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FFL
I'm not really here... but I just checked out the FFL thread again a little while ago, and noticed that One Bit Shy had finally turned up and joined in! One Bit Shy is a fandom gem - he (I think it's a he) thinks about the show to a degree most other posters there don't seem to, and generally impresses the hell out of me. (Most people in that thread started arguing over Dru being Spike's sire etc. Oh and some of them didn't actually understand Spike's speech to Buffy - I didn't know that was possible.) I'd force OBS to get an LJ this very minute, except he hasn't actually seen AtS yet - he's now watching along with AOQ.
Aaaanyway, there was (of course) also a discussion going about vampires and empathy. One Bit Shy joined in and this is what he said. (Beginning with the comment he replied to)
Unless there is the ulterior motivation, I can't accept the closing
display of empathy for a human being as at all being in character with
Buffy-verse vampires, even a chipped one. He's still an evil evil thing
in my view. It's a sweet nice "There, there" scene, but it just doesn't
compute under analysis, IMO, without a creepiness quotient.
KenM47
Sorry for the length of this, but I think the empathy question matters, and
it prompted some thoughts.
I like to describe chipped Spike as a controlled experiment to determine the
boundaries of the soul. Strip away his ability to express his core vampire
essence - no more killing humans and drinking their blood. Alienate him
from other demons. They're not exactly fond of him hunting their kind. But
more importantly, by preying on them instead of his natural human enemy, he
is subconsciously turning on his vampire self, psychologically rejecting
that part of him. (A slow process, mind you. This scene is easily the most
overt expression of that rejection to date. Past incidents have been
smaller and more easily rationalized by circumstance. It's not something
Spike has understood about himself. What he learns from this, we'll have to
see.)
And then force Spike to live among humans, even rely on them for more than
their blood. Make Spike interact with them on human terms, not his own. In
other words, make him adapt as much as possible to their ways and observe
the limits of his abilities. In time you should be able to get a sense of
what the soul does by seeing what Spike can't do.
(Now actually, it's not all that controlled. Spike probably isn't a typical
vampire. You don't have the comparison of what a souled Spike would be
like. And the demon part, however much suppressed it is, is still there and
still influencing. But he and Angel are pretty much the only ones around to
study. And Spike's the only lab rat. So you take what you can get.)
The point being that Spike is being primed to act as human as a vampire can
absent a soul. And in this scene we get by far the biggest test of his
progress to date. We are definitely challenged by the result. You are
quite right, I believe, to bring up the question of empathy. Wouldn't
empathic ability by Spike defy what we've already learned from Angel about
what the soul provides that the vampire cannot? When Angelus ensouled is
flooded with the true horror of what he's done, feels what it really meant
to his victims, isn't that the introduction of empathy at work?
Perhaps it's just guilt. But I think that's an insupportably narrow view of
what the soul gives - especially since so many people with souls live
stunningly free of guilt. And guilt alone cannot explain the sharing and
understanding of his victims feelings that Angel experienced. Guilt is a
consequence of that. So, perhaps the soul's influence could be described as
the conscience - which it sometimes is in the series. As a description of
the soul's sum I think it's pretty good. Especially since it implies
something lasting that can define a person's character over time in a way
that a more ephemeral understanding could not. But even so, the conscience
still depends on a kind of empathic ability not exhibited by Angelus or much
of any other vampire we've seen. (Except - maybe - Spike.)
That's not to say, incidentally, that vampires are totally absent empathic
ability. At the least there seems to be a kind of vampire empathy at work
in how his victim's emotional horror resonates within Angelus. I think he
must understand and feel what he does to his victims. But the key
difference is that unsouled, he delights in those emotions. It's a work of
art. Feelings that are every bit as complete and nuanced to him as they are
to the human victims, but inverted so as to elevate his state of mind rather
than beat it down. There are probably other simpler and lower forms of
empathy too. Every vampire surely must get each other's hunger to feed.
Indeed, at a base level of understanding, there may be considerable overlap
with human empathy.
