Idle thought for the day, watching a TiVoed Buffy episode from last season (the one where buffy turns invisible): At first glance, it seems that characters in the buffyverse can easily hop the fence from good to evil, or evil to good, and back again, but thinking about it more, it's more complicated. There seem to be three clear states: Good, evil, and amoral.

Willow, Anya, Spike, Jonathan and Angel, of the top of my head, all waffled between good and not-good, but the ways they did so fall into two distinct groups: those who caused destruction and pain for its own sake, and those who simply ditched their moral compass to get what they wanted.

Bad Angel is evil, but bad Spike is amoral. The primary difference being that the amoral will on occasion help the side of good, because they don't find it distasteful; they don't care much either way, but when doing good gets in the way of getting what they want they'll jump ship.

Anya's a weird case. In the beginning (of her appearance on the show) she was evil. Bad for bad's sake. Then she became indifferently good. Call it amoral, but in a position where being good helped her get what she wanted (Xander, the Magic Box, friends). Later she went back to vengeance, but this wasn't an attitude shift. She was still amoral, only now she could better serve her own internal needs for an identity by doing bad things. Though she was friends with Halfreck, she wasn't as close as she had been to Hally or the others before, because she wasn't evil anymore, just amoral. It was her distaste for evil-for-evil's sake, masked by a facade of righteous vengenace, that led to her eventual repentance.

Jonathan's pretty much the same way. He's always been an idealist, but his insecurities drive him to amoral behavior because it got him the attention he wanted (the one where he's in the clock tower with the rifle, then "Superstar," and later with the Trio). His inner struggle was swaying to good to the point that he moved beyond his own insecurities, but too late.

Warren, evil. 'Nuff said. Andrew, amoral. Ditto.

Evil Willow is kind of a conundrum. I don't think that she actually sought out evil, but it's easy to make it seem that way when her desire was so focused that she would do anything to achieve it. I'd still call it amoral. After all, she wanted to end the world because she felt its suffering and wanted it to stop, not because she wanted to kill everyone. Vamp Willow I think was also amoral, but that's a trickier subject.

Spike, chip or no chip, is amoral. The very fact that his love for Buffy makes him soulful, even without a soul, shows that however well greased his moral compass may be, it always points to what Spike wants. Give him a new loadstone and it's as good as giving him a soul, or taking it away.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share to possibly spark discussion. I forget if there are other characters straddling Nietzsche's fence... Of course there's the supervillans: Adam: amoral, Glory: amoral, Master: evil, First Evil: um, probably evil, Mayor: quintessentially amoral, despite his standards... Anyone else?