PART 2 - WHAT IS A VAMPIRE (metaphysics of buffyverse souls part 2)
Of the longest running buffyverse mysteries, so many have to do with the soul.
Because Buffy's magic is usually in service of metaphor over strict logical coherence,
it can get pretty wobbly when it comes to hard lore.
That’s just not what buffy lore is about.
It’s not about a tight system of rules and balances, it’s about what it means for the
story being told.
It’s why if you squint too closely at any mix of story developments [the gift] you come
up with more questions than answers.
When we talk about vampires, we’re talking about literal things for characters to fight,
but also a psychological and philosophical thought experiment.
For example: We could try to unpack eternity (ha ha ) for an eternity, and wouldn’t come
up with an explanation that serves both literal and metaphorical purposes.
This is because, by the admission of the writer, they were focused on telling a certain story–temporarily
bringing Angelus back–over building a body of internally consistent lore.
If you’re a lore stickler, I get it–this may not be the most fun thing.
I’m sure there are shows out there where that is more of a priority.
But, for better or for worse, in the buffyverse, it simply isn’t a priority.
Which is fine, as long as we just make our peace with it.
And central to this soul question is the idea of what it means to lose or gain it.
I did another video a while back about why two cases of soul losing/regaining are so
different, which boils down to “souls give ability to make meaningful change, and change
happens over time.”
But there’s a second category of confusion I also see come up a lot.
And it’s the “a demon takes control of your body” narrative.
Is a vampire a person corrupted, or does an outside demon come in and become an amnesiac
and take control?
Vampires recovering souls is an anomaly, but lucky for us, we have three of those!
In each of these cases where vampires lose and regain souls there’s no “AHH IT’S
ME IM BACK I WAS POSSESSED,” there’s a clear carryover.
These are different, but let’s look at werewolves.
When Oz changes, does a wolf named “josh” take over temporarily?
Does josh have friends and family and a favorite color?
No, oz becomes a werewolf temporarily.
It’s still oz, just buried under animalistic impulses.
And in the same way, a person becomes a vampire.
They’re transformed, physically, and the soul leaves their body.
Beyond this, the show doesn’t spend a lot of time on the nitty gritty magic of it all.
Does the vampire blood change your DNA a la spiderman?
Like a zombie?
Because it’s magic–specifically buffy magic–it’s less about the mechanics and
more about the meaning.
The narrative–and therefore most relevant–purpose of vampirism is that of a person stripped
of their conscience, with their selfishness amplified and also given fangs.
The demon possession premise raises more questions than answers, that the shows simply do not
bother with.
Who is this demon?
Where’d it come from?
Why is it amnesiac, what’s the point of this arrangement?
This is the world’s worst exchange program.
“Your soul leaves and goes to the ether, I possess your body and forget who I am.”
Both shows spend exactly zero time making a real case for this.
They do spend, on the other hand, a great deal of time showing us people reflecting
on their soulless lives and the things they did without a conscience.
That’s the purpose of vampirism, which is given narrative weight when it actually matters.
But, to weigh all our evidence, let’s look at the handful of evidence for the demon rehousing
program
Angel in the dark age “i've had a demon in me for a long time”
This one is a little goofy–an endearing hallmark of early Buffy.
We see some force inside Angel clearly fighting with Eyghon.
But this is the one and only time we ever see something like this.
This is also early in season 2, still early in buffyverse lore development, and because
it never shows up again, this is one of those common exceptions, rather than something we
decide the lore is now forever tethered to.
We can use a little discernment here.
But for argument’s sake, I can explain it away.
A.
The wording is because angel is dramatic.
B. the force we see is what happens when an outside force enters an unstable host.
That is the demon itself grappling with Angel’s vampire essence.
That’s it.
Ditto for this even earlier line [“The demon gets your body, it doesn’t get your soul.
You have no idea the things i’ve done–and to care.”]
next!
THE WATCHERS
[insert quotes] Giles’s logic is faulty because it's a secondhand
or third hand account, from a bunch of people who are known to manipulate evidence and who
have every reason to favor black/white explanations of the world.
If you’re a secret society tasked with fighting vampires, it’s likely you bump into them
now and then.
It’s more than likely that in their encounters with vampires, watchers have been bitten and
turned.
In fact, we see it happen in Helpless.
