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Souls and redemption in the Buffy verse.
I think I should probably start this by discouraging people. Because this is terribly, terribly long, very rambly and I’m not sure it all makes sense - also it’s very much a collection of my thoughts, so a lot of it is just opinions and speculation, going over well known stuff (it’s my LJ, I’ll waffle if I want to! *g*).
Another thing that I feel like pointing out, is that as a fan I was always easy to please. I liked Buffy and I enjoyed watching it. I never had any set ideas of where I wanted the show to go or what I ‘needed’ to see happen. I wanted to be taken on a journey and if it suddenly veered of to the left I found it an added thrill. So the argument of ‘but it should have happened in such and such a way instead of what we got’ never made much sense to me. It was never ‘my show’ in that sense (and thank goodness for that because Joss is a far, far better story teller than I could ever hope to be), I was just a grateful viewer.
Now about this post: it ties back to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
peasant_’s post a few weeks ago, which asked why do some people feel so strongly about soulless redemption? There were a lot of fascinating replies, but rahirah’s comment was possibly the most comprehensive and it just kept going in circles in my head until I began writing my thoughts down, using her comment as a jumping off point (her comments in bold). Thank you Barb! :)
So this is sort of the opposite (an explanation of why I think the soul was so important) so I’m bound to disagree a fair bit I’m afraid. But a lot of it is quite simply because we have different perspectives and want different things from our stories. Having thought about it, I think it comes down to who our Spike is!
Also I vainly tried to impose some sort of structure on this monstrosity: first come my responses to rahirah’s comments and then various musings on the nature of souls and redemption and stuff. If you get to the end I’ll give you a sticker! *g*
Souls and redemption in the Buffy verse
Rahirah’s comments.
My standard response to this is 'define redemption.' What I mean by the term is not what Alane over at BAPS means. What Alane means is not what the folks at TWOP mean. And so on. My personal definition has always been closer to "Spike makes the informed and conscious decision to work with the good guys on a long-term-to-permanent basis, and can be trusted to a reasonable degree not to eat people if dechipped." This is a far, far, cry from what some other folks mean by redemption.
This is of course one of the main problems - no one can agree on a definition. (And coming from a Christian background makes the whole thing even more confusing). Also I’m not sure unsouled Spike can be redeemed (although I’ve found a way that I’ll explain further down), and this is mostly because I don’t think he needs it, really. If he helps out in the way described above, that is pretty much all unsouled Spike is able to do - he doesn’t need to atone. Why should he? He doesn’t feel particularly bad about what he did, and if he dies he’ll quite simply go ‘poof’ and that’s that. No hellfire for him. So yeah, redemption almost becomes a moot point. I think it’s more where people want the character to go. Which of course brings us to...
Why did I want to see that?
A) Because the soul story had already been told. We know exactly what happens when a vampire gets a soul, and there's very little that can be explored with Spike getting one that hasn't already been explored at much greater length with Angel. Souled Spike is always going to be, to some degree, Angel Lite.
See I disagree already. Well more or less. Yes of course we already have a souled vampire - but Angel and Spike have always been opposites, even when evil, and having another souled vampire - someone to challenge Angel’s rather superior stance - is *fascinating*! For that reason I loved AtS S5 - differences create good sparks! Angel was cursed with a soul - Spike fought for his. Angel was pulled and prodded and handed shiny prophecies, but Spike fought quite simply because it was the right thing to do (and for Buffy’s sake of course! Without her nothing would have happened.). To be honest the Spike/Angel dynamic is possibly even more fascinating to me than Spike/Buffy. There is a family vibe between them that you don’t really get with any other characters on the show. They both had/have what the other wanted, are jealous and petty and yet incredibly loyal and understanding when the chips are down - very much like brothers.
During AtS S5 they go from this:
FRED: What did he mean, "saving the world"?
ANGEL: Oh, that—well—Buffy did most of the work. Well, he helped, but—
‘Just Rewards’ 5.02
To this:
DROGYN: The power to draw back Illyria lies in there. It requires a champion who has travelled from where it lies to where it belongs.
ANGEL: You got two of those right here.
‘A Hole In The World’ 5.15
Not to mention that in AtS S5 Spike pretty much *is* the hero, (seethedeadlyhook’s essay), we even have David Fury’s word that Spike is ‘morally superior’ to Angel. There are layers and layers and layers to their interactions, and personally I find it utterly mesmerising.
