January 2003 posts
Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- KdS, 10:14:53 01/29/03 Wed
This post is not intended as a "BtVS is better than AtS" post - if you put all the seasons of both shows together, they're fairly interspersed in my personal rankings. However, I do disagree with both lunasea and our beloved First Evil about the level of depth in S6 Spike (as expressed in the "No Mythos" topic in Archive 1). The remark that got me to post was Masq's "With Spike, they made his demon so "good" by the end of Season 6, he didn't really need a soul--it made no difference." I think that this misses the interesting point about Spike's portrayal in S6, which drives a metaphorical stake to the heart of a confused view of morality I see a lot in TV and film fantasy, which I'll explain at length in the rest of the post ;-). To clarify my opinion on Angel(us), before I go on to Spike, I'm both intellectually fascinated and entertained by Angel's struggle with his literal and metaphorical inner demons. I'm not that interested, however, in Angelus, although he does entertain me a great deal. I may be being heretical here, and I'm prepared for greater depth in the near future, but the Angelus that I've seen so far seemed pretty much to be the generic Bad Guy (Sarcastic).
Let's all stroke together, like the Priceton crew
When you're stroking Mama, Mama's stroking you
(Kander & Ebbs, Chicago)
By the end of S5, a lot of Spike redemptionists seemed to think that Spike's morality was proved by his standing up to Glory and crying over Buffy's demise. For some good examples, see some of the fics on the Existential Scoobies site written immediately post-The Gift. Most of these people seem to have fallen into what I'd like to refer to as the Vader/Vorlon Fallacy. The SF fans here may already have worked it out, but let's look at my first example, from Return of the Jedi. Luke Skywalker has resisted all of the Emperor's attempts to persuade him to accept Evil, and the Emperor loses his patience and decides to fry Luke with his Evil Lightning. Luke's corrupted father Darth Vader may be evil, but he can't bear to see his son being tortured to death, so he kills the Emperor, suffering fatal injuries in the struggle. There's an emotional reconciliation, Vader dies to heavenly music, and the last we see he's been welcomed into the ranks of the honoured dead. In the second example, from the episode Comes the Inquisitor of the series Babylon 5, the Vorlons (B5 version of the PTB, only fractionally more communicative) decide that the hero and heroine of the series are worthy to lead the forces of Order because they're willing to sacrifice their lives for each other, even in a situation where there's no audience and it's unlikely that anyone else will ever know exactly what happened.
The problem here comes from a childish view of Good and Evil. It's assumed that anybody who is Evil will be utterly devoid of tender emotions for anybody but themselves, capable of seeing their closest friend or relative slaughtered without a blink. This position is represented on BtVS by Angelus, who would have dumped Darla in a heartbeat to save his unlife, even though she was a fun partner in crime and a fantastic shag. By contrast, even before Spike was chipped, we saw him willing to risk his life for Drusilla on several occasions, and it's this that the Redemptionists always failed to really confront. The true test of morality isn't how you behave towards people you like, it's how you behave with regard to complete strangers, or even people who you actively loathe. Angel felt guilt over his acquiescence to the killing of the Special Projects crew. By contrast, Spike would have killed Warren Mears without a blink and walked off singing. Hell, he was quite prepared to kill a complete stranger in Smashed, even considered it in a twisted way to be his (im)moral duty, even if he had to work himself up to it.
I think it shows a crude understanding of morality to believe that Spike was redeemed in late-S5/early-S6. While we can argue about the quality of the protrayal of events immediately leading up to and after his souling, I don't think we can dismiss his trajectory as devoid of moral interest, whichever of two series we prefer.
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You have some good points there -- vh, 10:41:11 01/29/03 Wed
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Excellent points. -- HonorH, 10:52:07 01/29/03 Wed
Spike also seemed to feel no guilt over his past actions. He never expressed any regret over them, for the 120 years he spent killing. Why, after all, should he? He wasn't human. Now, with a human soul, he does feel the guilt over what his vampire self did. In "Smashed," he was willing to kill a girl just because he thought he could. Now, when the chip has really stopped working, he's none too eager to kill, and it's not just for Buffy.
Buffy said in "Potential" that Andrew wasn't evil, he just picked up its taste when he got close to it. I submit the opposite was true of Spike, pre-soul: He wasn't good, he just picked up its taste when he got close to it.
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Re: Excellent points. -- lunasea, 12:01:33 01/29/03 Wed
I submit the opposite was true of Spike, pre-soul: He wasn't good, he just picked up its taste when he got close to it.
I liked that.
I would tie that into what she said about "free will" and we have the explanation of Spike's behavior.
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Re: Excellent points. -- Tamara, 06:06:57 01/30/03 Thu
Angel and his guilt was always the exception to Anya and Spike. I always thought I would be fine with Spike never getting all broody as I see that as mostly self-pity anyway. Spike should have just started fighting the good fight and put his feeding off humans behind him. All the brooding just makes him an unoriginal Angel clone.
Anya always got positive reinforcement when she was bad and wanted to get back in the biz. In Beneath You Xander is telling Anya how great she is for undoing a curse and Buffy was always telling Spike he could never be anything more than a thing as there was nothing good or clean in him. Yet Spike is always the bad guy? I love Anya don't get me wrong but I do think Spike could have been a lot more if he was encouraged more by the self righeous scoobies. How could he change around people like Xander who never "forgot what he is". Yet Spike was expected by fans to forget who he is as a vampire and become perfect. Sorry but the way I see it that would never have happened without a little bit of help. He even asked for help in Dead Things. Both he and Faith didn't understand Buffy breaking up over one human being. He tells Buffy to explain it to him and she beats him to a bloody pulp. And Buffy was his moral compass!
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Re: Excellent points. -- HonorH, 10:39:33 01/30/03 Thu
I won't address the Dead Horses beating any more than to say that the request for information was spurious: Spike was delaying Buffy's turning herself in at that point. That's not the point, though.
The point is that, as he has acknowledged now, he wouldn't have understood. He didn't see what was truly wrong with killing people, and Buffy and the Scoobies could have modelled and explained until they collapsed and he still wouldn't have gotten it. Spike wasn't human in any sense. He had no morality. Now, with his human soul, he has a connection to other humans and understands instinctively why it's wrong for him to hurt them. That's why he feels guilt now. I'm not for brooding myself, but I'd like to know that the people I'm around would feel guilty about killing humans.
Spike does feel bad now. He truly wants to make things right, to make amends for his past. That's what Buffy's seen, and that's why she believes in the possibility of redemption for him now.
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Excellent! I can't wait... -- Rob, 11:39:04 01/29/03 Wed
...till Annotated Buffy gets to "The Gift." This is SO going to be the note under where Spike breaks down at the end of the episode.
Rob
P.S. I disagree about the Angelus-not-being-interesting thing, but other than that, the Spike and redemption stuff was pure golden!
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- lunasea, 11:59:07 01/29/03 Wed
Angelus until S1 of AtS pretty much is just a bad guy. He is just the oppposite of Angel to drive home the point "my boyfriend went bad once I slept with him."
Once we get to "The Prodigal" we see what informs Angelus. Angel really hasn't dealt with why Angelus is the way he is. Cause/effect. It is something Angel needs to understand in order to do more than say "The demon made me do it."
They did the same thing with Spike. S5's actions make sense for Spike when you realize that FFL informs his vampire.
I see both their redemptions laying with what was their issues when they were vamped. Angel still wants his father's approval. When Angelus cannot have that (namely because he ATE his father and his father was a prick), he lashes out. In "Billy" Angel says that he has moved beyond anger and that he never hated any of his victims. He doesn't hate his victims, but his vampire is a classic case of transference.
The style of Angelus is what makes him into something. That has been Angel/us' hot button. It was what Whistler used to get him to help Buffy. Darla knew how to push it. So did the First. Buffy knew how to push it. "Amends" sets up the spin off.
Spike was deeply wounded by the rejection of Cecily and his peers. He is forever looking for some sort of connection. That is the core of his character. "Affection and jealousy" with Dru made him human according to The Judge. When he found out about Angel, he reacted because "you were my sire, man. my yoda." He reacted badly when the Scoobies didn't tell him about resurrecting Buffy. Lots and lots of examples in S4-6, all the way to Seeing Red. Why didn't he? Because he wanted connection more than he did control. There was only one way he was going to get it.
But his redemption lies not in getting it, but moving beyond the need for it. Same thing with Angel.
It isn't some black/white, good/evil thing. It is about cause and effect. If you want to stop X, you deal with its cause.
When the redemptionists start talking about pre-soul Spike, I tend to quote Marti Noxton, Steven DeKnight and Jane Espenson who have each talked about that redemption wasn't what they were doing with pre-soul Spike. It floors them that people are ready to forgive him so quickly. Morality was not what they were doing and they will readily admit it. Spike is not Angel.
I used to read all sorts of things into Spike. Now I just have to accept that he is form following function and just a really entertaining character. Not every character has to have some deep thought behind it. The shows revolve around Buffy and Angel. Not Spike and not Cordy.
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Spike as a mythic character -- Caroline, 12:49:12 01/29/03 Wed
Thanks kDs for a great post - I'd like to add a bit more on this topic. Some definitions of myth and mythos before we begin (source www.dictionary.com)
my·thos
1. Myth.
2. Mythology.
3. The pattern of basic values and attitudes of a people, characteristically transmitted through myths and the arts.
myth
1a. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth.
1b. Such stories considered as a group: the realm of myth.
I've also been thinking a great deal about lunasea's assertion that there is no 'mythos' for Spike, that he's basically a plot device and an entertaining character. I'd like to explore this idea, given the definitions of myth and mythos above.
In season 2, I would agree that Spike is an entertaining bad guy. We know little about his past but I was certainly intrigued by his differences from Angelus. He was slavishly devoted to Drusilla while Angelus wanted to destroy the world. He was even rather pragmatically prepared to make a deal with his arch-enemy to ensure that he and Dru could have a continued supply of happy meals on legs. But intrigued is where it stopped. He disappeared for almost a season but managed to cause some havoc in Lover's Walk for several of our loving couples insofar as he was the catalyst for their secrets and internal desires to spill out. Very entertaining and very much a plot device. Going to our definition of myth, he has superhuman strengths, but he doesn't represent anything, he's not really symbolic of any archetype.
When he returns in season 4, we have more entertaining plot device stuff. The gem of Amarra, the chip, attempts to play both sides for his own interests. This changes rather dramatically in season 5. He falls in love with Buffy and we learn a great deal about his history. In Fool for Love, Joss and Doug Petrie manage to create a complete character with a depth of psychological complexity. He's no longer a straight bad guy or a 'serial killer in prison' We even understand his attraction to Buffy - he can't kill the slayer so he has to have her in some other way (I won't go into this - there have been too many great posts in the archives dealing with this issue). All of a sudden, he doesn't just have superhuman powers, he's wrestling with his feelings for his arch-enemy and with his own vampiric nature. Even after his beloved has died at the end of season 5, he remains faithful to promise he made her to look after Dawn. Everything he did was the result of love, not because he had been redeemed, so there certainly was a selfish motivation there. He can't quite understand a lot of what Buffy is doing in the middle of season 6, he doesn't understand why the 'using' is a bad thing. The culmination of that struggle is the conscious choice to acquire a soul at the end of season 6 after he attempts to rape Buffy and is horrified by his actions. He undergoes a truncated series of Herculean trials and is rewarded. But since Spike lives in interesting times, he gets more than he bargained for. Of course we now have the anguish of his past behaviour - the results of which we are seeing this season.
So here I see that Spike has undergone some psychological progression. No longer a one note villain, we see his struggles, his feelings, his projections and how he and Buffy become entangled in each other's psychological progress. Not only that, we also see an element of spiritual progression on his part - the acquisition of soul and the moral quandary and anguish that unleashes. It's important to note here that the choice to acquire a soul in order to stop himself from hurting someone is rather significant. I think that the moral implications of an evil, disgusting thing seeking the opportunity for spiritual progress is rather astounding. This progression bears more than a passing resemblance to a mythic journey. In season 6 I likened Spike to Hades and Buffy to Persephone. In Grave, I thought that the nature of the trials he underwent were quite Herculean.
But just because one can compare a character to a mythic figure does not make him a hero that is symbolic of an archetype of worldview . His journey (imo) is symbolic of an existential journey, where a being makes himself into what he wishes to be (see manwitch's posts in archives for more on this, as well as shadowkat's character comparison essays). He in not granted anything by higher beings. He has no get out of jail free cards. Every psychological, behavioural and spiritual change has been hard fought. He took what the world threw at him (the chip) and accommodated it rather well for an evil being (this point really ties in with the themes presented in Help and Slaughterhouse 5). He then earned his soul and now I think that he is trying to earn his redemption. I identify with that process of how we change and grow, how we discard those things about ourselves that are hurtful and painful and make ourselves into the kind of person we wish to be. That's why, imho, Spike is a mythic character.
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Re: Spike as a mythic character -- shadowkat, 14:56:55 01/29/03 Wed
Agree with what you said Caroline.
I find it so odd for people to say Spike isn't a mythic character when leslie, yourself, me, Anne, Ete, Rahael, and Chani over on the B C & S boards have been posting on him as a mythic character or symbolic of one for well over a year now. (Unless of course I misunderstood those posts - always possible...) I had a minor in Myth, I studied it - he fits the definition.
To me Spike is a bit like the character in many mythos - the character of Eros in Pysche story, the failed hero
or trickster. The unknown quantity.
Metaphorically? He fits the classic - the arrested youth. The Peter Pan. The boy who hasn't grown up. You know the series is reaching it's end when it decides to mature the one character who wouldn't for 100 years. The perpetual kid, cursed and loving it. Even in Season 2 - he was more than a one-note villain - he was lust personified. He was metaphor and he was the trickster - who changed everything by switching sides. That happens in myths. Again Pan. Cupid.
In fact in Lover's Walk - he's pan and cupid again.
In season 4 - he played the classic Iago/Trickster character often seen in stories and legends and mythos. Pan in the Greek myths. Cupid. The character who tells to truths to manipulate others to do what he wishes.
In Season 5 - he becomes the symbol of knight errant and Eros....the lover from afar. The myths of King Arthur - mention courtly knights. In The Mabinogi - Celtic Mythology - he is Cuchlain - which I can't spell or find my Celtic Myth dictionary (ugh) - the character who fails at love and keeps falling on his butt. In Jung - he is the shadow to the character - a heavy mythic archetype. The assertion he isn't is a narrow view of myth - being just Hercules or the hero, uhm no, it's not. In the Greek myths the superheros aren't always the lead character. Same with the Mabinogi - celtic myth. I learned long ago in my myth and comparative religion studies not to ignore minor characters - sometimes they are more important than the leads, they can provide even more interesting areas of analysis. People have written essays for example on the Ents and Tom Bambill (sp? again) in Lord of The Rings - Tom doesn't even appear in the movies. Han Solo is an archetype in Star Wars and as an important as the other characters - just not as obvious.
Season 6 - Spike is obviously Hades, the Jung Shadow, the Eros character, the Freudian Id. Paralleled with both Buffy and Willow.
See Exegy's analysis in archives.
Season 7 - we have the archetype of the evil man who is trying to be good - the self struggling against it's dark impulses. The fatal - who serves the purpose of forcing the hero to question who she should save or kill. Should she save this man? What if he kills again? If she does save him is that on her conscious? This element shows up throughout our fairy tales and myths and legends. The cursed prince.
The cursed princess. The vampire - which is also a myth in biblical lore - Lilith.
For more on why I think Spike is a mythic character and very important - see my essays on him - I think there's ten.
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Re: Spike as a mythic character -- Idler, 15:33:12 01/29/03 Wed
This is a very interesting discussion.
My comments/questions don't quite pertain but I'm charging forward anyway.
First, did anyone else expect or even hope that souled Spike would have more traces of William--would be William who had once been a vampire? (I know that that would infuriate all the devout Spike fans but I anticipated it in the course of the storytelling, and I was interested to see how JM would portray the character.) To link to the topic thread, does this have any mythical implications? With Angel/Angelus the personas are distinctly separate, and the flashback to Spike as William shows a sharp divergence as well. His character seems to lack coherence now partly because William didn't return as the base for the souled version of Spike.
Second, is anyone else bothered by the fact that souled Spike expresses little guilt over or interest in anything beyond the fact that he's "in love" with Buffy and once attempted to rape her? Does this have any mythical implications/explanations? (I know that it was mentioned previously that his searching for peer approval and acceptance was a constant in his character but in this context it seems like a severe limitation.)
Third, can anyone offer an explanation for Spike's rapid character shifts this season (abject object of pity and remorse draped on a cross, insane buffoon who provides comic relief for "the gang," possessed sociopath, defensive tough guy who smacks Anya to the ground, maiden in distress, lovelorn follower of Buffy, and confident, sexy taunter of Buffy)?
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Re: Spike as a mythic character -- Peggin, 16:33:02 01/29/03 Wed
With Angel/Angelus the personas are distinctly separate, and the flashback to Spike as William shows a sharp divergence as well. His character seems to lack coherence now partly because William didn't return as the base for the souled version of Spike.
I disagree that there is such a disticnt separation between Angel and Angelus. The man who locked a bunch of lawyers in a wine cellar with Darla and Drusilla and the man who put a pillow over Wesley's face while he was lying sick in a hospital bed seemed very much like Angelus to me. In the flashbacks to shortly after Liam was turned into Angelus, I see virtually no difference between the two -- the only difference I see is that Angelus had no remorse about killing people.
I would have been shocked to see "William" suddenly "return". Darla told Angel that all that we are informs all that we are to become, and I see this exactly how things have been played. All of the impulses that the vampire later acts on are already there in the person. The only difference is that most people have a conscience, so they don't act on those impulses.
