Because it's all about the Spike
Oct. 17th, 2002 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiper Okay, so I'm definitely grooving on the whole Spike thread this season. Of course, I am a documented sucker for strong male characters having themselves put into unexpectedly vulnerable situations, and I'm also a sucker for Bad Boy Gets Redeemed plots, so I'm getting double amusement mileage out of this thread so far.
Of course, it's not hurting in the slightest that James Marsters is apparently extremely good at making pitiful faces at Sarah Michelle Gellar. ;) Especially when he's delivering lines like "Stay and help me be quiet..." and "William is a bad man!" I'm totally in awwwwww mode.
I'm definitely liking that Spike's teetering back and forth between complete loopiness and pulling himself together enough to come help Buffy fight when he needs to. And that one of the apparent big things driving his current state of insanity is remorse over what he did to Buffy last season; it satisfies my sense of drama (not to mention justice) that, having attempted to assault Our Heroine, he must do some form of penance for it. And that he's taken to referring to himself as "William". Still answers to "Spike", but when he's in babble mode, what comes out is "William".
I'm liking Buffy's current response to him, too. She was obviously thunderstruck by discovering he has his soul back; her expression at that relevation was to me pretty clearly "OH MY GOD I have absolutely no concept of how to deal with this". (And the episode transcript up on Psyche's Transcripts actually describes a tear rolling down her cheek, but I'm not sure I see such a thing; the scene is shot really dark, so I might have just missed it.) Most of what she seems to be feeling dealing with Spike the last couple episodes, too, has been anger and irritation, which is totally appropriate. Some impatience, especially in last night's episode, when her obvious priority was to deal with the threat to Cassie...
And yet, I'm wondering if I'm imagining just a fractional, miniscule, tiny little bit of gruff concern. Like when Spike started freaking and hitting the (what was it? Cabinet?) he was hunched up beside, and Buffy caught his fist -- she looked like she was about to deck him until she realized he was freaking about having attacked her, at which point she seemed ever so slightly less cranky. And plus, her parting comment of "I think it's worse when I'm here." Hard for me to parse that... Buffy was obviously in "respond to imminent threat to helpless victim" mode, but that she said that to Spike on her way out rather than oh, say, "I don't have time for this" or "I'm not about to help you, you tried to rape me, you bloodsucking bastard" suggests that there's at least a microscopic grain of concern in there somewhere for not making things worse for him than they already are. ;)
And I'm good with that! If the show is aiming towards a real Buffy/Spike pairing, a goodly amount of time IMO needs to be spent developing him into someone she can actually genuinely trust. He's not there yet, and I'll not be surprised if it takes the whole season to make things change between them.
But I'm all torn now! I want to see it happen, right NOW NOW NOW, and I also want to see all the little bits and pieces that are just going to have to be put into place to actually make it happen.
This is gonna be fun.
Of course, it's not hurting in the slightest that James Marsters is apparently extremely good at making pitiful faces at Sarah Michelle Gellar. ;) Especially when he's delivering lines like "Stay and help me be quiet..." and "William is a bad man!" I'm totally in awwwwww mode.
I'm definitely liking that Spike's teetering back and forth between complete loopiness and pulling himself together enough to come help Buffy fight when he needs to. And that one of the apparent big things driving his current state of insanity is remorse over what he did to Buffy last season; it satisfies my sense of drama (not to mention justice) that, having attempted to assault Our Heroine, he must do some form of penance for it. And that he's taken to referring to himself as "William". Still answers to "Spike", but when he's in babble mode, what comes out is "William".
I'm liking Buffy's current response to him, too. She was obviously thunderstruck by discovering he has his soul back; her expression at that relevation was to me pretty clearly "OH MY GOD I have absolutely no concept of how to deal with this". (And the episode transcript up on Psyche's Transcripts actually describes a tear rolling down her cheek, but I'm not sure I see such a thing; the scene is shot really dark, so I might have just missed it.) Most of what she seems to be feeling dealing with Spike the last couple episodes, too, has been anger and irritation, which is totally appropriate. Some impatience, especially in last night's episode, when her obvious priority was to deal with the threat to Cassie...
And yet, I'm wondering if I'm imagining just a fractional, miniscule, tiny little bit of gruff concern. Like when Spike started freaking and hitting the (what was it? Cabinet?) he was hunched up beside, and Buffy caught his fist -- she looked like she was about to deck him until she realized he was freaking about having attacked her, at which point she seemed ever so slightly less cranky. And plus, her parting comment of "I think it's worse when I'm here." Hard for me to parse that... Buffy was obviously in "respond to imminent threat to helpless victim" mode, but that she said that to Spike on her way out rather than oh, say, "I don't have time for this" or "I'm not about to help you, you tried to rape me, you bloodsucking bastard" suggests that there's at least a microscopic grain of concern in there somewhere for not making things worse for him than they already are. ;)
And I'm good with that! If the show is aiming towards a real Buffy/Spike pairing, a goodly amount of time IMO needs to be spent developing him into someone she can actually genuinely trust. He's not there yet, and I'll not be surprised if it takes the whole season to make things change between them.
But I'm all torn now! I want to see it happen, right NOW NOW NOW, and I also want to see all the little bits and pieces that are just going to have to be put into place to actually make it happen.
