(no subject)
Shades of Motivation
(my thoughts on Angel and Twilight in reaction to a letter in the Slay of Critics section of the comics)
Since my last attempt to discuss this came out as a bit muddled I thought I use this letter to slay the critics as a framing device for my thoughts with additional ones as we go through. The letter contents are in quotes with my own thoughts in italics.
“You’re right that there’s some serious polarization in the fandom on the subject -through an online perspective, the only ones who think Angel is a straight up hero are some very passionate Bangles.”
I have to admit that only person I encountered like this was the person who used the phrase ‘salty goodness masquerading as evil’ - I will discuss what I think they meant by it and how I can sort of see their point later on - even the person who described Angel as the most heroic character in the verse defending his actions in an online video admitted he could be in their own words Machiavellian on occasion.
“For the rest of the fandom opinions range from thinking he’s a vile character who should just be done away with now,” -
don’t think I ever saw anyone express that one for which I’m kinda glad I wasn’t online for but can appreciate that perhaps closer to the event opinions ran high
“to those who think he’s a complicated character who does a lot of evil in the name of good and who has at least a potentially interesting redemption story available to him.”
I think in between those later two opinions is the potential to have been hoodwinked or misguided or to a degree self deceptive but ho hum.
“With that backdrop, the word ‘whitewashing’ mostly comes up in reaction to the view that killing evil lawyers is not a big deal,..”
again I haven’t come across many who think that although some think that the Wolfram and Hart were partially a victim of their own stupidity there and that in playing with Angel’s head they did set up the events where he was less disposed to act to save from their own stupidity but I’ll come back to that later
“that mind wiping one’s friends to save son’s is a noble act,”
I’ll deal with that one later in the letter when it returns to the subject,
“that attempting to murder your best friend is understandable:”
understandable doesn’t necessarily equal justified, let alone right, merely that you can get why they did it even if it was in fact wrong. Some of the acts committed in the later half of season six fall into that category for me for example.
“Angel is selfless, always putting the good of the world ahead of himself.”
Ok some people do believe that I'll give the letter writer that.
“He nobly took on the Twilight role because it was the only way to save the world from complete annihilation”
those words are in italics for emphasis in letter so I’ve put them in both italics and bold here for that reason,
“even though he knew people would hate him for it. So he’s a tragic martyr, suffering scorn from a world that does not appreciate how it cost him to save it.”
Again not seen that opinion voiced much it mainly seems to be seen as misguided at best.
“I don’t think that’s what the story is doing. But pretty much anytime anything is said about Angel that sounds exculpatory, people are worried it constitutes ‘whitewashing’. Also for the fans that really hate Angel, any story that doesn’t involve him being tarred and feathered and clearly labelled as a villain would probably constitute ‘whitewashing’.”
“My own feelings about this are complicated. I don’t think Angel’s ever meant to been meant to be seen as a straight up hero.”
Hard to say in some ways I don’t think any character in the Buffy/Angel verse is always shown to be a paragon but he is depicted as someone with real darkness in him who tries to be heroic. He’s more akin to an anti-hero. But then most characters in both sides of the verse have done some dodgy stuff or let their tempers get the better of them at some point or another.
“But I haven’t been sure if the writers (i.e. Joss) see his acts as being quite as dark as they actually are. I’m pretty sure that the lawyers and the attempt on Wesley were meant to be seen as dark.”
No shit although the latter he was backed up by everyone else - even Fred was really angry with him over what he did. I think it meant to show that whatever the right and wrong of it that the anger against Wes was universal even it wasn’t either right or rational.
“But the mind wipe seems to have been brushed away,”
the problem is that the only person who really found out about in the program was Wesley who had his own guilt around that issue anyway, most other people found out about it in the comics when the world had already gone to the dogs and they had bigger issues - this either refers to the ‘After the Fall’ IDW comics - season six or the season nine ‘Angel and Faith’ one where Willow had other reasons to be pissed off. Gunn is also dealing with his issues and guilt.
“I can understand that a parent would do anything to save a child - but that doesn’t make it okay. If you were to lobotomize me because somehow that would save your son, I’d understand why you did it. I’d also think you were a bad guy.”
Hmm… Lobotomise is over-stating it, memories of him are removed from people, much as they were added to people in the case of Dawn. The reason why Willow removing memories is so roundly condemned wasn’t so much what she was doing but she mind-wiped her girlfriend who’d already been mind raped girlfriend by Glory to not have to deal with her anger and have sex with her and then lied to her again and removed her memories again and removed her bf’s memories so she didn’t have to deal with the consequences of causing their unhappiness. Willow’s actions were selfish and aimed at her not facing the consequences of her actions and removing other’s agency to call her out on it and they’re done for her benefit. Angel is doing this for someone else.