I do think that Buffy, at the age of seventeen and looking at things through the eyes of a child, saw a very sharp distinction between Angel and Angelus, but Giles didn't. Soul or no soul, Giles blamed Angel for the death of Jenny and for the hours of torture he had endured at Angelus's hands.
Second, is anyone else bothered by the fact that souled Spike expresses little guilt over or interest in anything beyond the fact that he's "in love" with Buffy and once attempted to rape her?
No guilt? In Beneath You, Spike was hearing the voices of all the people he had ever killed in his head. You don't think that's a sign of remorse? You don't think his insanity was caused by guilt? You don't think his telling Buffy about the horrible things he used to do and trying to get her to kill him in Never Leave Me had anything to do with guilt?
Third, can anyone offer an explanation for Spike's rapid character shifts this season (abject object of pity and remorse draped on a cross, insane buffoon who provides comic relief for "the gang," possessed sociopath, defensive tough guy who smacks Anya to the ground, maiden in distress, lovelorn follower of Buffy, and confident, sexy taunter of Buffy)?
Multiple Personalty Disorder. He was so overwhelmed by guilt over everything he had done as a vampire, that his mind couldn't take it. The problem is, no single part of Spike is the "real" Spike -- who he is now has been informed by all he had ever been. But his mind could no longer deal with the enormity of all he had ever been, it could only deal with small parts of that at a time, so his personality would switch back and forth between different parts of who he had been in the past.
Around the time Buffy got him out of the school basement, Spike began to recover from his guilt-induced mental illness, and his entire personality began to reintegrate. No more insanity, no more switching back and forth between different aspects of who he had once been.
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Re: Spike as a mythic character -- Idler, 19:10:46 01/29/03 Wed
Thanks for the response.
1. I don't watch the Angel series so I'm not sure how the Angel/Angelus contrast or demon nature is portrayed in that venue. It's interesting that you attribute his split in Buffy to being seen through Buffy's "child" eyes but child or no the Angel/Demon duality remains constant as the years progress--Giles thinks differently, yes, but I believe that Buffy has more if not equal moral clarity with Giles at that point in time (she pursuades him, for example, that the practice of drugging away her skills and locking her together with an insane vampire is offensive to say the least).
As for William, I can understand what your saying (again, not familiar with the Darla reference not being an Angel fan) and very possibly that's what informed the retention of Spike (although I suspect that it had something to do with his fan base as well). I'm just surprised not to see more traces of the timid poet--especially as that poet was genuinely disinterested in if not revulsed by violence or anything "vulgar"--preferring to focus on "creating beauty". He even altered the type of British accent he employed when he became "Spike".
It also seems that he'd drop the hair bleaching punk costuming since he acknowledged it as such at one point.
And my impression of vampires in Buffyverse overall is that it's a tidy explanation, at times, to state that the vampire is the same person without a conscience but I think that it's randomly employed--there's also the scenario of being inhabited by a demon, connecting to Great, All-Encompassing Evil and casting out the person entirely (with the exception of mannerisms and memories)--this is how Buffy understands the Angel/Angelus transformation. I have a vague memory of Giles actually stating something along those lines (although I can't recall specifically, and it's before Angelus has murdered Jenny). Jenny herself reinforces Buffy's "child" perception by explaining that "Angel is not Angel now--he's Angelus"). I'm not sure, myself, if being inhabited by a demon equates with missing a conscience.
2. True, Spike mentions (once and briefly as far as I can recall) that he hears the voices of his victims--but what he mainly wants to talk about, with specifics, is his actions and feelings towards Buffy--that's what he brings up repeatedly and what appears to truly "haunt" him--I don't remember which episode involves the cross drape but his plea was for "peace" with Buffy. Yes, it can be inferred, and indeed assumed, that his insanity is as a result of a broad sweeping guilt--that's just not what I hear expressed. When he begs to be killed, it's after he's been recently established, with a soul, as a serial murderer. I would hope that that would cause guilt--and he does, once more during the same scene (this is the 2nd time the entire season as far as I can recall) mention remorse over his "other" victims. But he doesn't allude to it again (although there hasn't been much opportunity). He does, however, seem interested in the romantic spark he shares with Buffy.
3. Yes, multiple personality disorder is the obvious explanation for his character shifts. But my personal belief is that the writing has been faulty--it comes off as jerky thus far (perhaps to early to make season judgements but I'll go ahead) and more of an opportunity to allow JM to express his acting range than to depict a character arc. It appeared, to me, episode-by-episode, to be a potpourri of farce, pathos, romantic angst and largely Buffy-infused guilt. And as of the last episode it seems to have ended with a return of confident Spike (almost as though he's earned it after his torture--or as though we, the audience can accept the return of this popular character now that he's been duly punished and persisted in his one-note adoration of Buffy).
My 2 cents.
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Re: Spike as a mythic character -- shadowkat, 20:58:03 01/29/03 Wed
First: I think...you have to remember whose perspective you're in. In much of what you've said - you are watching the show through Buffy's eyes and you are trusting them as reliable. Buffy like many characters in fiction is NOT a reliable narrator. She doesn't know everything and she does tend to see things in black and white or how she wants to. Giles' acts to Buffy were understandably offensive - she forgave him. But that does NOT mean that Giles has a better grip on understanding what was going on with Angel/Angelus.
(I also think and this admittedly personal opinion that you need to watch both shows to see the whole story, they run parallel to each other and when one doesn't explain a mythic point or question - the other often does. I love them both and honestly can't concieve of not watching both, choosing between them right now would be like choosing between two favorite pets or books.)
I disagree with your views here. But then I never viewed the character of Spike the way you have. William to me wasn't just a gentle poet - he had lots of suppressed rage inside - see some posts in the archives on this discussing William, Malandaza, redcat and leslie and Rufus and Sophist do an excellent job of dissecting the character within his historical period. I also have several essays that incorporated some of their views on my site -
www.geocities.com/shadowkatbtvs
Actually that might be best - go read my essays for my views on this. I've already posted them on this board and don't want to take up board space doing it again:
See my essays on Angel/Spike - restraining the Monster,
Willow and Spike - Journey Part I: Orgins.
Soul Metaphors
Spike: Demolished Man and Conflicted Vamp
rather then trying to repeat what I said there - it's better you just read them for yourself and decide whether or not you agree or if it's changed your views.
The essays have quotes from both series so you shouldn't have troubles following them.
Hope that helps.
SK
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trickster trickster trickster trickster trickster -- leslie, 16:05:37 01/29/03 Wed
(Quick spelling notes for shadowkat: Cu Chulainn, Tom Bombadil. Now don't you feel better?)
Two things about Spike as Trickster here:
1) Tricksters are by definition constantly changing, constantly adapting to circumstances and making circumstances adapt to them, constantly in possession of powers they are not entirely sure how to control, constantly leaving (productive) chaos in their wake. I think one of the reasons people may have difficulty seeing Spike as "mythic" is because we are trained, in our essentially fundamentalist culture (and I'm not talking about religion only--I think our entire Western culture is increasingly trapped in a fundamentalist, i.e. literal, reading of the world and the universe around us) to consider both "character" and "myth" to be stable and unchanging. Yes, one may develop, but only along a preordained "hero's" path, and the ending is either happy bunnies or hell. (Or, if you are Anya, happy bunnies or heaven.) A character being as all over the map as Spike is is perceived as being, yes, INCONSISTENT. BADLY WRITTEN. RETCONNED. Nope, he's just a Trickster.
2) Many studies of trickster figures try to accomodate this agent of chaos into a nice narrative outline by showing how the trickster may "evolve" from one kind of trickster to another--usually from the really goofy, bumbling, scatalogical trickster into more or less a culture hero. To a certain degree, that seems to be what's happening with Spike, at least in his post-chip incarnation. But I think his Trickster qualities may, indeed, by what has drawn the FE to him in the first place. After all, if the balance between good and evil--if the balance of anything--is disrupted, Trickster is behind it.
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Re: trickster trickster trickster trickster trickster -- Idler, 19:21:02 01/29/03 Wed
Interesting idea. To be honest, this is about the only way that I can understand/appreciate the Spike character at this point without believing that he's being poorly written.
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Re: tricksy/treatsy -- Angela, 10:21:14 01/30/03 Thu
I know that many people are having a great deal of difficulty with Spike's presentation so you're in good company, including that of JM himself, if the rumors were true. However for good or for bad, I believe he's being *very* intentionally written. :-)
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Re: tricksy/treatsy -- Tamara., 01:19:11 01/31/03 Fri
James was on a chat show recently and he mentioned that he was getting tired of Spikes whining. Hes not the only one.
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I love Spike because of his Tricksterness! -- Deb, 23:43:44 01/30/03 Thu
And I'm so said, because I wrote a wonderful essay and then I lost it all. I'm going to bed.
Just one comment: Spike is perfectly in character for a Trickster and has always been. That was my thesis.
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But you can never trust a trickster -- Shiraz, 08:03:35 01/31/03 Fri
Let Loki loose and he'll cause ragnarok every time.
I'd agree that Spike was the archtypical trickster in season 4.
He tricked the Scoobie gang into listening to him.
He tricked Adam into trusting him.
And finally he tricked himself into beleiving his whole scheme would work.
By the end of season five though, the roll no longer fit him; he had developed loyalty, and that is antithetical to the trickster archetype.
-Shiraz
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Re: But you can never trust a trickster -- leslie, 08:55:15 01/31/03 Fri
Well, tricksters are tricky in a way that goes way beyond deceit--they are agents of chaos, but it always turns out to be a productive chaos. This is why I felt that the whole "you should have been able to tell that Spike and Buffy were a bad couple because the first time they had sex the house fell down and houses falling down are a bad thing" argument was pretty damned lame. If that's what they intended, then the house shouldn't have been an abandoned house. Accidentally destroying an abandoned house with the result that something new arises on the site is a very tricksterish act. The point about tricksters is that they do not always intend to cause the chaos they cause--it's inadvertant. Loki is only one kind of trickster, and although he is the one who will cause Ragnarok, the Aesir also use his tricksterishness to their advantage many times. This is another point of tricksters--they are, in many ways, beyond good and evil. You can't make a hard and fast decision that a trickster is all good or all bad--and that is why Spike has been such a perfect trickster ever since he decided to help Buffy save the world. Whether he is still a trickster, I'm not entirely sure. His being directed by the FE seems to suggest there's still something in there.
Incidentally, at the Nottingham Buffy conference, the other paper in my session was on Spike as Trickster, and I think the woman who gave it submitted it for the proceedings publication that's in the works, so I hope it will be published, if not there then elsewhere. It was a real winner.
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Can't wait to read that paper : ) -- Deb, 11:51:02 01/31/03 Fri
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Ethan -- Ete, 18:56:32 01/31/03 Fri
was the real Trickster in that.
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Re: Ethan -- leslie, 21:51:23 01/31/03 Fri
Yup. Especially that line in A New Man to the effect of "I have to just do the thing and get out of town--it's the staying around to gloat that always gets me." Trickster Shoots Self In Foot. It is interesting that except for that one episode, though, Ethan and Spike are in complementary distribution--Ethan starts as the trickster in Halloween, but that is really before Spike develops--or reveals--his tricksterish characteristics--at that point, he's still just a heavy, and a menacing one who is foiled by luck and blunt instruments applied to the skull. As Spike becomes more and more of a trickster, Ethan disappears. Maybe if Spike is going to be all good now, we can get Ethan back?
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Don't think Ethan can fit in now... -- KdS, 02:37:31 02/01/03 Sat
Ethan's brand of cowardly, playfully lethal mischief only really fit into the early seasons where the overall tone was lighter. If he turned up now the real extent of his murderousness would have to be addressed instead of being laughed at, in which case he'd simply be Warren Mears Mark II.
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Re: Don't think Ethan can fit in now... -- leslie, 10:08:25 02/01/03 Sat
I don't know, the FE seems to have a problem with chaos, and Ethan worships chaos. What if he has to be called in to combat the FE?
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Re: Ethan and the trickster archetype -- Celebaelin, 08:04:10 02/02/03 Sun
Ethan was absolutely the trickster, though he does seem to have much of the Loki malevolence about him compared with the other trickster notables of myth Raynard the Fox, Hermes, Coyote.
The whole issue becomes rather complicated when talking about trickster archetypes because of Jung's use of the image of Mercurius for the collective unconscious itself. Paralells between analysis and alchemy reference 'Hermes Trismagistus' - Thrice Greatest Hermes and in a similar manner the process of individuation is equated with the transformation of base metals into gold. It has been suggested that it is this psychological transformation that was and is the alchemists'/analysands' true goal. Obfuscation continues with the input of religious objection to the invocation of pagan 'gods' in alchemical practice in the Middle Ages (that Apollo was, and possibly still is, regularly invoked in the practice of medicine seems to have escaped the same level of vilification) identifying the alchemist as 'evil'.
I would suggest that Spike as "the alchemist", as a 'minion' of the mercurial trickster that is the human psyche is neither good nor evil but is unremittingly self-serving in his journey to individuation within the confines of "acceptable" behaviour (Acceptable for whom or in whose opinion? This may or may not mean 'what you can get away with' in most circumstances). If this involves acts of altruism from which he derives satisfaction then that is obviously going to be regarded as acceptable by the SG. As many posters seem to have thought Spikes love is selfish in that it is HIS love for Buffy and HE cares for her (rather than he CARES FOR HER) that his sense of well-being extends to acts performed for Dawn, pleasing the memory of Buffy by proxy as it were, would seem to bode well for his personal journey as viewed from a conventional, non-demon standpoint. Perhaps the fact that he and Buffy have elected to enter into sexual head-games that have gone too far is neither particularly unusual nor irredeeemably unhealthy, I can make no further comment in that regard other than to say that I watch with interest and a certain amount of trepidation as the pair explore their attitudes and personal morays.
He's just a crazy mixed-up 140ish year-old undead kid who's trying to carve out an existence he can enjoy in the face of the fact that he can never truly Rest In Peace (that's mentioned in OMWF isn't it?) IMO.
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trickster changes -- anom, 10:26:49 02/02/03 Sun
"Many studies of trickster figures try to accomodate this agent of chaos into a nice narrative outline by showing how the trickster may 'evolve' from one kind of trickster to another--usually from the really goofy, bumbling, scatalogical trickster into more or less a culture hero. To a certain degree, that seems to be what's happening with Spike, at least in his post-chip incarnation."
I can see this up to the end of season 6. But does Spike's decision to get his soul represent a decision to give up tricksterhood? Is that even possible? If the trickster figure is supposed to be amoral (not that I'm anywhere near as familiar w/what's been written on this as other posters who've discussed it), this one has decided to acquire morality. True, he had no idea what the hell he was getting into by this decision, but the result is the same. Is a trickster w/a soul still a trickster?
"But I think his Trickster qualities may, indeed, by what has drawn the FE to him in the first place. After all, if the balance between good and evil--if the balance of anything--is disrupted, Trickster is behind it."
Is it that, or is it that he's stopped being the trickster? Until recently, according to what it told Willow in the library, the FE had some kind of interest in the balance. If the trickster finally comes down on 1 side or the other, does that actually end up unbalancing things more than sticking to the trickster role would? After all, the trickster has a place in the world--this role is necessary somehow. If that role is abandoned, it leaves a vacuum. Maybe the FE doesn't like that Spike took a side. On the other hand, it was trying to get him to choose its side, so maybe I'm all wrong here.
Why the FE was ever interested in the balance is another question, which may belong in its own thread. How about it?
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Compert Con Culainn -- Celebaelin, 06:53:28 02/02/03 Sun
I can't find any reference to Cuchlain (or Culainn or Culann for that matter) in the Mabinogion (you're right that calling the WELSH 14th C. record of myths 'The Mabinogion' is strictly incorrect but it is the accepted title for the eleven tales which include the four branches of the Mabinogi proper, derived incidentally from the Welsh word Mab - youth).
Do you perhaps mean the smith Culann from the story whose name forms the title of this post translated as 'The Birth of Cu Chulainn' from the IRISH mythology as recorded in Leabhar ne h-Uidhre? Briefly the story consists of the naming of the Irish hero/demi-god formerly known as Setanta (Cu Chulainn means the hound of Culainn) and some details about his origins as the son of Lugh (Luchta) the Wright god (presumably Wheelwright and also Arts and Crafts and Magic and Commerce and War and Horsemanship - Dude! Oh, and the Sun as well I think but I'm having troble referencing that one) and Deichtire daughter of the Druid Cathbad and sister to Conchobhar (whose smith is Culann), in some versions Deichtre is married off to Sualtaim Mac Roth in order to avoid a scandal!
AtS paralells perhaps? Having not seen the eps. yet I can't be categorical but it seems a little lifting from Irish myth has occurred during the inception of Connor. I understand that DB has an Irish wife, and then of course there's Angels Irish origins...
There are no typos in the names mentioned above, the forms of the names themselves vary with context.
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Uhm ask Leslie...all I found was Cuchulainn, the Irish reference -- shadowkat, 15:46:33 02/02/03 Sun
From Peter Berresford Ellis' Dictionary of Celti Mythology, which is slanted toward the Irish tales over the Welsh:
Cuchulainn (there's an accent over the u, but I can't figure out how to put it there on a post). "Originally named Setana, he became known as the Hound of Culann. His mother was Dechitire, dauther of the druid Cathbad, while his father was Lugh Lamhfada. He features in numerous tales of the Red Branch Cycle but is chiefly famous for his single-handed defence of Ulster during the war of the Tain when Ailill and Medb of Connacht invaded the country to secure the Brown Bull of Cuailgne."
"His is a tragic tale for though he is constantly in love with women, he is forced to kill his own son and lose several of the women he loves, and slay his best friend, Ferdia. Although he is armed with magical weapons and adventures with impunity in the Otherworld, he arouses the wrath of the goddess of death and battles, the Morrigan, by rejecting her love. His doom at the Pillar Stone is ordained, and when he dies the goddes in the form of a raven, perches on his shoulder while an otter drinks his blood. His faithful companion through most of the sagas is his chrioteer, LAeg, and among his mystical weapons are his sword Caladin and his spear the Gael -Bolg. Although he knows many women, including the goddes Fand, Pearl of Beauty, wife to the seas god Manannan Mac Lir, he constantly returns to Emer, the daughter of Fogall the Wily, who entreats him piteously not to go forth on his last battle foray."
