It might be just me but does anyone else interpret the souls in Buffy The Vampire Slayer as the ability to change/grow?
At first when we meet the vampires we think they are just evil monsters incapable of human emotions. But as the story goes on we actually learn that they are capable of love and acts of kidness, particularly with Spike (when he protected Dawn because it would hurt Buffy if she got hurt and when he kept protecting Dawn even after Buffys death while Giles packed up and left. He had nothing to gain from it, it was purely for Dawns benefit).
And so this brings up the question: What are souls even supposed to be?
We know that vampires are monsters but they've been shown to have human behaviours, attachments, emotions... but the 2 vampires who got their souls aren't purely good either.
I'd argue that Angel was a manipulative pedo and Spike had no objections killing people who stood in his way even after getting their souls.
And I had this thought that when a human becomes a vampire and they lose their soul, they get stuck being the worst version of themselves that's the most perceptive to animalistic/monster instinct. They are frozen and they still have the access to the qualities they developed as humans but usually the monster like qualities win.
And a soul is the ability to change.
I had this quote stuck in my head since the first time I watched Buffy and it's "Evil cannot create, it can only corrupt" by Tolkien I believe.
That's why the first evil doesn't even have a form, it needs to take the form of a human, something alive, something inherently good. And it corrupts it. It's not because it's true face is "too terrifying" like it's implied, it's because it doesn't actually have a face or a form (bc it cannot create).
When a human gets turned into vampire, they lose their soul and get corrupted by evil. Which means they cannot create, grow and change anymore. They are stuck bc nothing grows from evil.
When they gain their soul back, they don't immediately become good, they just become capable of change.
