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.

Or a horrible nightmare. Possibly involving ventriloquism.

Ooh. Plot bunny.

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.

But the thing is I don't think they expected Angel to ever actively seek amends or integrate having a conscience into his persona. Prior to Angel (as far as anyone knows) there was never a vampire with a soul before. I imagine the gypsies just expected to him to spend the rest of existance eating rats in alleys and bemoaning his fate as the soul tortured him with his sins. If Angel was going to intentionally make himself unhappy, it would mean he wanted to keep the soul, which he initially did not.

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.

Maybe. But why to take the risk of him figuring a way out of it when they can just as easily leave him in the dark?

I don't know, maybe the gypsies did intend to tell him but he ran off into the night before they had a chance. But it falls in the category of Ethan's staying around to gloat coming back to bite him in the ass, for me.

But the thing is I don't think they expected Angel to ever actively seek amends or integrate having a conscience into his persona.

I don't understand what that has to do with what I've said. I haven't argued that Angel's desire to make amends was important or relevant to their intentions.

But why to take the risk of him figuring a way out of it when they can just as easily leave him in the dark?

Well, not telling him certainly contributed to the curse being broken. It seems unlikely that telling him could have a worse effect than total failure. Assuming they wanted the curse to remain unbroken.

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.

YES!! If only the show had done that, Buffy's whole "Dawn has my/Summers blood" would have made some sense. Well, to me anyway. And it's all about me, after all.

Maybe there's something about Gypsy magic (in order to prevent the kind of rebound effect we see with other magic?) that you have to have an out written in, to negate the whammy a little bit? With the amount of magic-ness attributed to them, I'd think they'd be big on keeping balance without loosing effectiveness.