When that happens, and watchers have to then confront their undead colleague, they’d
have every reason to be told something that makes it easier, and less emotionally messy
to dust them.
It actually makes enormous sense as a piece of watcher training.
Of course watcher protocol would be “the vampire is no longer them,” it’s just
a matter of practicality.
It would be so much easier to believe that the vampire who remembers you, who taunts
you with intimate information, with the same eyes as your friend isn’t really them.
It would also be a good way to help watchers avoid being swayed by vampire manipulations–again,
telling themselves that anything that resembles their friend is an illusion.
And furthermore: this explanation would spare the memory and dignity of the person they
lost.
They wouldn’t have to believe that those cruel, scary parts of the vampire were always
a part of someone they knew, but simply the work of a demon.
Ditto for Wes, who’s speaking from similar watcher training, not firsthand experience.
The watchers have no firsthand knowledge of what it feels like to become a vampire.
And they’d have every incentive to frame it to get necessary work done–however unsavory.
[helpless giles]
FORD
When Buffy talks to Ford, she’s also only repeating what she’s been told by Giles.
At this point, she’s not only speaking from secondhand experience, she’s also early
in her slayer journey, and so far, has never met Angelus.
SPIKE’S MOM There is the matter of this line [ ]
But this doesn’t hold a lot of literal weight.
Firstly, because In the same scene, Spike says [i turned her into a vampire.] he doesn’t
say “the demon that possessed me tried to turn her into a vampire.”
Secondly, Spike’s motivation in this scene isn’t pure truth telling for the sake of
it, but an attempt to jab at and hurt Robin.
Spike proposes the same platitude I covered when talking about the watchers: easier to
conclude that the things his mother was saying were complete demonic fabrications, rather
than distortions of a partial truth.
Easier to reject nuance than to accept that, for example, a mother might love her son,
and also occasionally feel suffocated by his idolization of her.
And it would make sense for these feelings to come out vicious and manipulative in a
newly made vampire.
And most significantly, Spike’s own words in Fool for love contradict this “becoming
a vampire blah blah.” he knows damn well that william informs soulless william and
then spike.
When saying “it was the demon,” it’s also not necessarily literal.
“The demon” rather than refer to a literal case of possession, can just as easily refer
to the corrupted, soulless creature that embodies and exaggerates the worst parts of the person
it used to be.
[so were we, once upon a time]
These are the secondhand experiences.
But when vampires do talk about firsthand experience losing a soul and then sometimes
gaining it again, it’s unambiguous.
It’s always “who i was,” “what i did.”
and most importantly, this is how the story treats it.
Angel and Spike I’m not going into the Angel/Angelus dichotomy–just
watch [this video link].
But for a quick summary: this particular duality is a unique case among unique cases: it’s
basically the Ship of Theseus.
Angelus with a soul spent 150 years as his own person, making choices that eventually
evolve into “Angel,” so much so that losing the soul again is effectively a century-plus
regression.
This is the split that we occasionally hear referred to with third person.
Them coexisting is a paradox, but it’s just the two ships of theseus The rebuilt ship–Angel,
and the restored ship–Angelus.
Anyhow.
Angel’s relationship with his father has everything to do with who he becomes.
His first murder is his most human.
William’s relationship with his mother has everything to do with who Spike becomes–we
see this over, and over.
These are things that are seriously explored, as a way to invite the audience to reflect
on their own flaws and what to make of them–a conversation which, again, doesn’t exist
if we are talking about possession.
The entirety of Fool for Love is emphasizing the bridge between human william and spike.
[spike in fool for love “becoming a vampire is a powerful experience]
Notably, Spike speaks specifically to the transformation from human to vampire itself–something
he was present and aware of.
Spike’s actions in season 7 are directly informed by season 6.
He speaks to the things he couldn’t understand without a soul, that now he does.
The entirety of Fool for Love works because it’s soulless vampire William reflecting
on and recounting his life, and the narrative using it to draw parallels with the present.
In Damage, both he and Angel reflect on what their vampire heydays were like “i never
looked back at the victims” “i couldn’t keep my eyes off them.”
Again, not only is this constantly first person, semantically, but this is an incredibly meaningful
discussion between two men about their respective corrupted dark sides, and what they mean as
they try to move forward.
Darla
Each time Darla loses and regains and loses her soul, she is still very much herself,
and each iteration is informed heavily by the one that came before.