However I do think this is a morally grey act and guilt in Angel’s case over what happens to some people especially Fred as a result of it shows that he understands that. I have more issue over the fact he accepted Wolfram and Hart’s offer as an ‘executive decision’ rather than the fact he erased memories of Connor to stop him being blamed and to give him a clean break. It also falls into a grey area that is very much left in the zone of viewer’s making their own mind about it which is the one about how much the rights and needs of an individual should be respected if there is a risk to the rights or safety of a larger group. Examples - should Dawn have been saved at the end of series five, should Giles have killed Ben, should Anya and/or Spike have been given any quarter in series seven, was Xander right to oppose the re-ensouling of Angel and to lie to Buffy about Willow’s message re: it at the end of series two, was Buffy wrong to conceal from everyone else the fact Angel had been returned from the hell dimension he was in at the start of series three. These were all very divisive issues amongst the scoobies in verse and/or in fandom out of it.
“In the case of the story, it doesn’t help the way Connor got ‘saved’ was essentially erasing him and replacing him with a completely different kid.(So much of who we are is bound up in our history - erase the history and you erase a large part of what makes a person a person).”
The problem with this agreement is there was literally no other way to save Connor except to reset his memories by this point. He wasn’t like Faith who could be shown there was another way to atone for her actions other than dying, or Willow who even though she seemed lost just needed something to pierce the wall of anger and nihilism around her to make her face her grief - and both Giles with his borrowed ‘pure’ magic and Xander’s unconditional love were able to do that. However with Willow and Faith it helped there was a base to build on. Angel had already managed to establish a connection to Faith before Wesley ruined it in Sunnydale and Willow and Xander had a strong connection going back to ‘yellow crayon’ days. Connor had nothing like that, his heart had been thoroughly poisoned against Angel who was probably the one who had that degree of love for him. The person who Connor was at this stage was irretrievably broken and he’d been broken by his upbringing through circumstances that were not his fault. The only non-mystical way of helping him would have been to put him in some sort of mental asylum where ironically he was so far gone that he may well have been actually lobotomised. It’s also worth noting he did eventually regain his memories but by then he was stable enough mentally to actually handle them and see them in context.
“My difficulties with Angel’s story were further compounded with ‘Not Fade Away’. The rhetoric from Mutant Enemy would seem to have that as a heroic act. From where I sit, you can’t do evil in order to achieve good. So killing Drogyn and executing Lindsey in the name of a higher good is already non-heroic and quite possibly flat-out wrong.”
Angel never really intended to kill Drogyn, it was meant to just look like he’d tried. Angel said that he knew that Drogyn would have been able to fight off the assassin sent for him. What Angel didn’t factor in is that Wolfram and Hart would bring Drogyn before him and make him kill him in front of them and by that stage to have refused would have tipped his hand and got Drogyn killed anyway. Does that make it right? No but it’s not quite as cold blooded a sacrifice as it appears at first. Lindsay’s murder was a morally grey even evil act and presented as such especially since it was Lorne who had to do it. In the comics Lorne is dead at least partially because of it - it was so contrary to his nature it gave him cancer which added to his incentive to sacrifice himself for another reason. However Lindsay was NOT a good person (even though he was a sympathetic one in some ways), he’d been given numerous chances to reform in the past all of which had resulted in more backstabbing of team AI by him and Lorne had confirmed to himself that he would never be a force for good by reading him. Lindsay himself didn’t seem particularly surprised or annoyed that he’d been killed only that Angel sent what Lindsay called a lackey to do it rather than doing it himself. Would Angel have done it if he hadn’t needed people elsewhere - no I don’t think he’d have given Lindsay the satisfaction but Spike may well have happily offed him.
“But it’s even worse when you realise that Angel only did all that to make a statement - he knew the world wouldn’t be changed. So he did evil in order to give himself the chance to die a hero’s death, not to save the world. And that’s pretty vile in my book.”
I can see where they are coming from here and especially since it did send LA to hell literally. Also part of it was the result of Angel painting himself and his friends into a corner through taking the deal to save Connor in the first place. However he did through the results of his team eliminate several very evil entities including one who wanted to use magic to convince the world that a political opponent was a peadophile, save a baby and strike a major blow against a very evil organisation. Also everyone else who helped him agreed to the deal of their own free will, knowing that there was a chance they would die too. Were they all vile vainglorious fools too? Only Lorne seemed to be the slightest bit reluctant. Everyone else had massive amounts of guilt and need to make some sort of statement to be special.
“I don’t think Angel is irredeemable. But for me redemption for Angel would not be matter of doing a bunch of good to balance off the evil he’s done. Redemption would require he really come to see why he’s been making these dark choices and change something in himself. I think the reason he does these things is because he’s really self-important and sees the world centreing on him.”
Again I can see this and I do think that Angel is a lot more egotistical than some of his fans realise but then again it’s hard not to think you’re desperately important if by word and deed everyone treats you as if you are. Especially if the evil organisation prompting most of your more questionable deeds (most of the actions mentioned were at least partly caused by Wolfram and Hart’s machinations) were caused by a bunch of people trying to drive you to the dark side because of special snowflake status that was utterly unique until very recently especially on top of being ignored and left to stew in your own misery for over a century is going to make you a bit desperate to be important. He isn’t unique in this either - Wesley has been accused of bringing himself down because of him acting in the belief he was the hero of the story however well intentioned that was and Gunn’s actions that resulted in Fred’s death spring from wanting to be special too. Poor Fred and Lorne are the only ones who can be argued not to have suffered from making some questionable decisions through wanting to be somebody or prove themselves in some way. Angel is also desperate for redemption partly through guilt and partly because he would like to be rid of Angelus, who seems to be forever hanging over him and certainly hampers most opportunities he has for much emotional fulfilment.
