Self-Deception Is A Necessary Tool, Sometimes

'You have no soul. You're not capable of doing anything selfless.' - Angel, to Drusilla, Angel & Faith #7.

My first reaction to that quote was irritation, followed by recognition that while a questionable claim, it's one that served as keystone to a lot of pyramids for the Buffyverse in general, and Angel in particular.

The irritation first. What about Spike? He fought alongside the Scoobies off and on from the climax of Season 2, through most of Season 6, without a soul. Yes, he was often working towards something. Wanting Dru back, needing blood, being in love with Buffy, but what about the summer she was dead? He stuck around and helped protect Sunnydale, because of a promise to a dead woman, who he believed lost to him forever? I suppose the selflessness of it could be called into question if we take the view that Spike wanted acceptance, and figured the Scoobies were a better bet than other demons, who regarded him as a turncoat. Turns out the Scoobs weren't much better, but you could argue he was trying to get something out of that as well. Still, to put himself at risk for people who barely tolerated him, because he wanted to keep his word, sounds at least close to selfless.

Still, we'll move on. What about Clem, or especially Lorne? Lorne helped Angel on several occasions, at great cost to himself, his club, and probably to his sense of self when he killed people for Angel in the series finale. Or Darla staking herself so Connor could be born? She's a vampire, what did she care about some baby that was only making life harder for her?

In this particular case, Dru admits she'd get something out of helping Angel, like she gets blood from these people who come to her looking for relief from their inner torments. It isn't a selfless act, but that hardly proves she's incapable of them, and it would seem there are other examples of beings with no soul (which seems to be defined as what animates a human being, versus whatever keeps vamps and demons moving) that could call that claim into dispute as well.

Still, Angel holding to it isn't a surprise. The concept one must have a soul to be worth something holds considerable sway in the Buffyverse. Buffy Season 6 tried to drive this home with the attempt to prove Spike couldn't be worthy of Buffy without one. What they actually succeeded in demonstrating was beings are capable of good and evil with a soul or without (Spike, but also Willow, Buffy, Xander), and one can very easily hurt someone they love (Spike and Xander were both guilty on that one). I doubt that was the intent. Buffy certainly felt Spike was more deserving of help come Season 7, when he had a soul, than the year before when he was steadily breaking down trying to love and help someone who desperately needed him one moment, and treated him like garbage the next. Maybe the Scoobs have smartened up about this particular blind spot of theirs in the comics, one can only hope.

This distinction between "soul = may be good or evil", and "no soul = EVIL!" is especially important for Angel, because it feeds into that martyr complex he has. As Drusilla pointed out, Angel acts as though he and Angelus are two different entities, and only one inhabits the body at a time. As long as Soul Boy is around, Angelus is not. If Angel gets his moment of perfect happiness, away he goes and here comes Angelus, trying to end the world or terrorize through tedious mind games.

This gives Angel the perfect excuse to play the suffering hero, because he can't take the chance on perfect happiness. He gets to make every saved life about how much he sacrifices. He could have fun, but if he did that, he might lose his soul, so instead he's going to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, and make a big show of it in the process. Why, he even cut off contact with his son, that's how much he cares about protecting others (sarcasm)! Never mind his kid is a superpowered human offspring of two vampires, who is going to have unsavory types interested in him whether dad's around or not, and it might be good to have Angel as a regular presence those unsavory types have to consider before trying something. Nope, that's sacrificed on the altar of Angel's suffering, too.

Yes, Angel is right to be concerned about Angelus getting loose. But it's disingenuous to act as though Angel is the good guy and Angelus the bad guy. Going by some of his past actions, either Angelus is entirely capable of slipping out past the soul, or Angel's soul is a least a little receptive to the demon's suggestions. It's more convenient for him to not think of it that way, like it was more convenient of the Scoobies to keep Spike on the outside regardless of how many times he helped them. If they accepted that the soulless vampire might actually be at least a little trustworthy, it would upset their metaphysical apple carts.

It really shouldn't hold up now, though, with so many vampires following Harmony's rules, and restraining themselves from killing or siring. Presumably all those vampires are also soulless, and yes, they get something from it (blood, adulation), but they could get more by breaking the rules, and it would simply require rolling the dice as to whether a Slayer will catch them in the act and end them.

Another Discussion Of Good And Evil?

