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Buffy, Angel, Spike.
It's a funny thing, but the comics are making me more fond of the show, more grateful for what we got and more willing to overlook the flaws. Anyway, today I went and re-read ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_royal_anna's review of Damage, and then began looking through the comments and found this absolute gem by ascian3. Under cut, cause it's a bit long. (Italics at the start is ascian3 quoting from Anna's post btw.)
Isn’t there the most delicious reminder this episode, when Dana throws Spike from the top floor of the building, and he lands, just as he did after being thrown from the tower in The Gift? Because there is Spike, and responsibility.
Yes, yes, YES! I think you've got it, absolutely, the difference I keep trying to work my way towards, between modes of expression of guilt on the path to redemption.
There's an ongoing conflict that underlies a lot of what goes on in the Jossverse, which is the conflict between heart and head. You talk about this a lot here, "heart and head, keep cutting until you see dust". And it's not an accident, not really, that this is so central here. Heart and head is the central conflict of the Buffyverse. Is the path to redemption paved with good intentions or good actions? Can you do good with evil in your heart? Can you do evil if your nature (and title character status) dictates that you're supposed to be good?
It was always Buffy's story, the conflict between duty and love, killing love to do duty, saving the world by sacrificing her heart. Because it was the right thing to do. Year by year, doing the right thing, Buffy turned to dust. Stake the heart, and you turn to dust. That was her story, and in the end it drove her away from everything; from house and home, from friends and loved ones and in the end, even from duty for a while. You can't save the world when you've turned to dust. It's no accident that the only thing she never did manage to lose was Spike - creature of nothing but heart - and it's also no accident that that's what saved her and the rest of the world in the end. Duty and love. In the Jossverse, when you're faced with a choice between the proverbial rock and the hard place, the answer is always to change the playing field. And that's exactly what happened, in the end; the answer to "heart or head?" was not either or, but "Yes."
And of course this is Angel's story, too, but Angel's question is a little bit different from Buffy's. Where Buffy tried desperately to do her duty in a way that allowed her space to keep her own heart, Angel's always tried to do his duty in such a way that his own heart - the one he's so desperately afraid of - is out of the picture. Angel's afraid of what his heart wants, and would rather live the life of the head. It's not a mirror of Buffy's story exactly, but rather its complement. In both cases, it's all about balancing heart and head, and in both cases the penalty for failure is a handful of dust, which is to say: isolation, and ineffectiveness.
And in both cases, I think, this is where Spike comes in. Spike (in general) is all heart, which makes him the perfect foil to both Buffy and Angel. Spike's the guy who always follows his blood (heart) and while this does not mean that his actions are necessarily good (good for Buffy, maybe, or good for Dru, or even good for Spike), they are good by the only yardsticks that matter to him - the people and things he cares about. Spike talks to Buffy in Fool For Love about the importance of ties to the world, and it's interesting that Angel gets a similar speech from Doyle in his own pilot episode. The essence of the speech is this: the capacity to act for good in the world is irreversibly tied to the capacity to care about the things you're saving. Spike has the opposite problem from Angel and Buffy - he only cares, and doing good has historically been a variably minor concern - but his quest is the perfect mirror of theirs in that regard. They're learning to balance head with heart, while he's (slowly) learning the importance of thinking with parts other than his blood.
the_royal_anna's review of Damage, and then began looking through the comments and found this absolute gem by ascian3. Under cut, cause it's a bit long. (Italics at the start is ascian3 quoting from Anna's post btw.)Isn’t there the most delicious reminder this episode, when Dana throws Spike from the top floor of the building, and he lands, just as he did after being thrown from the tower in The Gift? Because there is Spike, and responsibility.
Yes, yes, YES! I think you've got it, absolutely, the difference I keep trying to work my way towards, between modes of expression of guilt on the path to redemption.
There's an ongoing conflict that underlies a lot of what goes on in the Jossverse, which is the conflict between heart and head. You talk about this a lot here, "heart and head, keep cutting until you see dust". And it's not an accident, not really, that this is so central here. Heart and head is the central conflict of the Buffyverse. Is the path to redemption paved with good intentions or good actions? Can you do good with evil in your heart? Can you do evil if your nature (and title character status) dictates that you're supposed to be good?
It was always Buffy's story, the conflict between duty and love, killing love to do duty, saving the world by sacrificing her heart. Because it was the right thing to do. Year by year, doing the right thing, Buffy turned to dust. Stake the heart, and you turn to dust. That was her story, and in the end it drove her away from everything; from house and home, from friends and loved ones and in the end, even from duty for a while. You can't save the world when you've turned to dust. It's no accident that the only thing she never did manage to lose was Spike - creature of nothing but heart - and it's also no accident that that's what saved her and the rest of the world in the end. Duty and love. In the Jossverse, when you're faced with a choice between the proverbial rock and the hard place, the answer is always to change the playing field. And that's exactly what happened, in the end; the answer to "heart or head?" was not either or, but "Yes."
And of course this is Angel's story, too, but Angel's question is a little bit different from Buffy's. Where Buffy tried desperately to do her duty in a way that allowed her space to keep her own heart, Angel's always tried to do his duty in such a way that his own heart - the one he's so desperately afraid of - is out of the picture. Angel's afraid of what his heart wants, and would rather live the life of the head. It's not a mirror of Buffy's story exactly, but rather its complement. In both cases, it's all about balancing heart and head, and in both cases the penalty for failure is a handful of dust, which is to say: isolation, and ineffectiveness.
And in both cases, I think, this is where Spike comes in. Spike (in general) is all heart, which makes him the perfect foil to both Buffy and Angel. Spike's the guy who always follows his blood (heart) and while this does not mean that his actions are necessarily good (good for Buffy, maybe, or good for Dru, or even good for Spike), they are good by the only yardsticks that matter to him - the people and things he cares about. Spike talks to Buffy in Fool For Love about the importance of ties to the world, and it's interesting that Angel gets a similar speech from Doyle in his own pilot episode. The essence of the speech is this: the capacity to act for good in the world is irreversibly tied to the capacity to care about the things you're saving. Spike has the opposite problem from Angel and Buffy - he only cares, and doing good has historically been a variably minor concern - but his quest is the perfect mirror of theirs in that regard. They're learning to balance head with heart, while he's (slowly) learning the importance of thinking with parts other than his blood.