Angel/Liam

[Spike]

When someone becomes a vampire they die and the demon reanimates the corpse, so is Angel and Liam the same person? I get that Angelus has no soul and he is evil. So is Angel just Angelus with a soul and concience, or has he been restured to his human persona Liam?

this is something that seams to have plagued me

[Skytteflickan88]

This is how I see it (although i haven't read after the fall yet).

Liam=young human
Angelus=Liam-soul+demon
Angel=Liam+soul+demon

They're all the same person, but different aspects are in control at different times. For all we know, when a vampire is turned, something deep within wakes up and a vampire is born, the sireblood could just be the trigger. Or perhaps a new being entirely, a demon, is borned during the siring. That could explain how angel and Angelus could fight each other in Faith and Angel(us) shared dream. What I'm saying is, I believe that the three of them are the same person, in different "moods".

Angelus is Liam on crack and Angel is Liam with a hangover(still a bit buzzed) and Liam is the sober reasonable persona.

Now that angel's human again, his demonic urges are gone(but still remembered) and he has a soul, but since he has lived for so long and been through so much, he isn't exactly the same person as when he lived the first time, he's more depressed, experienced and lets face it, a bit jaded. But i suppose that deep down, he's still the man who liked to party for his dad's money.

Anyone follow? 'Cause i just confused myself.

[Ethros]

In a nutshell yes, but I think here in lies the paradox of the Buffyverse, and something one can only 'really' answer with "well its only a TV show"


I can't believe Angelus is just Angel with out a soul, as simply losing ones soul wouldn't turn you into a demonic serial killer. You'd just end up like Bart Simpson (in that episode where he sells his soul on a piece of paper to Millhouse) just an emotionless void.

So obviously Angel & Angelus are two different beings (as is represented as such a lot on the show)
Therefore I really don't see what Angel actually has to atone for, when he really hasn't done anything wrong at all. He didn't kill Holtz's family, he didn't kill Jenny Calendar, etc, so why should he have to atone for them?

Sure he remembers them, and they were *his* hands that did it, but he's no more guilty that Xander in "The Pack" or Jenny in "The Dark Age"


But as I say, there wouldn't be much of a show without said drama

[Skytteflickan88]

I think you're right about the blame Ethros. Someone should hit Xander on the head and remind him that he wasn't that nice when a hyena was possessing him, and make him apaologize to Angel and Spike. It's like blaming a person who has been druged. A person who is druged by force and does unspeakable thing while on a high, can't be blamed, only the person who did the druging. Although, since darla and drusilla also was "high" when siring Angel and Spike, they can't be blamed either.

Dawn that first demon who tried and suceeded to sire a human. Not everybody should experiment.

[Rachster]

well if liam was turned into a vamp and then given a soul strait away before he killed anyone would he be liam? he would have nothing to feel bad about right?

i think its just that angel felt bad for alot of the things he had done so that changed him

also the fact that hes a vamp with or without a soul thats bound to change someone

[Emmie]

skytteflickan88 said:

This is how I see it (although i haven't read after the fall yet).

Liam=young human
Angelus=Liam-soul+demon
Angel=Liam+soul+demon

They're all the same person, but different aspects are in control at different times. For all we know, when a vampire is turned, something deep within wakes up and a vampire is born, the sireblood could just be the trigger. Or perhaps a new being entirely, a demon, is borned during the siring. That could explain how angel and Angelus could fight each other in Faith and Angel(us) shared dream. What I'm saying is, I believe that the three of them are the same person, in different "moods".

Angelus is Liam on crack and Angel is Liam with a hangover(still a bit buzzed) and Liam is the sober reasonable persona.

Now that angel's human again, his demonic urges are gone(but still remembered) and he has a soul, but since he has lived for so long and been through so much, he isn't exactly the same person as when he lived the first time, he's more depressed, experienced and lets face it, a bit jaded. But i suppose that deep down, he's still the man who liked to party for his dad's money.