There's that Edmund Burke quote, 'All that is required for evil to triumpg is for good men to do nothing'* I've been thinking, does that mean someone who fights against evil is "good"? As fiction fans (and especially as comic fans) we've all seen stories where the villains team-up with the heroes to take down some greater menace.

The Rocketeer, for example. Late in the movie, the gangsters team up with the Feds to fight the Nazis. Are they good men? I'm sure they think so. Mobsters usually seem to be portrayed as thinking of themselves strictly as enterprising, but strict, businessmen. Simply providing goods and services the public demands, without concern for piddling things like laws. Actions tend to speak louder, and their actions up to that point in the film would point to them not being good. So for that brief moment, and only then, they are good men? That could be it, since we could argue that at that moment, they were motivated by some nationalistic pride**, rather than their usual interest in money. It wasn't driven by purely selfish reasons. Unless it was because bootlegging would be harder in a Nazi-conquered America.

The example I think started this was the conclusion of Buffy Season 2. Spike helps Buffy save the world, but his reasons seemed to be: 1) Screw over Angelus/Angel, because he hates him. 2) Get Drusilla back, and well away from the Slayer. 3) He likes the world how it is, as it is. None of those motives are exactly "good", since one of the reasons he likes the world is all the people there are for him to kill and eat. Still, he did help, to the extent of keeping Angelus from taking a chainsaw to Giles, and keeping Buffy from having to fight Dru and Angelus simultaneously. So I'm not sure one could say Spike was a good person, but he still chose to do something.

I guess the mobsters and Spike were good when compared to what they were fighting against, so it could be a relative thing, but I'm not sure less evil = good. I certainly think a person can go against their typical impulses, so maybe they were "good" in that moment, and that's really all that's required.

That's it for me until next Thursday, I leave it to you to discuss amongst yourselves.

* I'm not sure that's the exact phrasing. I've seen "is that good men", and "all that is necessary" as well.

** Though I'd say nationalism isn't always a good motive. Can lead to isolationism, xenophobia, imperialism. Might get some positive results out of those occasionally, but I wouldn't bet on it.

My Scott And Jean

I've been debating throughout the day whether to get with this meme, or do the post I originally had planned, but I finally figured I might as well. I haven't taken part in a meme for awhile, and I haven't really ranted about anything too recently, so why not?

So here should be the link to the description of what "Scott and Jean" means (as I type this, my computer keeps telling me there's an internal server error every time I try and load the page. It's basically something geek-related you feel so strongly about, you can't really debate it, rationally, I think. I have a few of these, of varying intensity, so I've been trying to decide which to focus on. I thought about "Cassandra Cain as a villain/killer", but I don't get angry about that anymore, so much as I just ignore stories which don't jibe with my view of the character (Beechen's Batgirl mini-series, for example). Maybe One More Day, since I don't see why it was necessary to remove the marriage so Peter Parker can have a supporting cast. Hey, I'm glad Pete has a supporting cast, but when JMS put Pete and MJ back together, Paul Jenkins kept including the wacky apartment neighbors he created previously, so I don't think the marriage was the issue, as much as the unmasking and having him move into Stark Tower. But I chalk that up to lazy writers and move on. I guess with anime there's my distinct feeling that as far as the Tenchi Muyo series go, Tenchi ought to wind up with Ryoko, and that prissy princess Ayeka can take a long walk off a short pier into a black hole infested with space piranha, but even there, I don't find myself getting actively riled about it. So I finally settled on the Scooby Double-Standard of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6.

I've complained about this before, in reference to the Spike/Buffy relationship of Season 6, and the different treatment Faith and Willow receive, compared to their relative crimes. Oddly enough, unlike most things that bother me, where I complain about them on the blog, feel better, and can sort of move on, I can't quite let this one go. I suppose it's because I liked, or at least in Buffy's case, could tolerate the characters before, but was actively wishing for their deaths by the end of the season. There's just something that bothers me so much about how Xander, Willow, and Buffy all pull various crap on other characters, then skate on it. Xander bails on Anya at the altar, then when she has drunk comfort sex with Spike(who had just been told by Buffy it's over between them*), Xander acts as though he's the hurt party, and was about to stake Spike, rather than deal with his own inadequacies. Plus, of course, Spike can't fight back, so Xander can beat him up as much as he needs to feel like a big man.

