just died if he gets perfect happiness? Or feels compelled to go for a walk on the beach on a sunny day?
If you knew that experiencing a moment of true happiness would cause you to become a horrifying monstrosity, how much happiness would you seek out? Remember also that there was a second part to the curse. Not only would Angel have to experience a moment of true happiness, he would also have to forget about the suffering he had caused. So he had to suffer, and he had to remember why it was he was suffering.
I never mush cared for the curse myself and in a couple of old Buffy or Angel threads I remember talking about it. But I really hated it when it morphed in people’s minds into “he’ll lose his soul if he has sex.” Yeah, he initially lost his soul on BtVS after having sex with Buffy, but he didn’t lose his soul until some significant time afterward. It wasn’t like he shot his soul with his wad.
My impression was that is was part of the requirement for creating a curse. All curses have to have an “out,” some way of lifting the curse, even if it’s nigh-impossible to achieve. Sort of like some sort of universal law of magic. That’s mostly an inference based on other fantasy and mythic sources, not on anything directly lifted from the show. Although quite a few other curses got thrown around during the shows run, and often as not, there ended up being some way of defeating it. Either it’s some sort of basic principal of cursing, or there are a lot of shoddy hexers running around out there.
One of the things I liked about it was that it was a common misconception not just for fans, but for characters in the show as well, even though it was explicitly refuted by events in the series. Angel had sex on several occasions without losing his soul, although there was that great fake-out when he had sex with Darla.
Not to mention later on in that season, in “Power Play” when we see [spoiler]Angel and Nina after a night of happy (but not-too-happy) sex.
ACT I:
2 INT. ANGEL’S APARTMENT - DAY
TITLE: 19 HOURS EARLIER
Angel is lying naked in bed, staring at the ceiling. A blonde woman cuddles up close to him.
ANGEL
Hey.
NINA
(sighs, wraps her arm across his chest)
OK. Where did you learn how to do that?
ANGEL
Which part?
NINA
Doesn’t matter. How are you?
ANGEL
I’m good.
NINA
(leans up)
You’re not perfectly happy, are you? 'Cause I’ve got my wooden stake right here.
(reaches over into her nightstand drawer)
Oh, that’s not a stake.
(continues looking)
I know I brought it—
ANGEL
You’re safe.
NINA
(leans back over his chest)
OK. And you? Good? You weren’t thinking about your little Roman friend, or—
ANGEL
Nina, for the last…
(picks up his wristwatch from the nightstand, looks at it)
whoa.
NINA
Wowee.
ANGEL
For the last… very long moment I haven’t had a single coherent thought.
NINA
(beaming)
I’m gonna take that as a compliment.
[/spoiler]
Vincent Schiavelli (Enyos) sort of explains this in his episodes as well. The gypsies didn’t give a shit about anything but punishing him. So when the curse no longer was effective at punishing him, it ended. As (IIRC) Whedon admits in the commentary to one of these eps on the DVD, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s not really supposed to. The gypsies didn’t do it to make sense; they did it out of rage. Enyos can even almost calmly admit this: “It is not justice we serve. It is vengeance.” And the fact that a moment of Angel’s happiness will not only cost him his soul but will destroy the life he’s built and perhaps the lives of those that have befriended him – as far as the gypsies care, that’s just what they’d hoped for, even though they know that innocents will die.
It’s not quite as indescriminate as all that, either.
The resouled Angel might have a concience that Angelus didn’t (nor Liam, for that matter), but, despite what the Slayers and Watchers Council tell themselves, a Vampire isn’t a completely separate being from what he was when he was human, nor are Angel or Spike different people once they get their souls back than when they were soulless Vampires. The demon-fueled Vampire is just a twisted version of the original human, at first, though personal growth continues, and when they get their souls back, they keep their personalities, except for the bloodthirstiness, or some of the more…disturbing expressions of their creative/romantic sides.
Thanks for the insight, everyone. I’m about to start on the **Angel **series. I’m resisting reading these spoiler boxes, because I’ve already heard too much from other sources.
Yes, but he didn’t “lose himself” in it, nor in bouv’s example from season 5.
In BtVS season 2 he experienced “one brief moment of pure hapiness” unfettered by guilt or anguish, when he slept with Buffy
it’s not likely he went thru that with Darla or Eve
WILLOW: It's horrible! That's me as a vampire? I'm so evil and ...and skanky. And I think I'm kinda gay.
BUFFY: Willow, just remember, a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person it was.
ANGEL: Well, actually... (gets a "don't go there" look from Buffy) Er... that's a good point.
You KNOW Angel was going to disagree, at least in part, with the sentiment that a vampire’s personality has nothing to do with the person it was.
[QUOTE=bouv]
Why is the sould removed when he experiences perfect happiness? QUOTE]
I think part of it too is that, since the demon is there, the human soul is just keeping it in check…the demon’s “imprisoned”, in other words. If Angel is perfectly happy (or high, from that one episode of Angel), then he loses his self control and the demon gets out.