ETA: About the above point, then I didn't quite formulate it very well I'm afraid. Thankfullythedeadlyhook explained it beautifully:
In saying things like "Spike took S5" and "Spike is the hero", what I meant was that this is how it looks to Angel. Because obviously Angel is THE hero of that story; it's his story, his name is on it, but by S5 he'd graduated into such a state of reasoned, complicated, brooding elder statesmanship, like a medieval king, that Spike, by contrast, ends up looking more like a recognizable "hero." In other words, the sort of person Angel used to be, back when he had fewer ideas about the real complexity of the mission. Spike's presence points out the extent of Angel's current gray state, shows how carefully he weighs things now.
Also if we’re talking about ‘singular’ characters, what about Buffy? Buffy was The Slayer, but I never felt that exploring the stories of Kendra and Faith somehow lessened Buffy’s story. Having the contrast there only pointed out more sharply why I loved her. And my heart had plenty of space for the other slayers too! Faith’s story in particular brought out a lot of interesting facets, that I would not have wanted to be without.
Basically it never struck me as a problem or a reason not to go down that route. Finally I just want to point people in the direction of this essay bythe_royal_anna, which probably better than anything I’ve ever read manages to spell out the differences between our two heroes.
B) Because previously established soul canon re: Angel and Angelus strongly implies that a souled vampire is a different person than an unsouled one. Now, I do think that the writers changed and modified this idea considerably as the series went on, but originally, it's fairly clear that Angel and Angelus were conceived of as two separate beings, and this interpretation is still in play as late as S4 of AtS. William is a nice guy, but he's not Spike, and Spike is the character I was emotionally invested in. If Spike gains a soul and is no longer Spike, then quite frankly I don't care about him as much.
Well I don’t think so. And neither do Angel or Spike. Is Angel Liam? No. Is Spike William? Even more no. The soul adds to their characters, makes them more than what they were. (“I tried to find it, of course. The spark. The missing... the piece that fit. That would make me fit.”) Neither ever tries to pretend that it was ‘someone else’ who committed their crimes. Both of them consistently use the word ‘I’ when describing their unsouled selves. I think the ‘split character’ thing comes mainly from Angel trying to find a way of coping with who he was.spikewriter put it very well recently:
Angel is a construct -- but he is a construct created by Angel as a way to a) do what the soul points to as right vs. wrong and b) as an emotional and psychological way of dealing with what he's done. It's sort of "It wasn't me, it was Angelus, but I am ultimately responsible for what Angelus does."
Angel (in the hundred years he sits around brooding) builds very high walls around his demon, which I think is probably a natural way of dealing with such a big trauma. Also it might have something to do with the nature of the curse.lmbossy has a very interesting theory:
I'm prone to believe that the difference between Angel and Angelus comes down to how he got his soul - both Spike and Darla reacted differently, and didn't change greatly with or without their souls (aside from the gut-wrenching guilt) ... however gypsy curses are tricky things and I wouldn't be surprised if by pushing his soul back into his body, they forced the parts of him that made up Angelus (and Liam to a certain extent) out.
I think it's more like Angel is a cut-down, but shinier version of Angelus.
Basis for it: in the soul restoration spell, you have the line "Gods, bind him. Cast his heart from the evil realm" - I think this effectively binds the Angelus part of his personality, and locks it away from his conscious mind, preventing him from being able to revel in it as Darla did when she first came back as human. There's then the part "Return to the body what distinguishes Man from the beast!", however I think this can only be done after "Angelus" has been bound.
Still, Angel never denies that he’s the same guy as Angelus (From ‘Angel’. (BtVS 1.07):
“For a hundred years I offered an ugly death to everyone I met. And I did it with a song in my heart. And then I made an error of judgement. Fed on a girl about your age. Beautiful. Dumb as a post, but a favorite among her clan. [...] When you become a vampire, the demon takes your body. But it doesn't get the soul. That's gone. No conscience, no remorse . . . it's an easy way to live. You have no idea what it's like to have done the things I've done, and to care.”
And souled Angel still has all the same instincts:
“I can walk like a man but I'm not one. I wanted to kill you tonight.”
Of course he doesn’t kill her - the soul would never let him. This is the first instance we hear of the soul and there is not a hint that Angel conceives of himself as two separate beings. He’s still a vampire with a vampire’s blood lust, but the soul adds another dimension, forcing him to ‘behave’ (with time it will also make him a fighter for good, but it takes Whistler, Buffy and Doyle to get him to go in the right direction).
What’s interesting though, is that the more he tries to become a part of the world, the more worried he is about ‘slipping’:
From ‘Guise Will Be Guise’ (2.06) when Angel and the fake swami are sparring:
Magev: “Fight!"
Angel: "I am fighting!"
