I don't buy that deciding not be a demon anymore satisfies enough requirements to get her into a Christian heaven.

I never took Perkins question as a theologically deep questioning of it, but a sort of analogous use of it. It wouldn't just be that she stopped being bad, but that she started being good, and died doing so--the combination.

It's not an unorthodox idea in Christendom that someone who hasn't heard of Jesus in a way in which he is able to believe in him will not be damned. It's isn't just "never heard the words". It goes deeper than that.

I think she's damned enough from her demonic activity to be barred the Pearlies without some kind of overt indication of repentance or acceptance.

And dying by fighting The First Evil wouldn't be that overt indication? C'mon. Talk is cheap.

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This is what I hate about the (post?) modern age. Of course we know. She died to save the world, and prior to that, she lived a pretty self-sacrificial life, putting her own life, and the lives of her loved ones in jeopardy, to save people

What I'm not getting, and I haven't made this clear, I realize, is what can we apply from Buffy's being in heaven to judging the after death experiences of other characters. Do you have to die saving the world to get into heaven? If you save the world and live, do you go to heaven when you eventually die? If youre basically good? If you aren't really really bad? If you aren't a demon? I'm trying to figure this out within the context of the Buffyverse mythology, not my personal morality, and that's kind of hard.

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Darla was cursing God or denying God or something similar right before she was turned (the first time), tat could have doomed her to hell.

Or being a vampire could have done it, I suppose. Of course it did.

See, I don't get this. If I were turned into a vampire today, wouldn't my actions as a human be what determined heaven or hell for me, and not what happened to/with my body after I died?

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See, I don't get this. If I were turned into a vampire today, wouldn't my actions as a human be what determined heaven or hell for me, and not what happened to/with my body after I died?

Yeah - isn't it canon that the human soul goes away and the demon replaces said soul? Or am I remembering fanfic instead?

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If I were turned into a vampire today, wouldn't my actions as a human be what determined heaven or hell for me, and not what happened to/with my body after I died?

Well, yeah, but I think Darla's a special case, given that she did die cursing God and actively choosing to be vamped; The Master didn't jump her in a dark alley and do it to her before she knew what she was choosing, she listened to his pitch, seemed to see his eviltude pretty clearly, and signed on anyhow.

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Yet oddly remembered nothing of her time in Hell, although Vocah did make it very clear that that's where he was calling her up from.

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See, I don't get this. If I were turned into a vampire today, wouldn't my actions as a human be what determined heaven or hell for me, and not what happened to/with my body after I died?

This was always a place where I was dissatisfied, that is, where I thought 'verse mythology could have used additional clarification and fleshing out. There's this idea that you can accidentally become a vampire, but that wasn't even consistently shown in the verse. I think it would have made for a cleaner canon, if the victim had to choose to suck back. I say this, because to my mind, you don't suck a vampire's blood by accident, but canon indicates you kinda/sorta can, except for when it doesn't.

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Also, in "Helpless" Kralik was able to somehow turn one of the assistant Watchers that was in charge of his keeping. Not sure exactly how that happened, but I doubt the guy was willing.

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This conversation comes out of what (to me) is one of Joss's great storytelling mistakes in the Buffyverse. Filmic universes run on McGuffins, but I think making the nature of the soul a McGuffin is a big freakin mistake - not a moral mistake but a literary one. In any character driven story -the state of the characters soul is important - not the state in theological sense but that state in a broader sense. A character who murders and tortures is different than one who doesnt' to take a really crude example (at least if the character is important to your story-telling; admittedly there are stories that are not character driven.)

The problem is that Joss confused something really is suitable for the McGuffin role - whether there is a ghost in the machine, whether spirit can seperated from flesh, and mixed with the question of the nature of an individual characters soul - whether immortal or not, whether a phantom captain or not.

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I don't know if I'd call that a mistake or a dodge.

Narratively, Joss always withholds commitment to a canonical reading until it yields maximum narrative payoff. In short, he will dick you around trying to figure out the worldbuilding rules, but will Joss you when it's convenient for him. The soul is one example.

The flipside is that he seeds the narrative for all kinds of payoffs which may or may not come. The foremost example is that he seeded both Xander and Willow as Gay until he had had to make a narrative choice.

This approach causes other problems, but worldbuilding is not his focus - character is. And he'll leave options ambiguous until he needs to leverage choice A or choice B.

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