Which is closer to Angel, actually. There is a welsh one, but I couldn't locate it - my Welsh books are in Hilton Head. I think the difference is Cu Chulain - is more task oriented, becomes a hound or on a leash and his achillees heel is women, hence the reason we associate him with Spike. He's not nice to begin with, pays for it by being a hound, loves numerous women, but has one true love who he never can quite have - she dies or something. again I think Leslie is a better source on this, since she may have actually studied it. I think she mentions him in old posts?
Leslie? help? Am I competely off??
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The Hound Thing -- Celebaelin, 23:09:08 02/02/03 Sun
He gets the name 'the hound of Culainn' because he kills Culainn's guard dog and in recompense stands in its' place as guard to the forge for a year.
Actually any comparisons one might draw are a matter of opinion don't you think?
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Aaargh! Deichtire not Deichtre! -- Celebaelin, 23:15:44 02/02/03 Sun
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Link to article about Darla and Angel/Angelus ....... -- Rufus, 13:17:05 01/29/03 Wed
Marrriage made in Hell
Quite frankly it was Darla who made Angelus interesting....she made him and fulfills the role of mother/lover in a way that he couldn't let her go....they had a contest going on...sort of a Bloodier Dangerous Liasons. Angelus as a bad boy, just like Spike I personally find boring....I don't like bad boys. Of course I liked Riley...and Principal Wood....well, Giles and Wesley..oh and Gunn is not bad....;)
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- Cactus Watcher, 13:39:58 01/29/03 Wed
I'm not entirely opposed to what you are saying, but I think your use of the word 'childish' instead of 'childlike' is an indication you haven't thought enough about those examples yourself, particularly the one from Babylon 5.
As a fan of Babylon 5, I was fairly unhappy with the episode "Comes the Inquistor" when it first aired. Not only did the trial seem to test exactly the wrong thing, namely Delenn and Sheridan's devotion to each other, but it seemed to make no sense from Kosh's semi-disinterested behavior from the begining of the show onward. But, when we finally discover what the Vorlons are truly up to, and we discover as well the reasons behind the shadows' behavior, you learn that neither of them is truly good and neither truly evil. After learning that, we realize that the inquistion was not about "good and evil" at all but about the Vorlon perspective versus the shadow perspective. The fact that it also proved Delenn and Sheidan's love for each other remains immaterial, as we suspected it was for the Vorlons before the episode ever aired. Perspective is everything. The couple saw (and obviously you still see) the test one way. The Vorlons, the ones for whom the test actually mattered, saw it another another.
The fact that people saw in Spike's refusal to break against Glory someone worth saving isn't terribly surprising. Perhaps it's poor evidence that he was already fully and unequivocally on the side of good. But, calling it 'childish' and 'crude' also shows lack of understanding on your part. I think you owe those people who see it that way an apology.
My own fiction is dominanted by a people whose concept of morality, seems childlike to those humans who deal with them. But, those who make the assumption of thinking their morality is childish, often discover they have made a grievous if not fatal mistake.
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Maybe my language was a little extreme -- KdS, 13:49:53 01/29/03 Wed
... and I apologise if anyone was offended. But I would still point out that "worth saving" is a long distance from "saved".
Regarding the specific B5 issue - it can be seen with hindsight that the Vorlons were looking for cannon fodder who would die unquestioningly (if you have a different interpretation again, I'd be glad if you'd clarify). But the episode was never specifically undercut, and the fact that it was at least a whole season before the moral ambiguity was made overt means that a lot of casual viewers probably never saw the lesson questioned.
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That's all I wanted cleared up -- CW, 14:22:56 01/29/03 Wed
Babylon 5 was the first TV series I found worth going back over and picking up all those loose ends. Often what seemed transparent and obvious was worth really thinking about, whether they hit you over the head with meaning later or not. We can excuse the 'casual' viewer for not seeing it or caring. But that doesn't mean its a good example for your argument. I think it's clear enough from the flow of the Buffy story that redemption is a work in progress for Spike.
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- Peggin, 14:28:51 01/29/03 Wed
The fact that people saw in Spike's refusal to break against Glory someone worth saving isn't terribly surprising.
There is a huge difference between saying that someone is "worth saving" and seeing in them the *potential* to be a good person, vs. saying that he is already a good person. I watch Spike in season six, and I can totally see someone saying that he wanted to be good but he wasn't there yet, or that he was on the path towards redemption but that he still had a long way to go -- it's not like it has to be a choice between 100% evil and unsalvagable vs. 100% good and already redeemed. There are plenty of shades of gray in between.
In Smashed, Spike tried to kill a girl, but he had to talk himself into it first. I remember seeing plenty of posts by people who saw that scene and used it as evidence of the fact that Spike was already good. Not that he was changing, or on his way towards becoming good, but that he was already there. I can absolutely see someone saying that the fact that Spike needed to work himself up a little before attempting to bite her might be a sign that he had *started* to change, but that's a far cry from looking at attempted murder and seeing it as a sign that he is already redeemed. I find that attitude incredibly disturbing, and can only hope that it was specifically related to this one fictional character and does not carry over into real life.
Same thing following Spike's attempt to rape Buffy. I can look at his remorse afterward the attack and see in him someone who realized he did something wrong and wants to change, but I see no evidence of someone who has already changed. But a lot of people did. I saw comments like, "Oh, look, after she pushed him away, he didn't attack her again; plus he felt bad about what he'd done. What a prince!" That's the attitude that causes people to stay in abusive relationships - "Well, sure, he beat me up... but look how sorry he is, and he's being so sweet and romantic." That attitude makes me physically sick. Spike tried to rape her! How is that being a good guy? His subsequent behavior may point towards someone worth saving, someone with the potential to change, but that's a far cry from looking at attempted rape and seeing it as a sign that the redemption process is complete.
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????????????Rah? -- KdS, 13:41:08 01/29/03 Wed
I'm sure there was a post by Rahael here five minutes ago. I understand why you got it deleted if you did - but was quite powerful and I regret losing it. Reminded me of a somewhat cynical remark by Michael Moorcock, that tyrants and thugs are often sentimental about children and animals because they don't pose any challenge.
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Methinks Rah's co-moderator boyfriend is lurking about : ) -- Masq, 13:47:55 01/29/03 Wed
"Do me a favor pet and undo that embarrasingpost I just made?"
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It was a great post -- ponygirl, 14:12:16 01/29/03 Wed
It's too bad. Rahael's post raised some interesting issues, especially about how people in general are often so eager to label evil or good as though one label can cover the complexities of any given action. What was Angel when he allowed the lawyers to be killed? Was Giles evil when he killed Ben? Was Faith evil when she helped the Mayor? Was Spike good when he faced Glory, but evil when he tried to kill the girl in Smashed? Do people really flip back and forth between black and white like the game of Othello or is it all just varying shades of gray and an ongoing circling journey?
See I'm talking about fiction, while Rahael was writing about her own life so I understand why she would want to remove the post. Fiction is safer, easier. Real life is not always something I have the courage for so I always applaud the honesty Rahael brings to a discussion.
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Re: ????????????Rah? -- Rahael, 20:47:44 01/30/03 Thu
Hey KdS!
You and Ponygirl make my points pretty succintly I feel.
Oh, I loved the latest issues you lent me, I really did. Looking forward to the next exchange. I figured I could agree heartily with your above post then as well.
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Interesting post -- shadowkat, 14:29:22 01/29/03 Wed
Interesting post Kds - you pointed out some things - that were bugging me in Star Wars, Bablyon 5 and in the fanfic.
In the back of my mind I kept asking myself the same questions - why do we do good acts and does the act itself make us good, the motivations behind it, or what?
Btvs is doing something interesting with the character of Spike - they are challenging the old romantic ideal shown in other works of Sci-Fi fantasy, two of which you pointed out. Xena also challenged this romantic ideal - Xena was actually one of the first to do so. In some ways the character of Xena reminds me as much of Spike as Angel - why? Because she is motivated to become good out of her love for Hercules - but that is not how she is redeemed. Doing good acts for Hercules or Gabrielle doesn't help.
(For those who don't know the series Xena was a horrible killer, raiding villages with her crew - the classic femme fatal, she falls in love with HErcles the hero of the show and realizing that he can never fully love her because she's well evil, she begins to try and be good...eventually she begins to feel remorse. But it is not until she is on her own show that she really begins to question her acts and understands...and that is outside of her love for Herc.)
Babylon 5 in contrast - didn't exactly have two evil characters get redeemed as elevate two good characters for their love for each other. (For those who didn't watch it - the leads - a human space station captain and a part human/part alien ambassador fall in love and declare they'd die for each other - motivating the Vorlons to make them the heads of the good guys...although who the good guys and who the bad guys are ...is debatable at points in the series. Cool series - highly recommend the first 4 seasons, fell a bit off in the 5th.) It would of sort have been like Tara and Willow being chosen to save the world because they are willing to die for each other - or Buffy and Angel (assuming he's good) or Buffy and Riley...I groaned when Bablyon 5 did it, I'm glad Btvs never copted out in this manner. Star Wars also copted out in my opinion - we have the most interesting and worst villain to hit the screen, Darth Vader, he spends most of the last two episodes trying to find a way to manipulate his son, Luke into joining the dark side of the force...it's not until he realizes his son won't fight him and is in fact willing to die for him - that he switches sides and sees the good path. Darth Vader is the classic example of a character used as plot device to further another character's arc - his good act - acknowledges and justifies Luke's final action - to not give in to the Dark rage, to not fight, to let go, and attempt to save his father, to find the good inside. Unfortunately, Return of the Jedi - didn't play it right - we were never given the opportunity to see what Luke did, Darth didn't show us indecision or uncertainity or remorse - Darth changing would actually be like Angelus changing in mid-stream.
Spike in contrast? Doesn't really do this - not like Darth, any more than Angel really did it. He's such a complex character. I've read so many essays on him - and fanfics and where everyone screws up is they attempt to make him simple and yep - they don't understand why he does what he does as a result. They want the nice compact supporting character. The Angel/Angelus of Season 2. He's really evil. He's good. But Buffy has begun to grow up and the perspective isn't that simple any more. And as I suspect we're about to discover - the line between Angel and Angelus was never that clear cut. To an adolescent's mind yes, but not to the adult's. Remember how into p.o.v and perspective these writers are - what we see, what we're told is what the character knows and that is not always reliable. Characters can be very unreliable narrators. Angel wasn't "good" and Angelus was no more evil than any other vamp. Spike wasn't good he just did good things to get Buffy's attention, he didn't understand why she wanted them, he certainly didn't get why she did the things she did...he doesn't really get it until he gets the soul. He understands not hurting the one you love - unless of course they get off on being hurt, which I suppose is a tad confusing for Buffy. He can't handle Buffy in emotional or physical pain - if she's getting off on the pain, enjoys it - sure no problemo, but if it's killing her, if it's destroying her - big problem - takes her out of his life, out of his arms, away from him - not good. Selfish love is still love, it's just not the type you want in your life. It doesn't last and it has a tendency to consume the people involved.
I think a lot of people's difficulties with Spike is they can't separate his journey from Angel's. If Spike is redeemed or shanshued, Angel isn't or won't be in their heads - the show has NEVER stated this. If Spike gets Buffy, that's not fair to Angel. Again this isn't shown anywhere in the story. Angel moved on. He NO longer wants Buffy or cares that much for her at least in that way. Angel and Buffy as Buffy states so well in Lover's Walk - were never really friends. Angel and Cordelia were. Angel isn't in competition with Spike for buffy for redemption for anything (I doubt he even knows Spike has a soul or a chip or would care all that much if he did) - this competition is NOT in the characters heads or the writers or the actors, it's just in the internet fans' heads. I love both characters but the competition fans put them in - pushes my buttons and makes me begin to hate one of them to the extent it interfers with my enjoyment of the show and I've almost stopped posting on one or more occassion and I stop reading posts on it - b/c it brings out the worst in me because- I find myself falling into the trap of defending the underdog. Bad. Truth is? I think Spike and Angel are on parallel journeys that do not affect each other at all, they don't even intersect really, they just act as mirrors...they show how you can reach something in two different ways. One is no better or more valid than another. Any more than the path I choose to take to reach whatever is ahead is any better than the one someone else does - they are different. There is NO one path...there are multitudes. What causes people to get into so many violent disagreements is I think our insistence on there being just one.
Spike - I never know what he'll do. He follows his heart, his gut more than his head. He is a "fool for love" because love is what moves him. Love for a woman. Love for poetry.
Love for art. Love for the next fix. The next adrenalin rush. The next higher level of feeling. the more intense the better. As a vampire - his passion for love for beauty is twisted and taken to the extreme. Re-ensouled - he is faced with the one thing he hoped to be most "a good man" and his failure to be that...that instead he became the most wretched evil creature imaginable, can he ever overcome this? Angel's story isn't that - it's very different, Angel's story has more to do with the archetypal prodigal son which is spread all over the tv screen now days, just saw it on another tv show a moment ago...believe me Angel does it much much better. Angel's story is not about a man who wanted to be good and loved and became evil instead and wonders if he can ever become good? If good is even something he's capable of? Can he fight the monster inside him? Can he become a better man? Can a slayer forgive him, when he has made a living out of killing slayers? Is it possible for him to be forgiven by someone he almost raped? And most important - can he ever forgive himself enough to be able to move forward and become a better man, even find redemption? What does that take?
How does a cruel selfish arrested bully - become a mature good man? Burgess tries to discuss this a little in A Clockwork Orange - interested in the turn or the point of change. But most story tellers aren't quite sure how to do it, it's a hard story to tell, there are so many dramatic pitfalls. Probably why that story fascinates me so - it's like watching someone tight-rope walk between two buildings. Can they pull it off without falling?
Angel's journey seems to be about something else entirely.
Completely different tale. Yes it's about the villain trying to be good, the evil guy trying for redemption. But Angel never really saw himself as "good" nor was that his implied thing as Liam. Angel's problem was Daddy and rejection by his family, being outcast. Hence the reason we have all the family metaphors. His question is can I ever forgive myself for killing my family? Can someone who destroyed his own bloodline - ever be good? Will I repeat my father's mistakes and create a monster? Is it my father's fault? Can I move past these things, let them go?
Very different journey - really has zip to do with what Spike's is. The two are comparable yes, but not in conflict.
Spike does not negate Angel and Angel does not negate Spike.
Actually if it weren't for Angel - spike would not exist and if weren't for Spike - Angel would not be in LA or as far on his journey as he is - remember Becoming? I often find I enjoy both journeys more when I'm not placing them in competition or prefering one over the other.
Not sure that made much sense - I tend to ramble when I don't write these things separately (like my essays).
Did enjoy your post, KdS.
SK
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Re: Angel v Spike -- yabyumpan, 16:25:58 01/29/03 Wed
So agree with everything you wrote -
"Spike does not negate Angel and Angel does not negate Spike." Can we have that as a header for the board? ;-)
They're two vry different vamps with very different beginings and very different journeys. I'm ashamed to admit that I would probably be more interested in Spike if I hadn't read so many posts which compare one more favourably than the other (usually Spike over Angel), they make my Angel-obsessed heart pull away from Spike. I go into reactive mode which isn't really a good place to post from.
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Yep -- Masq, 16:42:03 01/29/03 Wed
And after it's done, we'll all stand around in a circle holding hands and singing "We are the world".
But seriously, I'm with you in having that "reactive" mode. I tend to not post to people who make such arguments, 'cause then the board would see the troll in me!
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Wow! I have a quote at the top of the board??? -- shadowkat, 20:13:59 01/29/03 Wed
Leave the board for a little while and what happens?
I pulled up voy and I see my quote right under Joss Whedon and James Marsters - two men who I ardently admire for their work. Not to mention having a quote at the very top of the best board I've seen on the internet. ( Blushing.)
Thank you so much for this compliment Masq. I'm really honored.
SK (Whose wondering if she will lose her soul now that she's had a happy moment. ;-) )
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Fine company -- ponygirl, 06:41:37 01/30/03 Thu
Congratulations SK! The ultimate in coolness!
It's like some sort of Voy Peace Prize awarded for promoting harmony between warring character factions!
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Re: Wow! I have a quote at the top of the board??? -- Masq, 10:05:20 01/30/03 Thu
It's my attempt to wish and hope that this will be a bi-partisan board, not tied to a single show, or one character over another, or one 'ship over another.
So thanks for the quote. From your keyboard to the PTB's ears.
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Welcome. Happy to help. All we can do is try right? ;-) -- s'kat, 10:35:42 01/30/03 Thu
For what it's worth...I think you've already succeeded.
If you peruse the other boards out there...this is one of the few that discusses both shows in depth and is relatively free of shippyness. (Yeah we have a little...but
nothing like what's on the other boards, no where close.)
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LOL! Big hugs Masq, you made my day :o) -- yabyumpan, 09:41:00 01/30/03 Thu
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Interesting post, yourself, s'kat! -- HonorH, 17:13:40 01/29/03 Wed
I think you've got a good perspective on this. Angel is not Spike is not Angel. They really don't have anything to do with each other other than the whole souled-vampire thing at this point. They're two completely different stories and must be addressed as such.