This is gonna be fun.
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mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 10:18 am (UTC)He was hitting himself, not the cabinet.
And there was, in fact, a tear, as the transcripts suggest.
But it was the "She'll tell you. Someday, she'll tell you," that REALLY made me go AUGH!!! Because I really really REALLY want that to mean "Someday Buffy will tell you she loves you," but it might not! AUUUUUUUGH! Plus, AUUUUUUUUUUGH!
Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 11:02 am (UTC)I went back and watched the two-parter from Season 2 where Spike captures Angel so he can restore Dru back to health -- and seeing Season 2 Spike again only makes Season 7 Spike that much more of a dramatic change, IMHO. (Though it's STILL great to see him do lines like, in response to "What are you going to do to him?!" "I'm thinking dinner and a movie -- I don't want to rush into anything. I've been hurt, you know!" Hehehehehe...)
Are you sure about him hitting himself? I thought I heard something make a metallic thunk in that scene, but I guess if he was just thrashing against a cabinet that would account for that.
And YES. I'm totally fretting about what Cassie meant, too. "Someday Buffy will tell you she loves you" is an option. Possibly also "Someday Buffy will tell you she forgives you". I'm finding the latter a bit more likely at the moment just because my personal jury is still out as to whether Buffy will in fact actually LOVE him at some point.
<user site="livejournal.com" user="mamishka"> (who thinks I am a traitor and a turncoat for grooving more on this right now than on past Buffy/Angel history, but well hey, the Universe as it stands makes it impossible for Buffy to have Angel, so this is a good alternate scenario ;) ) and I were debating the nature of Buffy's feelings towards Spike to date... I have wondered whether she has had the potential for tenderer feelings to him already and has just been ruthlessly squelching them because she refuses to harbor such sentiments for a soulless "thing". By her own admission she was using him during their fling last season, and she was obviously also all about just desperately trying to make herself feel alive again... and yet, she broke it off with him in such a way as to suggest that she had at least a little bit of concern for him there. She called him "William" after all.
We've also been having amusing discussions as to why there seems to be much less difference between Spike with a soul and Spike without one... because so far the only major difference seems to be "now he's stark raving bonkers". ;) Because even before he seemed to be harboring altruistic motives and even a glimmer of remorse for trying to attack Buffy as he did. Compare to Angel, who is obviously a totally different creature without his soul. We were musing as to whether Spike is just a weirdo vamp who kept more of his human personality than is normal when the demon takes over... or whether it's part of him being a comparatively young vamp -- 'cause he's only what, about half Angel's age? Regardless, he seemed to keep a pretty big amount of "William".
Theory: Buffy won't love Spike. But she <i>might</i> love William. And perhaps the glimmers of potential tenderer sentiments she was exhibiting before had to do with Spike having actually retained some hints of William even without a soul. Now that he has his soul back, and William is home again.......
Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 12:10 pm (UTC)Have I mentioned my demonological theory of the Buffyverse? This was a response to a discussion some people were having about whether Buffyverse demons were inherently evil. My opinion: Yes, demons are inherently evil, but exposure to human beings can corrupt them with goodness.
Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 12:42 pm (UTC)Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 05:50 pm (UTC)We also have examples of otherworldly good beings, like Skip from Angel.
There's always Whistler and Doyle, the half-demons trying to do good. (And, for the curious, it was Whistler in the original Angel pilot. Emily has the early-draft script.)
So, it seems to me that not only is demons are inherently evil an incorrect theory, but what we call a demon is extremely subjective.
There are clearly Hell Dimensions, that are home to a lot of evil creatures, and certainly some kinds of demon seem to only come in the nasty varieties (all the Creature of the Week types), but there are more dimensions than just the bad ones, and you can't always judge a book by it's ugly scales in the Buffyverse.
My current theory is that nothing is 'inherently evil' or 'inherently good'. But living in a nasty dimension where there's pain and war and death as a daily part of life leads to nasty creatures, and they tend to not change much if they change dimensions for one reason or another (including getting stuck in a new Vampire body.) You could possibly redeem almost any kind of demon (or at least train it, for the more animalistic kinds), but those circumstances are really hard to achieve.
And hey, I'm a sucker for redemption plots too.
Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 07:15 pm (UTC)Same thing applies to the Buffyverse, methinks!
Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-17 11:34 pm (UTC)An idea I was once fiddling around with for a fantasy RPG campaign: Free will varies inversely with power. Human beings can choose between good and evil, but demons can't, and gods have even less choice about their actions. Human beings aren't even subject to Protection From Evil spells, except for powerful mages.
Re: mooooooooooore buffy spoilers
Date: 2002-10-18 11:21 pm (UTC)I'm not sure I like the idea you propose though... though I'm having a hard time nailing down exactly why. My gut says that I don't like the idea of anything so external and immutable affecting one's free will... maybe it's a "you have no choice but to let the power control you, you have no say in controlling the power" thing.
Someday she'll tell you.
Date: 2002-10-17 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 11:09 am (UTC)Damn useful site, for purposes of catching up on Buffy! Our former housemate
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Date: 2002-10-17 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 12:32 pm (UTC)Though again -- not necessarily anything we haven't seen Spike do before! After all, he did let Glory beat the living crap out of him and didn't give Dawn away to her either.