Liam chose to become a vampire?

[Lyri]

No, it doesn't.

Literally nothing you've said suggests that Liam had any prior knowledge of vampires. He kills his family, yes, and his very, very Catholic father calls him a demon - not vampire, demon. It's the nature of the religion, especially the religion at that time. You see something that looks like Angelus, the first thing you're going to think is 'monster' or 'demon'. And saying that does not mean that you knew something like that existed before you were confronted with it.

In 'Spin the Bottle' he also accuses Lorne of being the devil. Does that mean he knows something about Lorne that we all missed? And he came to the conclusion that he must be a vampire only AFTER Gunn and Wesley explained that vampires are real. He made no such inference that he had any idea prior to those two spelling it out for them and only after Wesley mentioned the test that the Council puts them through.

 

[Taake]

I'm thinking if you manage to time travel any person from the 1700's and place them in the 2000's they are all going to believe every single surperstition they were ever told at their mothers' knee but probably rejected in their own time period. 😉

 

[janas]

In the "Prodigal" Liam's father nailing up his window because something evil and vile and monstrous had taken to terrorizing the village, and that something evil and monstrous are Angelus and Darla. This doesn't imply that he knew the existence of vampires before that night.

 

[NightLady]

No, it doesn't.

Literally nothing you've said suggests that Liam had any prior knowledge of vampires. He kills his family, yes, and his very, very Catholic father calls him a demon - not vampire, demon. It's the nature of the religion, especially the religion at that time. You see something that looks like Angelus, the first thing you're going to think is 'monster' or 'demon'. And saying that does not mean that you knew something like that existed before you were confronted with it.

In 'Spin the Bottle' he also accuses Lorne of being the devil. Does that mean he knows something about Lorne that we all missed? And he came to the conclusion that he must be a vampire only AFTER Gunn and Wesley explained that vampires are real. He made no such inference that he had any idea prior to those two spelling it out for them and only after Wesley mentioned the test that the Council puts them through.

I'm afraid I explained myself wrong. My point has nothing to do with Angelus killing his family or them being catholic or Liam's father calling him demon instead of vampire. What's relevant is that Liam's father was taking specific anti-vampire measures and he showed a knowledge about vampires that went behind 'you were dead and you are not anymore so you must be evil'


Angel: “You’re no different from the rest of them, - are you, father? (His father spins around and stares at him) Cowering in their houses – boarding up the windows – smearing that foul herb in the doorways. You’d think something evil – and vile – and monstrous - had taken to terrorizing this village –and everyone in it.”
Dad: “Be gone, unclean thing! A demon can not enter a home where it’s not welcome. He must be invited!”

About Spin the bottle, doesn't take a genius to think of something evil when looking at Lorne 🙂 and yes, Gunn and Wesley mentioned the vampires but they never said anything about mirrors, so how would he know that vampires didn't reflect in the mirror?

 

[NightLady]

I'm thinking if you manage to time travel any person from the 1700's and place them in the 2000's they are all going to believe every single surperstition they were ever told at their mothers' knee but probably rejected in their own time period. 😉

Sorry, I don't understand your point 🙁

 

[Lyri]

Like @Taake said, superstitions are passed down through families. We all hear stories. Are you telling me that right now, if someone whose funeral you attended suddenly showed up in your home and killed your family, you wouldn't immediately think 'oh, god, it's a demon, it's a demon.' and know some tricks that might be able to save you? If you do, that doesn't mean you have prior knowledge of the thing, that means that the stories to prepare you in the event that they are real worked the way they were supposed to.

And, again, Liam's father said 'demon', not vampire. Things like superstition were taken FAR more literally back then than they are now. Things like covering mirrors and pictures when people died. Just because people believe in their superstition doesn't actually prove that they had full knowledge.

He went to the bathroom to see what was wrong with his face. It was only when he actually looked in the mirror that he realized he didn't have a reflection. He put all of those clues together - Wesley and Gunn explaining that vampires are real, Wesley explaining about the test the Council puts them through to kill a vampire, wanting to bite Cordelia, knowing that his face is mis-shapening, and seeing that he doesn't have a reflection - and comes to the very obvious conclusion that he must be the vampire that they are meant to kill.

None of that proves that Liam knew about vampires. It proves that Liam isn't stupid and can put two and two together and get four.

 

[Taake]

Sorry, I don't understand your point 🙁

Oh, I'm sorry.
I just meant that in "Spin the Bottle" we have a very teenage 1700's Liam placed in an extremely modern setting. It's not weird to me that he looks for supernatural reasons for his presence there, he probably didn't have much education so religion and folklore would have been his go-to explanations in strange situations, and that - being in modern times LA would have qualified as a very strange situation.

I.e. his readiness to believe in vampires and demons then, does not to me mean that he actually believed in them during his human lifetime in Ireland.