Then Buffy acts like Spike wronged her by sleeping with Anya, after Buffy freaking broke up with him, and then he gets chewed out by Dawn about hurting Buffy later, and it all ignores the loads of shit Buffy dumped on him throughout the season. The beatings, the insults, diminishing his every attempt to improve himself (which he was doing for her), occasionally pretending they could be friendly when they were alone, then treating him like dirt as soon as her friends showed up. And she gets away with it! No one calls her on this bullshit! And then everyone acts horrified that Spike did something bad (which assaulting Buffy in the bathroom was, I'm not denying that), when they spent the entire season telling him he was bad, that he was a monster, a thing, that he couldn't ever be good. Here's a thought: You want someone who's been evil in the past to stop being evil? Give them encouragement when they do something good. Let them know you recognize their efforts, and appreciate it. If all you do is mock or belittle them, you shouldn't get to act hurt when they decide it's not worth the hassle and revert to old habits.

And yes, Buffy consistently defends and protects Spike in Season 7. Swell, except I still think that support would have done more good when he didn't have his soul. Also, near as I can tell, her friends still don't understand the damage she (and they) did to him the previous year, which probably contributed to the nervous breakdown that lead to the assault attempt, so there's no recognition that, yeah, Buffy really ought to assume some responsibility for Spike, and maybe we should too, since we treated him like dirt, except when we needed him to act as muscle for us. Bunch of poncy bastards, the lot of them.

I've gone into the Willow/Faith thing before, so I won't bore you by repeating all of it (here's one example, the rant in the last footnote). For me, it boils down to accepting responsibility, where the core Scoobs don't, and the others do. Faith accepts she screwed up, goes to prison, stays there until she's needed. Spike decides he screwed up, that he can't be good without a soul**, goes to get one. Anya had a chance, after Xander caught them, to let Spike make a wish against Xander and she restrained herself, because she'd grown to the point she didn't really want vengeance for herself. Meanwhile, Xander's acting like bailing on your bride on your wedding day is no big deal, Buffy's (for a long time) unwilling to risk her friends' scorn by admitting what she was doing with Spike, and I still don't think they know about the beatings she gave him, and Willow gets to foist the blame for her actions off on the magic. Funny, I recall Giles accepted the responsibility for that demon he and his friends summoned back in their youth, even though that was also dark magic, just like what Willow was messing with. Can't quite see the difference there myself.

So, there it is, hopefully for the last time on this blog. Tomorrow, making fun of stuff from War of Kings #1!

* And for the record, I'm glad she ended it, since she was killing him by inches, but she doesn't get to act proprietary towards him afterwards. Where I come from, if you break up with someone, you don't get to be mad if they screw someone else later. You want to be their one and only, then say so.

** Again, I think if the Scoobies had simply encouraged him a bit, he wouldn't have needed the soul. He was struggling to do good, but the point is he was making the effort.

The Joys Of Leadership: You Can Tell Others To Do What You Will Not

I've got a few more thoughts on the Buffy/Faith things I was discussing this weekend I want to get to, so that's where I am at today. So one of the other complaints I saw about the arc starring Faith in the current Buffy comic was that there was no way that the Scoobs would ask Faith to go and assassinate this other Slayer. After all, the last time she killed someone, she went off the rails until she wound up in a coma. When she came out of the coma, she went back to attacking them, then went after Angel, with some Wesley-torture along the way.

A couple of responses to that. One, the commenter seems to be assuming that Faith hasn't grown as a person, learned anything from that whole experience that might help her. Originally, Faith tried to deny the incident bothered her at all, not only to Buffy, but to herself, which is not a healthy attitude. I think when the comic shows Faith consistently marks her arrival at her apartment by angrily stabbing her stake into the wall, combined with her attempts to get a passport and leave Cleveland, it suggests she knows she's not happy with where she is or what she's doing, so at the very least she isn't lying to herself anymore. Plus, that denial the first time around left her deaf to the people who truly wanted to help her (that'd be Xander and Angel). This time around, she hears Giles when he tells her she isn't the first person to screw up royally as a teen, and that he gets feeling the need for atonement*. She knows now there are people who care about her, that believe in her, and that makes a difference. By the end of the arc, Faith wants to travel and try to help other Slayers from not making her mistakes, so she is definitely not the same person she was in Season 3.

