Afterlife of the Party

turns out "everything you have ever wanted is on the other side of this fear" is a great trans mantra but also a good mantra if you have OCD

the intimacy of being vulnerable together. being afraid together. finding safety in each other

Alright I’m going to run my mouth and dredge up soul lore again and say some things that's probably gonna annoy some people but I genuinely do think it’s true: basically trying to adhere to the show’s original soul lore is pointless and a disservice to every single vampiric character that’s not Angel. Because the thing about soul lore is it's simply a loophole for Joss Whedon’s original black-and-white mythology which was that he didn’t want complicated vampires. He didn’t want vampires with sympathetic/human traits or internal worlds. He didn’t want “Anne Rice crap” he wanted grrr arg scary monster vampires with cardboard personalities who aren’t human at all anymore. The only reason soul lore exists is because the network pushed him to add a vampire so he slapped a soul on angel and basically all the soul was ever supposed to be was a lil sticker that says Angel gets a pass to be a multidimensional character. That's it. And that’s fine and well so long as Angel remains the only reoccurring vampire in the show with any character development. But of course, it's pretty hard to do a good show full of monsters where you never actually tell us about who the monsters are or what their motivations are besides monologuing and villainously twisting their mustaches. That's what happens in season 2 when they kill the anointed one. By killing him they effectively kill the old flimsy archetype and after that we start seeing vampires with more traits and personalities and memories from their human life. Boom, out goes Angel’s soul and then eventually, Angel as well. Graveyard cemetery doornail dead. Double dead. Dead squared. And you know what, here’s the controversial part, I’m just gonna say it…even with the established soul lore…they probably would’ve let it go and actually amended it if Angel had stayed dead. But he didn’t. Angel came back with his soul and got his own show where he is the main character and that simply magnified the problem with soul lore because Angel has to be a very special boy because otherwise why are we focusing on him?? Why is he the main character if any old vampire can grow a personality and a conscience? And honestly they probably also wanted him to be the “one vampire in all the world.”Buffy but a Dude. And therein lies a huge source of back-and-forth and continuity errors and the writers having to cling to the OG lore even though the story has grown beyond it. Angel is gone from btvs and the growing narrative and overall character/lore development demands that you have to take a step back and look at the shades of gray, but also remember you can never be anything without a soul because Angel is on right after this. The universe shows us that vampires can grow and change and have a full continuity of self and that they are more than just simply the shells of humans with a demon inside, but tells us otherwise because of outside aspects. That's why I think trying to rigidly adhere to soul lore is pointless, because its not a well thought out established rule of the universe, its a massive continuity error that was never properly corrected and continued to mess up and confuse the universe because the creator stubbornly wrote himself into a corner from the start.

I just want to let you guys know Cornell's entire library is open access (no permissions required) and there are (shocker) many books...