Angel is a douche
- Thread starter Joan the Vampire Slayer
- Start date
Officers in armies have given orders to kill for all of recorded human history. At least Angel asked for volunteers and didn't draft his army. Now, from Power Play:
You didn't judge. You didn't spend your life obsessed with good and evil. You do that, you get swallowed, lost in the minutia. Good, bad, Angel, Angelus"” None of it makes a difference.
And so Lorne was "swallowed", as he went from his role as storykeeper on the periphery, above the "minutia", to active participant [or if you prefer, he went from historian to a participant in history]. And, yes, he couldn't reconcile himself to notion of active participant and so he bagged out, and no surprise that our end has the final line, with Lorne absent, let's go to work...
By the way, you should have seen this coming with the destruction of Caritas. In the narrative, Caritas functioned as the one place where all engaged in the struggle over "good and evil" could go for an escape (where one didn't judge or obsess over good and evil). Except the escape was a lie. Just as is Lorne's pacifism. To borrow from George Orwell aka Eric Blair [the one premise that the pacifist can never accept lest cognitive dissonance set in]: Those who "˜abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf. And what were you expecting? Buffy killed, Willow killed, Xander killed, Anya killed, Giles killed, Dawn killed, Potentials killed, Faith killed, Angel killed, Wes killed, Gunn killed, Fred-Illyria killed, Cordelia killed, Conor killed, in other words, everyone who well and truly cared that good triumphs over evil, killed. And don't know whether Joss intended such, but what Lorne always was is made painfully clear in the end, to wit, anti-hero. The survivors take on the world's evil in that alley, and where's Lorne? Not there, because he tells Lindsey that such line of work is "unsavory" (morally disreputable). And so anti-hero. For one more, even Illyria transformed, but in the other direction. She goes from Wes being one of the "Motes of dust. Mayflies who die so soon after they're born they might as well not live at all", to, "I'm feeling grief for him. I can't seem to control it. I wish to do more violence."
Willow My Love
Scooby
It's so easy to point out the bad in people.
It's not so easy to point out the good.
There are bad things about all of us. Some things we all do annoy someone out there to the brink of their minds. Do we change everything to make one person happy? (Not talking SO here, just a person) Not usually. We usually stay true to ourselves, and the people that don't like us can shove it.
Buffy would be really easy to do this to.
It's not so easy to point out the good.
There are bad things about all of us. Some things we all do annoy someone out there to the brink of their minds. Do we change everything to make one person happy? (Not talking SO here, just a person) Not usually. We usually stay true to ourselves, and the people that don't like us can shove it.
Buffy would be really easy to do this to.
B
buffyprops
Angel likes Barry Manilow...that makes him OK in my book.
goodbyetonight
I'll tear down the sky
Angel is the only male character I really like in the whole Buffyverse. Most of the rest of them all bug me for one reason or another.
Daniel Osbourne
Townie
Angel was always written as a morally ambiguous character. Everyone says he's a hero. He wants to help the helpless, truly. Buffy believes in him.
But he needs the guidance of the Powers to get off his butt after a century's wallowing. He allies himself with Wolfram and Hart. He gets Lorne to murder Lindsey, a completely redeemable person. And of course, he goes into a hopeless battle with all his human companions now dead or dying.
Angel isn't a douche. A real douche wouldn't want to help people. But like all the important characters in the Whedon-verse, Angel has problems. He is susceptible to proclamations of destiny, he can be petty and jealous, and he lets his own feelings get in the way of his self-proclaimed mission.
I'm sick of people viewing all the characters (especially Angel and Spike) in a wholly positive or negative light. Accept that the characters are flawed, and that they all have good and bad parts to them. That's what makes them GOOD characters.
But he needs the guidance of the Powers to get off his butt after a century's wallowing. He allies himself with Wolfram and Hart. He gets Lorne to murder Lindsey, a completely redeemable person. And of course, he goes into a hopeless battle with all his human companions now dead or dying.
Angel isn't a douche. A real douche wouldn't want to help people. But like all the important characters in the Whedon-verse, Angel has problems. He is susceptible to proclamations of destiny, he can be petty and jealous, and he lets his own feelings get in the way of his self-proclaimed mission.
I'm sick of people viewing all the characters (especially Angel and Spike) in a wholly positive or negative light. Accept that the characters are flawed, and that they all have good and bad parts to them. That's what makes them GOOD characters.
Kana
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