Now let me contradict myself: I think we can learn more about the Angel/Angelus dichotomy by watching Spike and his adjustment to his soul. We've seen Spike batting between William and Evil!Spike, particularly in BY, and I don't think the insanity thing is entirely the fault of the FE. Rather, I think it took advantage of the temporary insanity Spike experienced in the wake of regaining his soul and probably intensified and prolonged it. Angel, too, is shown to be in a bad state shortly after regaining his soul ("Five by Five"). Clearly, Spike has all components of all his former personalities inside: William the Bloody Awful Poet, Spike the Slayer of Slayers, soul, demon, everything. He is a different being now, but it's because of an addition to his person, not the subtraction of any of the evil parts. Spike and William seem to be in the process of merging to form something new. Hence the instability. He hasn't managed to integrate it all, let alone come to terms with what he now is. It's interesting to watch.
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Agree (some general spoilers for Tonights Angel) -- shadowkat, 20:38:24 01/29/03 Wed
I agree with what you said. The difficulty in comparing the two characters is the landmine of charactershipping and buttons. But that does not mean we shouldn't compare them, just skirt around the whole who should and should not be redeemed issue, who is better/whose not, etc which annoys me to no end and brings out the trolls in us all - it's more than possible that neither will be redeemed or both will be, but whatever happens, keep this in mind, what one vampire does - does not change or directly effect the others story in any way. They are on two different shows and networks. Here's a way we should do it -
think of Angel as the lead on character in one comic book say Ghostrider and Spike in another say Wolverine, or vice versa - in the comic book world these two team up occassionally and they have similar issues, but they don't really affect each others stories overly much.
In Angel's story he hasn't done something yet which Spike did do last year - he hasn't faced Angelus - the demon inside. This is the reason Spike doesn't have a new name and Angel does. Angel got cursed - so in Angel's head Mr. Hyde isn't him. Angelus is not me. He says this several times in tonight's episode. Perhaps the reason he does not remember the Beast is to do so would mean facing the fact that he was Angelus and is Angelus - that that evil beast is not separate from him like the actual one is. That's why the big evil this season is The Beast. We see this in Connor in Angel's dream - he has the same wicked arrogance as Angelus and sees Cordy as his. It's even mentioned. What has always kept Angel from moving forward is an inability to see that he did Angelus acts and could still do them - that the monster inside him is a part of him that it got its desires from him. Spike has faced this - he tells Buffy - That was me. You got off easy. You need to kill me. Buffy - has not really faced this. Not yet. But this season every character on both shows is facing their monsters - the monsters they did not believe existed in them. Which is why they are coming out.
Gunn did not believe Fred was capable of murder. Uhm everyone is - we choose not to - I think that's what the show is trying to say. Evil lurks in all of us, waiting for us to give in.
I think tonight's Angel episode really demonstrates the desire not to face that evil, to admit it's there, the desire to see it as separate from us, not in us, and defeat it like some non-entity that can be easily slain. I find it interesting that neither show takes that easy path.
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- Deb, 17:25:23 01/29/03 Wed
Interesting thoughts. Spike of season 4 and 5 treated the people he liked well, which turned out to be quite a few people: Joyce, Dawn, Buffy, Clem, Willow etc. Angelus never liked anyone enough to treat them well. He loved torture and tormenting. Spike could also tolerate people he did not like . . . Xander, Giles. Angelus only tolerated the "fanged four" and then fell away from Spike. Spike, before chip, killed to feed and for political survival (all survial is political to degrees). He had to show "strength" in vampire terms to keep his followers in line, and not at his throat. Angelus just killed, often like a cat playing with a mouse. He got the most thrill possible out of certain kills. Example being Dru.
Spike may not have been redeemed in season 5 (i.e. his horror that Dawn believed she was more evil than he was.) So he has been on the path, or journey for redemption without benefit of soul. Angelus would not have even considered "acting good" if he were not cursed with his soul.
The word "cursed" is very important, because it betrays how Angelus views his soul -- as something that was given to him in vengance. Spike the demon, went to get his soul on his own, and though it is not easy living with it now, he doesn't see it as a curse. He sees it as a gift to give to those people he loves. The motivations for redemption are different, and to those who say that Spike has done nothing helpful to earn redemption, good intentions pave the way to hell and, as this season is showing us, "helping" is not always "helpful."
Angel gets excited when he has something "helpful" to do in the same manner that Spike reacted when he found out he could hurt demons. "Ah, something to un-live for!" Angel still broods when he has no one to help. It is a waste of time. The thrill of demon hurting has faded for Spike. So, in many ways, not doing something can be more "helpful" for all concerned.
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- prometheus, 02:08:43 01/30/03 Thu
I disagree with all of this. My take on Spike isn't about redemption or moral ambiguity, nor do i agree that he killed 'to feed and for political survival.'
Spike LOVED the violence. The challenge. The brutality - not just doing it, like Angel, But having it done TO him, as well. In short, he is the "vampire's vampire", like a man's man. The prototype of the strong ego, the one character who acted not out of morality, or destiny, or duty - but out of pure joy in the action.
Spike was the most moral person on the show. The "goodest" character - in the vampire world view,, which was where he was, so who are the humans to judge him by their own human morality?? Spike's story is not redemption - It is a fall from grace, just like Darth Vader. But Annakin Skywalker stepped out of the system where he was a good man - Spike was brutally forced into the human world of morality and society, against his will. When you think how many times Spike made it clear that he would feel joy and respect if his opponent would kill him good and violently, that chip was the most evil, cruel thing anyone could have ever done to anyone.
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- steven, 02:12:18 01/30/03 Thu
Let's not forget that noone is 'evil' in essense - except the first, by definition - they DO EVIL ACTS.
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Strange Feeling -- Deb, 23:37:05 01/30/03 Thu
But I don't disagree with anything you say. My argument is basically that at some point, (Chip) Spike was put on the Trickster's road to redemption.
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for what its worth Deb, I agree with you -- Helen, 08:44:19 01/30/03 Thu
There was a huge difference between Spike unsouled and Angelus. And crazy rantings in earlty S7 aside, souled Spike (dare I say this) is not noticeably different from unsouled Spike in the same way that Angel is different to Angelus. It is people's REactions to him that make him different.
I can't put my finger on it (apart from the lack of mindless torture, and please don't start retconning on me. I know what we saw Spike do, and he never tortured Giles, or murdered a Scooby's loved one in a sexually twisted manner) but I do see that Spike was achieving some kind of redemption even without a soul (which he then screwed up).
Not, I think. that he would have seen it as redemption, I think. Spike S4-6.19 ish was just living his unlife as best he could (best for himself, and those few people for whom his affection meant their interests were in his self interest ie Buffy, Dawn, Joyce). His comment to Dawn "I'm not good, and I'm okay" pretty much sums it up.
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Retconning? -- Shiraz, 11:49:13 01/30/03 Thu
HE GOT THE NAME SPIKE BY TORTURING PEOPLE WITH RAILROAD SPIKES!!!
Which are eight inches long and blunt.
And he was fiercely proud of this.
Furthermore, to say that Spike was 'better' than Angelus because he only fed on bit-part characters, is a more than a little disturbing.
Finally, if Spike had such a different outlook on killing than Angelus did, why did Spike call Angelus his "Yoda".
-Shiraz
(who remains convinced that pre-souled Spike was a VERY bad man)
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Ah, but he wasn't a very good demon anymore either. -- Deb, 23:56:06 01/30/03 Thu
If one thinks of dark warriors and demons as all bad. If you get right down to it, comparing Spike to Angel/Angelus is a futile effort. They have different roles in their respective stories. Angel is the Hero and Angelus is the Shadow. Spike is and always has been a Trickster. Totally different journeys.
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When did I say he was 'better' than Angelus? Oh, I didn't. -- Helen, 00:46:03 01/31/03 Fri
I said he was different.
If you can't see that pre-souled Spike of S4-6.19 ish was an entirely different kettle of fish to Angelus of S2 (and yes I know he had a chip to hold him back, but Crush demonstrated an easy solution to that little problem. He chose not to take it), then we will just have to agree to see differently.
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Re: Retconning? -- Miss Edith, 02:24:20 01/31/03 Fri
Fool For Love told me that Spike and Angel had different killing styles. Yes Spike called Angelus his yoda. However Angelus didn't have much respect for Spike as a good pupil. In the mine scene in FFL Angelus is frustrated because Spike is more interested in mindless violence than in the artistry of the kill. I haven't seen any flashbacks implying Spike raped women, or that he enjoyed torturing. As for using railroad spikes hardly the most inventive way to torture someone. IMO Spike got his revenge on the people who mocked him by slamming railroad spikes through a few heads. Not the elegant way Angelus would have wanted Spike to prolong the pain. I just don't see Spike having the patience to spend days on torturing anyone.
"Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're gonna win?" Spike's interest was in fighting slayers, not torturing humans that Spike knew he was stronger than anyway. That is why I see ME as retconning when Spike talks of all the people he's raped and how Buffy never saw the real him. In an unaired scene Spike tells Buffy about how he used to keep young girls Dawn's age alive for weeks so he could torture them. We have no on screen evidence that Spike wasn't involved in such behaviour so I can understand some people seeing any new information we are given about Spike's past as accurate. All I can say is that is not the character I have been following for the past 5 years.
For instance in School Hard Spike was at his worst and he was killing people for the sheer joy of killing. He was not interested in torture. He was more like an English football hooligan. In Lie To Me he just wants to eat Ford without prolonging it. In Lovers Walk he is very drunk and suggestively talks about having Willow as he hasn't "had a woman in weeks" except for a shopkeeper that we saw him kill on screen. It is implied Spike is thinking of rape but Willow firmly says "no having of any kind" and Spike accepts that even though presumedly his impulse control was not great as he was very drunk and crying in front of Willow at one point.
And I don't think saying Spike killed differently from Angelus is saying he was more noble in some way. My concern is just with character consistency being followed. And yes I would maintain that Spike did have a different outlook on killing from Angelus. Different styles does not make one more noble than the other though. Spike was still a vicious killer regardless.
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He did torture Angel in 'In The Dark' and seemed to get off on it. -- Finn Mac Cool, 04:35:35 01/31/03 Fri
Also, rape is often a crime of anger, and pre-soul, un-chipped Spike seemed to operate very intensively out of anger towards the world.
And when you say Spike wouldn't rape someone, given that a vampire's bite is a metaphor for rape, it doesn't strike me as hard to imagine he'd go the non-metaphorical route as well.
Lastly, in "Harsh Light of Day", Spike and Harmony have a man chained up in their lair and Spike refers to him as a snack. From the looks of things, the guy looked like he had had quite a bit of pain inflicted on him, more than the neccessary force of kidnapping him would take.
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Usual response re:In the Dark -- KdS, 05:35:01 01/31/03 Fri
i) At this point he had special reasons to hate Angel(us) with or without a soul, which make it a bit different from torturing a total stranger
ii) He had to hire someone else to do it
iii) He got bored very quickly and started moaning that not enough was happening
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Re: Usual response re:In the Dark -- Finn Mac Cool, 08:50:07 01/31/03 Fri
Yeah, but Spike has been shown taking his anger out on minions (notice beating up Dalton), lovers (Harmony), and strangers as well (in is post chip state, he uses demons as punching bags).
As for hiring someone else, I think Spike was afraid that if he did it himself, he'd get carried away and kill Angel without finding out where the Gem of Amara was. He came close to the same sort of thing in What's My Line II.
I do agree that torture isn't Spike's specialty the way it was for Angelus. However, while Angelus preferred torturing people, he also enjoyed the pleasures of a quick kill, though to a lesser extent. Likewise, Spike preferred simple killing, but he also enjoyed the pleasures of torture.
And, even if you don't buy any of that, there is the fact that for a hundred and twenty years, Spike was always seeking to please Drusilla, the super-sado-masochist.
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Re: Usual response re:In the Dark -- Miss Edith, 03:49:00 02/01/03 Sat
Does beating up minions really count as torture though? I have always seen torture as something akin to what Giles was put through by Angelus. Prolonged and saidistic pain with chainsaws etc. Losing his your temper and smacking someone around is certaintly something Spike is guilty off. But then even Buffy has given Spike smacks in the nose when she is feeling frustrated e.g when Dawn was kidnapped, and I would not classify that as torture. Bullying perhaps but torture? In What's My Line it was Drusilla who wanted to torture Angel, and it was Spike who did not have the patience, and almost killed Angel from frustration. Using others as punching bags I can certaintly see Spike doing. I am not arguing Spike was never involved in a five minute beating or whatever. I am just saying torture was not his speciality.
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absolutely what I would have said if I was articulate enough to say it. -- Helen, 06:31:07 01/31/03 Fri
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Re: Retconning? -- Peggin, 07:12:04 01/31/03 Fri
"Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're gonna win?" Spike's interest was in fighting slayers, not torturing humans that Spike knew he was stronger than anyway. That is why I see ME as retconning when Spike talks of all the people he's raped and how Buffy never saw the real him.
I don't think that's inconsistent at all. When we saw Spike talking about not wanting fights where he knows he's going to win, that is within a few months of when he was first turned. Left to his own devices, I have no doubt Spike would have happily gone on fighting large crowds of people and calling attention to himself everywhere he went and gotten himself killed fairly quickly. Angelus took Spike under his wing, played "Yoda", and taught him how to kill and torture and rape, and also taught him how to stay alive. I have no problem believing that Spike was an excellent student. The difference is that, IMO, it was in Angelus's nature to want to do those things, where in Spike I see it as learned behavior -- Spike's nature was to go for the big grand fight to the death. But just because the Angelus-type behavior was something Spike had to learn doesn't mean it never happened.
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Re: Retconning? -- Miss Edith, 08:11:39 01/31/03 Fri
FFL was basically a showcase for Spike. If the writers wanted to show Spike learning from his yoda they could easily have done so. Instead we see Spike rejecting Angel's style of killing. We then see his past as the vicious fighter killing two slayers. FFL was specifically dealing with Spike's past and the way the writers wanted us to see Spike.
In Sunnydale Spike was at his worse in season 2 yet even then he was "never much for the pre show". That is why I personally don't buy it when the writers talk of Spike raping and torturing. I just don't see how he would have had the patience to prolong his victims agony. Nothing to do with being better than Angelus, I just don't see torture as Spike's style based on what the writers have shown me. Yes I'm sure some of his victims may have died fairly brutally, but prolonged torture doesn't fit the text as I see it.
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Re: Retconning? -- Dochawk, 15:36:32 02/01/03 Sat
Miss Edith,
I suggest you get a copy of the Spike showcase on the season 4 DVDs. In it, you'll see JM and JW talkign about who Spike was pre-chip and they describe him in the most horrible evil terms. JM talks about the sucking of blood as a metaphor for rape and Spike's lust for it. There is no retcon in Season 7, its the same Spike they are talking about. You're just choosing not to see it.
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Re: Retconning? -- Trilby, 09:23:12 01/31/03 Fri
I agree with you, Peggin.
I am really interested and puzzled with the idea that many people seem to have, that if it isn't explicitly shown onscreen that such and such happened, then it didn't, and any mention of it means it's 'retconning'. This is not directed as a shot at anyone,it seems pretty pervasive and I accept it as a valid point of view. I just don't happen to think about it that way. I think that in a hundred years or so of being a vampire there probably isn't much nastiness that any vampire has not tried (Hello! Vampire! Evil...)even if they later rejected it when they found what was most satisfying to him or her, so I don't see it as a 'retcon'. It's the same with whether Willow pays rent. There's only so much that can be shown in 42 minutes. Once again, this isn't directed at anyone, but my husband joked that from this standpoint, it's implausible to believe that Spike got to Africa because they never showed him getting rid of his motorbike.('Did he ride underwater? Don't think so!')
Of course, I am on the lookout for inconsistencies, because I feel that the writers have set a high standard, and I am disappointed to see them let the side down. But, I
LIKE the show, mainly because I think they don't let the side down anywhere near as often as some other shows' writers do. Sometimes I wonder if some people who write to boards, and not just this one, don't enjoy the show at all, or only enjoy pointing out what they didn't like. I'm new to this entire board thing altogether, and I think it's completely fascinating to see other perspectives, and how others react to what is being shown.
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Prague -- Malandanza, 22:36:24 01/31/03 Fri
"When we saw Spike talking about not wanting fights where he knows he's going to win, that is within a few months of when he was first turned. Left to his own devices, I have no doubt Spike would have happily gone on fighting large crowds of people and calling attention to himself everywhere he went and gotten himself killed fairly quickly. Angelus took Spike under his wing, played "Yoda", and taught him how to kill and torture and rape, and also taught him how to stay alive. I have no problem believing that Spike was an excellent student.
I have a big problem believing Spike was any kind of student. I think he wanted to be like Angelus, but lacked the finesse and patience to accomplish anything artistic. I agree that Spike's attitude changed dramatically from his initial turning -- recall this line from Season Two:
SPIKE: Who cares! What matters is he's back. Now it's four against one, which are the kind of odds I like to play.
Innocence
When Spike talks about wanting fights he might not win, it is early in his life as a vampire -- when he believes he's invulnerable. Saved from mediocrity, he's Dru's dark knight. Plus, Angelus and Darla are around to bail him out when he gets in over his head. He's like Warren waltzing into the Bronze with the orbs tucked into his belt -- he starts fights that appear to be unwinnable, but he really knows he has the advantage. Three to one odds still isn't fair if the one is superhuman and three are fragile humans. I think what changed Spike isn't anything that Angelus said to him (he was still reckless when Angelus was ensouled), but his experience in Prague, where that mob almost killed Dru. It finally sunk in that he could be killed -- and could get Dru killed. Suddenly aware that he isn't invincible, he stops looking for fights he might lose. His attacks on Buffy have been in force -- or by minions with Spike in the background. The last time he faced her in serious combat, he was wearing the Gem of Amara -- an invulnerability ring he took great pains to get before he challenged the slayer -- and once it was gone, he never challenged her again. Similarly, when the troll brushes against him in Triangle, Spike at first is ready to intimidate the troll, then sees this is a fight he might lose and meekly returns to his seat. Nor can he face Angel or Angelus in a fair fight -- he strikes from behind or with assistance.