Secondly, who else could they send? Buffy obviously can't go, with her being the target (even assuming she would kill Gigi). Gigi's been killing other Slayers for awhile, so sending one of the newbies is risky. I think Gigi's Warlock Master would notice if you tried to send Willow, and Giles ruled out sniping her from a distance, so what's that leave? Giles or Xander trying to sneak in and kill a Slayer at close range? It is to laugh. Listen to me laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha, ha.

I think what amused me about that criticism of the story's logic was the claim that putting Faith in a situation like this, where she could go back down that same dark road, is completely unlike the Scoobies. Let's set aside whether Giles thinks the same way as the Scoobs (I'd say no). What amused me was I recalled Buffy telling Willow and Spike to confront their fear of their dark sides for the greater good. She told Willow she needed to get over her fear that using heavy-duty magic would drive her evil again**, because as things stood, she wasn't helping enough. Then she got on Spike for not being a good fighter since he got his soul, and how she needed the old Spike back, because he'd be useful in the battle to come. You remember the old Spike, brutal killer, Slayer of Slayers? The one Buffy only escaped from in their first battle thanks to the intervention of Joyce Summers and a fire ax? Both come in the same scene, and in that same episode, Buffy meets the fellows who created the first Slayer, by infusing some girl with the essence of a demon to give her its power or something like that. They offer Buffy more power (apparently the connection to that demonic force has been diluted), saying she'll need it to beat the First Evil, and she turns them down.

Why I think that's interesting is that one of Buffy's fears has seemed to be the essence of the Slayer itself. When she and Faith first met, Faith talked about how much she enjoyed getting out there, slaying the baddies, and how it left her feeling like finding a steak or a guy afterwards. Buffy makes some weak joke in response about how sometimes she craves a fat-free yogurt after slaying. At the start of season 5, when she meets Dracula, she finds herself going out in the night, hunting, as she puts it for demons to slay, as opposed to patrolling earlier in the evening. She tells Giles this scares her, and she needs to know more about where her power came from. Buffy consistently tries to deny any sense that she enjoys the slaying part of being a Vampire Slayer, and if she starts to enjoy it, she gets worried.

Buffy's met the First Slayer (in a dream), and she's seen what happened with Faith, so perhaps she has good reason to fear, but still, it's hypocritical to stand there and order other people who are trying very hard to rein in their darker tendencies to get over it when one isn't ready or willing to do so themselves. It's like one of those war movies, where the Bad General keeps ordering his men to throw themselves at the Fortified Enemy Position on a Nameless Hill, while he sits comfortably safe behind the lines enjoying his steak and fine wine, while the Kind Squad Sergeant grieves, fumes, shares his rations, and tries to keep his men alive, without disobeying orders. Of course, the Kind Squad Sergeant usually dies taking the position singlehandedly, or saving the peach-fuzzed kid in the outfit, so I'm not sure who in Buffy season 7 would play that role.

* And I can't help thinking, "Why the hell didn't you tell her this in season 3, Giles?" Maybe she's too deep into denial for it to sink in, but I felt she respected Giles - perhaps because his concern for Buffy reminded her of her first Watcher's (the one Kakistos killed) concern for her - enough to listen. Xander and Angel tried and failed to reach her then, but I think Faith figured Xander was just looking for another roll in the hay, and Angel, well, he is a vampire. One that tried to destroy the world, no less. Plus, his attempt to talk to her came after he clocked her with a bat (shovel?) and chained her to a wall in his home. Not really conducive for sharing of feelings.

** This feels like more excuse making for Willow, which started in Season 6, when they started arguing the magic she was using was dark, and that's why she did bad things. This as opposed to, Willow likes magic because it gives her control over the situation, but she abuses that power because she thinks her intelligence makes her more perceptive of what's best than the others. So Willow went from being Jerk-style Batman to a coke addict. Boo.

I Sit Here Typing, My Throat Cells Are Lysing. . . Character Archetypes #2

Sometimes, I really hate Blogger. I had this entire post typed out. But I couldn't post it, because Blogger's messed up so I can't add the images. So I save it, I even see it saved. Then I come back, and it's fucking gone! Damn it! Fine!

The first archetype was the person I think I'd be if I had superheroes. More likely, it's who I wish I could be. I doubt I could keep saving the day while putting up with all the crap Parker does. This time around, it's the characters I'm rooting for, the ones I want to get that happy ending. For my prime example I present Ryoko, from Tenchi Muyo.

