I think personally that the best metaphor for being soulless in the Buffy universe is one I read a few years ago.
Basically, without a soul, it's kind of like playing a video game. Sure you can come to care about some of the characters, deeply even, but they're not real. And if you hurt someone, even someone you're not supposed to hurt, so that you get a penalty for it (aka the chip), it still doesn't touch you personally.
In that perspective getting a soul, is like getting the game's glasses taken away, being immersed 'into the game', and seeing it for real, and realize that all those pixels you destroyed and killed for hit points were real, and that the consequences are more than just a score that you were leveling up.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2015-08-30 07:56 am (UTC)Basically, without a soul, it's kind of like playing a video game. Sure you can come to care about some of the characters, deeply even, but they're not real. And if you hurt someone, even someone you're not supposed to hurt, so that you get a penalty for it (aka the chip), it still doesn't touch you personally.
In that perspective getting a soul, is like getting the game's glasses taken away, being immersed 'into the game', and seeing it for real, and realize that all those pixels you destroyed and killed for hit points were real, and that the consequences are more than just a score that you were leveling up.