I think you’re taking too black and white a view of things. Most actions are neither wholly good nor wholly bad but somewhere in-between. Lynch’s position isn’t that Slayers robbing a bank to fund their slaying is “cool” just that it’s not terrible, there are many worse things. The idea that sometimes there are no ‘good’ choices (which doesn’t mean that all choices are equally bad) has been part of the ‘verse from very early on.
I’m also not convinced by your argument that Buffyverse morality changes significantly from episode to episode according to genre - for one thing very few of the episodes are pure in genre (and neither are the comics). My impression is that Joss genuinely blends genres rather than simply alternating between them. I would agree that the characters can become slightly exaggerated in the more comedic episodes. Xander and Willow wouldn’t be so easily convinced that the Buffybot was Buffy in a less comedic episode than Intervention. But even there it’s more accurate to say ‘in a less comedic episode that also embodies some very serious dramatic points’ and how dumb the scoobies are is not a matter of ethics. Usually there are both in-story (diegetic) and non-diegetic justifications for a character’s behaviour. Xander was the one to summon Sweet in OMWF because dumb plots are part and parcel of musical comedy but within the story he had a sound emotional justification to have been tempted, it was never made clear to HIM in the story that the singing and dancing and burning and dying were connected until it was too late and once he summoned Sweet he would have been under his spell.
If you look at each of your ‘killing humans’ examples in detail they differ sufficiently to be judged differently quite independent of the episodes/seasons they’re in. Buffy killed the knights in Spiral in self-defence while they were attacking her. She never thought Katrina had attacked her, she thought she’d killed her accidentally while fighting demons.
As a serious magic user aiming to ascend to demonic status the zookeeper’s humanity is ambiguous like the Mayor’s or Rack’s. He also didn’t die by Buffy’s hand but was eaten by his own hyenas, which she threw him to in defence of Willow. The deputy mayor was quite unambiguously human and wasn’t unambiguously attacking Buffy or Faith (if anything it transpires he was attempting to betray the mayor to them). Moreover, Faith’s accidental staking was not the act we were supposed to condemn, it precipitated her fall it wasn’t the fall itself. The real problem was her refusal to accept that his death even mattered and the transgressions this lead to. (It makes sense that Buffy was so shaken by Katrina’s death she’d already seen where trivialising such an event could lead).
If it's a drama then Buffy is the villain who is corrupting young slayers and creating a generation of amoral superwomen.
Until we know the context amoral is far too strong a term for what we’ve seen. All we can say at the moment is that those involved in the robbery don’t count “thou shall not steal” as a moral absolute. That doesn’t mean that they believe the same of all the other commandments or that moral absolutism is the only ethical philosophy.
no subject
I’m also not convinced by your argument that Buffyverse morality changes significantly from episode to episode according to genre - for one thing very few of the episodes are pure in genre (and neither are the comics). My impression is that Joss genuinely blends genres rather than simply alternating between them. I would agree that the characters can become slightly exaggerated in the more comedic episodes. Xander and Willow wouldn’t be so easily convinced that the Buffybot was Buffy in a less comedic episode than Intervention. But even there it’s more accurate to say ‘in a less comedic episode that also embodies some very serious dramatic points’ and how dumb the scoobies are is not a matter of ethics. Usually there are both in-story (diegetic) and non-diegetic justifications for a character’s behaviour. Xander was the one to summon Sweet in OMWF because dumb plots are part and parcel of musical comedy but within the story he had a sound emotional justification to have been tempted, it was never made clear to HIM in the story that the singing and dancing and burning and dying were connected until it was too late and once he summoned Sweet he would have been under his spell.
If you look at each of your ‘killing humans’ examples in detail they differ sufficiently to be judged differently quite independent of the episodes/seasons they’re in. Buffy killed the knights in Spiral in self-defence while they were attacking her. She never thought Katrina had attacked her, she thought she’d killed her accidentally while fighting demons.
As a serious magic user aiming to ascend to demonic status the zookeeper’s humanity is ambiguous like the Mayor’s or Rack’s. He also didn’t die by Buffy’s hand but was eaten by his own hyenas, which she threw him to in defence of Willow. The deputy mayor was quite unambiguously human and wasn’t unambiguously attacking Buffy or Faith (if anything it transpires he was attempting to betray the mayor to them). Moreover, Faith’s accidental staking was not the act we were supposed to condemn, it precipitated her fall it wasn’t the fall itself. The real problem was her refusal to accept that his death even mattered and the transgressions this lead to. (It makes sense that Buffy was so shaken by Katrina’s death she’d already seen where trivialising such an event could lead).
If it's a drama then Buffy is the villain who is corrupting young slayers and creating a generation of amoral superwomen.
Until we know the context amoral is far too strong a term for what we’ve seen. All we can say at the moment is that those involved in the robbery don’t count “thou shall not steal” as a moral absolute. That doesn’t mean that they believe the same of all the other commandments or that moral absolutism is the only ethical philosophy.