Human darla is amoral until her conscience kicks in and then she seeks Angel.
Then, once she’s soulless again, she seeks Angel out again for some convoluted “revenge”--
very much like angelus did to buffy for making him “feel human.”
THEN, once she has a proxy soul inside her, darla’s emotions come back very much like
the human darla we remember.
When Darla is vampire-d the second time, there is zero discussion of “was it the same demon
that took her over?”
no, it’s darla, transformed, once again–and that’s why the ensuing plot has any emotional
weight.
Which is why there’s continuity in her story despite losing and regaining a soul multiple
times.
Darla is perhaps the most interesting example of this simply for the amount of times this
poor woman goes through it.
“Did you bring back that girl who’s name i can’t remember,” the soul didn’t restore
some old human darla from the 1600s, it’s brought Darla, with every memory and experience
of 400 years now with
“400 years and still, too short”
Most of all, darla requests to be turned by Angel.
She sees this as an escape of her illness and her guilt.
She’s experienced vampirism and humanity both, and knows what it entails, and she wouldn’t
ask for it if it led to possession
Miscellaneous: PYLEA
Pylea is its own fun anomaly.
Here, we see a literal demon, presumably the “pure” demon as it exists in a black and
white world.
The way we can take this is that it’s literally just the pure dna that angel’s vampire is
encoded with, now fully taking him over.
This transformation is most similar to werewolfism.
Because when he reverts, it’s still Angel, remembering exactly what he was.
It’s not so much soulless, but animalistic.
Conclusion
If
we operate with the “template for demon that takes x over,” the actual philosophical
and psychological discussion of the show becomes moot.
There’s no need for Angel the series, because Angel isn’t responsible for 150 years of
carnage, some random demon is.
Spike should regain his soul in s7 and go “wait, who ARE you people,” because he’s
just returned to his own body.
But that’s not how the show treats it when it matters.
The only times it does are from the mouths of people who have had no experience being
vampires, using a really understandable excuse to explain something otherwise heartbreaking.
If it’s just some random vampire going “hey, these guys had mad mommy/daddy issues, let
me replicate that,” the entire show becomes profoundly less compelling.
Most significantly, this premise is not taken seriously by the text itself insofar as it
doesn’t actually explore the implications, and in fact, the storylines and character
arcs themselves directly contradict it.
The question of vampires is “what if the worst parts of ourselves were unleashed and
given form,” how would we, and those around us, reckon with that?
Some of the most powerful scenes rely on this understanding, between characters, and between
them and the audience.
The handful of times we actually see possession (angel possessed by old man carpe noctem,
spike and the first) the show makes that fact incredibly, incredibly clear.
Angel doesn't feel guilty over what Marcus did with his body, because….
Why would he.
The reason angel and spike are interesting characters is because they are informed by
their pasts.
They are informed by their soulless behavior.
That’s the whole point.
What we can take from the “a demon takes you over” narrative is an understanding
of how people would rationalize, and cope with the horrors and tragedy of vampirism
in a world where it exists.
As a blanket disclaimer–this is obviously my analysis of the text.
Knowing the buffy fandom, I'm sure other people have their own interpretations, which I'm
sure we’ll discuss passionately in the comments.
The bottom line for me is–this is a magic system that writers have repeatedly admitted
was maneuvered and tailored to fit the plot.
That may not be satisfying to hear, but we can weigh narrative, thematic, and emotional
consistency more heavily than mechanics of lore that is, by the creative team’s own
admission, built to suit that narrative–not the other way around.
Because buffy is an extended metaphor, taking its richly poetic universe too literally can
lose some of the meaning.
And it’s fair to be frustrated by this!
It’s fair to want a show that merges its internal rules and its meaning more effectively!
That doesn't have interesting, multi season arcs then complicated by a handful of contradictory
lines from early worldbuilding.
So what do we make of this?
Because it’s inconsistent, and we know that, there will always be exceptions, whatever
way you look at it.
So it’s a matter of deciding: what is a priority for the text?
Telling a story about demonic possession, or about something else?
To me, that answer is pretty clear throughout.
The story being told by vampirism is not a story about body snatching identity theft.
It’s a story about guilt.
It’s a story about identity, choices, and forgiveness, and how these things combine.
That’s where the story puts its focus, and therefore, so should we.