“That can lead him to do great things. But he does them for less for the good they achieve than because it allows him to see himself as a champion.”
Again I think it’s more true than many Angel fans want to admit but I also think he is genuinely motivated by a desire to do good for its own sake and to atone for the bad.
“But it can also lead him to do the terrible things he does - he can give up and act in ways that are dark (lawyers, Wesley),”
I don’t think anyone is denying this although again I think desperation and being the target of mind games are part of the picture.
“and he really can treat others like ants whose own projects don’t matter when he’s in pursuit of his own very important projects (all the folks he mind wiped. Drogyn, Lindsay).”
“I haven’t commented on the Twilight thing because I really still can’t make sense of it.”
Part of what’s lead me here to chew on this is to try and understand it myself. I stayed away from the comics for years because of it.
“It looks like he got seduced by an appeal of his idea of himself as very important and he was an easy mark for this because he has a built-in propensity to see other’s projects as less important than his own, and is therefore quite able to sacrifice others in pursuit of things he identifies as as the greater good.”
I do think that was a part of it and I’ll get into it later but I wonder if he lacks self-awareness in some ways.
On the other hand the fangirl who made the ‘salty goodness pretending to be evil’ comment did have a point. Twilight did not create a lot of Buffy’s enemies and having someone who kept them in one place and controlled them in the name of coordinating them wasn’t entirely a self-serving idea especially if the ultimate goal was to make her stronger. Originally the idea of Angel being responsible for the murder of a lot of other slayers seemed out of character to me but they probably would have died anyway and his comments to Faith make it clear that Twilight was taking direct control of him and doing things in it’s own name for some time before it murdered Giles. Then again Buffy herself isn’t completely innocent. The whole bank raid caper made her vulnerable to being seen as a threat who would abuse any power she had. It certainly helped turned the elements of the military against her.
Also at the end of the day he did get roped into it because he was important Twilight needed one of two people and when the other one is a)not around and has a rep for being b)a hot head/natural contrarian/loose cannon and c)being an attention seeker with a distinctive accent and number of distinctive mannerisms making him stick out like a sore thumb even before being known to anyone involved in the Initiative which considering the military faction after Buffy wasn’t that unlikely.
As far as Twilight was concerned he was the only dude for the job the charm offense was going to be pretty full on.
Whistler was involved and I’ll come to that later.
It’s debatable how much he knew about the ultimate goal and there is a tendency to over-protect people which the Connor situation could be read as.
“It that’s what’s going on, then you are setting up to tell the redemption story I’ve always wanted for Angel - the one where he sees that his evil isn’t the number of people he’s killed, but rather his basic way of seeing himself.”
I think he does in some ways - he tells Faith in the course of this comic series he needs her around to tell him when he’s going too far and that the problem why Twilight happened is that he didn’t have that in that situation. On the other hand he is still trying to atone with a big gesture - hmm. I’ll come back to that. The people he killed as other people are relevant though and he doesn’t excuse himself for that.
“He needs some serious humility.” True and boy will Willow deal some out to him later.
“(I’d love it if the PR demon was actually named Superbia - Latin for pride - as a way to referring to all of this).”
Pride is a strange thing - it’s good to have a degree of it but not too much but someone once gave me a lesson in that - it’s not about how you see yourself but how you see yourself compared to others - so if you see yourself as great and everyone else as great you’re not arrogant but you see yourself as better than others or more deserving of rights then you are.
“If the story is about a guy with the flaws I describe, I can actually sympathize with him. I have my own fan wank that his problem is that he was cursed with a soul and therefore saddled with a real desire to do good, but without the human/humane centre that would allow him to pursue the good in a humane way.”
I’ve thought about this and I think the problem that you interpret that way is to do with a lack in who he was and where he was going. I’ll explain two big beliefs of mine with regard Angel that those lacks are related to are a Occam’s Razor problem - i.e. the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. From the only comparable example we have (where it is referred with words ‘return’ and ‘your’) validates the obvious and simplest explanation of what Angel’s soul is and where it came from i.e its the same one that the mortal Liam possessed. Now someone has stated that if demon’s has souls which I don’t see but some do - I think bad demons have spirits and spirituality and religious beliefs but it’s not soul as I understand it in the verse and good demons have the sort of a souls as people do - so Angel has a ‘good’ soul. The problem is that Liam was neither ‘good’ or ‘soulful’ by most people’s criteria - and to contrary to what one apologist who was admittedly trying to argue in a second language tried to excuse it - it’s not to do with how promiscuous he was and how drunk he seemed a lot of the time for what we are shown. Some people have that and are still ‘good’ people. James Bond, who even if he isn’t ‘good’’ has obvious principals and values that he regards as more important than he is, immediately springs to mind. It’s that Liam just at some point ceased to give a crap about anything that wasn’t having a good time and annoying his dad. He took the attitude that he couldn’t possibly live up to what his dad wanted and so stopped trying with a vengeance. In soul terms he stopped listening to and trying to develop it and what it represented which IMO was conscience and altruism - the superego in Freudian terms. So what Angel when he became Angel rather than Angelus was given to work with was somewhat underdeveloped to begin with.