A quick origin. Ryoko is either 5000 or 2000 years old, depending on what website I check. She's a combination of her mother, Washu's, egg cell, and an organism called Masu, which has unusual energy properties. A student of Washu's named Kagato abducts Ryoko, and uses her as a weapon of mass destruction for at least a 1000 years (more if she's older). To do this he controlled her. It's kind of suggested that Ryoko's mind isn't like most, that it's more of a computer, and like Washu, Kagato could hack into it and assert control. Anyway, under his orders, she attacks the Imperial Planet of Jurai, gets chased by the Crown Prince Yosho, shot down over Earth, defeated by said prince and imprisoned inside a stasis chamber hidden within a cave for 700 years. Yosho's grandson Tenchi inadvertently frees her, and now you're caught up.

Ryoko is a character looking for redemption, even if she rarely shows it outwardly. Though both Jurai's and the Galaxy Police's statute of limitations have run out on her crimes, she's still feared throughout the galaxy. Still most people don't know she was controlled. If they do know, they may not believe it, or may not care. Those people have never seen this "Kagato", but they certainly remember Ryoko. To them, she's at best "Space Pirate Ryoko", and others regard her as an outright demon. And though she wasn't in control of herself, she feels guilt for all the people she hurt or killed. It was shown in one comic that she expects that if Tenchi or the others knew everything that she had done, they'd send her away, want nothing to do with her. But she mostly conceals this behind her loud, wild, somewhat crazy personality that caught my interest initially.

Along those lines, she has to figure out a whole new way to do things. Kagato seems to have lived by the philosophy "want, take, have", or more precisely "want, make Ryoko take, have". Wuss. And that being the only way Ryoko remembers, she often acts that way. Except that it can't help with what she really wants (Tenchi's love and acceptance). In fact, showing off her powers, her fighting ability, scares the crap out of tenchi, or at least makes him nervous for quite awhile. Likewise, she can't simply blow off her rival Ayeka's face, because Ayeka and Ryoko share friends. If she did that, Tenchi, Sasami, and plenty of other people would be saddened. So the ways that seem most natural to her, are the exact things she can't do. It's an uphill battle, and I can't help rooting for her.

Other examples:

Raven - I think this is a result of that season of Teen Titans, but I really cheer for Raven. She seemed to completely believe that she was destined to destroy the earth, that there was nothing she could do to defy her father. It was nice to see her friends, especially Robin, working to convince her that nothing was set in stone.

At the same time, it's Raven's abilties that make it hard to relate to people. She can absorb their emotions, enter their dreams, sometimes without even meaning to. That tends to make people keep their distance, because when you're feeling really happy, you might not want to talk to
the girl who can suddenly drain all that happiness. It's why I thought the "Raven goes to high school" was an awesome idea. Hopefully that'll happen after One Year Later starts.

Batgirl - Like my previous two entries, Cassandra Cain has been screwed over by her father/male figure. Like Ryoko, she had no influence from a mother to counteract that. I do think Cain cared for his daughter more than the others. She was more than just a weapon. True that 'more' was mostly as a testament to his greatness, but it feels like there was something more, not compassion necessarily, but something. Either way, he left her mostly unable to interact with the real world. Speaking is difficult, and if Oracle is to be believed, reading and writing will be damn near impossible. Still, she's trying, and early in Gabrych's work, she was expanding her life. Meeting boys, talking to the coffee shop lady. There was progress.

Stacy X - I've said it all before (repeatedly), but I believe given time she would have felt comfortable enough to drop the tough facade she puts up, and once that's accomplished, she could start to develop a bit. Become someone who doesn't define the majority of her life by sex.

Faith - Faith had a harder life than any of the "Scoobies" could guess. Buffy thought that having to set up everything for Parent-Teacher Night was difficult. Try having a mom who beats you, "B". She made mistakes, got saddled with a crap Watcher like Wesley, made more mistakes. Then she owned up to them, accepted the punishment, and went to prison. When she was needed, she escaped, and all she did after that was try to make amends. Try to be the Good Slayer, and show that she could be counted. And still, most everyone regarded her with mistrust and suspicion, while Willow, who did just as much evil crap, had been welcomed back with open arms. I'm just gonna move on, before I get pissed.