So, basically, I agree with your conclusions, but not the premises.
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But in School Hard... -- Peggin, 04:40:39 02/01/03 Sat
I have a big problem believing Spike was any kind of student. I think he wanted to be like Angelus, but lacked the finesse and patience to accomplish anything artistic.
But in School Hard, Angel told Buffy that Spike was worst than any vampire she had ever met:
Angel: Once he starts something he doesn't stop until everything in his path is dead.
If, prior to Prague, Spike just liked the big dangerous fights, then that means Angel was flat out lying, or at least twisting the truth. And I don't think that's the case.
There are 18 years of the Fanged Four's life as a "family" that we haven't seen on the screen, but we have been given hints about it. Unless they actually show us flashbacks that incontravertably show differently, I have to assume that the things the characters have said about their shared past is true. So, based on what the characters have said, Angel was Spike's "Yoda". I can't think of anything that term could possibly mean other than mentor and teacher, and the the only thing I can imagine Angel teaching Spike is how to be as vicious and relentless as possible. Not just to kill, but to cause the maximum amount of pain possible. Because, really, Angel's description of Spike? Sounds a lot more like Angel himself than it does like Spike.
So, Spike studied at the feet of the master, and he learned well. Then Angel got a soul and disappeared from his life, and Spike (as many students do) promptly decided that school was over, he was done with the final exam, and he didn't need to remember any of the stuff Angel had taught him anymore. He went back to doing things for the fun of it again and discarded the stuff Angel had taught him. There's even a hint of Spike discarding all the knowledge he had learned from Angel when Angel chides him about the fact that Spike had failed to guard his perimeter -- something that Angel said he had taught him.
Both Spike and Angel make reference to Spike having learned a lot about how to be a vampire from Angel. We have Angel describing Spike as someone who never quits, which sounds very Angelus-like. We have Spike describing some of his past behavior to Buffy in a way that also sounds very Angelus-like. I think the simplest conclusion is that, at least for the 18 years they were together, Spike actually did learn how to be as Angelus-like as possible, and then, after Angel took off, Spike went back to doing things the "fun" way he preferred to do them.
I think dismissing Spike as too impatient to act like Angelus is underestimating him. In Halloween, it took patience for him to think of videotaping Buffy in a fight so that he could study her moves and have a better shot at killing her. Over then next few episodes, it took patience to keep at the books until he found the ritual to restore Drusilla to health. It took patience to come up with a plan like gathering together all of the pieces of the Judge and reassembling them. At the end of the season, it took a hell of a lot of patience for him to stay in the wheelchair after he had regained the use of his legs and keep his recovery a secret until he could find a way to use it to his advantage. It took patience to track down a gem that was supposed to be a myth, find out where it was located, and keep a more-or-less low profile until he actually found the gem.
Can Spike be impatient? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean he never has it in him to formulate a plan and see it through.
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Re: But in School Hard... -- Malandanza, 20:10:19 02/01/03 Sat
"I think dismissing Spike as too impatient to act like Angelus is underestimating him. In Halloween, it took patience for him to think of videotaping Buffy in a fight so that he could study her moves and have a better shot at killing her. Over then next few episodes, it took patience to keep at the books until he found the ritual to restore Drusilla to health. It took patience to come up with a plan like gathering together all of the pieces of the Judge and reassembling them. At the end of the season, it took a hell of a lot of patience for him to stay in the wheelchair after he had regained the use of his legs and keep his recovery a secret until he could find a way to use it to his advantage. It took patience to track down a gem that was supposed to be a myth, find out where it was located, and keep a more-or-less low profile until he actually found the gem."
You make some good points -- so I'll refine my theory. I think Spike focuses a one goal at a time, and can be very patient with that goal -- if it's killing the slayer, that's all he thinks about and is impatient with anything that gets in his way or is not relevant to his goal. When his goal seems close, he gets even more antsy and jumps the gun, like in School Hard when he attacks a day early. Later, his goal was get back at Angelus, so he was able to patiently sit in the wheelchair (yet we do see scenes of him pacing nervously, the rushing back to his wheelchair). With the Gem of Amara, he patiently dug up them gem, yet in LA, with the recovery of the gem so close, he ruins his own plan by attacking Angel early and lacks the patience to have the information tortured out of Angel -- instead runs off to AI and begins randomly trashing the place.
With Buffy/Riley, he schemed to help stir up discontent, but he immediately ran to Buffy when he saw Riley slipping away to the vamp house because his goal was so close that he couldn't be bothered to consider consequences (like Riley staking him or Buffy blaming Spike for his part -- killing the messenger: something he belatedly worried about in Triangle). In Season Six, a little patience on his part and he could have had both a physical and emotional relationship with Buffy, but pushed so hard for sex when the goal seemed reachable that he lost the friendship.
Even rushing off to Africa -- trying to get his soul back without considering
consequences like would he still be Spike? Would his having a soul mean anything to Buffy? Would he still want Buffy once he had a soul? How much suffering is involved? He did have the example of Angel showing him the down side of being a tortured vamp.
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Re: But in School Hard... -- Peggin, 06:01:04 02/02/03 Sun
In Season Six, a little patience on his part and he could have had both a physical and emotional relationship with Buffy, but pushed so hard for sex when the goal seemed reachable that he lost the friendship.
I don't think anything Spike could have done prior to getting a soul would have resulted in Buffy falling in love with him. There was a time when I would have thought it was possible, but watching the way Buffy was around him even right when she first came back, I don't think Buffy would have ever been happy with being more than friends with Spike unless he proved he was no longer evil. He had told Dawn at the end of season five, "I'm not good, but I'm okay." As far as Spike was concerned, that was good enough. Season six convinced me that "not good" would never have been good enough for Buffy. It also convinced me that "not good" (although maybe no longer completely evil either) was the best Spike was capable of being without a soul.
Even rushing off to Africa -- trying to get his soul back without considering consequences like would he still be Spike? Would his having a soul mean anything to Buffy? Would he still want Buffy once he had a soul? How much suffering is involved? He did have the example of Angel showing him the down side of being a tortured vamp.
That's assuming that the only reason he did it was the idea that maybe Buffy would fall in love with him if he got a soul. I think his motives were nobler than that.
I think he was shocked at what he had done -- or tried to do -- to a person he loved. For Love's Bitch, the fact that he took an act that he had intended as an expression of love and perverted it the way he had, hurting the woman he loved, must have shook him to his core. IMO, he was horrified to realize that he was capable of doing anything like that. He had convinced himself that he wasn't evil anymore, that he was good enough for Buffy just the way he was. The fact that he could hurt her like that made him look inside of himself and acknowledge that the monster was still there.
I think Spike got the soul at least as much out of a desire to become the type of person who would never do something like that again as he did out of any expectation that it would make Buffy fall in love with him. He wanted to be what she deserved, but it does not necessarily follow that he expected her to fall in love with him once he got the soul. Wanted her to fall in love with him? Hoped she would? Yes. Expected her to? Not necessarily.
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Re: But in School Hard... -- shadowkat, 10:12:19 02/02/03 Sun
Well done. I think you're comments are supported by what Spike says in the shows. In Beneath You:
"Shame on you Buffy. Why does a man do what he mustn't?
For Her. To Be Her's. To be the kind of man...who would never- to be a *kind* of man."
Then in Help:
"william is a bad man. I hurt the girl." HE starts beating himself. she stops him. "I hurt you Buffy, I should be punished."
In Entropy:
"I don't hurt you. Something's happened to me. This is real."
In Seeing Red
"What have I done? Why didn't I do it? What has she done to me?"
Again Beneath You:
"Did you make me weak?"
Sleeper:
"No, not the chip. The soul. The chip they did to me! I had no choice. The soul I got on my own. For you..."
When you look at the dialogue which criss-crosses you see how complex Spike's decision to fight for and earn his soul really was. From a writing perspective anything less complex would be boring. I think we have to keep in mind what has always motivated Spike - love. It's the one constant in his character - love or the desire for it.
And women. Another interesting tid-bit was William's desire to be a "good man" - which Cecily rejected as did Dru - buffy in contrast appears to want the good man - which William originally was according to the dialogue spoken in FFL. Whether this is true or not? Is open for debate I suppose, but Petrie seems to believe William was in his commentary as did Whedon - so I'm going with whose writing the show for now.
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OOps - spoilers for Beneath You to NLM in above post -- s'kat, 10:15:36 02/02/03 Sun
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Good post, a little addition on Angelus -- shadowkat, 09:57:30 02/02/03 Sun
I think you can actually support the idea of Angelus as teacher/mentor to the younger vamp and the younger vamps he makes his sons following his teachings to an extent with the Somnabulist episode in Ats - Penn adopts Angelus cross on the hand signature in his killings - to the extent that Kate believes it was Angel doing the killings, because it was his m.o. Similarily - we see Spike doing a few things in Season 2, that we later learn Angelus often did.
1. The mental torture trick with Drusilla to get information from Giles in Becoming PArt II - Angelus is shown as the impatient one in this scene, not Spike, but to Angelus' credit - he was a bit off-kilter due to his passion to succeed and obsession with Buffy. But Spike's tactic does in some ways remind me of Angel's tactics in both flashback sequences and in present day episodes in Ats.
2. The whole ritual and the tactics he uses in What's My Line. While it's doubtful Angelus would have resorted to hired bounty hunters, he may have if someone was getting in his way. (I doubt it though - since Angelus seems to have a thing about doing it himself). But it's clear Dru learned torture from Angelus in What's My Line and it's clear that Spike is far more pragmatic - not really caring all that much about torturing his grandsire as he is just bleeding him for Dru. (By the way the bleeding of Angelus in the church to Dru - is metanarrated in Never Leave Me - great metanarration, just as the torture sequence in In The Dark is metanarrated on in Never LEave ME - BoTN, FE even uses Spike's comment in In The Dark - I always was a sucker for the classics.)
I think a safe guess and it is really just guessing right now, is that Angelus taught Spike half of what he knows, and Dru and Darla taught him the other half. There is a reason these vamps have survived as long as they have.
It wasn't just luck. Vamps don't care about killing each other and they come up against slayers all the time. The mere fact that Angel/Angelus survived 250 some years and Spike survived 120 some years (I think 130 - since he was 126 in The Initiative) proves these guys were pretty clever and vicious, especially since neither looks like they just stayed in their crypts or underground.
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O.K. Definately going into rant mode here -- Shiraz, 09:49:47 01/31/03 Fri
Did you really want to see Spike sexually assault Willow in Lover's Walk? Would there have been any conceivable way to keep him as a recurring character if he had? Remember, the writers were surprised they got away with the sexual content in Fool for Love.
In fact, now that I think of it, the only time we see anything akin to explicit coerced sex from any character is in late season six (Dead Things).
Also, we didn't get to know anything about Angelus' more pernicious deeds until well after Angel's character had been firmly established as a heroic figure. It's only logical that, once his good intentions were well established, the nastier side of Spike's past would also be explored.
"Hardly the most inventive way to torture someone"
So? He looses points for creativity, but he makes them back in the whole "Oh god please stop!" category. Spike torture was his TRADEMARK, his vampire thing! It seems ridiculous to me that he'd name himself after something he only did once. And all the mine scene proved was that Spike liked vicious fights more than Angelus; at no point did he express any distaste for the rest of the scourge of Europe package deal.
Furthermore, exactly how much "fight" did those nuns in Prague put up? You know, the ones he and Dru were always talking about? (secret Franciscan ninja Nuns?). Or the wife and children of the gypsy father? (Eating the barganing chips) Or the boy at the bronze? Or the missionary family?
Finally, Spike was the devoted servant for over a hundred years to an insane vamp with a fixation on children. You might be able to argue that Spike wasn't into torture, but Dru definately was, and Spike has always been willing to do anything for his girl.
If Spike didn't match Angelus' level of artistry in cruelty, its only because he lacked the skill, not for any lack of trying.
-Shiraz
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Re: O.K. Definately going into rant mode here -- Miss Edith, 03:43:00 02/01/03 Sat
I think if ME wanted to show Spike as someone who was planning to rape Willow they could easily have done so. It was implied that Drusilla was raped by Angelus as early as season 2. And in season 3 in Amends we saw flashbacks with implied rape. Obviously I did not want to see Willow raped. My point is that Spike was very drunk yet accepted Willow's refusel easily enough. Hardly the charactaristic of a vampire used to rape.
And Spike has been shown to be someone who bluffs because reputation means everything to him. Remember FFL and the dramatic juxtaposition when he tells Buffy "I've always been bad". When we were shown where the William the Bloody nickname came from, yet even Angel called him this and it was used as a mark of respect by Spike. I have no problem believing that Spike killed the people who laughed at him in a gruesome manner, and spend the next 120 years living off the name he made for himself in that instant.
Spike did express distate for torture. He hated Angel, yet in What's My Line he left Dru to get on with the torture by herself "Never been much for the pre-show". Obviously that doesn't make him a prince of a guy, and he probably did help capture people and leave Dru to torture them. But my point is he did not personally torture and I find it inconsistent with the character ME are writing if they suddenly want me to believe that Spike had the patience and interest in torturing anyone for a significant period of time. His attention span is just not great enough. He got bored with Angel's torture in In The Dark and Angel was someone he despised for taking Drusilla away. You really think he would have spend hours on a stranger who menat nothing to him if he couldn't even see the torture of Angel through?
Yes killing women and children was certaintly something Spike did. I find that shocking enough without needing to make him something he's not and paint him as Angelus's prodigy when everythiong I have seen has made me personally believe that is not the case.
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Building a character...retcon? inconsistent? -- shadowkat, 21:37:26 02/01/03 Sat
In a month or so...I may post a more lengthy essay on how I see Spike functioning in the show and how they've built his character, but until then, here's my view for what it's worth.
This is something I've been avoiding getting into b/c it the argument becomes circular after a while, sort of like arguing about religion or politics, people are nutty about their beliefs and their characterships. But I'm bored and what the heck...I'll jump into the fray:
Spike was introduced as a cool villain. An "evil" character that was supposed to be staked by Angelus in Innocence or at the earliest in What's My Line. He was not initially meant to be the character he is today.
But the writers saw a character there - something they could play with - this happens when you are writing something. You see a cool, interesting character - that you'd originally meant to be two-dimensional and suddenly think - wait a minute! There's something interesting here.
That is what happened with the writers and Spike. They started asking themselves questions: Who is this guy?
Does he love to be abused? Is that what attracts him to Buffy the fact she hits him so much? If so why? How can we play with that and more important what would that say about Buffy and how would that expand on her journey? Why is Spike so compassionate towards Joyce? What drew him to Drusilla and why does he love Dru? What is his modius operandi as a vampire? What motivates him? When you build a character whether as an actor or a writer - you begin to ask these sorts of questions. It's fun. The writers started asking these questions after Lover's Walk. TV being the medium it is - the questions sometimes get asked as you go along and you build on what you have, like dressing a doll or building a house if you will, layer by layer, season by season within the time constraints provided.
They knew Spike was evil - they'd brought him in evil. The challenge was how do we make him good enough to interact with the SG without being killed? How do we gradually make him good without repeating Angel's story or turning him into a puppy dog? And whoa that's a wonderful challenge for a writer to have - how do we make someone evil good and how do we do it gradually and keep it suspenseful and expand on the other characters in the process?
Another issue is how much do we tell/show the audience? The story is after all Buffy's? So we don't tell the audience more than is necessary for Buffy's story. And if we tell them too much too soon - we lose story potential and audience interest. After Season 4, Spike they realized had good chemistry with Buffy and made a good romantic foil (see Marti Noxon's interview with CBC on www. slayage.com) - so they felt they could build on that. Also he worked metaphorically for their exploration into Buffy's relationship with the dark side of her nature - sex without love, aggression. That does not mean she won't love him eventually or anything - but isn't it more suspensful not knowing? I mean you don't know what Buffy is going to do with Spike, you always knew what she was going to with Riley and Angel. But Spike? no clue. Any more than you really know what Spike will do in relation to Buffy. Keeping the love question unanswered or partially answered builds dramatic tension and gives you more directions to go in. It's also more interesting from a writing and acting standpoint.
Now when you consider Spike's story and you compare it to Angel's - you should keep two things in mind: 1) This is Buffy's show, we only really know what Buffy knows or what affects or expands on Buffy's character. Ex: today someone asked why we never see Willow's parents - where are they? And I responded - well it is ALL. ABOUT. BUFFY. and Buffy doesn't see them. For the same reason we only celebrate Buffy's birthday - we don't see or know about anything in Buffy's friends lives that doesn't directly affect her journey. (Yes, it's frustrating if you are more interested in Spike, Xander or Willow's story but unfortunately the show is created around Buffy and doesn't have enough time to go in depth on everyone.) 2. We know more about Angel because Angel has his own series and is no longer part of Buffy's journey. (Or their journeys may parallel each other but they aren't part of each other any longer - nor does either actor want that - because it derails them. One has to be the supporting player to the other. At the moment they are at the heads of two separate shows and two separate yet parallel and occassionally intersecting paths.) So we can learn things Angel has done that have zip to do with Buffy. As long as Angel isn't part of Buffy's journey or her show- we'll learn tons about him. In Angel the Series - it is ALL ABOUT ANGEL - we only learn what is necessary about Wes, Cordy, Fred, Gunn, connor, etc - that affects Angel. If it doesn't expand on or affect Angel's journey in some way - we won't see it.
So to compare Spike's acts to Angel's - becomes after a while a big guessing game. (I do it - to find a way to figure out more about Spike, but I admit, I'm guessing.)We know more about Angel. We could only do it if Spike had his own series - then maybe. OR if Spike was on Angel's series - then it's a lot easier. But Spike is on Buffy's series. So we only know what is necessary for Buffy. As a result - we'll never see what Spike did with Angelus or even after Angelus got a soul unless it somehow affects Buffy. We also will never see who William is unless it affects Buffy in some way. Frustrating as hell for those of us who are more interested in Spike than Buffy, but hey that's what you get for shipping a supporting character.