Perhaps considering this it’s not surprising that the first reaction Angel seems to have had was to try in fit in with his old life as much as his soul would allow especially since he had no personal connections to anyone who was even remotely interested in helping him be a better person and this is in stark contrast to his ensouled counterpart. Angel then seems to have overwhelmed by the guilt and loneliness not helped by every time he tried to help on his own as we see ‘Are You Now and Have You Ever Been’ (‘everytime you stick out your neck, someone puts a rope around it’ as the demon says) and ‘Why We Fight’ (where he was concoerced into helping a cause and ended having to turn a good person into a vampire) it all went horribly wrong for him. He was ultimately rescued from that by Whistler but technically Whistler isn’t good - from the way he’s presented he seems more in AD&D alignment terms as true neutral. Whistler may well have had his own agenda related to Buffy and Twilight right from the start. Whistler introduced him to Buffy who did help Angel form a lot of his ideals and a concept of kindness and help but it was complicated by the fact that they were lovers and when he had to leave her he had to start all over again. Doyle who in some ways was like Angel a part human, part demon atoner was someone who helped formed Angel’s ‘help the helpless’ credo but then Doyle died in service of those ideals leaving his development to be formed by Cordelia and Wesley. When Angel went off the rails he offered to work for Wesley realising he needed other people but he never really did and turned against Wesley with a vengeance the minute he failed. I wonder sometimes if in some ways his anger at Wesley was Wesley failing to act his check as much as what happened to Connor. As if he felt let down by Wesley by failing to set the right standards and stop him falling off the cliff.
Also I wonder in a way if Angel’s model for atonement is formed by the Catholicism that he grew up with and as adult Liam and Angelus spent so much time actively rebelling against. (Angelus’s obsessions with torturing nuns and destroying and then eternally preserving the ruin of the previously - before he started working on her - nun-like Drusilla was almost certainly NOT an accident). Even if we form a spirituality divorced of religious values the ones we grow up with will still compose a part of it. Catholicism seems to be more about atonement through actions rather than examination of motives and looking at correcting them in the framework of what’s right which is much more a part of the Protestant mindset. Interpreting what’s right in the catholic church is also much more top down (i.e. the priest does it) than the protestant one which is about reading the bible and finding meaning for yourself or sometimes by discussing the issues in groups with fellow worshippers.
“Whether that’s the case or not, Angel genuinely wants to be good.”
Of that we can all agree.
“He’s just got a major personality disorder that makes him incapable of actually doing good.”
I’m not sure I wholly agree with that. He has done a lot of good especially with Faith and people like the abused telekinetic lady. He’s got a personality flaw that doesn’t help sometimes but then who in the verse doesn’t have that.
“If this is the story, it would be really interesting to have a story where he comes to some realization about who he really is, something that might allow him to make meaningful changes. I could really root for him.
If, on the other hand, the story is about a basically good guy who screws up, but then spends time in a penalty box doing ‘redemption’ (whatever that means), I pretty much loathe him and wish he’d just be staked out of existence.
It’s funny that it’s hard to tell which story you’re telling. Reading A&F” that’s the first Angel and Faith comic series “itself makes me feel like we’re heading the story in a direction I’d very much like.” This letter appears in Daddy Issues part 2 letter page so the writer probably just read the first arc ‘Live through This’ it would be interesting if their Faith (no pun intended) was rewarded here.
“But then Gage” Christos Gage the main writer, “tweets about how Angel is already redeemed or whatever, and we have Faith seeming to think that she and Angel are birds of a feather,”
That’s because they pretty much are in a lot of ways - she is someone like him who struggles with real darkness but also a wavering faith in humanity like him she did not get on with her own parents although for different reasons - Faith’s parents were dysfunctional people, Liam’s father just didn’t understand his son and had standards Liam didn’t feel he could live up to. Angel’s background is probably more similar to Wesley’s except Wesley’s was actually abusive which we don’t see with Angel’s. Both Angel and Faith have struggled to see good in people because of the way they were treated at times and were shown the way by people caring for them. In Faith’s case this was Angel and then Giles. In Angel’s Buffy and Doyle and Cordelia. Angel was paying forward Buffy’s care with Faith and Faith is paying it back to Angel in helping looking after him although she’s torn because she’s also trying to stop Nadira becoming what she was too.
“And it’s hard to know.
Anyway, there’s my perspective on the whole thing.”
The reply at the bottom agrees with the fifth paragraph and that part about redemption but disagrees with other parts but considers it ‘A fair and thoughtful look at where the character is today’ namely at that point. And I certainly think it’s an interesting perspective that’s helped frame my own understanding.
