Angel - Life of the Party

[lathany]

I enjoyed this one, particularly the second half. The similarity to Something Blue was notable, but didn't ruin my enjoyment of the episode (compare with Spin the Bottle vs Tabula Rasa). It was also my second favourite Halloween episode (after Halloween) and the "biggest party of the year" idea was a good one. It was satisfying to see Lorne get centre stage after the last few episodes. Plus the bit where the slave ran away was a nice touch. Finally, I liked the fact that the party was said to have gone better than those in previous years...

...which takes me onto the continuity issues. Now, I agree that removing Connor probably rewrites a bit of history, but the team are still in Wolfram and Hart - right ? So they must still have had most of The Beast / Jasmine stuff to have (not) saved the world from - right ? So... how come there are Wolfram and Hart employees around who have seen previous Halloween dos (eg. Knox and the two Lorne speaks to) ? Weren't they all killed by the Beast ? And why do they still talk about all the employees being "evil" ? All that singing in Conviction was supposed to remove the worst of them and leave those tending more towards selfish (or, in D&D terms "neutral").

But, having got those continuity moans out of my system, I still think it was a good episode.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

and leave those tending more towards selfish (or, in D&D terms "neutral")

I would've thought 'chaotic' was the alignment of the selfish ?

Not that I disagree with the actual point.

Re:

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Er... Isn't 'evil' the alignment of the selfish? You can easily have lawfully selfish people, but it's pretty hard to have a good selfish person isn't it?

Or am I falsely applying AD&D rules with the two lawful/chaotic good/evil axes? ;-)

Re:

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the "Lawful Neutral", "Neutral", "Chaotic Neutral" combination. I have a feeling that neutral equated to selfish in 2nd Ed. I could be wrong though.

Re:

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Isn't 'evil' the alignment of the selfish ?

No ! (And I would argue that Lawful people are inherently not selfish. The fact you can sort-of have Lawful selfish types is a reflection of the weakness of a stereotype-based system.)

Much as people take the p*ss out of 1st Ed. D&D alignments, it was actually a pretty decent system (albeit for something one doesn't actually want a system for).

Someone can be very selfish, but have a strong moral code which results in them behaving overall in a 'good' manner.

Most of my characters way back when were Chaotic Good, in fact. It's the ideal alignment for a questing character because it perfectly describes the inherently selfish nature of grubbing around for gold and cheesy magic items for a living when you could be working for the city guard (or similar), whilst at the same time reflecting your disinclination to steal money from people, kill them and nick their stuff and so on.

Re:

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of degree, obviously. Totally selfish people are going to be pretty evil. Moderately selfish people might, on the whole, balance out as good.

Extreme 'Chaotic' people instinctively rebel against rules, customs, regulations and co-operation. I can see why this might be seen as selfish, but I don't think it's a defining trait - more of a byproduct of their individuality.

Additionally, I think 'Very Selfish' and 'Strong Moral Code' cannot sensibly coexist, whereas there's plenty of Selfish Lawfuls around - ambulance chasers, for one ;-)

Re:

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I think 'Very Selfish' and 'Strong Moral Code' cannot sensibly coexist

That's a lefty liberal speaking. Ayn Rand recommends a position which amounts to a strong moral code (e.g. strict property rights) combined with assumed extreme selfishness on the part of everyone.

Re:

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Yes. In the sense of 'being nice to people' is lefty liberal. Not that I want to get nailed to a tree or anything.

There's a reason people seen as extraordinarily good are described as 'selfless' y'know ;-)

Re:

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Yes, because being nice to people is something which is generally seen as good, especially by lefties. But there are lots of other things which some or more people see as being good, and it's possible to have a strong moral code in which being nice to people, per se, doesn't really feature very strongly.

Selfishness is really a question of how strongly you rate your own wellbeing compared with that of other people - but that's not all there is to morality. Lefty liberals happen to rate observable individual welfare very highly as a moral good, which makes selfishness bad. A committed free marketeer believes that everyone will benefit if we all stop doing selfless things just because they are of local benefit to some particular group we feel sorry for.

Re:

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

The problem here is that TSR never knew what they were trying to do with the alignment system, and had the moral philosophy credentials of an educationally subnormal yak. Hence different versions of D&D had different meanings for the alignments, the alignment set never spanned all possible (or indeed all likely) characters, and any given alignment set was rarely consistent.

Hence all this stuff should at least be qualified by version. D&D1-chaotic might be the most selfish of the 6 possible "trends", but it doesn't necessarily follow that the same is true of AD&D2-chaotic. In AD&D 2nd, for example, a Lawful Evil character serves his group but promotes its ends to the exclusion of the interests of all possible other groups, so is ultimately far more selfish than a Chaotic Good character who has little concern for avoiding anti-social behaviour, but is strongly sympathetic to the interests of other individuals.

If I were going to try to make any sense of the irredeemable, I'd say that "selfish-unselfish" is a characterisation of the chaotic-lawful axis by the lawful. A chaotic might characterise it as "progressive-reactionary" and a neutral as "individualist-conformist" or perhaps "libertarian-authoritarian".

Re:

[wimble.livejournal.com]

There's a D&D aphorism of "Selfish Neutral". Chaotics may not be selfish, because they don't think that far ahead.