Blurred Lines Between Good and Evil

I loved what Sydney said about Joss Whedon blurring the line between black and white and good and evil by defying stereotypes, and though I initially wrote this up as a comment to her post, I realized that I wanted to expand on it so much and it deserved to be its own post. But still, props to Sydney! Anyway, I think that Whedon defying stereotypes is one of the things that makes the show so great. Whedon creates this grey area with his characters, giving the pretty blonde cheerleader some super strength, the nerdy bookworm badass magical powers, and the goofball Xander the sensitivity to talk people off of a ledge. I think that this is a trend in the Gothic that not everything is good vs. evil or black vs. white. We talked today about how Buffy had to make her roommate "Evil", because she is an "Evil Fighter" and then the answer to her problems seemed simple. Then, in the monster realm and in Gothic literature, there are monsters and there are heroes, but then there becomes this grey-ness when we can't distinguish between the two. What I mean is that Kathy, though a demon, is really not that radical of a roommate. Annoying, sure, but I think we all know of someone who has Kathy-esque tendencies...plus, I really wouldn't want Buffy as a roommate either. I find myself almost feeling bad for her, even though she is a soul-sucking demon, she was just doing what she had to do, and besides, in her realm, she is good and Buffy is evil.
I can relate this sensation to something I have experienced first hand, and forgive me for getting off topic of the class, but I think this is important to understanding my point. I have acted a lot in my life, but the most meaningful role for me was playing a villian, Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and had to learn how to turn the tables. To play a villian, an actor must learn how to view a situation in the reverse of good and evil. See, Ratched doesn't see herself as doing wrong, no, she sees herself the hero. She genuinely believes that she is a protector. Through the eyes of a villian as opposed to a hero, we might still see a situation as dark and light, good vs. evil, but which role is which is entirely based on individual perception, and so, how can a third party like an audience for a TV series or a reader for a gothic novel truly deem one person evil and worthy of suffering while declaring another person a moral heroine? I think that what is so beautiful about the Gothic is that it acknowledges this paradox and uses it to the advantage of the storyteller. Gothic writers harness this internal conflict for the audience and create a greyness, so that once a character like Carmilla or Kathy is defeated or wiped out, the audience cannot feel entirely satisfied with the defeat.
Even though this isn't really from "Living Conditions," I can't help but bring up Angel and Spike into this conversation, as throughout the series, they are the epitome of the grey area between good and evil, both being vampires who fight alongside the vampire slayer. In Carmilla and even in Dracula, we see this Gothic trend of blurring the lines between the darkness and the light. Carmilla confuses Laura; Laura is unsettled by her, and senses that something is wicked and dark about her, but at the same time, she is her companion, and she speaks to her of (morbid as it is) love and eternal friendship. It seems that Joss wasn't the first to devise a meshing of good and evil to throw a protagonist off guard.