But to truly feel it as a human feels it, with all the resulting compassion
and guilt... that kind of understanding and sharing of feelings seems
absent.
So how do you reconcile that with what Spike does in this scene?
Spike has always challenged simplistic notions of vampire behavior. His
devotion to Dru reminds us more of human love than anything we've seen in
the vampire world. Certainly more so than the religious fervor of fealty to
the Master. Even Angel and Darla's pairing has been depicted more as a
partnership in horror where they inspire each other to ever greater evil -
not true love. Spike and Dru also inspire each other that way, but add to
it a personal intimate devotion that exists outside the bounds of good and
evil - especially from Spike. And then you've got Spike's seeming uncanny
ability to see and understand the emotional nuances of humans.
Well, I think it probably starts with simply recognizing that Spike's not
Angelus. That perhaps vampires can be as wildly varying in nature as humans
are. And that Angel might not be as good a template for understanding the
workings of the soul and the demon as we might have thought. (From what I
can gather thus far in the developing AtS story, we can see a similar idea
building with Darla, who would not seem to match the Angel template either,
even though Angel may imagine her to.) There may be more room to maneuver
than we thought.
But even within the constraints of similarity, much can be explained. I
don't think Spike's perceptiveness is really all that different from
Angel's. They just respond to it differently. Angelus exploits the
understanding. Angel is reserved and internalizes it. Spike just blurts it
out like Cordelia. Besides, there's nothing about being vampire that
requires Spike to be stupid or forget what he learned as a human. He's
quite capable of observing and putting two and two together without special
empathic abilities. Likewise, he's quite capable of using his brains and
acquired knowledge to construct a humane looking artifice. If A happens,
good humans are supposed to do B. He already knows much of that, and can
observe more. So he's able to pretend. Maybe even try to fool himself.
But, again, not requiring true empathy. I believe you've promoted something
akin to this - as you have the idea of a kind of twisted vampire love (and
other twisted versions of vampire human-looking emotions) that could go a
long way towards explaining Spike's devotion to Dru. They may follow the
forms of human love, but a close looks also sees them dancing around a flame
of pain and suffering that's human like only in its sickness.
I think Spike does indeed build such an artifice at times. But I don't
think that can explain this scene, where he comes to kill Buffy, certainly
not to deceive her, and clearly responds to her emotional state so
thoroughly as to completely transform his own. That's not faked.
Well, lets go back and look at Spike's memories again. For he would not
just remember what things happened and how things worked. He would also
remember how things felt and why. We've just seen that in spades as he
recalls his bad poet youth and then gets flung into the same emotional state
by Buffy's put down. Indeed, that's why he's here with a gun in this scene.
Since such memories have a way of welling up unbidden from the simplest of
prompts, and flooding you with their emotions, they by themselves could
create the appearance of empathy. In sense they really are, for when you
see someone in a state that reminds you of your own similar experience,
isn't that a form of empathy? (Some might argue that empathy is simply
memory and logic paired. I don't care to go further with that. But it's a
notion.)
I think that can go a long way towards explaining understanding, and
demonstrate Spike's ability to have feelings. Angel's the vampire with a
soul, while Spike is the vampire with feelings. Spike's wide range of
feelings goes back to S2, though it's probably been expanded since the chip.
I think that introduced a dose of self pitying. Now we see more how his
human life informs those feelings.
But there are still serious limits to that. It really only describes a self
centered view. He's still a demon. He still doesn't have a soul and its
elements of conscience. Why does he care about Buffy's feelings? Why
doesn't he exult in her pain the way Angel did? If you go back to In The
Harsh Light Of Day early in S4 - before the chip - he seemed to exult in
Buffy's pain then. Even accepting that Spike's obsession with Buffy and his
sexual attraction makes him less inclined to really want her dead, it still
doesn't explain why he cares so much how she feels now.
