On letting Ethan off the hook

[beccaelizabeth]

Thinking on Halloween again, it occured to me, it would be very simple and consistent to make there be no permanent damage at the end of the day. Costumes with makeup that made people look dead or scarred or hideously injured would just turn back to costumes when the spell broke. So it would be easy to have any new injuries, say from getting shot by Xander or skewered by each other, turn into gooey special effects too.

Thing of it is, that makes Ethan be not so very bad after all. Yeah, people could have got hurt, but he could plausibly believe none of it would be permanent. And even the psychological effects- in the denial capital of California- wouldn't be terribly huge. Like a bad dream, mostly.

If Ethan doesn't believe what he does is really harmful then that kind of softens the edges on him. It also makes it easier to get him together with Giles, because there's a lot less to forgive.

But.

I kind of like Ethan being twisty. I like his edges. I like that he'll turn the world upside down and not try and catch anyone who falls off. It makes him a more interesting character.

It also makes it really, really difficult to get him back with Giles without either corrupting Giles or reforming Ethan. And a reformed Ethan woudl be like a soft edges Ethan, not the guy I like to write.

Is a bit of a puzzler really.

We could take the Spike route and have Ethan suddenly limit his activities to the non-humans of the world, but that would be such a complete turnaround I'd have trouble justifying it in my head.

But Giles involved with an Ethan who still does magic on humans is also difficult to justify. I mean I've read it and believed it, but usually it ends up a version of Giles who is kind of broken, too worn out to fight any more. Willingly blind, not accepting. Is a less fun Giles.

Half the fun with Ethan/Giles is the way they really don't fit even though they totally do. But the don't fit part is also the problem.


*sigh* now I'm being really obvious from being awake too long. Going now.

PS Journal entries: 400
many. neat.

Comments

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

It's sad, really. It's just a matter of pov, of like Ethan says, religious intolerance. I love Rupert, but he sees the world in such a different way than Ethan. When you talk of an Ethan "not really so bad", I always keep in mind that there is no good and bad, not objectively. Never could be. Not in the way he sees it (or me, but that's a different issue). For Rupert there is always "order", always good and bad, even when he's doing things he feels he must, like Ben, he knows it to be bad. I think Ethan plays with the concepts of good and bad as things that are given to him, toys, but he remembers they're just labels, not unshakeable truths.

[nandibble.livejournal.com]

There's another thing, BeccaElizabeth--Ethan loves and worships Chaos, so in part that means he can never fully predict the results of his actions. Because, well, Chaos. From that, it follows that Ethan does *both* good and bad...or rather, the things that he does have good or bad outcomes (to the people he does them to) more or less randomly. That gives him a certain amount of deniability. He couldn't have known that by turning Giles into a Fyarl, Giles would then be in danger of being killed by Buffy. That was an unexpected consequence. So because he doesn't know the outcome, he's not fully responsible.

I don't know if that ameliorates his culpability sufficiently to allow him to be reconciled with Giles, but I think it's a factor to consider--that he's guilty only of being irresponsible (most of the time), not specifically intending harm or wrong. He shoots arrows into the air....