 

[jom]

I already commented on William's consent. I'll just add that it's believable that he didn't try to stop Drusilla because he was shocked. And anyway my post wasn't about William 🙂

of course it wasn't, you wanted to damage Angel but in doing so information has been revealed that puts William in a more damaged situation than Liam. So it's the life of an Angel hater.

 

[Taake]

of course it wasn't, you wanted to damage Angel but in doing so information has been revealed that puts William in a more damaged situation than Liam. So it's the life of an Angel hater.

There is no need for this comment.

NightLady has not said anything about hating Angel. This thread is simply not about Spike/William and she clearly, and rightly, pointed that out.

 

[NightLady]

Like @Taake said, superstitions are passed down through families. We all hear stories. Are you telling me that right now, if someone whose funeral you attended suddenly showed up in your home and killed your family, you wouldn't immediately think 'oh, god, it's a demon, it's a demon.' and know some tricks that might be able to save you? If you do, that doesn't mean you have prior knowledge of the thing, that means that the stories to prepare you in the event that they are real worked the way they were supposed to..

Um, no offence but I find this quite contradictory. Or you know something or you don't. I fail to see how one can know things about vampires... while not knowing about them...

And, again, Liam's father said 'demon', not vampire.

Again, doesn't matter how he called him. Demon, vampire or... bad-puppy XD
Apart from the fact that a vampire IS a demon, so Liam's father calling him demon doesn't contradict the idea the he knew about vampires. Buffy has often called vampires 'demons' or 'unsouled things' or other colorful names. Does that mean that she knew nothing about them?

He went to the bathroom to see what was wrong with his face. It was only when he actually looked in the mirror that he realized he didn't have a reflection. He put all of those clues together - Wesley and Gunn explaining that vampires are real, Wesley explaining about the test the Council puts them through to kill a vampire, wanting to bite Cordelia, knowing that his face is mis-shapening, and seeing that he doesn't have a reflection - and comes to the very obvious conclusion that he must be the vampire that they are meant to kill.
None of that proves that Liam knew about vampires. It proves that Liam isn't stupid and can put two and two together and get four.

Oh, I'm sorry.
I just meant that in "Spin the Bottle" we have a very teenage 1700's Liam placed in an extremely modern setting. It's not weird to me that he looks for supernatural reasons for his presence there, he probably didn't have much education so religion and folklore would have been his go-to explanations in strange situations, and that - being in modern times LA would have qualified as a very strange situation.
I.e. his readiness to believe in vampires and demons then, does not to me mean that he actually believed in them during his human lifetime in Ireland.

Look, I get where you both come from and I understand that to some Angel's fans the possibility that Liam willingly chose to became a vampire may seem to somehow diminish him as a character. But I disagree because accepting to become a vampire doesn’t necessarily mean being ‘evil’. Take for example those who wanted to become vampires in the Buffy episode. They were fools, not evil.
Also, I believe Angel (the one we see in his show) is a champion and a hero, no matter how he became a vampire and what happened in his past. (Actually, I think that my theory explains better why he feels so much remorse and why he fights so hard.)

That said, my personal opinion (which I wont change because as I said I have already dissected it before 😀 ) is based on the fact that we are not talking of real life. So if these were real conversations, made by real people in a real world, I would agree. But these are words thought by the writers - WANTED by the writers - and maybe I put too much faith in them but I believe there (usually) is a reason if they chose to have the characters say what they say and act the way they act. I honestly think that the scene in Spin the bottle wasn’t meant to say that Liam knew about vampires and therefore knew what Darla was proposing him, it was just meant to be funny. And it was funny!
But all the rest: Darla’s ambiguous words, the dialogue between Liam’s father and Angelus... if the writers wanted us to believe that Liam was an innocent victim they would have had him sired like Harmony or write the scene differently. Why hint that the people at his time knew about vampires (even if it was a knowledge coming from folklore)? Why have Darla’s words be so ambiguous?

 

[Taake]

I guess to me the difference is that I don't see any hints.

I don't see Darla's words as a sign that Liam understands what she's truly talking about and the real world examples I've used is because the Buffyverse is in the real world with a fantasy addition to it. It's not a separate verse (like say Lord of the Rings) where entirely different rules apply.

I don't think all innocents would have to be turned like Harmony. For me Liam was an innocent based on the evidence at hand, that's how I interpret that situation and while your theory is interesting, I see it as purely conjecture.

 

[NightLady]

I guess to me the difference is that I don't see any hints.

I don't see Darla's words as a sign that Liam understands what she's truly talking about and the real world examples I've used is because the Buffyverse is in the real world with a fantasy addition to it. It's not a separate verse (like say Lord of the Rings) where entirely different rules apply.

