#buffy lore

humanity is the heart of a person and the soul only serves as a magnifier.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk and I'm going to go drown in my tears now.

"I think the statement of "the person a vampire was is completely gone replaced by a Demon who wears their body" doesn't really hold up with anything we see on the show. Although it's probably good to believe that as a vampire slayer because otherwise most of what Buffy does would be in a morally gray area. I also personally believe that the watchers council deliberately gives watchers and slayers that wrong information (the dialog that says so in the beginning is mostly Buffy and Giles I think. Vampires aren't framing their own experience that way) so that they don't think about the potential moral implications of, for example, killing a vamp that was just turned and hasn't killed anyone yet. The way it makes sense to me is that two things happen when you get turned 1. You loose your soul 2. Some demonic energy/presence/thing enters you and becomes a part of your body through the demonic blood. Loosing the soul I see as essentially loosing an inherent sense of Morality and guilt and loosing (most) empathy. Neither of those makes you inherently evil and there's also the philosophical question of if you can even be inherently evil or if evil is something that you have to do. But you are obviously very likely to end up doing evil things to get what you want if you don't see hurting people as wrong and can't empathize with anyone. And without a sense of Morality you won't want to do anything good unless it also serves you and you will go after more simple pleasures without a care for anyone. But not feeling empathy or having morals doesn't mean you don't have emotions yourself. You will still feel good or bad and you can still fall in love. We don't seem to question that vampires can feel hate and anger without a soul and love is essentially just another emotion. Of course there's the question of how love expresses itself if you can't empathize with who you love. If you try to cheer them up when they are sad it can't be because you feel their pain... Do you look at them more like you'd look at a broken toy that can't give you what you want anymore and try to cheer them up because of that. Is that love or just an intense desire to be with someone because of how they make you feel. Does it matter as long as you are doing the right thing? Do I need to feel someone's pain to want them to be happy? I think there's a lot of interesting questions there but just saying no soul = no love is a bit too reductive for me. (I also personally feel like soulless spike does feel some empathy for people he loves just not for anyone else but that's debatable). For the second thing I think the demonic energy/thing/whatever is what keeps their bodies going, gives them the bloodlust / need for blood to survive and the problems with the sun and all that other fun vampire stuff. But I don't think it is a different entity/identity with a personality of their own taking over and replacing the person. The reason why vampires go evil even if the person they are wasn't before is just that the loss of the soul (Morality/guilt/empathy) coupled with the new bloodlust and being hard to kill by humans thus not having to fear consequences will lead them to murder pretty quickly. But what we see of people before and after they were turned it's always the same people just without a moral compass now going after whatever they want without a care. And one thing they want now is blood but they also still have the desires they did before. Their desires and personality and memories and such is the same. I think that that mind/spirit/whatever is what makes someone who they are. I think that another being with all my memories, wants, feelings and needs would be me. But I know that philosophically you could make an argument that loosing your sense of right and wrong and empathy is enough of a difference to make you a different person. I'd personally say they are a different person in the same way that I'm a different person to who I was five years ago. The person I was then is gone not because some other entity took over my body but because I changed. And being turned is a pretty big change to go through. Even humans sometimes change from one day to the next for example when they go through trauma but you wouldn't necessarily say that they died and some other person took over. In some ways who I was 5 years ago is dead and that person will never be around again. But that's not how we frame things for humans because we have a continuous sense of self and vampires on Buffy have that too. But I'm going to try to get away from the purely philosophical arguments and into the actual show canon. First of all there is the situation where a different demonic presence actually does take over someone's body, retains memories but completely eviscerates the person and becomes a completely new character... on angel with illyria. And it's very obviously a completely different situation to what we see happen with vampires. She might know who Fred was but she has different wants and a different personality and acts according to that. With vampires that's not what happens. Spike is the most obvious example. The first thing he does after being turned is try to save his mother. He cared for her before and he still does. And if he was just a Demon in a William suit he would have no reason to even call her his mother. Turning her is not a moral choice ( I don't think turning someone into a vampire can be unless they ask for it because if they don't you are essentially making choices about their body without their consent) and it's not (necessarily) because of empathy. It's just that his mother was someone he always liked to be around and he wants to keep her around.  and spike was always motivated by his romantic obsessions and that informed everything he did after being turned too. Then we have dru who was driven mad pre being turned and stays mad as a vampire. And we have Darla who on angel when she gets brought back as a human with a soul doesn't act like "I finally have my body back" or "what happened, I was dead and have no memory of it". She's like "I was a vampire, that was me, I did that" and she doesn't just have a soul. She's a human with a soul again. But as a character she's a continuation of Darla the vampire. And we have dark willow and vampire willow both using the same phrase ("bored now") which to me shows that regardless of how willow turns evil its a continuation of her character and vamp willow isn't just a random Demon that looks like willow. In the same episode we also have angel basically saying the same thing. When Buffy tries to console willow by saying that a vampires personality is not related to the person they were Angel starts saying "well actually..." then seems to realize correcting her wouldn't help the situation and switches to "good point". And then obviously we have Harmony. Who is most obviously the same person, who still has a lot of the same wants that are not related to being a vampire ( status, money, a comfortable life, a boyfriend) and who stops drinking human blood ( in season 5 of angel) not because she had a problem with killing humans but just because it didn't serve her and it was easier for her to live the life she wanted while playing by the rules. She's clearly soulless but is probably the most interesting example if you want to argue about inherent evil vs. evil actions and "does it matter why someone is doing the right thing?". The one that feels like an outlier is angel but I think even he makes sense. If you look at Liam and Angelus I do see a continuation of character. He wanted to have fun, he already didn't really care much for others and I would argue based on what he does once he looses his empathy he probably already had some desire to hurt others. He just wouldn't have ever actually acted on it when he had his soul. Being turned unleashed the worst parts of him, living out dark desires he otherwise probably would have taken to his grave and the reason he changes so drastically as a character once he gets his soul back is because of the immense guilt of knowing that everything he did was exactly what he wanted. And with a conscience he doesn't want to want those things and won't indulge in those desires to torture and harm. Because all vampires kill and don't feel bad about causing harm to get what they want but Angelus does take things a step further and I think that's based in his own desires. ( A human moral equivalent for me would be the difference between hunting animals to eat and torturing puppies for fun ) And knowing where those desires can lead him makes him work on distancing himself as much as possible from who he was once he gets his soul back which is how he becomes such a different person.