I'm willing to give them a pass on Dracula since it seems he was incrementally turning himself to elemental dust rather than dying via stake.

I seem to recall (or fanwank) that since he was the oldest vampire, he could dematerialize at will. When buffy staked him, he simply dematerialized around the stake.

I'd thought about the possibility of the infusion of power from Buffy or the energies he was manipulating at the Hellmouth keeping the Master's bones around, but then realized that in "When She Was Bad" other vampires had a ritual for restoring his remains to unlife. Probably not too effective if you couldn't be sure what you had was a destroyed vampire's remains and not the contents of someone's spilled ashtray.

I chalked it up to something special about the chief undead sire of the Order of Aurelius Vampires--something about which we were not informed. That's the thing about magic, there's always consequences fankwankability.

This is the only way I can make sense of it, too. My personal fanwank is that the original intention was to tell Angel the details of the curse. But they didn't count on Darla, Spike, & Dru dropping in and killing everyone who knew that there was still one more item on the to-do list. So basically, the gypsy plan would have worked if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.

So Strega, as far as we can tell from canon, Angel didn't know he could lose his soul, prior to when he lost it?

I'm willing to give them a pass on Dracula since it seems he was incrementally turning himself to elemental dust rather than dying via stake.

Narrator and I have talked about Drac, before. There was a late-era Bronzer who had this theory that the monks magicked up Dracula (sort of in a "Superstar" way--which would cover why Spike and Anya thought they knew him from the past) in order to get Buffy's blood, and keep the Scoobies distracted while they created Dawn and channeled the key into her and made the entire world incorporate her into history.

The Bronzer in question was sort of an energy creature, and I wouldn't usually take his theories seriously, but enough happened in the Drac and Dawn stories lines, that if a similar backstory had ever been revealed, I could have bought into it.

So Strega, as far as we can tell from canon, Angel didn't know he could lose his soul, prior to when he lost it?

Yeah, I'm fairly sure that there's no indication that anyone outside the gypsy clan knew what the deal was. Because if there had been, someone would have brought it up on the Angel boards, heh.

It's confusing to me because when I started watching Buffy I thought I didn't know about the happiness clause because I hadn't seen the first season. For some reason I assumed that it was general knowledge among the characters and in the audience. People had to explain it to me a few times in small words before I got it.

Question on Bones. Is that 8PM Eastern? Because then it's 7 Central and I want to check it out, too.

yes, it's 7 CST because House comes on at 8.

Well, the thing is, if you're going to curse someone, telling them how to break the curse is sort of counter-intuitive. The gypsies weren't interested in making Angelus into a good guy, they were interested in making him suffer. If Angelus, immediately upon being cursed, knew how to break it, he'd likely try his best to do so (both to return to what he was and to stop the pain the curse was causing him.) He didn't get cursed and go "Poof, I'm Angel now. I better not lose my soul, lest I become evil again." It was a long, slow process to become the Angel we know.

As for the curse having the happiness clause in the first place, I've never had a problem with it, as one of the big things about curses and the like in myth and fairytales is they have a way to be broken. If you're cursing someone to suffer, true happiness is a logical "cure".

Plus, as someone I forget said long ago, if you're serving vengeance as a philosophy then inflicting Angelus on whoever made Angel happy enough to break the curse fits right in line with the spirit of the thing.

Plus, as someone I forget said long ago, if you're serving vengeance as a philosophy then inflicting Angelus on whoever made Angel happy enough to break the curse fits right in line with the spirit of the thing.

Right, I mentioned that. I'm just not sure why you'd want your people around if there was a chance of it happening. It's not like Uncle John O'Connor sounded like he had given up his vengeful ways.

The gypsies weren't interested in making Angelus into a good guy, they were interested in making him suffer.

I agree. And ensuring that he'd have to spend his eternal life guarding against ever being happy for even a moment would be a pretty good way to do that. They gave a a sadist every motive in the world to treat himself sadistically. And he's got a knack for it, so he'll probably think of much better ways to torture himself than they ever would.

Barry Manilow concerts, for example.

If Angelus, immediately upon being cursed, knew how to break it, he'd likely try his best to do so

Which is where the curse becomes a nice catch-22. Any deliberate attempt to get rid of the soul is an acknowledgement that he's not happy about having it. Which means that he's not perfectly happy, which means it's not going anywhere. It's wonderfully self-defeating.

Strega speaks for me. Of course, I first typed, "Strega speaks for you," which sounds like a political slogan.