Watcher Propaganda

[nerd4hire]

Unaccustomed as I am to supporting the arguements of the very opinionated Lady Lavinia, I have to say, I think she has a point.

As I understand the original purpose of the thread it was meant to examine the possibillity that slayer's may be receiving a morally hypocritical message in what they're taught about vampires. Specifically that when the vampire takes the body, the demon gets it, and that's a black and white bad thing, therefore kill it. This becomes complicated in cases like Spike and Angel when the human soul returns and takes charge of the body.

I'm not sure you can come to a full understanding of this question unless you consider demon energy in all it's forms and where the watcher's council stands on how to deal with it.

It appears to be anti-Glory (demon god) for instance. Werewolves appear to be within the council's mandate, because Wesley's watcher dad (as cyborg) says he fought them, and Giles doesn't appear to have any problem taking on a werewolf situation.

So what is the Watcher's council saying? Are they simply saying. Humans good/Demons bad, therefore kill demons, or do they recognize shades of gray where you might have to deal with different manifestations of demon energy differently.

More specifically to the Lady's arguement I guess - should they, and where do you draw the line between what's a good slay, and what's a bad one?

 

[Pagan]

Agreed, assuming you are considering the demon aspect of the vampire to be the same thing as the flesh and blood demons but that is not my case.

Demons like Lorne, Merl, Clem etc are fully realised physical beings, regardless of their demon nature. They exist in and of themselves. They are clearly as aware, or sentient, as the average human. Also they clearly are able to make their own moral choices despite them, apparently, not having a soul. However seeing as how the existence of a demonic alternative to the soul has neither been established nor refuted within canon then that is an argument we can only speculate on, Anya being a good example of where the lines blur.

The demonic aspect of the vampire though is not the same kind of thing at all. As we were debating earlier it may in fact be no more than an infection that can reanimate a human corpse and corrupt it's host form towards evil.

The only evidence we have at all of what the demon inside a vampire is truly like would be Angel's transformation in Pylea, there we got a true glimpse of what was inside him. Now i'm not going to begin the "what establishes sentience" debate again simply because it is besides the point so i will simply say that it cannot be refuted that the vampire demon is a lot more savage and beastial than Lorne for example. If it is sentient at all then it is certainly on a much lower scale than the average demon we know.

It operates on a much lower level of sophisticated thinking, from what we saw purely on survival instinct and rage. It obviously has some form of awarness but not intelligence. Certainly not what you could suggest was responsible for any aspect of Angelus, at least not beyond his wildest evil and rage.

So what i am saying is that this debate is one that is with regard to the nature of the vampire demon, and as such comparing it to Lorne only takes us away from the nature of the specific beast. Lorne is one thing, the vampire demon is another. In each case the Watchers Council may or may not have guidelines but this is purely about it's opinion on the vampire.

But as you had pointed out Pagan, isn't it a matter of opinion whether the demon aspect of a vampire (the animal) is or isn't sentient?

As far as this is concerned, whilst i don't wish to dwell on the exact nature of sentience, as we clearly have a different opinion on that, i would like to point out that the criteria that i was taught qualified a being for sentience were intelligence, self awareness and consciousness.

We have evidence that most demons possess all three of these, however in the case of the much more animal like vampire demon the evidence is not so clear. Certainly if it did possess all three then it would be on a very small scale. If you would prefer though how about rather than animal we compare the vampire demon to a caveman as opposed to Lorne being the astronaut. Is that a more accurate comparison in your mind? 😉

 

[nerd4hire]

There's one demon that might give us some insight into where watcher training stands on the whole human/demon, sentient/non-sentient thing. It's werewolves.

The gang meet their first werewolf in Season 2. Giles is into year 2 of his tenure as watcher. He has some previous, similar field experience to draw on for ideas on how to proceed, from his experience with hyena possession, but I'm going to suggest he's still drawing largely on his watcher training.

So the way Buffy and Giles choose to capture not kill, suggests to me that watcher training might take into consideration the variables in the demon/human, sentient/non-sentient equation.

On the other hand, I wonder. I wonder how Wesley's dad dealt with his werewolf...