Magev: "Yourself. You're fighting yourself. Fight me! Why are you holding back? Why can't you let go?"
Angel: "Because."
Magev: "Why?"
Angel over their locked staffs: "If I let it, it'll kill you."
Magev: "It?"
Angel disengages and steps back: "The demon."
Magev: "Ha! But the demon is you!"
Angel: "No."
Magev: "Yes! That's the thing you spend so much energy trying to conceal!"
Angel shakes his head: "No, I just - I can't let it control me."
Magev nods: "Ah. I see. (Hits Angel's knee hard then hooks the staff behind his legs to drop him onto his back) You *don't* think it controls you?"
But what happens if he lets it out? In S2 of AtS we find that out, when Angel punches a giant big hole in the wall he erected, and - for a short while - is Angel The Vampire (with a soul, but screw that). From ‘Redefinition’ (2.11) after Angel has set Darla and Dru alight:
Dru: "I'm burning. Make it stop, please."
Darla: "Shh. Shh. That wasn't Angel."
Dru: "He's gone. He's all gone. Oh - it hurts! It hurts!"
Darla: "Wasn't Angelus either."
Dru: "Darla, help me. Help me, please! Please. Please."
Darla: "Who was that?"
So - getting a soul doesn’t turn the vampire into an essentially different person. As Darla says in ‘The Prodigal’ (AtS 1.15) , after Angelus has killed his family:
“What we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts even if they no longer beat. Simple death won’t change that.”
A simple souling won’t either - and we saw Angel seek out his vampire family after getting his soul, desperately trying to fight against what he’d become. His conscience wouldn’t let him, in the end, but he still felt the pull to the dark side.
Even Darla, when human, is just herself. From ‘Dear Boy’ (2.05):
Darla: “What do you expect? They're only human."
Angel smiles at her: "You better embrace that mediocrity, honey. You're talking about your own kind now."
Darla walks towards him with a smile: "But I'm still me. And I remember everything, Angel. Everything we did. Everything we can do."
Later, as her soul begins to weigh on her, Darla begins to wonder who she is - because all she remembers is being a vampire (‘Darla’ 2.07):
Darla: "It wasn't my name when I was human. - The first time when I was human, I mean."
Lindsey: "What was your name?"
Darla: "Hmm - I don't remember. (Shakes her head) I'm not her, whoever she was. I was Darla for so long - then I wasn't. I - I wasn't anything. I just stopped. - He killed me. I was done. (Turns to look at Lindsey) Then you brought be back."
Lindsey: "Yes."
Darla steps closer: "What did you bring back, Lindsey? What am I? Did you bring back that girl, whose name I can't remember? - Or did you bring back something else? - The other thing."
Lindsey: "Both. - Neither. - You're just you. Whatever that is."
Darla doesn’t even remember who she used to be... so the soul she has been given does not change her ‘back’ in any way. It confuses her, and she tries to fight it. What the soul in the end gives her is understanding - and the ability to let go. Which I think came into play with Connor.
Anyway, lets look at Spike. I’ve always thought that Spike was completely different to Angel in how he dealt with his soul, but thinking through all this, maybe there is some semblance amongst the differences. Let me explain.
Firstly of course, Spike deals better overall because of these factors:
1) He asked for a soul.
2) He has always loved in some way and doesn’t consider love an abomination.
3) He had someone to go back to who helped him, and who valued the soul.
Now what I noticed was the way Spike behaves between ‘Him’ and ‘Get It Done’. He is quiet and cautious. He is afraid of unleashing ‘it’. He no longer wears his duster. It is possible that he was trying to subconsciously build walls around his demon, in the same way that Angel did. This is of course pure speculation, but whatever the case might be he was putting a dampener on himself.
Until Buffy calls him on it in ‘Get It Done’ (7.15):
SPIKE: All this speechifying doesn't really apply to me, does it? (walks away)
BUFFY: (calls after him) Fine. Take a cell phone. That way, if I need someone to get weepy or whaled on, I can call you.
SPIKE: (turns to Buffy) If you've got something to say—
BUFFY: Just said it. You keep holding back, you might as well walk out that door.
SPIKE: Holding back? You're blind. I've been here, right in it—fighting, scrapping...
BUFFY: Since you got your soul back?
SPIKE: Well, as a matter of fact, I haven't quite been relishing the kill the way I used to.
BUFFY: You were a better fighter then.
SPIKE: I did this for you. The soul, the changes—it's what you wanted.
BUFFY: What I want is the Spike that's dangerous. The Spike that tried to kill me when we met.