(my thoughts on Angel and Twilight in reaction to a letter in the Slay of Critics section of the comics)
Since my last attempt to discuss this came out as a bit muddled I thought I use this letter to slay the critics as a framing device for my thoughts with additional ones as we go through. The letter contents are in quotes with my own thoughts in italics.
“You’re right that there’s some serious polarization in the fandom on the subject -through an online perspective, the only ones who think Angel is a straight up hero are some very passionate Bangles.”
I have to admit that only person I encountered like this was the person who used the phrase ‘salty goodness masquerading as evil’ - I will discuss what I think they meant by it and how I can sort of see their point later on - even the person who described Angel as the most heroic character in the verse defending his actions in an online video admitted he could be in their own words Machiavellian on occasion.
“For the rest of the fandom opinions range from thinking he’s a vile character who should just be done away with now,” -
don’t think I ever saw anyone express that one for which I’m kinda glad I wasn’t online for but can appreciate that perhaps closer to the event opinions ran high
“to those who think he’s a complicated character who does a lot of evil in the name of good and who has at least a potentially interesting redemption story available to him.”
I think in between those later two opinions is the potential to have been hoodwinked or misguided or to a degree self deceptive but ho hum.
“With that backdrop, the word ‘whitewashing’ mostly comes up in reaction to the view that killing evil lawyers is not a big deal,..”
again I haven’t come across many who think that although some think that the Wolfram and Hart were partially a victim of their own stupidity there and that in playing with Angel’s head they did set up the events where he was less disposed to act to save from their own stupidity but I’ll come back to that later
“that mind wiping one’s friends to save son’s is a noble act,”
I’ll deal with that one later in the letter when it returns to the subject,
“that attempting to murder your best friend is understandable:”
understandable doesn’t necessarily equal justified, let alone right, merely that you can get why they did it even if it was in fact wrong. Some of the acts committed in the later half of season six fall into that category for me for example.
“Angel is selfless, always putting the good of the world ahead of himself.”
Ok some people do believe that I'll give the letter writer that.
“He nobly took on the Twilight role because it was the only way to save the world from complete annihilation”
those words are in italics for emphasis in letter so I’ve put them in both italics and bold here for that reason,
“even though he knew people would hate him for it. So he’s a tragic martyr, suffering scorn from a world that does not appreciate how it cost him to save it.”
Again not seen that opinion voiced much it mainly seems to be seen as misguided at best.
“I don’t think that’s what the story is doing. But pretty much anytime anything is said about Angel that sounds exculpatory, people are worried it constitutes ‘whitewashing’. Also for the fans that really hate Angel, any story that doesn’t involve him being tarred and feathered and clearly labelled as a villain would probably constitute ‘whitewashing’.”
“My own feelings about this are complicated. I don’t think Angel’s ever meant to been meant to be seen as a straight up hero.”
Hard to say in some ways I don’t think any character in the Buffy/Angel verse is always shown to be a paragon but he is depicted as someone with real darkness in him who tries to be heroic. He’s more akin to an anti-hero. But then most characters in both sides of the verse have done some dodgy stuff or let their tempers get the better of them at some point or another.
“But I haven’t been sure if the writers (i.e. Joss) see his acts as being quite as dark as they actually are. I’m pretty sure that the lawyers and the attempt on Wesley were meant to be seen as dark.”
No shit although the latter he was backed up by everyone else - even Fred was really angry with him over what he did. I think it meant to show that whatever the right and wrong of it that the anger against Wes was universal even it wasn’t either right or rational.
“But the mind wipe seems to have been brushed away,”
the problem is that the only person who really found out about in the program was Wesley who had his own guilt around that issue anyway, most other people found out about it in the comics when the world had already gone to the dogs and they had bigger issues - this either refers to the ‘After the Fall’ IDW comics - season six or the season nine ‘Angel and Faith’ one where Willow had other reasons to be pissed off. Gunn is also dealing with his issues and guilt.
“I can understand that a parent would do anything to save a child - but that doesn’t make it okay. If you were to lobotomize me because somehow that would save your son, I’d understand why you did it. I’d also think you were a bad guy.”
Hmm… Lobotomise is over-stating it, memories of him are removed from people, much as they were added to people in the case of Dawn. The reason why Willow removing memories is so roundly condemned wasn’t so much what she was doing but she mind-wiped her girlfriend who’d already been mind raped girlfriend by Glory to not have to deal with her anger and have sex with her and then lied to her again and removed her memories again and removed her bf’s memories so she didn’t have to deal with the consequences of causing their unhappiness. Willow’s actions were selfish and aimed at her not facing the consequences of her actions and removing other’s agency to call her out on it and they’re done for her benefit. Angel is doing this for someone else.