I don't think all innocents would have to be turned like Harmony. For me Liam was an innocent based on the evidence at hand, that's how I interpret that situation and while your theory is interesting, I see it as purely conjecture.

that's why I said it was my personal opinion 🙂 
Oh, one last thing: let's change the context and put Xander in Liam's place and an unknown female vampire in Darla's.
Xander goes out in the night, he meets a beautiful woman and she tells him 'another world', 'frightening things' and blah blah. He accepts and closes his eyes. What would you think? Honestly.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

What would you think? Honestly.

In a word: penicillin

 

[NightLady]

In a word: penicillin

What does that mean? ... if it does mean something at all, that's it.

 

[thetopher]

I think its rather odd to say that Liam knew about the existance of vampires (because of folklore) and therefore must've automatically known what Darla was talking about that night. She had all the appearance of a high-born lady not a creature of the night, and talking about 'showing him the world' in that context, wouldn't have nessesarily meant 'I'm going to make you a vampire'- that would be a MASSIVE leap.

Bear in mind that this is 1760 Ireland, the idea of vampires outside of myth/folklore were only really taken seriously in Eastern Europe at this period. Historically at this time they were painted as fearsome and monstrous demons who slaughtered whole villages, not seductive-looking humans.

And anywhere other that Eastern Europe these legends would be no different than other creatures of folklore, like fairies or goblins and demons (as in the devil's minions) or other things that Christinanity had put a stop to.

In 'The Prodigal' its obvious from the conversation with his Father that Angelus has been praying upon his village for a while before visiting his own family (this fits with his habit of toying with his intended true victims, savouring the death and lending an 'artistry' to his killing), in fact it may well've been one of the last houses he visited- Angelus' conversation with Darla certainly hints at this.
So this means that the terrorised villagers would've had time to consider the fact that vampires/demons were perhaps not nonsense folklore afterall, but real and stalking the night. Evidence of people being drained when evening fell would've led naturally to that conclusion, but before that time? Doubtful.

It was only the publications of 19th century literature that made vampires well-known to Europe as a whole, and also changed the perception of them, gone were bestial monsters and in was the more gothic, humanised vampire.
In fact the high-point of popular vampire literature that started with Byron's poem The Vampyre in 1819 (who knew Andrew pronounces the classical version of the name!) and reached an apex in the 1860's and 70's- in these popular fiction the vampire was often portrayed as seductive, and capable of seducing/turning people to their evil ways (i.e siring)
And when was William sired? 1880. Seems to me he was much more likely to be savvy about the nature of vampires, especially ones who at first looked like beautiful women.

Also in 'Spin The Bottle' Liam thought that cars were demons, I'm almost certain that he thought every strange thing he saw was a demon, and that all leant itself, in his mind, to the folklore that educated people dismissed in his time, including vampires and all the legends associated with them, being true.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Liam thought that cars were demons,

Those damned global warming, drive electric car nutjobs actually consider them demons as well. At least Liam had an excuse for his lunacy.

 

[NightLady]

I think its rather odd to say that Liam knew about the existance of vampires (because of folklore) and therefore must've automatically known what Darla was talking about that night. She had all the appearance of a high-born lady not a creature of the night, and talking about 'showing him the world' in that context, wouldn't have nessesarily meant 'I'm going to make you a vampire'- that would be a MASSIVE leap.

Bear in mind that this is 1760 Ireland, the idea of vampires outside of myth/folklore were only really taken seriously in Eastern Europe at this period. Historically at this time they were painted as fearsome and monstrous demons who slaughtered whole villages, not seductive-looking humans.

And anywhere other that Eastern Europe these legends would be no different than other creatures of folklore, like fairies or goblins and demons (as in the devil's minions) or other things that Christinanity had put a stop to.

In 'The Prodigal' its obvious from the conversation with his Father that Angelus has been praying upon his village for a while before visiting his own family (this fits with his habit of toying with his intended true victims, savouring the death and lending an 'artistry' to his killing), in fact it may well've been one of the last houses he visited- Angelus' conversation with Darla certainly hints at this.
So this means that the terrorised villagers would've had time to consider the fact that vampires/demons were perhaps not nonsense folklore afterall, but real and stalking the night. Evidence of people being drained when evening fell would've led naturally to that conclusion, but before that time? Doubtful.

It was only the publications of 19th century literature that made vampires well-known to Europe as a whole, and also changed the perception of them, gone were bestial monsters and in was the more gothic, humanised vampire.
In fact the high-point of popular vampire literature that started with Byron's poem The Vampyre in 1819 (who knew Andrew pronounces the classical version of the name!) and reached an apex in the 1860's and 70's- in these popular fiction the vampire was often portrayed as seductive, and capable of seducing/turning people to their evil ways (i.e siring)
And when was William sired? 1880. Seems to me he was much more likely to be savvy about the nature of vampires, especially ones who at first looked like beautiful women.

