Now this is the kind of mindbending pointlessness I crave, lol. I don't know how many errors in logic I have here, but...
It seems like a vamp is not dead, precisely. It's undead, so we're told. So, is being vamped the same as being killed in the 'verse? The soul is removed and the body no longer needs oxygen. I've been told by some on these boards that the mind, and therefore the person, is still (at least partially) intact. The mind hasn't actually migrated with the soul to the ether. And the body continues to exist, such as it is.
If being vamped isn't true, meaningful death...then Darla, for example, died just twice"”each time at the point of a stake. Amazingly, it seems WR&H had access to a spell that could retrieve a soul and perfectly recreate a body and mind from scratch. Or, Darla's mind and soul were somehow reunited after she was dusted by Angel and the spell only had to recreate her body. Theoretically, Darla"”or any other dusted vamp"”could once again be revived as a human in this way. Unless the conditions are unreproduceable, can't remember...I assume Darla would still come back fatally ill, each time.
As far as the alternate reality of the Wish and Dopple...that reality must be, in fact, real. Otherwise how could Vamp Willow coexist with "our" Willow in "our" reality? Unless she were just some kind of manufactured, magical apparition or something...but we actually see Vamp Willow transported back to her reality. Seconds later, she's dust.
So, was that other being Willow? Or, just something very similar to Willow. Are those people in the other reality the same beings? Doesn't seem like it to me. If they are separate beings, I don't think they should count as character deaths.
But, if that other reality is in fact real, then Cordelia was actually transported to that reality, right? So, "our" Cordy did in fact literally die in that other reality. How is it that we see her alive again, back in "our reality"? Must've been an illusion...right? Or was it time travel? Destroying Anya's necklace in the alternate reality rewound "our reality" back to the moment just before Cordy's wish fulfillment...I dunno...
The vamp sailor's "part of a soul" idea just makes me think of Fred again. It suggests a Buffyverse soul could exist as fragments"”not just pure, whole existence or complete destruction. Could that have happened because...that's what happens everytime you're sired by an ensouled vamp?