However I do think this is a morally grey act and guilt in Angel’s case over what happens to some people especially Fred as a result of it shows that he understands that. I have more issue over the fact he accepted Wolfram and Hart’s offer as an ‘executive decision’ rather than the fact he erased memories of Connor to stop him being blamed and to give him a clean break. It also falls into a grey area that is very much left in the zone of viewer’s making their own mind about it which is the one about how much the rights and needs of an individual should be respected if there is a risk to the rights or safety of a larger group. Examples - should Dawn have been saved at the end of series five, should Giles have killed Ben, should Anya and/or Spike have been given any quarter in series seven, was Xander right to oppose the re-ensouling of Angel and to lie to Buffy about Willow’s message re: it at the end of series two, was Buffy wrong to conceal from everyone else the fact Angel had been returned from the hell dimension he was in at the start of series three. These were all very divisive issues amongst the scoobies in verse and/or in fandom out of it.
“In the case of the story, it doesn’t help the way Connor got ‘saved’ was essentially erasing him and replacing him with a completely different kid.(So much of who we are is bound up in our history - erase the history and you erase a large part of what makes a person a person).”
The problem with this agreement is there was literally no other way to save Connor except to reset his memories by this point. He wasn’t like Faith who could be shown there was another way to atone for her actions other than dying, or Willow who even though she seemed lost just needed something to pierce the wall of anger and nihilism around her to make her face her grief - and both Giles with his borrowed ‘pure’ magic and Xander’s unconditional love were able to do that. However with Willow and Faith it helped there was a base to build on. Angel had already managed to establish a connection to Faith before Wesley ruined it in Sunnydale and Willow and Xander had a strong connection going back to ‘yellow crayon’ days. Connor had nothing like that, his heart had been thoroughly poisoned against Angel who was probably the one who had that degree of love for him. The person who Connor was at this stage was irretrievably broken and he’d been broken by his upbringing through circumstances that were not his fault. The only non-mystical way of helping him would have been to put him in some sort of mental asylum where ironically he was so far gone that he may well have been actually lobotomised. It’s also worth noting he did eventually regain his memories but by then he was stable enough mentally to actually handle them and see them in context.
“My difficulties with Angel’s story were further compounded with ‘Not Fade Away’. The rhetoric from Mutant Enemy would seem to have that as a heroic act. From where I sit, you can’t do evil in order to achieve good. So killing Drogyn and executing Lindsey in the name of a higher good is already non-heroic and quite possibly flat-out wrong.”
Angel never really intended to kill Drogyn, it was meant to just look like he’d tried. Angel said that he knew that Drogyn would have been able to fight off the assassin sent for him. What Angel didn’t factor in is that Wolfram and Hart would bring Drogyn before him and make him kill him in front of them and by that stage to have refused would have tipped his hand and got Drogyn killed anyway. Does that make it right? No but it’s not quite as cold blooded a sacrifice as it appears at first. Lindsay’s murder was a morally grey even evil act and presented as such especially since it was Lorne who had to do it. In the comics Lorne is dead at least partially because of it - it was so contrary to his nature it gave him cancer which added to his incentive to sacrifice himself for another reason. However Lindsay was NOT a good person (even though he was a sympathetic one in some ways), he’d been given numerous chances to reform in the past all of which had resulted in more backstabbing of team AI by him and Lorne had confirmed to himself that he would never be a force for good by reading him. Lindsay himself didn’t seem particularly surprised or annoyed that he’d been killed only that Angel sent what Lindsay called a lackey to do it rather than doing it himself. Would Angel have done it if he hadn’t needed people elsewhere - no I don’t think he’d have given Lindsay the satisfaction but Spike may well have happily offed him.
“But it’s even worse when you realise that Angel only did all that to make a statement - he knew the world wouldn’t be changed. So he did evil in order to give himself the chance to die a hero’s death, not to save the world. And that’s pretty vile in my book.”
I can see where they are coming from here and especially since it did send LA to hell literally. Also part of it was the result of Angel painting himself and his friends into a corner through taking the deal to save Connor in the first place. However he did through the results of his team eliminate several very evil entities including one who wanted to use magic to convince the world that a political opponent was a peadophile, save a baby and strike a major blow against a very evil organisation. Also everyone else who helped him agreed to the deal of their own free will, knowing that there was a chance they would die too. Were they all vile vainglorious fools too? Only Lorne seemed to be the slightest bit reluctant. Everyone else had massive amounts of guilt and need to make some sort of statement to be special.
“I don’t think Angel is irredeemable. But for me redemption for Angel would not be matter of doing a bunch of good to balance off the evil he’s done. Redemption would require he really come to see why he’s been making these dark choices and change something in himself. I think the reason he does these things is because he’s really self-important and sees the world centreing on him.”
Again I can see this and I do think that Angel is a lot more egotistical than some of his fans realise but then again it’s hard not to think you’re desperately important if by word and deed everyone treats you as if you are. Especially if the evil organisation prompting most of your more questionable deeds (most of the actions mentioned were at least partly caused by Wolfram and Hart’s machinations) were caused by a bunch of people trying to drive you to the dark side because of special snowflake status that was utterly unique until very recently especially on top of being ignored and left to stew in your own misery for over a century is going to make you a bit desperate to be important. He isn’t unique in this either - Wesley has been accused of bringing himself down because of him acting in the belief he was the hero of the story however well intentioned that was and Gunn’s actions that resulted in Fred’s death spring from wanting to be special too. Poor Fred and Lorne are the only ones who can be argued not to have suffered from making some questionable decisions through wanting to be somebody or prove themselves in some way. Angel is also desperate for redemption partly through guilt and partly because he would like to be rid of Angelus, who seems to be forever hanging over him and certainly hampers most opportunities he has for much emotional fulfilment.