Also in 'Spin The Bottle' Liam thought that cars were demons, I'm almost certain that he thought every strange thing he saw was a demon, and that all leant itself, in his mind, to the folklore that educated people dismissed in his time, including vampires and all the legends associated with them, being true.

I stand by my opinion because of what I said about the writers... but you make very good points! and kudos for your knowledge about the vampire history 🙂

 

[Lyri]

I see absolutely nothing that suggests that Liam knew anything about vampires and nothing that you've posted has even made me pause to rethink my stances. Liam is entirely innocent as far as I'm concerned.

I understand that to some Angel's fans the possibility that Liam willingly chose to became a vampire may seem to somehow diminish him as a character. But I disagree because accepting to become a vampire doesn’t necessarily mean being ‘evil’.

The same could be said about William when I and @thetopher pointed out that it's much more plausible that William knew what was going on than Liam did, and yet you dismissed that out of hand without even taking the time to discuss it. And I do think it links with this thread, as the similarities of their siring are too glaring to dismiss.

that's why I said it was my personal opinion 🙂 
Oh, one last thing: let's change the context and put Xander in Liam's place and an unknown female vampire in Darla's.
Xander goes out in the night, he meets a beautiful woman and she tells him 'another world', 'frightening things' and blah blah. He accepts and closes his eyes. What would you think? Honestly.

The two situations aren't even remotely similar. We know for sure that Xander has personal and indisputable knowledge of vampires. So if some sexy female vampire came up to him in an alley and offered to 'show him the world' and Xander agrees, then Xander is both stupid and 100% responsible for his actions and everything that happens because of those actions.

However, if we're talking about this happening to Xander in 'Welcome to the Hellmouth', or prior to the events of that episode, then Xander isn't 100% innocent - because he doesn't know vampires exist.

Xander knows how to spot a vampire and he's not stupid enough to let someone - anyone - take him out to an alley to do anything with him.

The only thing we have to go on that 'proves' that Liam knew about vampires when Darla took him to that alley is your insistence, @NightLady and I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me.

What I see on that screen and when I read the transcripts and shoot scripts is a drunk, innocent boy who thought that this highborn noble lady wanted to help him escape his father's iron fist. Nothing more.

 

[NightLady]

I see absolutely nothing that suggests that Liam knew anything about vampires and nothing that you've posted has even made me pause to rethink my stances. Liam is entirely innocent as far as I'm concerned..

I'm glad for you... but it wasn't my goal to make you or anyone else rethink your stances 🙄

The same could be said about William when I and @thetopher pointed out that it's much more plausible that William knew what was going on than Liam did, and yet you dismissed that out of hand without even taking the time to discuss it. And I do think it links with this thread, as the similarities of their siring are too glaring to dismiss..

I 'dismissed' it because that wasn't what MY post was about and it was very clear that it was turning in the same old (and childish) Angel vs Spike fight. You want to talk about Spike and his siring? Go create your own post.

The two situations aren't even remotely similar. We know for sure that Xander has personal and indisputable knowledge of vampires. So if some sexy female vampire came up to him in an alley and offered to 'show him the world' and Xander agrees, then Xander is both stupid and 100% responsible for his actions and everything that happens because of those actions.

However, if we're talking about this happening to Xander in 'Welcome to the Hellmouth', or prior to the events of that episode, then Xander isn't 100% innocent - because he doesn't know vampires exist.

Xander knows how to spot a vampire and he's not stupid enough to let someone - anyone - take him out to an alley to do anything with him.

The only thing we have to go on that 'proves' that Liam knew about vampires when Darla took him to that alley is your insistence, @NightLady and I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me.

My insistence? I don't mean to be rude but seeing that you have no qualms in being I'll point out that no one forces you to go on reading my comments. And what makes you think that I care if what I say it's enough or not for you? This is a forum to talk about Buffy, to express ones opinions and that's what I'm doing. If you don't like me or my ideas, ignore me. I'll surely do the same.

 

[Lyri]

And I'm expressing my opinions as well. You created a thread for discussion, and that's what I'm doing. I'm sorry if you think my posts are rude or if I was being in any way antagonistic. I was simply pointing out that while you have your own opinion on that scene, which you brought up for discussion, you haven't said anything that makes me stop and think 'yes, I can see how that conclusion could be reached'. You haven't given any solid proof or even hints that Liam had specific, real world knowledge about vampires and that's why he went into that alley way with Darla.

Alright, maybe 'insistence' was the wrong word to use, but it's 1am here and I'm running on fumes. Maybe 'opinion' would have been a better word. So, yes, the only thing I and others in this thread can see that even opens this line of discussion is your opinion, @NightLady And I stand by that.

And as for the 'Spike Vs Angel' comment, the writers themselves made those two scenes similar. They chose to put both of those men into the exact same situation. If that's not cause for discussion, I don't know what it.