Where I end up is questioning the very premise offered. Are you sure that
it's empathy being demonstrated? I'm not. I think it's much more the
somewhat simpler feeling of sympathy. Something that also shares emotions,
but does not require anywhere near the level of understanding that empathy
does - nor its implicit sense of ethics or conscience. Spike knows what it
feels like to cry that way. He was just lying in an alley sobbing himself.
By itself that would likely bring him up short. Even before he begins to
wonder what's bothering Buffy, he's going to be pulled back into his own
sorrow and torn away from the raging fury he approached with. This is
decidedly *not* the climate of final confrontation that he imagined when he
loaded the shotgun.
With his fury stripped away, all the other emotional influences that have
been building up in him can come in play again. The obvious obsession with
Buffy. His sexual desire. How the chip has thrown him back into a human
world, both in the sense of his need to interact with humans today, and in
the sense of how losing his vampire abilities has returned him to the level
of the whimpering bad poet. How he's always felt beneath others and has
latched onto his "betters" aspiring to match them and win their approval.
In his current condition, all of these (and more) point in some fashion to
Buffy - his main contact with the human world, the mountain he cannot climb,
the only human he truly admires.
Though he is only starting to understand this, Buffy has become his role
model, his teacher, and possibly on the way to becoming his hero. She has
repeatedly bested him, and everyday shows Spike how his better acts - in all
ways. Not just in battle. There is much more than sexual desire at work
here - which is why the episode must resolve with something other than sex
or violence. Buffy has become to him what he aspires. He wants her
approval, her companionship - even her friendship. Not her suffering. To
want that is to aspire to lie forever sobbing in the alley. Consoling her
is probably in good part consoling himself. So he puts down the gun and
takes the huge step to forsake his campaign to hurt her, in the process
subconsciously blocking off yet more of his vampire self. He offers himself
as companion. And Buffy accepts.
This is not a bad moment for Spike. When Buffy accepts his company, it's a
sign of approval from her unlike anything he's received before. I imagine
his heart soared. He still sympathizes, still wants her to feel better.
Maybe even more than before Buffy's approval, since that would only feed his
growing sense of devotion. But it's still a great moment for himself.
This is the first time since the chip was implanted that Spike has found
something to live *for* besides ripping the chip out of his head.
As he thinks through it more, he might conclude that it is the first step
upwards from a downward spiral that began with his arrival in Sunnydale back
in S2. Of course that would all be wild hope now. Probably filled with
illusion and further steps back. But still more than he's known in quite
some time.
None of that is terribly empathic. It's actually very self centered. And
requires not a lot more than basic sympathy, which itself serves self
interest, even if not consciously motivated by it. And it's pretty
naturalistic. Spike doesn't have to think through all I wrote. He just
responds to his feelings. One thing nice about evaluating Spike is how
impulsive he is. He tends to react to feelings before thinking them
through. So you can usually see them as they occur.
I wrote all of this because of how important I think your comment on empathy
is. I think there is less empathy here than there might seem at first
glance. (Note that Spike has no clue whatsoever what is wrong with Buffy.
Buffy would not tell him. The only thing he knows is that she's upset.)
But that in itself is one of the clues to Spikes limitations when it comes
to empathy. Watching how empathy does and does not work with Spike - past
and future both - tells a lot about Spike's evolving nature. Shows where
the vampire in him cannot leave. Shows what humanity he is capable of - and
is not.
For purposes of looking ahead, I believe it is specifically Spike's failure
to achieve human empathy where he most fails in his dealings with Buffy.
Even when he most desperately wants and tries to do it the human way, he can
never truly see things through a human's eyes, and cannot stop seeing them
through a vampire's eyes.
OBS
Aaaanyway, there was (of course) also a discussion going about vampires and empathy. One Bit Shy joined in and this is what he said. (Beginning with the comment he replied to)
Unless there is the ulterior motivation, I can't accept the closing
display of empathy for a human being as at all being in character with
Buffy-verse vampires, even a chipped one. He's still an evil evil thing
in my view. It's a sweet nice "There, there" scene, but it just doesn't
compute under analysis, IMO, without a creepiness quotient.