Statements like: William was a weak poet who could never get a girl. Spike never tortured anyone. Spike couldn't rape anyone. Spike was only nice to women. Or Spike raped everyone in sight. Are actually if you think about nothing short of fanfiction at this point - they are guesses based on the limited amount of information we have.
Here's what we are told:
1. William had a mother - and obviously he cares about her in some way because he says "Mother is expecting me" also he forms a relationship with Joyce - as almost a surrogate mother, which suggests this could either be a good or negative relationship but was definitely a defining one. This is backed up by statements in Beneath You - Please Mum, stop it, begging now.
2. William was educated. We have no clue where. Except that he was into writing poetry, apparently bad poetry but so was Cassie (god, I think Cassie's was worse) and he seemed to realize it. Also he got caned for not keeping up on his lessons and had a chalk-board. (Lessons)
3. William liked women. We see that he is rejected by one.
Whether it's the only one or not, we don't know. Nor do we know her overall significance, except he was devasted by Cecily's rejection. The writers never tell us if Cecily and Halfrek are the same. They imply it as a possibility but never follow up on it. (Evil Writers). We also see that he attracted by Drusilla and why - she communicates to his soul or heart or mind or whatever you want to call it. She tempts him by telling him he has imagination and heart.
According to the writer who wrote this scene - Dru meant it. Petrie admits in the commentary that it is possible she didn't from the cross-over, but he's pretty sure she did.
(Also remember the cross-over is in Darla's pov and is all about Darla and Angel - so hardly reliable in regards to Spike.)Fool for Love as a title can be read more than one way...as someone who is motivated by love or someone who is made a fool due to love - actually that means the same thing come to think of it.
4. William is motivated by love. He goes where his heart leads him regardless of the consequences and as we have seen they can be severe. His heart can make him a fool.
What is that poem - love makes fools of men?
5. We learn from more than one source in Angel and Buffy - that the personality and nature of the human informs the vampire. So Spike is a twisted version of William.
in the flashbacks - we see the following crimes mentioned:
1. a brawl and massacre which caused the vamps to go underground and Spike was somehow responsible for starting
2. Spike killing two slayers - rather brutally and associating sex with killing - scene with Drusilla
6. What do we already know about Spike?
- on two occassions he considered "having" Willow - raping and biting her, but was prevented. First Lover's Walk, too drunk to really care and he wanted her to do a spell. Xander is half-dead in the background with a concussion and bleeding head. Spike threatens Willow with a broken bottle and comes on to her - "I haven't had a women in a long time" not counting the shopkeeper.
- Sheila in School Hard. Just because they don't show Spike raping Sheila does NOT mean he didn't. They can only show so much on TV. We have no clue how long Spike and Dru kept Sheila alive. Also in Season 2 - it's clear that biting someone is a semi-sexual act for vampires, as is siring and later in the series in the episode where Dru turns Darla in Angel - siring is considered rape. It is also referenced as rape in Sleeper and Never Leave Me. And it is a metaphor for it in The Initiative - the writers state this in commentary and Marsters states it. If not being able to bite the girl is considered impotent or castrated - wouldn't biting her have the opposite connotation? Isn't it interesting that the only people Spike has sex with are Anyanka (demon) and Buffy (who the chip can't work on)? Yes he doesn't bite them - but clearly the metaphor is still there.
- He goes after Women in Sleeper and CwDP. And the trigger song is about treating women badly.
Spike is both lover and rapist, it makes perfect sense when you think about it. He has a thing about women, he loves them, but fears being rejected by them, lives for them and dies for them, the sexual predator and the protector. The contrast is interesting and it is a great foil for Buffy who is protector and killer.
Is Spike more or less evil than Angel? Do you really care?
I mean does it matter? Spike does evil acts - he is a vampire, it's what they do. Angelus does them. Ensouled he tries not to. I'm hoping for more information on Spike's background before the series is done and possibly a little happiness or redemption for him - I dearly love him. But I have no complaints on how he's being written,while I may not be able to predict his actions - they make perfect sense to me, he seems to be a well-rounded/complex character, and a mythic one.
Doubt that changed anyone's mind. But hey just my two cents.
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Great post, one comment on 'Sleeper' -- Peggin, 06:32:41 02/02/03 Sun
Fantastic post, and I agree with just about everything except this one small part:
He goes after Women in Sleeper and CwDP. And the trigger song is about treating women badly.
Yes, that is one interpretation of the song, but I think it's a little too narrow. Not all of the people Spike killed were women -- we see him killing a couple of men in his brief flashbacks, and just about half of the vampires in the basement were men.
Early one morning, just as the sun was rising
I heard a young maid sing in the valley below
"Oh don't deceive me, Oh never leave me,
How could you use, a poor maiden so?"
Remember the vows that you made to me truly
Remember how tenderly you nestled close to me
Gay is the garland, fresh are the roses
I've culled from the garden to bind over thee.
Here I now wander alone as I wonder
Why did you leave me to sigh and complain
I ask of the roses, why should I be forsaken,
Why must I here in sorrow remain?
Through yonder grove, by the spring that is running
There you and I have so merrily played,
Kissing and courting and gently sporting
Oh, my innocent heart you've betrayed
How could you slight so a pretty girl who loves you
A pretty girl who loves you so dearly and warm?
Though love's folly is surely but a fancy,
Still it should prove to me sweeter than your scorn.
Soon you will meet with another pretty maiden
Some pretty maiden, you'll court her for a while;
Thus ever ranging, turning and changing
Always seeking for a girl that is new.
Thus sang the maiden, her sorrows bewailing
Thus sang the poor maid in the valley below
"Oh don't deceive me, Oh never leave me,
How could you use, a poor maiden so?"
If you take away the gender connotation of the word "maiden" and just consider the fact that the song is about an unfaithful lover, I think this is The First's song to Spike. Not just in the sense that this is what triggers him, but also the message behind it.
The song is all about chastising the ex-lover. The person who has been rejected lamenting the fact that she has been tossed aside. Well, if The First is the incarnation of all evil, isn't that what Spike did? He "married" himself to evil, and was "faithful" to evil for about 120 years. Then someone better came along, and Spike tossed evil aside, went out and got himself a soul.
I think the song is all about The First saying, hey, we had so much fun together. Remember how we "merrily played" together? Remember how "tenderly you nestled close to me" for so many years? We "kiss[ed] and court[ed] and gently sport[ed]" together for such a long time. Now you've gone out and gotten a soul and "my innocent heart you've betrayed".
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Wow Peggin -- Doriander, 06:48:29 02/02/03 Sun
Can I join your fan club? I'm loving the sub-thread you and Mal have above. Again wow.
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Cool! I never had a fan club before! :-) -- Peggin, 07:00:13 02/02/03 Sun
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Great post and do agree on the song. That never occured to me. -- s'kat, 09:26:25 02/02/03 Sun
Actually I thought the song could be for either Spike or Buffy....but you're interpretation is well the most interesting one I've read to date. Everyone else who's analyzed that song to date came up with:
1. It is a song relating to Spike's feelings about women, which was the one I was going for.
2. It is women's feelings about Spike - the fact he died, his mothers, Buffy's, etc.
3. It is the idea of the dead lover - Spike and Buffy's feelings.
What I haven't seen is the idea that it is the FE's feelings towards Spike, which come to think of it is the most logical and best explanation I've heard. Well done.
I wasn't going to use the song as a point because as posted above it has too many ways to interpreted and is a guessing game, but I'm glad I did - your response was well worth it.
SK
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Re: Building a character...retcon? inconsistent? -- Sophist, 10:57:25 02/02/03 Sun
Statements like: William was a weak poet who could never get a girl. Spike never tortured anyone. Spike couldn't rape anyone. Spike was only nice to women. Or Spike raped everyone in sight. Are actually if you think about nothing short of fanfiction at this point - they are guesses based on the limited amount of information we have.
I agree.
Spike killing two slayers - rather brutally and associating sex with killing - scene with Drusilla
Yes, but not in the sense that you develop it. This is true in Faith's sense of "Doesn't it make you hungry and horny?"
Just because they don't show Spike raping Sheila does NOT mean he didn't.
I think you just contradicted the passage I agreed with above. Of course he could have raped her. It's no less logical, however, that he did no such thing. It's also not clear that Spike sired Sheila -- it could have been Dru or even one of the other vamps. "These are guesses based on the limited information we have."
Spike is both lover and rapist, it makes perfect sense when you think about it.
It only makes perfect sense if you are willing to make the guesses based on limited information. The problem is, other guesses are just as plausible. That's the inherent problem with limited information.
But Spike is on Buffy's series. So we only know what is necessary for Buffy. As a result - we'll never see what Spike did with Angelus or even after Angelus got a soul unless it somehow affects Buffy. We also will never see who William is unless it affects Buffy in some way.
And this is the key point: the bathroom scene in SR DID affect Buffy. For this reason, some of us expected that we would have been shown the essential background, not just been left to guess.
I don't doubt that our imaginations can supply nearly any plot point. That really isn't the issue; imagination is so flexible that virtually every inconsistency can be reconciled somehow. The trick of good writing is to supply the background along the way so that the plot develops naturally. No one on the "retcon" side is going to be persuaded by inference or guesswork. That's not the criticism. The criticism is the failure to show.
One of ME's strengths has been that it does this so well. They have been willing to forego short term benefit for the long term payoff of a well-developed character. The bathroom scene in SR was intended as a crucially important scene. The failure to supply background -- leaving it to our imagination and guesses -- was conspicuous.
Shortly after SR aired, I challenged anyone to show me a post before SR which identified Spike as a rapist (or potential rapist). No one took me up on that. I think the failure of that dog to bark in the night will remain persuasive to those whose who want evidence, not guesswork, in the development of a character.
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Re: Building a character...retcon? inconsistent? -- Dochawk, 12:54:01 02/02/03 Sun
I'll turn that around on you, because its much more important I think. Show me evidence that Spike WAS NOT a rapist prior to SR. When you argue that it was a retcon of his character, you have to show me what previous information the action invalidates, not the other way around. There was nothin in the little of Spike's past that we know that is inconsistent with his behavior in SR. Thats what you have to show us.
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Ah, the burden of proof -- Sophist, 16:00:53 02/02/03 Sun
Now we're talking my language.
The way I see it is this: if I'm forced to prove that Spike was not a rapist prior to SR, then I have to prove a negative. Since that can't really be done, the burden of proof must rest on those who claim he was.
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Re: Ah, the burden of proof -- Peggin, 16:05:30 02/02/03 Sun
But I don't think anyone is trying to prove Spike was, for absolute certain, a rapist. At least I haven't been. All I've been saying is that it is not inconsistent with anything the writers have already let us know about Spike for them to now expand that backstory to include the fact that he was a rapist. (Of course, neither would it be inconsistent for them to expand the backstory to include the fact that he wasn't a rapist.) Right now, neither story would be either inconsistent or a retcon of any kind.
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Very well said - Ignore my below post and go with Peggin's posts -- shadowkat, 16:22:48 02/02/03 Sun
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Re: Ah, the burden of proof -- Sophist, 16:55:47 02/02/03 Sun
All I've been saying is that it is not inconsistent with anything the writers have already let us know about Spike for them to now expand that backstory to include the fact that he was a rapist.
Now we're back to my key points in response to SK:
I made 2 related points: (1) If the issue is important to Buffy, (2) then we can reasonably expect that it would be shown to us, not left to supply on our own. This means that we can expect backstory on key points in order to develop the arc to the point where Buffy is affected. To be clear, the backstory doesn't have to be relevant to Buffy at the time we're shown it, as long as we later see the relevance when that story line intersects Buffy.
It's the failure to provide that backstory before SR that constitutes the criticism.
That's the minimum form of the argument. I'll go a step further as well. I would claim that the failure to provide the backstory is an essential condition for great (as opposed to mediocre) narrative. As I said before, our imagination can supply virtually any gap in the plot line. A hack writer can demand that of us. Great narrative gives us the information early in one context and then makes it pay off later in another. ME has done this repeatedly throughout the series. The failure to do it for SR was conspicuous.
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Re: Ah, the burden of proof -- Peggin, 17:46:24 02/02/03 Sun
I made 2 related points: (1) If the issue is important to Buffy, (2) then we can reasonably expect that it would be shown to us, not left to supply on our own. This means that we can expect backstory on key points in order to develop the arc to the point where Buffy is affected. To be clear, the backstory doesn't have to be relevant to Buffy at the time we're shown it, as long as we later see the relevance when that story line intersects Buffy.
If Spike had been incontravertably shown to be a rapist throughout his history, IMO it would have made Buffy look like a complete idiot for getting as close to him as she did. Even if it was something only *we* knew, but Buffy didn't, I still think it would have made Buffy appear to be incredibly foolish for letting him within ten feet of her.
If you're looking for backstory showing that it was something Spike was capable of, then I don't see why you have too look any further than what we were shown in season six. I think there is plenty in season six giving us clues that it was something Spike was capable of doing. (Not story that Spike had ever been an actual rapist -- that is irrelevant to how Buffy would react to being attacked herself -- simply evidence that he was capable of it.)
To me, if there was anything "poorly written" about Spike's attack on Buffy, it was that I'm used to being surprised by the writers at Mutant Enemy and I saw that attack coming a mile away. Maybe not at that particular moment in time, but I saw signs of it being a possibility on a few occasions earlier in the season. There were several times when Spike tried to initiate something between them, Buffy said "no", and Spike pouted and protested and pushed until she gave in. I'm going to give the examples I can think of. (To be clear, I'm not saying Buffy acted like a perfect saint on any of these occassions, just that they are examples of Spike refusing to accept "no" as an answer.)
In Smashed, it was just about talking - Spike wanted to talk about the kiss at the end of Tabula Rasa. He had a right to want to talk, but Buffy also had a right to *not* want to talk. She gave him an answer (she'd been depressed and had made bad decision), but that wasn't the answer he wanted, so he kept pressing the issue and physically grabbed her to get her to give him what he wanted. He only relented after she hit him and he hit her back and discovered he could hurt her.
In Wrecked, Buffy said that she had left Dawn alone all night and she had to go home, and Spike refused to accept that as his answer. He kept pressing the issue until he got what he wanted. If he hadn't made his idiotic comment comparing his night with Buffy to the thrill he got from killing a Slayer, he would have gotten his way -- Buffy gave in, started kissing him, and seemed ready to stay with him for a while. Even after she pushed him away, he still kept pressing the issue until she punched him in the nose and left.
In Dead Things, he went to Buffy on the balcony and, even though Buffy asked him to stop, he refused and this time he actually got what he wanted. Yes, she could have stopped him, but she shouldn't have needed to stop him.
In As You Were, Spike came to Buffy on her front lawn and made it clear that he was there for sex. Buffy again said "no", and Spike again refused to take that for an answer and again did not give up pressing the issue until Buffy gave in.
I'm not saying that Buffy is blameless in any of this. Maybe if she had struck to her "no" on some of those prior occasions, Spike would have never gotten violent and out of control in Seeing Red. Maybe Buffy made things worse by giving in on those occasions. Maybe the fact that she had changed her "no" to a "yes" before made it more confusing to Spike. But maybe if she hadn't changed her mind on those occasions, the attempted rape would have happened sooner.
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Re: Building a character...retcon? inconsistent? -- Peggin, 13:32:23 02/02/03 Sun
And this is the key point: the bathroom scene in SR DID affect Buffy. For this reason, some of us expected that we would have been shown the essential background, not just been left to guess.
What essential backstory? How would information on whether Spike had ever raped anyone before effect Buffy? Do you think Buffy would feel better about it knowing that Spike had raped 1,000s of women throughout his history? Or finding out that he's never done anything even remotely like that before? Do you think either one of these backstories would make Buffy decide that what Spike had tried to do to her wasn't that bad? How is any backstory on Spike relevent to Buffy's reaction to almost getting raped?
Shortly after SR aired, I challenged anyone to show me a post before SR which identified Spike as a rapist (or potential rapist).
It wasn't about "rape" -- it was about Spike having a "want, take, have" mentality. It was about him believing he had the right to use force to take anything he wanted. If he wanted blood, he'd take it. If he wanted money, he'd take it. If he wanted sex with Buffy, he'd take it. Even if you could incontravertably prove that Spike had never raped a single other woman, it would not make Spike's actions at all inconsistent with his past behavior, unless you could also show me a bunch of other women with whom he had wanted to have sex who rejected him and who he had not tried to rape.
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Re: Building a character...retcon? inconsistent? -- shadowkat, 16:16:42 02/02/03 Sun
Shortly after SR aired, I challenged anyone to show me a post before SR which identified Spike as a rapist (or potential rapist). No one took me up on that. I think the failure of that dog to bark in the night will remain persuasive to those whose who want evidence, not guesswork, in the development of a character.
Uhm actually we did, Malandaza and I tried using examples from the Iniative but you refused to buy our arguement. We did take you up on it though. Mal even took a paragraph from Masq's review of The Initiative. But you still didn't agree. We tried to show scenes from School HArd and we discussed the slayer killings and Angelus and how Angelus probably taught him and how vampire's biting you could be a metaphor for this - but hey, it didn't work. But we DID try. And here I am trying to do so again, sigh, I'll never learn:
From Psyche Transcripts on The Iniative:
She [Willow] goes to run past him [Spike], but he grabs her and and throws her against her dresser.
Spike : I'll give you a choice. (He walks over to her.) Now I'm gonna kill you. No choice in that. But... I can let you stay dead... Or... Bring you back, to be like me.
Willow : I--I'll scream.
Spike : Bonus.
Willow screams.
Spike throws her on the bed and then turns the radio up to a blaring level.
Willow: No!
Spike jumps on her and they battle but he goes to bite her.
