Xander throughout the series condemns Angel, and Buffy’s involvement with him because he was “a known murderer”, although technically, it wasn’t really Angel who committed the deeds of Angelus, but rather the demon inside of Angel. If Xander is so condemning of getting involved with murderers, why does he get involved with Anya? Throughout her life as a demon she killed/hurt people, and it wasn’t a demon inside her, but rather herself. This seems pretty hypocritical even if Anya was sorry and trying to be more humane.
January 14th, 2006 at 9:36 am
It’s really pretty hard to discern whether demon Anya is soulless or souled. Also, at the very least, Anya was punishing men who hurt women. Angelus was just a crazy mofo.
January 14th, 2006 at 10:56 am
I don’t think that Xander was really condemning the relationship because Angel(us) was a known murderer as much as he was just masking his own insecurity/jealousy. And he kind of gets over it…I mean, he ever really accepts Angel, but he kinds of mellows out about it as the series goes on.
January 14th, 2006 at 10:58 am
“but no one really ever jumped on Anya for what she did as a demon”
Willow did. Xander did too. Okay…they didn’t really jump all over her, but they did get a few digs in from time to time. Willow moreso than Xander.
January 14th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
True, it just always bugged me.
January 17th, 2006 at 10:43 am
hmmm interesting one!
from s3amends onward, when xander decides to get involved helping angel, i reckon xander made a deliberate choice to give in to the ‘grey area’ of the whole good evil thing that he’d been struggling with.
as for anya and her soul, i think that before she agreed to become a demon she had a soul. but as she couldn’t really know what was in store for her, i dont see that this equates to her choosing to be evil.
i guess it leads into bigger questions like “does having no soul equate to being evil” and “does being a demon automatically mean having no soul”. seems to me that as a rule on buffy both answers are YES (except for maybe Clem?) but the rules change on Angel cause there are lots of good/ soulful demons around LA.
but anyway, when angel got his soul back, he very quickly remembered his deeds, experienced remorse, and suffered instantly and deeply. Anya, after becoming human again, seems to take a while to notice and get the hang of the emotions she feels as the years go by. she doesnt really spend much time feeling remorse for her/ anyanka’s actions.
and xander doesnt seem to worry about it too much either.
therefore i can confidently conclude that during Anya’s time as a demon her soul was cryogenically stored in her feet, and because she stood on it for centuries it got all numb. it did thaw out, but it came back wrong.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:25 am
“Angelus was just a crazy mofo.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahaahahah. Ooh, deep breath. Hahaha.
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:33 am
:) That was great!
January 28th, 2006 at 4:50 am
Something no one has mentioned yet is that Xander was a “known murderer” himself after Once More, With Feeling. He summoned the singing/dancing demon that ended up killing at least one person for sure during that episode. Yet, he never showed any remorse for that and no one else ever points it out either.
January 28th, 2006 at 5:13 am
That was his fault, but indirectly. He just thought that “there would songs and dances. I just wanted everything to work out. You know, get a happy ending.” He didn’t mean for the demon to com and to kill that tap dancy guy. And also (not sure if anyone else said this) in The Gift when Giles killed Ben. No one ever talked about that … actually, did Giles ever tell anybody about that? But wouldn’t someone have noticed with the whole no more Glory/no more Ben thing?
January 28th, 2006 at 5:36 am
Even though Xander didn’t directly cause anyone’s death doesn’t mean he wasn’t responsible in some way. Since he has a soul and a conscience you would think that he would feel at least a little bit of guilt about summoning a demon that killed people.
The whole Giles killing Ben/Glory thing is never mentioned again. You would think that someone would have noticed that they weren’t around anymore. However, I think it’s apparent that Giles doesn’t want to have to kill Ben, but thinks it’s necessary to stop Glory. I doubt Giles would tell the Scoobies because he wouldn’t want to burden them with that knowledge or want them to judge him for making a decision that they might not agree with.
January 28th, 2006 at 5:51 am
Faith had a soul and a conscience when she went back and began killing people for the Mayor. I guess, that might be different because she had all this power and didn’t want to have to control it the way Buffy did.
In Spiral, when the Knights of Byzantium attacked the RV type thing, Buffy killed a bunch of them, via throwing them off a bus and stabbing them with a sword. They were all human (which was apparent when Spike couldn’t hurt them) and even though they wanted to kill Dawn, shouldn’t she feel some remorse, considering the thing with the soul and all??? Hmmm…. (but not in a sarcastic way)
January 28th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I didn’t like Giles killing Ben the first time I saw The Gift, but then after rewatching it, I got more into it. It was an emotional scene; Giles just knowing he has to kill Ben because Buffy won’t do it. And besides, with how bad things got at the end of season 5, I think everyone was willing to do more things they previosuly would have elected not to do.
January 30th, 2006 at 6:04 am
i always really liked the fact that giles made the decision to kill ben. I guess because ben was more of a mystical entity than a human the decision was much less about killing humans and more about taking the necessary steps to save the day.
never thought about the OMWF/ death thing. i just thought ha ha those people exploded.
re knights of byzantium: its good food for thought, albeit slightly offtopic. makes me think about wars, and the fact that every side of every war ever fought believes so utterly and fundamentally in the ‘rightness’ of their beliefs, their side of the conflict.