KenM47
Sorry for the length of this, but I think the empathy question matters, and
it prompted some thoughts.
I like to describe chipped Spike as a controlled experiment to determine the
boundaries of the soul. Strip away his ability to express his core vampire
essence - no more killing humans and drinking their blood. Alienate him
from other demons. They're not exactly fond of him hunting their kind. But
more importantly, by preying on them instead of his natural human enemy, he
is subconsciously turning on his vampire self, psychologically rejecting
that part of him. (A slow process, mind you. This scene is easily the most
overt expression of that rejection to date. Past incidents have been
smaller and more easily rationalized by circumstance. It's not something
Spike has understood about himself. What he learns from this, we'll have to
see.)
And then force Spike to live among humans, even rely on them for more than
their blood. Make Spike interact with them on human terms, not his own. In
other words, make him adapt as much as possible to their ways and observe
the limits of his abilities. In time you should be able to get a sense of
what the soul does by seeing what Spike can't do.
(Now actually, it's not all that controlled. Spike probably isn't a typical
vampire. You don't have the comparison of what a souled Spike would be
like. And the demon part, however much suppressed it is, is still there and
still influencing. But he and Angel are pretty much the only ones around to
study. And Spike's the only lab rat. So you take what you can get.)
The point being that Spike is being primed to act as human as a vampire can
absent a soul. And in this scene we get by far the biggest test of his
progress to date. We are definitely challenged by the result. You are
quite right, I believe, to bring up the question of empathy. Wouldn't
empathic ability by Spike defy what we've already learned from Angel about
what the soul provides that the vampire cannot? When Angelus ensouled is
flooded with the true horror of what he's done, feels what it really meant
to his victims, isn't that the introduction of empathy at work?
Perhaps it's just guilt. But I think that's an insupportably narrow view of
what the soul gives - especially since so many people with souls live
stunningly free of guilt. And guilt alone cannot explain the sharing and
understanding of his victims feelings that Angel experienced. Guilt is a
consequence of that. So, perhaps the soul's influence could be described as
the conscience - which it sometimes is in the series. As a description of
the soul's sum I think it's pretty good. Especially since it implies
something lasting that can define a person's character over time in a way
that a more ephemeral understanding could not. But even so, the conscience
still depends on a kind of empathic ability not exhibited by Angelus or much
of any other vampire we've seen. (Except - maybe - Spike.)
That's not to say, incidentally, that vampires are totally absent empathic
ability. At the least there seems to be a kind of vampire empathy at work
in how his victim's emotional horror resonates within Angelus. I think he
must understand and feel what he does to his victims. But the key
difference is that unsouled, he delights in those emotions. It's a work of
art. Feelings that are every bit as complete and nuanced to him as they are
to the human victims, but inverted so as to elevate his state of mind rather
than beat it down. There are probably other simpler and lower forms of
empathy too. Every vampire surely must get each other's hunger to feed.
Indeed, at a base level of understanding, there may be considerable overlap
with human empathy.
But to truly feel it as a human feels it, with all the resulting compassion
and guilt... that kind of understanding and sharing of feelings seems
absent.
So how do you reconcile that with what Spike does in this scene?
Spike has always challenged simplistic notions of vampire behavior. His
devotion to Dru reminds us more of human love than anything we've seen in
the vampire world. Certainly more so than the religious fervor of fealty to
the Master. Even Angel and Darla's pairing has been depicted more as a
partnership in horror where they inspire each other to ever greater evil -
not true love. Spike and Dru also inspire each other that way, but add to
it a personal intimate devotion that exists outside the bounds of good and
evil - especially from Spike. And then you've got Spike's seeming uncanny
ability to see and understand the emotional nuances of humans.