“That can lead him to do great things. But he does them for less for the good they achieve than because it allows him to see himself as a champion.”
Again I think it’s more true than many Angel fans want to admit but I also think he is genuinely motivated by a desire to do good for its own sake and to atone for the bad.
“But it can also lead him to do the terrible things he does - he can give up and act in ways that are dark (lawyers, Wesley),”
I don’t think anyone is denying this although again I think desperation and being the target of mind games are part of the picture.
“and he really can treat others like ants whose own projects don’t matter when he’s in pursuit of his own very important projects (all the folks he mind wiped. Drogyn, Lindsay).”
“I haven’t commented on the Twilight thing because I really still can’t make sense of it.”
Part of what’s lead me here to chew on this is to try and understand it myself. I stayed away from the comics for years because of it.
“It looks like he got seduced by an appeal of his idea of himself as very important and he was an easy mark for this because he has a built-in propensity to see other’s projects as less important than his own, and is therefore quite able to sacrifice others in pursuit of things he identifies as as the greater good.”
I do think that was a part of it and I’ll get into it later but I wonder if he lacks self-awareness in some ways.
On the other hand the fangirl who made the ‘salty goodness pretending to be evil’ comment did have a point. Twilight did not create a lot of Buffy’s enemies and having someone who kept them in one place and controlled them in the name of coordinating them wasn’t entirely a self-serving idea especially if the ultimate goal was to make her stronger. Originally the idea of Angel being responsible for the murder of a lot of other slayers seemed out of character to me but they probably would have died anyway and his comments to Faith make it clear that Twilight was taking direct control of him and doing things in it’s own name for some time before it murdered Giles. Then again Buffy herself isn’t completely innocent. The whole bank raid caper made her vulnerable to being seen as a threat who would abuse any power she had. It certainly helped turned the elements of the military against her.
Also at the end of the day he did get roped into it because he was important Twilight needed one of two people and when the other one is a)not around and has a rep for being b)a hot head/natural contrarian/loose cannon and c)being an attention seeker with a distinctive accent and number of distinctive mannerisms making him stick out like a sore thumb even before being known to anyone involved in the Initiative which considering the military faction after Buffy wasn’t that unlikely.
As far as Twilight was concerned he was the only dude for the job the charm offense was going to be pretty full on.
Whistler was involved and I’ll come to that later.
It’s debatable how much he knew about the ultimate goal and there is a tendency to over-protect people which the Connor situation could be read as.
“It that’s what’s going on, then you are setting up to tell the redemption story I’ve always wanted for Angel - the one where he sees that his evil isn’t the number of people he’s killed, but rather his basic way of seeing himself.”
I think he does in some ways - he tells Faith in the course of this comic series he needs her around to tell him when he’s going too far and that the problem why Twilight happened is that he didn’t have that in that situation. On the other hand he is still trying to atone with a big gesture - hmm. I’ll come back to that. The people he killed as other people are relevant though and he doesn’t excuse himself for that.
“He needs some serious humility.” True and boy will Willow deal some out to him later.
“(I’d love it if the PR demon was actually named Superbia - Latin for pride - as a way to referring to all of this).”
Pride is a strange thing - it’s good to have a degree of it but not too much but someone once gave me a lesson in that - it’s not about how you see yourself but how you see yourself compared to others - so if you see yourself as great and everyone else as great you’re not arrogant but you see yourself as better than others or more deserving of rights then you are.
“If the story is about a guy with the flaws I describe, I can actually sympathize with him. I have my own fan wank that his problem is that he was cursed with a soul and therefore saddled with a real desire to do good, but without the human/humane centre that would allow him to pursue the good in a humane way.”
I’ve thought about this and I think the problem that you interpret that way is to do with a lack in who he was and where he was going. I’ll explain two big beliefs of mine with regard Angel that those lacks are related to are a Occam’s Razor problem - i.e. the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. From the only comparable example we have (where it is referred with words ‘return’ and ‘your’) validates the obvious and simplest explanation of what Angel’s soul is and where it came from i.e its the same one that the mortal Liam possessed. Now someone has stated that if demon’s has souls which I don’t see but some do - I think bad demons have spirits and spirituality and religious beliefs but it’s not soul as I understand it in the verse and good demons have the sort of a souls as people do - so Angel has a ‘good’ soul. The problem is that Liam was neither ‘good’ or ‘soulful’ by most people’s criteria - and to contrary to what one apologist who was admittedly trying to argue in a second language tried to excuse it - it’s not to do with how promiscuous he was and how drunk he seemed a lot of the time for what we are shown. Some people have that and are still ‘good’ people. James Bond, who even if he isn’t ‘good’’ has obvious principals and values that he regards as more important than he is, immediately springs to mind. It’s that Liam just at some point ceased to give a crap about anything that wasn’t having a good time and annoying his dad. He took the attitude that he couldn’t possibly live up to what his dad wanted and so stopped trying with a vengeance. In soul terms he stopped listening to and trying to develop it and what it represented which IMO was conscience and altruism - the superego in Freudian terms. So what Angel when he became Angel rather than Angelus was given to work with was somewhat underdeveloped to begin with.