The position they are in on the bed, is Willow legs akimbo, Spike positioned between her legs forcing her head back to bite her. This made me think Date Rape and I've seen people in date rape scenarios.
You're right we don't know about Sheila. No clue. Can be debated either way. But now the writers are giving us information finally - should they have given it earlier?
Maybe. But the reason they didn't is we are in Buffy's pov really and in order to see the world through her eyes, it's limited what they give us. She doesn't believe he'd ever rape her - so we don't - as a result we're all horribly shocked. They show us what is key to Buffy.
"Just because they don't show Spike raping Sheila does NOT mean he didn't."
I think you just contradicted the passage I agreed with above. Of course he could have raped her. It's no less logical, however, that he did no such thing. It's also not clear that Spike sired Sheila -- it could have been Dru or even one of the other vamps. "These are guesses based on the limited information we have."
Actually I didn't contradict myself, I just left off the other alternative. It doesn't mean he DID either, BUT and it's a big BUT we have more information supporting the fact he did than we have supporting he didn't both from recent episodes and what we know about Spike's teachers: Dru, Angelus and Darla. (Also the writers have stated that he did turn her in the Watcher Books and commentaries, but even if they didn't, think about this for a minute. In order to become a vampire - you need to suck a bit of blood from the Vampire siring you. Dru is portrayed as starving and sickly in the first half of Season 2 - to the extent that she can barely fight or go out and he has to bleed Angelus to save her. So it makes 0 sense that Spike would allow Dru to turn Sheila or that Dru even had the strength to do it. Later after What's My Line PArt 2 - yeah, she would have, but not before. ) Logically it makes more sense, from everything the writers have told us about evil vampires and how they've portrayed Spike as sexual predator from School HArd onwards (that whole prowl sequence in The bronze??), that Spike would go there. Why not? He has no conscience. He cares nothing for these girls - they are just toys to him. It's not until he meets Buffy and is chipped, he changes his tune. Buffy - he cared about and honestly believed he'd become partially good for, that he'd never hurt, not in a million years - so hurting her forced him to face the monster inside and realize without a soul/conscience he could never overcome that monster (see Peggin's post above which illustrates this beautifully far better than I have here). Knowing the B/S relationship last year - I've known men who could have gone there..and they have souls. The line between doing good and evil acts in us isn't as thick as we'd like to believe, I'm afraid.
So SR does work for me characterwise, being "out of character" was never my problem with it, but you already knew that. ;-)
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The stuff of tragedies... -- Peggin, 18:41:00 02/02/03 Sun
Another great post, shadowkat -- agreeing with you is becoming a habit! :-)
Can be debated either way. But now the writers are giving us information finally - should they have given it earlier?
Maybe. But the reason they didn't is we are in Buffy's pov really and in order to see the world through her eyes, it's limited what they give us. She doesn't believe he'd ever rape her - so we don't - as a result we're all horribly shocked. They show us what is key to Buffy.
I think that's exactly the point. In Entropy, Spike had told Buffy "I don't hurt you", and Buffy believed him. If she hadn't, she would have pushed him away much more forcefully the first time he tried to lay a hand on her. Maybe Buffy shouldn't have believed him, maybe she should have known he might hurt her, but I thought the fact that she didn't realize it was one of the points of the story.
From Restless: "My god, it's like a tragedy. ... It's exactly like a Greek tragedy."
It's no secret that Joss has a major thing for tragedies, and in a lot of ways, I saw Seeing Red as the the climax of the "Buffy Tragedy" of season six.
The reason why classic tragedies are *tragedies* is because the hero's downfall is either caused directly by his own flaws, or at least those flaws play a large part in allowing the tragic outcome to occur. In fact, while most tragedies do end in death, death is not required for a story to be a true tragedy, just a downfall of some kind. There were a lot of people in both my high school and my college literature classes who thought that Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy simply because the kids ended up dead, but that is totally missing the point. If Romeo and Juliet had made better choices, talked to their parents, sat everyone down and tried to work things out, there could have been a very different ending to the story. The story was a tragedy because the kids died as a result of their own stupidity. This is the defining feature of all true tragedies. The hero's own mistakes and/or flaws always contribute to his downfall.
Buffy's death at the end of "The Gift", while it left me shattered and crying like a baby, was not a "tragedy" in the classic sense, because it wasn't about her flaws leading to her downfall; it was about her giving her own life to save others. Tara's death, while gut wrenchingly sad, was not a "tragedy" in the classic sense either, because no action of Tara's led either directly or indirectly to Tara getting shot. IMO, Buffy getting attacked by Spike, and again her getting shot by Warren, were "tragedies", because Buffy's own flaws and mistakes contributed to the circumstances that culminated in each of those events.
When Buffy said "no" to Spike in Seeing Red, her own past behavior had made it reasonable for Spike to believe that he might be able to convince her to change her mind. It's possible that Spike would never have taken things as far as he did if Buffy had been consistent in the past as to the meaning of the word "no". It was also Buffy's own foolishness that allowed that scene to go as far as it did. Just moments before Spike attacked her, Buffy had made it clear that she knew he was still a vampire, he was still evil, and he still could not be trusted. Yet, because she had feelings for him, she allowed herself to believe that he would never hurt her. Her attitude seemed to be "I know that he's a vampire, and he's evil, and I don't trust him... but he would never hurt *me*" -- a foolish presumption on her part, that made the situation much worse than it would have been if she had just listened to herself and not trusted him. It was exactly because she had that small degree of faith in Spike, despite *knowing* what he was, that she allowed the attack to go as far as it did. I saw it as a sad kind of misplaced confidence on her part that kept her from realizing sooner that she was going to need to actually fight him off. While I do understand how she could make that mistake, there is no question that it was a mistake and that she acted foolishly. This is, IMO, the stuff of classic tragedies -- Buffy's own mistakes helped contribute to her downfall.
This is also what happened with Warren. There were several times during the course of the season when Buffy could have made better choices that would have prevented Warren from having the chance to come after her with a gun. She could have called the police with the information she knew about Warren after Gone or after Dead Things. She could have been more proactive in trying to find him, rather than just letting weeks at a time go by without doing anything. But Buffy had underestimated Warren -- she didn't see him as a serious threat because he wasn't one of the demons she is accustomed to fighting. He was an ordinary human, and a pathetic one at that. In addition, there was her failure to take seriously the real damage that could be done by a gun. She fights demons, and guns are not typically part of her world, so at two points in the season (Flooded and As You Were), Buffy made clear statements completely dismissing the usefulness of guns. As with Spike, Buffy's own failure to understand the seriousness of the threat she was facing helped create the situation that gave Warren the opportunity to shoot her. Once again, Buffy's own mistakes helped contribute to her downfall. Once again, I see this as the stuff of a classic tragedy.
This doesn't give either Spike or Warren an "out" for their criminal behavior, but the fact is that Buffy could have done a lot of things differently that would have kept both Spike and Warren from ever having the chance to hurt her. I can understand Buffy partially allowing herself to forget exactly how dangerous Spike could be, and I can understand her underestimating how dangerous Warren could be, but just because it's understandable doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. I'm not sure if I'm saying this right, because this isn't about blaming the victim, but the fact is that Buffy's choices helped create the situations that led to both of the attacks on her person in Seeing Red, and that is what makes the episode, IMO, a classic tragedy.
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I think you said it very well... -- shadowkat, 20:50:41 02/02/03 Sun
Actually you put that marveously well and I completely agree. Before the attempted rape happened last year, I posted an essay on Respect on the boards. In my essay I discussed issues very similar to what you did. People asked me why I could predict the Attempted Rape why it didn't surprise me when spoilers came out on it? Because of what you said above...it made sense to me. It was a tragedy in the making and the stuff of classic tragedies. In some ways it actually reminds me more of Othello than Romeo and Juliet or MacBeth or even Hamlet. It also reminds me of the Greek tragedies, Medea, Electra....Oedipus. Where the hero's own fatal flaw often hubris leads him into tragedy.
She played with fire. In AYW - she dismisses guns and Spike as two things that can't hurt her. Spike is incompetent.
The guns missfire. Oh my dear girl...don't be so foolish.
She had gotten so used to using Spike as a punching bag that couldn't punch back she'd forgotten what he was/is. Something he reminds her of in Never Leave Me - with a soul, he tells her the truth finally of what he's capable of. Interesting thing about SR - of the two characters, Spike appears to be the most affected and changed by it, and the most traumatized.
At any rate here's a snippet of that old post, while it doesn't say what you said above quite as well...I think it might add to it.
Buffy's treatment of Spike reminds me of the Michael Douglas/Glenn Close movie Fatal Attraction. In the film, Michael Douglas, a happily married man, pursues a sexual relationship with a high strung and emotionally unstable businesswoman played by Glenn Close. Their sex is violent and visceral and they do it on the elevator, in the kitchen, everywhere but the bed. Glenn Close's character falls hard for Douglas. She craves his visits. Craves his company. When he breaks off their affair and goes back to his wife, things get rather ugly. Close kills his daughter's rabbit, attacks Douglas' wife and finally commits suicide in his bathroom attempting to set him up for the crime. She doesn't want to live if she can't have him. And she wants him to hurt as much as she does. Michael Douglas's character thought he could just have a quickie affair, use her and lose her. But life doesn't work that way. He didn't respect her or himself or his marriage and as a result almost loses everything. Buffy has done the same thing with Spike - she's entered what she considers a purely sexual relationship with an emotionally unstable vampire who can hurt her. Talk about playing with fire. She does not respect what he is or represents. It's not the sex that's the problem here - it never was - it's the lack of respect Buffy has for herself and/or for Spike's feelings. She doesn't even consider his feelings real. In each of their early scenes, he tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to converse with her while she continues to push the physical. He wants to connect. She just wants physical gratification. He might as well be a robot. The only problem is, Spike is not a robot. He has feelings not unlike, ironically enough, the robot April.
Spike and April are quite a bit a like in this context. In I Was Made To Love You (season 5, Btvs), Warren creates a female robot girlfriend to love him, named April. When he dumps her, she blindly pursues him like a puppy dog. Warren doesn't respect April or consider her love for him real. He thinks that he can just turn her off and move on. Just discard her like a toy.
BUFFY: Did you even tell her? I mean, did you even give her a chance to fix what was wrong?
WARREN: I didn't need to fix anything. I mean, her batteries were supposed to run down. Really, they should be completely dead by now.
But April can't turn off what she feels for him. It's not that easy. When he spurns her - she reacts with rage and tries to kill him until he deflects her rage onto Buffy. She even growls.
WARREN: No, hey, no. See, I - I know that you love me, but the truth is, I can't love you. (April frowns) I mean, it's not your fault, but... (Cut back to the computer display. ) I don't love you. (IWMTY, Season 5 Btvs)
Buffy has done exactly the same thing to Spike. In As You Were she practically states the same lines that Warren does, the only difference, she does admit she's been using him and she does blame herself: "I'm using you. I can't love you. I'm just ... being weak, and selfish..." (AYW, Season 6 Btvs) Warren shows no remorse.
Like Warren's April, Spike has become Buffy's own personal windup toy. Dead. Not real. Like a robot. And she appears to respect him as much as one would a robot. In As You Were, she asks him to tell her that he loves her, that he wants her - almost as if she's playing a recording to make herself feel better:
BUFFY: (quietly) Tell me you love me.
SPIKE: (surprised) I love you. You know I do.
In Gone, she throws him around his crypt, embarrasses him in front of Xander and basically uses him as a sex toy. After she breaks up with him, and he's following her around, she tells him in Entropy, "I don't love you" and when he once again confesses his feelings for her, "The way I feel... about you... It's different. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself it isn't. It's real, " she says: "I think it is. (a beat) For you." (He gives her look as if she's just driven a stake through his heart.) (ENTROPY, Season 6 Btvs).
Has Buffy forgotten what Warren did to April? Maybe Spike doesn't rate that high? No - I think Buffy does remember in both Dead Things, when she replays the scene with Katrina and Warren in her head and in As You Were when she finally breaks things off with him, but as often is the case in Btvs, it's a little late. And in typical Buffy fashion - she thinks, 'okay it's over now, I can just bury it. We can forget it ever happened. We can both move on.' Just like Michael Douglas thought in Fatal Attraction. But they've forgotten something - people aren't toys that you can just discard whenever you're done with them. To Buffy's credit - Spike should have respected her decision to call it off. But how many times has she called it off prior to AYW only to return to him again? At least five that we are aware of and at no point did Buffy treat Spike with a modicum of respect. Except possibly when she told him it was over and greeted him at Xander's wedding.
This reminds me of another fatal attraction storyline, a bit more famous than the Michael Douglas film, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. In Wuthering Heights - Heathcliff, a wild child who is continuously treated with disdain, falls deeply in love with the beautiful Kathy. Kathy spurns him to marry a respectable landowner and Heathcliff, in emotional turmoil, goes off to seek revenge. The story ends tragically for them both. Kathy may be able to move on, but Heathcliff, try as he might, cannot.
In Entropy, Buffy tells Spike the same thing that Giles told him in I Was Made To Love You: "Spike, this thing ... get over it."
SPIKE: (small smile) I don't know what you mean.
GILES: Yes, you do. Move the hell on. (I Was Made To Love You, Season 5)
BUFFY: You just... have to move on. You have to -" (Entropy, Season 6)
Has Buffy forgotten what it felt like when Parker dumped her in Harsh Light of Day (Season 4, Btvs) ? In Beer Bad, she daydreams about getting him back, gets wasted, turns into cave girl, and knocks poor Parker out twice with a branch. She even fantasizes about killing him: "If he were tied and gagged and left in a cave that vampires happen to frequent it wouldn't really be like I killed him really." (Beer Bad, Btvs Season 4) What about Willow - when she got dumped, she almost became a vengeance demon in Something Blue: "I just can't stand feeling this way. I want it to be over. (edited for length and emphasis) Well, isn't there someway I can just make it go away? Just 'cause I say so? Can't I just make it go 'poof'?" I agree, why can't we just make this sort of pain go poof? It would make life so much simpler.
When Cordelia dumped him, Xander concocted a dangerous love spell that made every woman go nuts over him because he wanted Cordelia to feel the pain he felt, in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (season 2, Btvs): "The point is I want her to want me. Desperately. So I can break up with *her* and subject her to the same hell she's been puttin' *me* through." And here's what Spike says to Anya in Entropy: "I need something. Numbing spell, maybe? (edited for length and emphasis) Got something that'll dull the ache a bit?" Interesting: Willow tries to get rid of her pain by getting drunk first, Buffy tries by getting drunk and Spike tries by getting drunk. What's that saying "love makes you do the wacky?" Fatal Attraction is a long-running theme in BtVs. And now we have the ultimate rejected party - an emotionally unstable vampire who can hurt the Slayer. Did Buffy forget what it felt like to be rejected? Did she forget whom she was dealing with? Did we?
Apparently so, he's been her punching bag for so long now that she sees him as incompetent, therefore incapable of trafficking in demon eggs or really hurting anyone. Not because he loves her - because he's incompetent. She not only lost respect for his feelings, she's lost respect for him as her nemesis. It's not until two episodes before As You Were, Dead Things, that Buffy even realizes what she's doing with Spike - using him. But she hangs on to the relationship until Riley confronts her with what Spike is, "amoral, opportunistic and deadly." I found this relationship as difficult to watch as Fatal Attraction or Wuthering Heights - for the same reasons, I was routing for the wrong person. In Fatal Attraction - my sympathy lay with Glenn Close, in Wuthering Heights - with Heathcliff and now, oddly enough, with Spike. Why? RESPECT. Buffy does not respect Spike. Okay -I know there are a few of you out there who don't see a reason why she should, after all he is a soulless vampire, and as such not really deserving of it, but I'm not talking about "respect in the sense of finding him honorable or worthy of respect" - I'm talking about "respecting the fact that this person could become dangerous if crossed" that this person has "feelings" which can be hurt and can cause him to hurt back. Just like April the robot when Warren rejected her. Warren didn't respect April's feelings any more than Buffy respects Spike. Warren also didn't see any reason to respect April, he didn't appreciate how dangerous April could be when thwarted. Spike is also dangerous. Riley makes that clear in As You Were - "Amoral, Opportunistic, and Deadly or have you forgotten?" Apparently she's forgotten the "deadly" part of the formula. The writers are making an interesting point - you should not treat anyone the way Buffy has treated Spike without expecting to get kicked. And she is about to. Three times three - remember? I'm not saying she deserves it, I'm saying that you tend to reap what you sow in this life and the amount of respect you give out is the amount you can expect in return. In Spike's defense - he does love Buffy, but he is also a vampire, a soulless vampire, who as the season has progressed, has received less and less respect from the object of his affections. She keeps telling him that he's evil, untrustworthy, amoral, and not real. As he states to Anya - "I was always going above and beyond. I saved the Scoobies how many times? And I can't stand the lot of you.." (Entropy, Btvs Season 6.) From Spike's point of view, it clearly doesn't matter to Buffy whether he's good or he's bad, she'll treat him the same. And that must sting - because he did it all for her. She will never respect him because he is a monster. (Odd, last year she had begun to, enough to actually treat him like a man and trust him to take care of her sister. Now - since she had the fling with him - her respect for him as a person has gone out the window.)
Buffy also hasn't shown a great deal of respect for her friends. She doesn't respect them enough to tell them that they tore her from heaven or to tell them about her relationship with Spike. Instead she buries everything, just like she always has, and as Xander puts it in Dead Man's Party (Season 3 Btvs):"You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back up to get you." Which it's doing right now, coming right out of the ground and biting her, maybe not literally like it did in Dead Man's Party but it is doing it. Xander might have been able to deal with her relationship with Spike, if she'd chosen to tell him before the wedding disaster. Letting Spike be the one to do it - and yes she did let him, was probably the worst possible thing she could have done to Xander. To Buffy's credit she didn't tell them for the same reason Xander didn't reveal his relationship with Cordy - lack of respect for the relationship, the other person, and themselves.