Well, I think it probably starts with simply recognizing that Spike's not
Angelus. That perhaps vampires can be as wildly varying in nature as humans
are. And that Angel might not be as good a template for understanding the
workings of the soul and the demon as we might have thought. (From what I
can gather thus far in the developing AtS story, we can see a similar idea
building with Darla, who would not seem to match the Angel template either,
even though Angel may imagine her to.) There may be more room to maneuver
than we thought.
But even within the constraints of similarity, much can be explained. I
don't think Spike's perceptiveness is really all that different from
Angel's. They just respond to it differently. Angelus exploits the
understanding. Angel is reserved and internalizes it. Spike just blurts it
out like Cordelia. Besides, there's nothing about being vampire that
requires Spike to be stupid or forget what he learned as a human. He's
quite capable of observing and putting two and two together without special
empathic abilities. Likewise, he's quite capable of using his brains and
acquired knowledge to construct a humane looking artifice. If A happens,
good humans are supposed to do B. He already knows much of that, and can
observe more. So he's able to pretend. Maybe even try to fool himself.
But, again, not requiring true empathy. I believe you've promoted something
akin to this - as you have the idea of a kind of twisted vampire love (and
other twisted versions of vampire human-looking emotions) that could go a
long way towards explaining Spike's devotion to Dru. They may follow the
forms of human love, but a close looks also sees them dancing around a flame
of pain and suffering that's human like only in its sickness.
I think Spike does indeed build such an artifice at times. But I don't
think that can explain this scene, where he comes to kill Buffy, certainly
not to deceive her, and clearly responds to her emotional state so
thoroughly as to completely transform his own. That's not faked.
Well, lets go back and look at Spike's memories again. For he would not
just remember what things happened and how things worked. He would also
remember how things felt and why. We've just seen that in spades as he
recalls his bad poet youth and then gets flung into the same emotional state
by Buffy's put down. Indeed, that's why he's here with a gun in this scene.
Since such memories have a way of welling up unbidden from the simplest of
prompts, and flooding you with their emotions, they by themselves could
create the appearance of empathy. In sense they really are, for when you
see someone in a state that reminds you of your own similar experience,
isn't that a form of empathy? (Some might argue that empathy is simply
memory and logic paired. I don't care to go further with that. But it's a
notion.)
I think that can go a long way towards explaining understanding, and
demonstrate Spike's ability to have feelings. Angel's the vampire with a
soul, while Spike is the vampire with feelings. Spike's wide range of
feelings goes back to S2, though it's probably been expanded since the chip.
I think that introduced a dose of self pitying. Now we see more how his
human life informs those feelings.
But there are still serious limits to that. It really only describes a self
centered view. He's still a demon. He still doesn't have a soul and its
elements of conscience. Why does he care about Buffy's feelings? Why
doesn't he exult in her pain the way Angel did? If you go back to In The
Harsh Light Of Day early in S4 - before the chip - he seemed to exult in
Buffy's pain then. Even accepting that Spike's obsession with Buffy and his
sexual attraction makes him less inclined to really want her dead, it still
doesn't explain why he cares so much how she feels now.
Where I end up is questioning the very premise offered. Are you sure that
it's empathy being demonstrated? I'm not. I think it's much more the
somewhat simpler feeling of sympathy. Something that also shares emotions,
but does not require anywhere near the level of understanding that empathy
does - nor its implicit sense of ethics or conscience. Spike knows what it
feels like to cry that way. He was just lying in an alley sobbing himself.
By itself that would likely bring him up short. Even before he begins to
wonder what's bothering Buffy, he's going to be pulled back into his own
sorrow and torn away from the raging fury he approached with. This is
decidedly *not* the climate of final confrontation that he imagined when he
loaded the shotgun.
With his fury stripped away, all the other emotional influences that have
been building up in him can come in play again. The obvious obsession with
Buffy. His sexual desire. How the chip has thrown him back into a human
world, both in the sense of his need to interact with humans today, and in
the sense of how losing his vampire abilities has returned him to the level
of the whimpering bad poet. How he's always felt beneath others and has
latched onto his "betters" aspiring to match them and win their approval.