I look over this list, and it's entirely women, after my first list was entirely guys. I don't know whether that's a reflection of me and my being a guy, or whether it represents the stories that writers more often assign to specific genders. I did, however, come up with one guy for this list.

Spike - Probably the hardest road to redemption of all. Even with a soul, the demon is still there, reminding him that humans are supposed to be food. That eating and killing them is what vampires do, not saving them. Even when he gave his big speech about how much he likes this world, one of the reasons was the abundance of people, or "Happy Meals with legs". Still, he's fighting against that instinct. Even when he had the chip that wouldn't let him kill, that didn't mean he had to do good. When Buffy was dead, he didn't have to patrol with the Scoobies. There were other places he could go for a brawl, and probably have more fun without the humans getting in the way.

The thing is, soul or not, he'll never be accepted. The humans will never trust him because his demonic nature is always there, it's just of matter of whether he goes along with it or not. And he's had setbacks. He fell in love with a girl who wound up crushing him like a bug, verbally, emotionally, sexually, and physically abusing him, frequently. And then he snapped, and hurt her back. But he went out, and got the one thing he thought would make him a better person. And still, they didn't trust him. How can I not root for the quintessential "get knocked down, but get up again" character? Frankly, I always thought he and Faith would have gotten along well together, if Buffy weren't in the picture. But that's another subject.

Well, let's see if Blogger holds on to this one. Looking at it, I think these characters are the next step of suffering from the first group. I mean, for all the crap that comes Peter Parker's way, he still has a pretty good life. That's part of why he can remain upbeat and keep doing the hero thing. At least, when he's being written well. These characters have had crappy incident, after crappy incident, after lousy childhood, piled on them. They have to climb out from under the proverbial mountain of stuff, just to start on their path.

Gender Dynamics in Fictional medium

Wow, that title sound kinda dissertationist doesn't it? Well, it's really just an example of why I shouldn't read other people's blogs before I post. See, I was all set to do a "fix New Avengers" day, which you, the kind readers would hopefully help with. Then I check out Pretty, Fuzzy Paradise and Kalinara did a post that struck a chord. She noted that if you reverse the genders of the characters in the Kyle Rayner/Jade relationship, it starts to look kind of disturbing, with "Johnny" looking like the typical abusive boyfriend. You should really read it yourself. But it brings up something that has been bothering me for a few years.

See, I'm a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel. Not those two characters mind you, I can't stand Buffy or Angel (Go Faith! Go Spike! Whoo!), but I like the shows. Which was part of what made the sixth season of Buffy so rough. Her friends bring her back from the dead, pulling her out of Heaven in the process, but leave her in her coffin, so she has to claw her way out. Understandably, Buffy's traumatized, she avoids her friends, and hangs out with Spike, and he tries to help, because he loves her, and honestly she likes him too. She just can't admit it, because he's "an evil thing". So instead she uses him sexually. The morning after their first time, Buffy tells Spike that if he tells anyone, she'll kill him. What? If a male character said that to a female character (like Angel talking to Cordellia, for example), there would be outrage. But when a women, who is the hero, and supposedly 'good', says it to the 'evil' vampire it's no big deal.

And it continues, with Buffy denying Spike actually cares for her, denying that he is actually trying to be good, when she isn't just beating the crap out of him or sexually assaulting him. There is a point where Buffy tries to initiate sexual relations and Spike says "No". Go Spike! Buffy ignores him, and the writers play goofy, silly music to make it like it's no big deal. Wait a minute, I thought that no meant no? To be fair, Spike deserves some blame for not doing the smart thing and breaking it off with Buffy, but he loves her, so like most people in abusive relationships, he wants to help her be the person he remembers. Ultimately, Spike snaps, and assaults Buffy in her bathroom. This time the writers play the assault as a serious thing, Spike's being bad, folks. See he's evil, Buffy's the victim. The double standard is jarring to say the least.

Sorry about that fanboy rage, but it's been a sensitive subject with me, especially when Season 7 seemed to be one character reminding Spike he assaulted Buffy after another, but Buffy never gets called on what she did to him. She skates away, the same way Willow skated for killing two {Edit, January 4, 2008: make that killing one, flaying another} people, even though what she did was easily as bad as what Faith did, and Faith was sitting in prison for most of that season.

Anyway, there's an essay that explains the whole thing much better than I did. http://www.allaboutspike.com/kristen.html