Perhaps considering this it’s not surprising that the first reaction Angel seems to have had was to try in fit in with his old life as much as his soul would allow especially since he had no personal connections to anyone who was even remotely interested in helping him be a better person and this is in stark contrast to his ensouled counterpart. Angel then seems to have overwhelmed by the guilt and loneliness not helped by every time he tried to help on his own as we see ‘Are You Now and Have You Ever Been’ (‘everytime you stick out your neck, someone puts a rope around it’ as the demon says) and ‘Why We Fight’ (where he was concoerced into helping a cause and ended having to turn a good person into a vampire) it all went horribly wrong for him. He was ultimately rescued from that by Whistler but technically Whistler isn’t good - from the way he’s presented he seems more in AD&D alignment terms as true neutral. Whistler may well have had his own agenda related to Buffy and Twilight right from the start. Whistler introduced him to Buffy who did help Angel form a lot of his ideals and a concept of kindness and help but it was complicated by the fact that they were lovers and when he had to leave her he had to start all over again. Doyle who in some ways was like Angel a part human, part demon atoner was someone who helped formed Angel’s ‘help the helpless’ credo but then Doyle died in service of those ideals leaving his development to be formed by Cordelia and Wesley. When Angel went off the rails he offered to work for Wesley realising he needed other people but he never really did and turned against Wesley with a vengeance the minute he failed. I wonder sometimes if in some ways his anger at Wesley was Wesley failing to act his check as much as what happened to Connor. As if he felt let down by Wesley by failing to set the right standards and stop him falling off the cliff.
Also I wonder in a way if Angel’s model for atonement is formed by the Catholicism that he grew up with and as adult Liam and Angelus spent so much time actively rebelling against. (Angelus’s obsessions with torturing nuns and destroying and then eternally preserving the ruin of the previously - before he started working on her - nun-like Drusilla was almost certainly NOT an accident). Even if we form a spirituality divorced of religious values the ones we grow up with will still compose a part of it. Catholicism seems to be more about atonement through actions rather than examination of motives and looking at correcting them in the framework of what’s right which is much more a part of the Protestant mindset. Interpreting what’s right in the catholic church is also much more top down (i.e. the priest does it) than the protestant one which is about reading the bible and finding meaning for yourself or sometimes by discussing the issues in groups with fellow worshippers.
“Whether that’s the case or not, Angel genuinely wants to be good.”
Of that we can all agree.
“He’s just got a major personality disorder that makes him incapable of actually doing good.”
I’m not sure I wholly agree with that. He has done a lot of good especially with Faith and people like the abused telekinetic lady. He’s got a personality flaw that doesn’t help sometimes but then who in the verse doesn’t have that.
“If this is the story, it would be really interesting to have a story where he comes to some realization about who he really is, something that might allow him to make meaningful changes. I could really root for him.
If, on the other hand, the story is about a basically good guy who screws up, but then spends time in a penalty box doing ‘redemption’ (whatever that means), I pretty much loathe him and wish he’d just be staked out of existence.
It’s funny that it’s hard to tell which story you’re telling. Reading A&F” that’s the first Angel and Faith comic series “itself makes me feel like we’re heading the story in a direction I’d very much like.” This letter appears in Daddy Issues part 2 letter page so the writer probably just read the first arc ‘Live through This’ it would be interesting if their Faith (no pun intended) was rewarded here.
“But then Gage” Christos Gage the main writer, “tweets about how Angel is already redeemed or whatever, and we have Faith seeming to think that she and Angel are birds of a feather,”
That’s because they pretty much are in a lot of ways - she is someone like him who struggles with real darkness but also a wavering faith in humanity like him she did not get on with her own parents although for different reasons - Faith’s parents were dysfunctional people, Liam’s father just didn’t understand his son and had standards Liam didn’t feel he could live up to. Angel’s background is probably more similar to Wesley’s except Wesley’s was actually abusive which we don’t see with Angel’s. Both Angel and Faith have struggled to see good in people because of the way they were treated at times and were shown the way by people caring for them. In Faith’s case this was Angel and then Giles. In Angel’s Buffy and Doyle and Cordelia. Angel was paying forward Buffy’s care with Faith and Faith is paying it back to Angel in helping looking after him although she’s torn because she’s also trying to stop Nadira becoming what she was too.
“And it’s hard to know.
Anyway, there’s my perspective on the whole thing.”
The reply at the bottom agrees with the fifth paragraph and that part about redemption but disagrees with other parts but considers it ‘A fair and thoughtful look at where the character is today’ namely at that point. And I certainly think it’s an interesting perspective that’s helped frame my own understanding.