In his current condition, all of these (and more) point in some fashion to
Buffy - his main contact with the human world, the mountain he cannot climb,
the only human he truly admires.
Though he is only starting to understand this, Buffy has become his role
model, his teacher, and possibly on the way to becoming his hero. She has
repeatedly bested him, and everyday shows Spike how his better acts - in all
ways. Not just in battle. There is much more than sexual desire at work
here - which is why the episode must resolve with something other than sex
or violence. Buffy has become to him what he aspires. He wants her
approval, her companionship - even her friendship. Not her suffering. To
want that is to aspire to lie forever sobbing in the alley. Consoling her
is probably in good part consoling himself. So he puts down the gun and
takes the huge step to forsake his campaign to hurt her, in the process
subconsciously blocking off yet more of his vampire self. He offers himself
as companion. And Buffy accepts.
This is not a bad moment for Spike. When Buffy accepts his company, it's a
sign of approval from her unlike anything he's received before. I imagine
his heart soared. He still sympathizes, still wants her to feel better.
Maybe even more than before Buffy's approval, since that would only feed his
growing sense of devotion. But it's still a great moment for himself.
This is the first time since the chip was implanted that Spike has found
something to live *for* besides ripping the chip out of his head.
As he thinks through it more, he might conclude that it is the first step
upwards from a downward spiral that began with his arrival in Sunnydale back
in S2. Of course that would all be wild hope now. Probably filled with
illusion and further steps back. But still more than he's known in quite
some time.
None of that is terribly empathic. It's actually very self centered. And
requires not a lot more than basic sympathy, which itself serves self
interest, even if not consciously motivated by it. And it's pretty
naturalistic. Spike doesn't have to think through all I wrote. He just
responds to his feelings. One thing nice about evaluating Spike is how
impulsive he is. He tends to react to feelings before thinking them
through. So you can usually see them as they occur.
I wrote all of this because of how important I think your comment on empathy
is. I think there is less empathy here than there might seem at first
glance. (Note that Spike has no clue whatsoever what is wrong with Buffy.
Buffy would not tell him. The only thing he knows is that she's upset.)
But that in itself is one of the clues to Spikes limitations when it comes
to empathy. Watching how empathy does and does not work with Spike - past
and future both - tells a lot about Spike's evolving nature. Shows where
the vampire in him cannot leave. Shows what humanity he is capable of - and
is not.
For purposes of looking ahead, I believe it is specifically Spike's failure
to achieve human empathy where he most fails in his dealings with Buffy.
Even when he most desperately wants and tries to do it the human way, he can
never truly see things through a human's eyes, and cannot stop seeing them
through a vampire's eyes.
OBS
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somewhat simpler feeling of sympathy. Something that also shares emotions,
but does not require anywhere near the level of understanding that empathy
does - nor its implicit sense of ethics or conscience. Spike knows what it
feels like to cry that way. He was just lying in an alley sobbing himself.
By itself that would likely bring him up short. Even before he begins to
wonder what's bothering Buffy, he's going to be pulled back into his own
sorrow and torn away from the raging fury he approached with. This is
decidedly *not* the climate of final confrontation that he imagined when he
loaded the shotgun.
Nods. Spike seems to have kept the ability to "remember" human emotions and feelings and he often acts on them, unlike Angel(us). I'd definitely agree that he hasn't reached the point of empathy because as he put it "the spark" isn't there yet. But in his earlier life he was a caring, compassionate human being and bits of that are still floating around inside him. How else could you explain things like his devotion and caring for Dru? How many vampires would keep a sicky mate around who doesn't appear to be a bed partner? If something like that happened to Darla I doubt Angelus would be searching the world for a cure.
Spike has always been "different" than other vampires, from his very first appearance on the show up to the porch scene. He just seems to have a talent to do the unexpected and frankly I doubt many other vampires would have adjusted so well to being chipped. If someone gives Spike lemons, he just makes lemonade. That's one of the beauties of the character.
