A topic for the discussion of Doctor Who, Arrow, and The Flash. Beware possible invasions of iZombie, Sleepy Hollow, or pretty much any other "genre" (read: sci fi, superhero, or fantasy) show that captures our fancy. Expect adult content and discussion of the Big Gay Sex.
Marvel superheroes are discussed over at the MCU thread.
Whitefont all unaired in the U.S. ep discussion, identifying it as such, and including the show and ep title in blackfont.
Blackfont is allowed after the show has aired on the east coast.
This is NOT a general TV discussion thread.
I think... I think that demons don't have souls, but the demons that make vampires are a specific type of demon, and that's why they're so awful?
If I had to make an argument, it would be along these lines. Most demons are either good or evil, soul-having or not (which raises the question of why it's ok to kill evil demons when it's obviously not ok to kill evil humans, but...moving on). Because vampires take over human bodies, they have their own special vampire soul issues that other demons don't deal with.
Ok, I withdraw the Buffyverse from contention.
BSG was very consistent, except when it wasn't, but I can pretend those eps don't exist and then everything's fine.
What other sorts of "stuff" was contagious in the Buffyverse--where do werewolves rank on the ensouled scale? Did a person become a demon? Or just a monster?
Yeah, my problems with the Buffyverse are all theological/soul-related. Most of the world-building quibbles I can think of with shows I watch are theological, really (BSG, SPN, TVD has additional problems...). Still haven't watched Farscape, so I can't weigh in on that one. Fringe has really interesting world-building, but they stay consistent (to the extent they do) by changing the reality of the Fringeverse pretty frequently...which I am actually okay with, but can't endorse as sound policy.
Buffy herself seemed to treat werewolves as mostly people and therefore ensouled, I think. The 'verse, I'm not sure.
That Seth Green was able to get training and be able to control himself implies he was souled - no implant or addition of a soul needed. Vampires are explicitly dead people animated by an evil demon.
I think part of the Buffy/Angel-verse problem came when they started writing in-story differences between demons that were supernatural evil guys hybridized with humans (vamps, D'hoffryn, dudes like that) and demons that were just sentient beings from other universes (Lorne, whatzername the princess played by Bai Ling, dudes like that), but never actually said what the difference was. For a while, the main difference seemed to be that Angel and crew treated non-harmful demons like people and Buffy just kinda stabbed anything non-human (unless it was cute), but that broke down towards the end of the series. But then there's Doyle, earth-born hybrid demon, but I'm pretty sure he had a soul.
Hunh. I dunno.
TB, are you assuming that any monster/demon that didn't have to be evil the way vampires did had a soul? So, Oz and Merle are equivalent? What explains the fact that vampires seem to be a minority--we haven't explicitly been shown any other sort of monster/demon who had no choice, right?
No just that Oz, being a human, had a soul before he was bitten/scratched/whatever, and there is no reason to assume he lost it. Plus his behavior did not change except during the full moon. So not Merle equivalent. Just not without a soul.
From what I understand, all demons were without souls, just some of them did not have to be evil. And no the soul thing never made sense, in part because how having a soul or not interacted with eviltude changed. When did we first see a non-evil demon (other than Angel who explicitly had a soul added)? As I remember, and my memory is not reliable, we did not see one during the first season.
But the Pylea episode showed that the particular kind of Demon who possessed dead human bodies to create vampires was not only a predator, but an animal predator (the "blood beast"). So basically vampires were dead bodies possessed by an evil animal spirit - why they retained so much of humanity (the intelligence came from the human brain, not the demon) but were pretty much over the top evil (the demon part was pretty much purely present oriented and not very rational.)
Other demons were evil or not depending. I guess the ones who could live on big gulps had no particular reason to be evil. So what the soul did exactly I'm not sure. Added guilt? Demons who chose not to be evil seemed not be guilt motivated. In the case of vampires, even those who wanted to stop drinking human blood needed a soul to have a chance to overcome their desire. Also, even Spike got a case of the guilts for a while once he got a soul. Drove him mad for a while.
Even though he appeared to get over it, there are hints he still felt some guilt (some of his conversations with Angel) Just unlike Angel, once he recovered his mental footing, he did not brood and dwell on what could not be changed.
Now that Korra can restore people's bending (fan comic): [link]
My favorite bit of proposed fanon I've seen is that Zuko was responsible for the giant Aang statue, just to irritate Aang.
Who is responsible for Aang's incredibly stupid beard?