I think Angel and Liam are very similar in their actions. Liam wasted his life drinking and whoring. Angel spent a century uselessly wallowing in his guilt. Both behaviors used to escape dealing with their issues. The huge difference is Angel has found a purpose in helping others, in being a champion.

As for Angel feeling guilty for something done as Angelus, its like doing something when you're drunk or drugged. Maybe you're out of your mind, but it was still done with your body. Plus I think Angel views his becoming a vamp as something he ignorantly chose ('show me the world'), so its like he shot himself up with pcp for curiousity's sake and then went on a murderous rampage.

[Skytteflickan88]

buffyfanforever said:

well if liam was turned into a vamp and then given a soul strait away before he killed anyone would he be liam? he would have nothing to feel bad about right?

That has always fascinated me. Angel and spike were good once they got their sould, but they have had time to adjust to the bloodlust. Perhaps Liam would have killed(but not tortured) in case he was sired and kept the soul.

[Skytteflickan88]

emmie said:

As for Angel feeling guilty for something done as Angelus, its like doing something when you're drunk or drugged. Maybe you're out of your mind, but it was still done with your body. Plus I think Angel views his becoming a vamp as something he ignorantly chose ('show me the world'), so its like he shot himself up with pcp for curiousity's sake and then went on a murderous rampage.

*kissing you*

I agree completely. Now we just have to convince the rest of the world. And Xander. Joss should definitly teach Xander a lesson.

[buffyfan97]

I would say Angel and Liam are not the same people. I mean lets use SPike for example. Before being sired he was a sniffling, poet, wimp. After being sired something awoke inside him. Like when he sired his mother, something deep inside her awoke. So once SPike got his soul back he wasn't WIlliam again. He didn't revert back to his old self. Evn though Angel and SPike have souls now, they still have the demon in them as well. Which makes them different from their previous human selfs

[Rachster]

forget about them becoming demons and awakening something that will change them forever...
and just think 100 or 200 years has gotta change you with or without the demon inside

[tkts]

Exactly what happened when the gypsies cursed Angelus?

Was the soul that was taken from Liam returned to him? Or was Angelus given a new soul?

[shslibrarian55]

Was the soul that was taken from Liam returned to him? Or was Angelus given a new soul?

From what I recall, the Orb of Thesulah was used to trap his soul from the Ether, as it was expelled by the demon Angelus. Further, it's a "Restoration" spell, not a soul creation spell.

So I would say it is Liam's soul. But I'm sure receiving a soul and living with everything he had done would change him. Perhaps remembering brutally murdering his father is a deterrent for being "the man who liked to party for his dad's money."

[Billie Erin]

I think he's technically like Liam but after 200 odd years of turmoil could you really say that anyone could remain the same person? I think he may have been changed too much fundamentally by his experiences to still be the same young man

[orangejuicepony]

I think that alot of this depends on how you define a soul in the buffyverse. I keep thinking about it and I wonder, is it what allows you to make moral choices? Is it what makes you you? or is it just what allows you to control your own body instead of an invading demon. It's probably some weird combination of all three. Less of the making you you part though, because in orpheus we see that Angelus is always inside angel, even though he really doesn't have much of a say in what Angel does. I assume Liam was always inside Angelus in the same way.
I like the control answer to the soul question the best. When Angelus is in charge, the demon, is in control, and the demon Angelus really enjoys killing and torture. When Liam is in control we get Angel.
If this is true though, the Angel really doesn't have anything to feel guilty about, because he had no control, but people blame themselves for things they have no control over all of the time. Maybe he blames himself for allowing Darla to turn him.

So I guess I think that Angel is Liam with an added 200 + years of unlife experience, plus guilt for everything Angelus has done, and that lingering feeling of knowing that Angelus is always inside of him, and knowing all of the things that Angelus would like to do to those around him, and resisting all of Angelus' evil urges. Which he is able to resist because of the soul.

Did I make any sense there?

so yeah I think that Liam and Angelus are two beings crammed into one body, and the soul determines who has control.