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And, missy, I have you to blame for this, I registered and joined the group ACK!! I _really_ don't need to have yet another place to go to read stuff about Buffy. I'm killin' me here - lol.
But I do have a question, I noticed some of the posts and pieces of post were written in gobbley gook like this--> K ig dktin se lke gtfse. HUH? From something I read later (and it might have been a post by you actually) I thought maybe it was some kind of method to hide actual text, in this case due to 'spoilers'. But if that's so, they how do you convert it back to the actual text. I also thought it might be a problem with my browser, I was reading it in IE. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about or am I just a lil' bit crazy like our poor Spike in early S7?
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(just hoping I'm not one of them*eg*)
The bits of nonsense are indeed to hide spoilers and as Elisi gave me the link...
http://www.rot13.com/index.php
Just paste it in there and then press cypher, it also works the other way around to scramble things up.
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Their logic is not like out earth logic! Maybe they're from Olaf's family? Anyway, those tend to be the Spike-haters, so it's not really possible to argue with them anyway. I remember
But I think the reason I'm joining in is all because of AOQ - what with watching the show for the first time, he has no pre-conceived notions or hang-ups. I guess we're all fighting for his
soulfandom opinion. And also since I never knew that fandom existed before around 'Chosen' I never did any of this fighting 'back in the day' - it feels like catching up or something. Also - it's fun arguing when you know you're right! :)And, missy, I have you to blame for this, I registered and joined the group ACK!!
Mwahahahaha! I feel so proud! *g* I'm actually thinking of making myself a profile, since I'd like to have a little quote at the bottom of my comments. So far I'm thinking of Sirk's:
It's metaphor. Please tell me I don't have to explain metaphor to you people.
Because it just seems very appropriates given some of the people there! ;)
Anyway, I really must run - it's my nearly-5-year-old's birthday party today! And since
Oh and I guess I'll friend you?
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I too missed all of the BtVS fandom wars as I only watched BtVS for the first time about a year and a half ago. I watched all 7 seasons at an incredibly accelerated pace and I adored Spike right from the beginning and then fell head-over-heels in love with him probably around early S5.
About 2 months later, tho I was still heavily involved in my first fandom – QAF (we were getting ‘horrible’ spoilers for the last season and I was getting more and more depressed about it so…), I decided to see if there was anything left of the BtVS fandom online. Because Spike was my man and S/B my OTP that’s what I searched for. And I checked out tons of websites, fic sites, message boards, LJ, etc.
Of course, where ever I went led me to other places and one day I found myself on a site that had BtVS articles posted and there was one called “How Spike ruined BtVS”. The Spike hatred was thick and I was, well, honestly, I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe it! How on earth could anyone hate Spike?
Spike is arguably the most incredible character ever created for/seen on TV. The depths and layers and permutations of the character, the incredible growth, the journey from monster to man to champion is a joy fiction lovers rarely get to see. IMO, the only others that came close on TV were probably some characters in the Farscapeverse but most TV characters pale and become ghostly in comparison.
Now that I’ve read a bit more anti-Spike meta, I understand better why some fans hate(d) him so much but I don’t think I’ll ever really comprehend it fully.
Sirk’s tagline will be perfect for that group. There are definitely a few folks there who seem to think only in absolutes. I also think there are quite a few of them who aren’t watching the eps now and haven’t watched them in a long time and probably never did watch all of them (like the later seasons). I find myself talking out loud to my PC “What? Where did that come from? Did you even watch the same show I did?” lolololol.
I’ve been enjoying your posts and am looking forward to reading more.
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I missed the fandom wars, since I only really went on-line after Chosen (OMG THEY KILLED SPIKE!!!!) and fairly quickly found a particularly lovely corner of LJ and never strayed far.
Really have nothing to add to all of your lovely statments about Spike - he is *the* best character ever! And going from completely bad guy to champion, and believably too? That's amazing! *happy sigh*
I often wonder what show these people watched - although it's no wonder that they tend to prefer the earlier seasons. Everything was so straightforward then!
