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shapinglightOkay, so we all know (I think) that BtVS is not a show about vampires and that if Joss Whedon had been left to follow his own instincts there might well have been no vampire characters in the show, beyond disposable villain of the week/season. Vampires were there to be staked by Buffy as comic relief or as metaphors for parts of her growing up process.
We weren't supposed to care about them, and to make sure we didn't fall into that trap, Joss introduced the vampires-are-soulless-and-therefore-can-never-be-anything-but-evil idea to differentiate between the characters we were supposed to care about and those we weren't.
More behind cut, with a poll.
Of course, with the introduction of Spike and Dru, things began to get messy, and they only got messier when Spike became a show regular and poor, hopeless Harmony got vamped. They got messier still when Angel had his fling with Darla in AtS season 2, Spike and Buffy had their affair in BtVS season 6, and when Harmony became a regular in AtS season 5, and so on and so on. In other words, the vampire characters grew personalities, let us into their lives and made us care about them, or at least be intrigued by them. They became people, not things, or some of them did.
That being the case, I'd be interested to know whether people think there's some measure of degree in the way the good guys can treat vampires as opposed to the way they treat other humans. Please note, I'm not saying they shouldn't kill them. It pretty much goes without saying that they have to. But if they treat them badly otherwise - for instance, the way Spike treats Harmony, and the way Angel treats Darla in Epiphany - does it matter the same, or less?
[Poll #1575802]
Also, I might as well fess up and admit this poll is the result of an ongoing dispute on a comics fanboard about Spike's treatment of a female vampire character (not Harmony) in a recent issue of the Angel comic, but I have had qualms about the subject for a long time. No, I don't think Joss meant us to approve of Spike's treatment of Harmony in AtS season 5, but I suspect we were meant to disapprove less because she was a vampire, and I really don't know what the AtS writers thought they were saying in the scene in Epiphany where Lorne and Angel are discussing his Despair Sex with Darla, but the RL connotations are very unpleasant. See here for the text of that exchange.
ETA: As usual, I seem to have framed my poll questions badly. If you vote 'yes' in the poll, it doesn't follow that you think vampires are fluffy kittens and should be treated as such, just that you don't think that just because they're vampires anything goes.
We weren't supposed to care about them, and to make sure we didn't fall into that trap, Joss introduced the vampires-are-soulless-and-therefore-can-never-be-anything-but-evil idea to differentiate between the characters we were supposed to care about and those we weren't.
More behind cut, with a poll.
Of course, with the introduction of Spike and Dru, things began to get messy, and they only got messier when Spike became a show regular and poor, hopeless Harmony got vamped. They got messier still when Angel had his fling with Darla in AtS season 2, Spike and Buffy had their affair in BtVS season 6, and when Harmony became a regular in AtS season 5, and so on and so on. In other words, the vampire characters grew personalities, let us into their lives and made us care about them, or at least be intrigued by them. They became people, not things, or some of them did.
That being the case, I'd be interested to know whether people think there's some measure of degree in the way the good guys can treat vampires as opposed to the way they treat other humans. Please note, I'm not saying they shouldn't kill them. It pretty much goes without saying that they have to. But if they treat them badly otherwise - for instance, the way Spike treats Harmony, and the way Angel treats Darla in Epiphany - does it matter the same, or less?
[Poll #1575802]
Also, I might as well fess up and admit this poll is the result of an ongoing dispute on a comics fanboard about Spike's treatment of a female vampire character (not Harmony) in a recent issue of the Angel comic, but I have had qualms about the subject for a long time. No, I don't think Joss meant us to approve of Spike's treatment of Harmony in AtS season 5, but I suspect we were meant to disapprove less because she was a vampire, and I really don't know what the AtS writers thought they were saying in the scene in Epiphany where Lorne and Angel are discussing his Despair Sex with Darla, but the RL connotations are very unpleasant. See here for the text of that exchange.
ETA: As usual, I seem to have framed my poll questions badly. If you vote 'yes' in the poll, it doesn't follow that you think vampires are fluffy kittens and should be treated as such, just that you don't think that just because they're vampires anything goes.