The writers have paralleled Warren with Buffy a great deal this season. And Buffy barely takes him seriously, certainly not as seriously as she took Glory. Why would she? Glory is a hell god. Warren is a nerd, ineffectual. She knows he's a murderer. But Buffy and the SG have fought worse. Warren on the other hand takes Buffy very seriously, to the extent that he has her and her friends on constant around the clock video surveillance. Throughout the season we have watched Buffy struggling to do things the hard way, while Warren takes short-cuts. Occasionally their actions mirror each other. In Gone - Warren wants to use the invisibility ray to spy on the girls at the spa, maybe even play with them a bit. When Buffy is accidentally hit with it, she goes and plays sex games with Spike. Warren's actions were clearly worse - since the girls are unwilling participants and he intended to use the ray to spy on them. Buffy is just making the best of her situation and Spike is willing enough. But not that willing, since he eventually kicks her out. Her actions, Spike notes, show a lack of respect for him, herself and life in general. She also uses her invisibility to torment Doris the social worker, causing the woman to possibly lose her job. Instead of taking charge of the situation, she uses it to take reckless short-cuts, not unlike Warren. Next we have Dead Things - and again the writers flip us back and forth between Warren and Buffy. Warren makes Katrina his sex slave while Buffy is struggling with her cravings for Spike. Warren doesn't respect Katrina at all - she's just an object to him. Buffy sees Spike as an evil soulless thing. Yet, unlike Warren, she is beginning to see Spike as more than an object - hence the guilt. Spike is also a willing participant in Buffy's game. But the biggest difference between Warren and Buffy is Buffy can feel guilt. Warren apparently can't. He kills Katrina and treats her like she's just a body to be disposed of, Buffy on the other hand rails at Spike for disposing of the body and insists on turning herself in. Buffy, unlike Warren, still has respect for life.
The word "Respect" has a broad rang of meanings and uses in our language. I found at least seven in the dictionary. Respecting authority or honoring someone with respect - is one and the theme discussed in Season 3 Btvs. In Season 6 - the "respect" theme is far more complex. Respecting the forces of nature, respecting things we can't change, respecting ourselves, respecting others...if you look back through the episodes, it becomes clear that the SG's loss of respect for the evil they've always fought, the allies who've fought beside them, and life in general has trapped them in a nightmare of their own making.
from RESPECT essay on www.geocities.com/shadowkatbtvs
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GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR -- Dochawk, 23:51:59 02/02/03 Sun
Peggin - I have found myself agreeing with you as often as anyone on this board but you are way off on this one. "When Buffy said "no" to Spike in Seeing Red, her own past behavior had made it reasonable for Spike to believe that he might be able to convince her to change her mind. It's possible that Spike would never have taken things as far as he did if Buffy had been consistent in the past as to the meaning of the word "no""
Simply put Buffy has NO responsibility for the rape in SR. Spike gets 100% of the blame. In each of the previous instances you mention above, Buffy had been involved with Spike on a romantic level. Buffy initiated the kiss in OMWF and though she said no the next day, she didn't push it. And she had never cut off the relationship after that. It was a situation where Buffy was reluctant about the timing, not the act. By Seeing Red, they had not been seeing each other romantically for at least six weeks. They were clearly no longer having sex at any time in spite of pressure from Spike at other point (Spike brought a different date to Anya's wedding to make her jealous). There were clearly set boundaries which Buffy had maintained and Spike had no reason to suspect that her no this time meant anything other than no. Buffy has alot to answer for in the way she treated Spike and their relationship, but none of it adds up to having any responsibility for Spike's actions. They were all his own (and he realized it for him to take the actions that he did).
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Re: GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR -- Tamara, 04:53:13 02/03/03 Mon
In Wrecked Buffy was horrifed that she slept with Spike and made it pretty clear it would not happen again. They weren't involved romantically then. But when Spike kissed her she threw her arms around him so I can see why he'd be confused. Spike was to blmae for the rape but it was Buffy who only let him connect to her through sex. Someone else said Spike choose to throw away his friendship with Buffy because he wanted sex. That is not true. It was Buffy who refused to even talk to him after she kissed him in the musical. She was calling him a thing in Smashed before they slept together so I think Spike knew that a friendship was out. He wanted Buffy to crave him he said in Wrecked and he thought she would feel something if they slept together. And yes he did f#*k up. But Buffy isnt exactly blameless here either.
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That's not what I meant... -- Peggin, 07:16:45 02/03/03 Mon
I think you're making the same mistake I'm saying Buffy made -- expecting Spike to think and act the same way you would expect a *person* to think and act under the same circumstances. Spike wasn't a person, he was a vampire without a soul, and Buffy should have treated him like one rather than trying to treat him like a person.
If you read the rest of my post, you would know that I tried to make it clear that it wasn't about blaming the victim for the attack. Spike is 100% to blame for his own actions. I think you are totally misreading what I was trying to say -- I said that I think it was reasonable for Spike to *believe* it was okay for him to act the way he did, and you seem to be reading that as if I was saying that Buffy's behavior made Spike's *actions* reasonable. Maybe I phrased it poorly, but what I meant was that, knowing who and what Spike is (vampire without a soul) I can understand Spike's brain "reasoning" things this way. I can understand him refusing to see that this was any different from any of the other times Buffy had said no then turned around and changed her mind. I can see Spike refusing to hear anything Buffy said that in any conflicted with what he wanted. I can see him, with his vampiric "want, take, have" mentality, filtering out anything Buffy said to him in that bathroom other than, "I have feelings for you. I do."
Yes, Buffy told him that it was over, but in his mind, that didn't mean anything. Of course, it was only in his mind that they had ever had a "relationship" at all. In Buffy's mind, she had never been involved with Spike on a romantic level. Spike may have convinced himself that she was romantically involved with him, but she made it clear time after time that she wasn't, that the "relationship" wasn't one. Throughout the course of the so-called relationship, Spike had filtered out every word she said to him about the fact that she didn't love him, or that, "We don't have a relationship. We have this." That wasn't what Spike wanted, so he filtered it out -- anything that didn't lead towards Spike getting what he wanted, had simply never happened in his mind.
In As You Were, when Buffy broke thing off, Spike said "I've memorized this tune, luv. Think I have the sheet music. Doesn't change what you want." While I saw a big difference in Buffy's attitude this time as compared to all the other times she had told him that she was done with him, because Spike is a vampire, I can understand Spike refusing to see that this was any different from any of the other times Buffy had pushed him away. Heck, I can see him almost being encouraged by the fact that, for the first time, Buffy actually admitted that she did want him. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the only part of her speech that filtered through -- he heard "I do want you" and the rest of it was white noise. Spike is a vampire and, as I said, by his nature, he has a "want, take, have" mentality, so anything that Buffy said that didn't fit into what he wanted was just kind of filtered out, and all he was left with was remembering that she had admitted that she wants him.
Now, you say six weeks had passed since Buffy had broken up with him, but I don't think that's true. Maybe six weeks had passed in our time, but in Buffy-time, I would put it at half that at the absolute most. As You Were was a week before the wedding, and in Normal Again, Willow told Xander that Anya had left a couple of days ago, so I would put that as no more than a few days after the wedding. In Normal Again, it was clear that Spike hadn't accepted that the relationship was over. He continued to insist that she tell her friends about them. Despite everything Buffy has said to him, Spike continued to believe that there was a "them". In Entropy, Buffy told Spike that she had tried to kill her friends "last week", and at that point Spike was still insisting that she did love him and why wouldn't she just admit it. Seeing Red happened just a couple of days after that. I think it was pretty clear that nothing Buffy had said had filtered through. In Spike's mind, the two of them were still involved in a relationship and this was just some kind of temporary break.
So, this brings me back to Buffy's mistake, which IMO was looking in Spike's face, calling him evil, acknowledging exactly what he was, and not realizing that he would see these things differently than a human might. Buffy's mistake was in treating Spike differently than she would have treated any other vampire. She allowed herself to believe that he wasn't a danger to her, so she treated him like she would have treated a person. That was where she was being foolish. The moment Spike took a step towards her and tried to kiss her, Buffy should have remembered he was still a vampire and she should have kicked him across the room immediately rather than making a half-hearted attempt to push him away and asking him to stop. Her mistake was in actually believing he might stop just because she asked him to.
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Re: Building a character...retcon? inconsistent? -- Malandanza, 18:17:10 02/02/03 Sun
Shortly after SR aired, I challenged anyone to show me a post before SR which identified Spike as a rapist (or potential rapist). No one took me up on that. I think the failure of that dog to bark in the night will remain persuasive to those whose who want evidence, not guesswork, in the development of a character.
Check the November 2001 archive -- look for "Malandanza" :)
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Can't find it -- Sophist, 20:21:42 02/02/03 Sun
I tried 3 searches: Malandanza, rape, and rapist. I searched Sept 1, 2001 to Jan 31, 2002. Maybe you can find it?
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Re: Can't find it -- Malandanza, 20:37:40 02/02/03 Sun
Try:
Aaarrgh! Malandanza!
with an exact phrase match.
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A disagreement on Vader (digression, but not entirely OT) -- HonorH, 10:29:24 01/30/03 Thu
My dear friend Tanja, who lurks here but can't post, had this to say about Vader. Though it's not strictly on-topic, I thought her points were interesting enough to post here:
"The comparison of RotJ, the ending, with Angelus changing mid-stream is completely wrong. For starters, Vader never is Angelus, i.e. evil for the sake of destruction and being evil. Both his "join me so we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy" pitch in ESB and the prequel background with Anakin outlining his "well, then they should be made to" idea for politics to Padme show he's basically a believer in the benificent dictatorship idea (and post-Sith-turning willing to be absolutely ruthless in order to achieve this). Incidentally, considering Anakin grew up a) on a planet controlled by the Mob (i.e. the Hutts) and b) in a galaxy with a rotten Republic, this is not surprising. Anyway, it's very different from Angelus' destructorama life. Angelus wouldn't care about order at all, let alone a galaxy of same. We never, not even in "A New Hope", where Vader is at his darkest, see him being gleefully sadistic a la Angelus.
"Next, of course we see signs of Vader being increasingly troubled in the OT. The end of ESB, for example, when he doesn't strangle Piett, though Piett, who had reassured him the Falcon couldn't fly, is arguably more to blame than the unfortunate Nada earlier; note that the shot of Vader staring at the dissappearing Falcon is repeated with Anakin trying to meditate in AotC on the balcony, staring into his future, as it were.
"The Emperor explicitly asks Vader whether his feelings are clear in the Luke matter, probably sensing the Anakin within is troubled (in the troop reviewing scene). Vader's denial doesn't sound that convincing. Next, we get the conversation between him and Luke which ends with "It is too late for me, my son", which is an implicit acceptance that Luke's code of behaviour is the right one. It also points to what I think will a big factor in Anakin's fall - the belief that he is dammed anyway, so redemption can't even be tried. (By the end of RotJ, this is irrelevant - Luke's life is at stake.) It reminds me of Milton's Satan, who shows his hubris when pondering at one point whether he could be forgiven if he repented and decides he couldn't.
"Lastly, of course one act of life-saving doesn't atone for hundreds and thousands of crimes. But, if you go by Christian theology, absolute and sincere repentance means you can be forgiven, even something as serious. What happens at the end of RotJ is an act of grace. Anakin repents, accepts full responsibility for his deeds, and gets forgiven. If he had survived, of course I'd be all for putting him on trial, and so would he be, btw. But as he's dying, active deeds are no more an option. It's a matter of belief - either you do believe repentance and absolution are possible, or not."
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Despair as a mortal sin - even more OT -- Helen, 00:54:42 01/31/03 Fri
It reminds me of Milton's Satan, who shows his hubris when pondering at one point whether he could be forgiven if he repented and decides he couldn't.
This is, to some sections of the Christian Church, the ultimate sin - to believe that God cannot forgive you, is to doubt his omnipotence, and so, in a funny kind of way, to deny God.
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Vader? Kiddie Redemption? -- Rina, 12:31:59 01/31/03 Fri
Your argument might be good if you had not used "Return of the Jedi" as an example. You assumed that Darth Vader's redemption suddenly came upon him in that final scene in the last installment of the SW saga. I'm afraid that you're wrong. Vader's redemption openly began in "The Empire Strikes Back". It didn't suddenly appear in the final act of ROTJ. I suggest that you use another example of what you have deemed "kiddie redemption".
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- Gwyn, 03:35:22 02/02/03 Sun
I think the fallacy in your argument lies in the assumption that a moral person will act towards a stranger as they would towards a loved one. If we take your argument to its logical conclusion when faced with a burning house, a loved one and a stranger inside, a truly moral person should have no desire to save the loved one over the stranger. This is a test quite a few good people in the world would fail. It is human to care more for those we love than those who are complete strangers. The motivation to feel this way is not a judgement against Spike's morality. I think you can fault him on other stuff, but not on this.
Spike's not running around in season five actively refusing to help people who are not Buffy or Dawn. He has no problems with saving others as a side effect of protecting Buffy and Dawn. I once read a fanfic that had a line capturing that sort of stance where someone complimented Spike on saving the world and the author had him say to Buffy, "I saved you. Saving the world was just a perk." He is not big on the empathy for others but he will go along with a moral action that spins off from his love for Buffy and Dawn without any protest. He saves the Scoobies on numerous occasions without liking them because they are important to Buffy. While Buffy is dead over that summer following the Gift he fought along side the Scoobies as a part of his promise to Buffy. However, we can be sure he was not only fighting alongside them when Dawn's safety was an issue. He was fighting the good fight and not examining his motives too closely. Doing the right thing was becoming a habit.
I think you hold Spike to higher standards than we expect of all of us who make up this mortal coil. When it comes to doing good we are all mostly concerned with doing so for the sake of those we hold dear and less so to those who are strangers. The average Joe is no saint you know. We are all more Spike than we are willing to admit.
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Yes, I do have high standards -- KdS, 06:38:20 02/02/03 Sun
I think that how we behave to people we like, however morally admirable that conduct may be in itself, is inevitably influenced by our desire to keep those people in our lives and hence selfishness cannot be ruled out. Of course, Spike's behaviour to the Scoobies for Buffy's and Dawn's sakes was admirable, but if he'd seen a complete stranger about to get knocked down by a car he probably wouldn't even call out a warning, let alone try to rescue them. I don't think there's a single ocassion, and I'm ready for corrections, where Spike behaves morally to a stranger in S5-6 where it's unlikely that Buffy would find out. And once again, let me stress that Spike behaved altruistically to Dru, even at the risk of his own life, at a time when absolutely no one would have disputed that he was evil.
The fact that many people in the real world only help people who they are close to is a sign of the general low moral standard of humanity (I'm including myself here) from the ideal viewpoint, not an argument against ideal moral standards.
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Exactly! -- Earl Allison, 14:41:42 02/02/03 Sun
That was always my test for Spike as redeeemed. If he had the opportunity to kill someone totally outside the circle of the Scoobies, with total and absolute guarantee that he would never be caught or punished -- what would he do?
If, in those circumstances, he still decided not to kill, I might have considered him redeemed, or at least on that road. Otherwise, I agree, refraining from certain actions because of how others view you is far from redemption.
Take it and run.
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Re: Spike, Darth Vader, and kiddy Redemption -- Peggin, 06:52:07 02/02/03 Sun
If we take your argument to its logical conclusion when faced with a burning house, a loved one and a stranger inside, a truly moral person should have no desire to save the loved one over the stranger.
That's not the logical conclusion of the argument at all. The way I read it, it's more like: if you passed a burning building where you knew there were a few strangers (but only strangers) trapped inside, would it even occur to you to pick up the phone and call 911?
IMO, before he got his soul, Spike wouldn't have done it. Now he would.
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I like your arguement Peggin, but -- Dochawk, 15:01:59 02/02/03 Sun
its a little better analogy than others have used, but as ME has shown getting a soul doesn't mean you will act to the good. So the jury is still out, I don't think we have seen anything yet from Spike that proves he would act as you suggest. I happen to think he would and that there is evidence leaning that way, but nothing definitive yet.
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I totally agree... -- Peggin, 15:26:00 02/02/03 Sun
I didn't mean to sound like I had proof that Spike would do the right thing now that he has a soul. I just meant that I think he would, but it is totally possible that the folks at ME could prove me wrong on that without contradicting anything they've already told us about Spike's character.
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Remember -- Tchaikovsky, 07:28:34 02/02/03 Sun
That line in 'Triangle' where the insane troll rips down half of the Bronze? Spike then wants some recognition for not eating people, even though they're covered in blood. If Spike had truly been changing other than to Buffy and Dawn, would he not have been helping save them, instead of spending his time hoping for justification for a much less laudable act?
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Re: Remember -- Gwyn, 11:46:08 02/02/03 Sun
In that incident I think it is significant that Spike kept taking care of the woman after Buffy berated him and left. She did not see that....he didn't stop taking care of her because Buffy would not see it. That illustrates my point really. The boundaries of human morality are not as clear cut as the original poster's premise for this thread argues. There is a lot of psychological research, and arguments amongst philosophers too, about whether unalloyed altruism really exists. Even saints expect their heavenly reward. Other forms of altruism are often rewarded by the "feel good" factor that those acting 'altruistically' enjoy. The borders between altruism, the ego, and self esteem are not simply defined, no matter how much we would like them to be so we could always be sure of making clear cut moral judgements about people. I work in the field of behaviour change and the presence or absence of empathy for others is not that crucial a factor in getting violent people to cease their behaviours and initiate socially acceptable ones.
If the story of Spike tells us anything about being human, it is that one's internal moral compass is a complex thing and its development something of a mystery. Spike does good for a range of reasons and, the fact that he is inspired to do so out of love for someone is not a defect, it is his salvation.
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Nicely put -- Sophist, 12:50:03 02/02/03 Sun
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