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Yes, a very thoughtful post. I’d like to see what they make of the whole arc when they’ve seen the last two seasons. One of the things I’m coming more and more to appreciate about the whole soul thing is that because it didn’t begin a fully defined mythology, which was then rigidly adhered to, but grew as the story evolved it has something of the quality of real world psychology. For which theories are good for highlighting different aspects and generating new ideas but applied to any one individual, no one theory is ever quite enough.
So lacking empathy due to not having instinctive echoing response to other people’s pain is quite a good description of Angelus, at least his season 2 incarnation. He can recognise emotions perfectly well but feels nothing in response. It probably also accounts for Spike’s indifference to people not Buffy or Dru but the way Spike feels about people who are Buffy or Dru is something else. It’s love of a sort but I think the clue to the difference between what he feels before and after the soul comes from his comparison of love with drowning. He feels no boundaries between himself and the object (or maybe subject would be more accurate) of his affections. He feels their pain as his own because it is his own because he is them and they are him (so I’d differ from OBS about calling it sympathy). It’s like empathy but not quite like mature empathy because it’s twisted to be all about him and fails to encompass the understanding that he might not fully understand.
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I don't know - what is the difference between "I know how you feel, but I don't care, because I don't care about you" and being unable to empathise? Everyone is able to draw this boundary somewhere, otherwise we'd be swimming about in a permanent sea of grief. Perhaps Spike just starts drawing the line an awful lot sooner than most people. And yes, agree completely that empathy - or knowing how someone feels - needn't equate to knowing what that person wants/needs, especially if what they want isn't what you want. In many ways I think the defining characteristic of vampirism is overwhelming selfishness (perhaps that's why they're so attractive - they get to live out all the me-me-meness we so dutifully repress) and I'm not sure if that comes from a lack of empathy or from simply assigning other people's needs a low priority compared to one's own. Eg Spike knew damn well Harmony loved him, but he just didn't care. Whereas he cared about Dru, so he was sensitive to every tiny nuance of her shifting affections.
All very complicated.
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Thinking about selfishness, it's true one relatively consistent thing about vampires, even the newly risen is a kind of unquestioning self-confidence as if the soul takes with it the capacity for self-doubt, never mind self-loathing. Spike is at his nearest to being good when he’s still recovering from being beaten down by Glory or barely out of the denial stage of grief (over Buffy’s death). Pride. I suppose, is a traditional mortal sin but coupled with simple egotism also the root of much charisma. In Hollywood anyway. You must need a certain amount of arrogance to write or act or do anything creative.
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Alienate him from other demons. They're not exactly fond of him hunting their kind. But
more importantly, by preying on them instead of his natural human enemy, he is subconsciously turning on his vampire self, psychologically rejecting that part of him.
Hmmm... yes. Or even more simply, just settling in with the group of humans, adapting, as his only option. I saw the end of S4 again recently, as was struck by how Spike changes sides back and forth - he goes to Buffy and Co. for help after the chip, sells them out to Adam, and then goes right back to the Scoobies after Adam betrays him, because he's now learned that humans are simply more trustworthy. (I get the feeling this is why Spike was so shocked to have been cut out of the loop about Buffy's resurrection in "Afterlife," and why he was so sure there was a sinister reason for it - it doesn't fit his picture of the "good" Scoobies, but more like the sort of thing Adam and his ilk would do.) So in some ways, I tend to see him acting and reacting based on what he's gotten accustomed to, from hanging out with humans (shooting pool with Xander in "Triangle," etc.) If Buffy had been aggressive in that scene, he would've reacted in kind. That she was sad... it triggered something else. Something sympatico.
Like you say, not empathy exactly, but... something.
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Well not me literally, but yeah, that's the sentiment.
I don't have much to say to your excellent points, since I agree with them all. Thanks for commenting. :)
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*psst* hope birthday party went well!
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And the party went very well indeed. :)