SPIKE: (angrily) Oh, you don't know how close you are to bringing him out.
BUFFY: I'm nowhere near him.
Yes she’s mean. Incredibly so. But I’m beginning to think that it was possibly the best favour she ever did him. Because she forced him to bring the demon forth without it taking over. To quote ‘Guise will be Guise’ (2.06) again:
Magev: "Ha! But the demon is you!"
Angel: "No."
Magev: "Yes! That's the thing you spend so much energy trying to conceal!"
Angel shakes his head: "No, I just - I can't let it control me."
Spike learned how to use the demon without letting it take control, and it was feasibly his first real lesson post-soul and a very important one. Also, look again at what Buffy says:
“if I need someone to get weepy or whaled on, I can call you.”
Now call me what you will, but that does sound rather a lot like Angel in the early seasons of BtVS. Angel was very much ‘the mission’s true love’. He got hurt, he got kidnapped, he needed looking after... basically he was a bit of a wimpire. (Since we later found out just what he was capable of, then it is obvious that he was holding back the entire time.)
And here is Spike’s reply:
“I did this for you. The soul, the changes—it's what you wanted.”
That is - ‘I tried to be like Angel, because I thought that was what you wanted.’ But - Buffy doesn’t need Angel anymore, Buffy doesn’t need a boyfriend, she needs a partner. She has no use for someone who is a burden, but only for someone who can fight right along side her without her having to worry.
So yeah, I think she did a good thing in a nasty way. Of course it wasn’t plain sailing, as LMPTM showed particulary, but he learned how to live with himself. Then when ‘Damage’ came he was able to take a step back to where he was before, but without worrying about his demon. But I’ll get back to Spike.
To focus briefly on Angel again, then after his epiphany in S2, he went back to walling up Angelus. Until... until S5 I’d say. S5 of Angel show us a much darker Angel than we have before.makd argues superbly in this essay that he was beginning to put his two halves together.
Finally, about Spike and who he is post-soul I’m going to indulge in this terribly long quote from a review of ‘Beneath You’ (7.2) by Hunter Maxin, written after the episode first aired. It encapsulates almost everything I love about that scene and souled!Spike:
So this is how Spike has decided to wrestle with his demons: he’s spliced himself into halves.
On one side, we have William...tortured by the things he’s done. Soft at heart. Weak and misguided. Living in the past. Tormented. Unkempt hair.
On the other, we have Spike. Neutered Spike, yes, but still Spike. British cool. Devious, yet charming. Misplaced. Misguided. In love with Buffy.
Last week, I was sure that Spike’s reference to "just the three of us" meant Buffy, himself, and the big evil lurking in the shadows. Now, I’m not so certain. Now, I think it might just be Spike, William, and Buffy.
And how much more interesting is that?
In the end, however, I think the two came together. Maybe not for the first time, but the first for us. In the end, Spike met William half way and became something not entirely not unlike...a man.
Flawed and lost. Strong and with purpose. Confused about who he is in relation to what he wants. Vulnerable and pathetic, and all the more worthy of our love...if only because he is real.
The evolution was fast and furious, however, and I spent much of the last half of the night wondering what, exactly, I had witnessed. Then came the last five minutes...five of the coolest minutes of BtVS I have ever seen.
For starters, JM has gotten so good that...what? What can you actually say about him? He transcends, now. At this point, more than any other slight the show has received, his lack of recognition borders on criminal. We watched him swing, quickly back and forth, from William to Spike, arguing with himself, pleading with God, helpless to hopeless to threatening...with the smoothest of transitions and subtle, subtle power.
The performance itself left me confused. As if I could possibly write about something else. Because tonight I felt I saw JM truly come into being. And I was somewhat awed.
[transcript church scene]
Honestly, what can you say after that? What can you write? My friend, Jack Blair, who was watching with me, said it best – Spike has become the greatest vampire in all of movies and television. His character is so evolved, so complex, so, for lack of a better word, real, that to dissect him...to say that this is what he means and this is what he is offends.
People – real people – can’t be explained so easily. Only characters can.
Angel is a character. A beloved one, to be sure, but limited and confined by his motivations. I am a vampire with a soul. I atone for my past transgressions. The memories haunt me everyday. I brood therefore I am.
But not Spike. Not anymore. He is William and he is Spike, that which is beneath Buffy. But unlike Angel, in which Angelus was just a variation on a theme, this Spike, this current William, they are different. At opposites. And in the middle is just this...man.
A tired, tired man who just wants someone to explain to him what it’s all for. What it all means? Who is he here? Who is he now? And he suspects the only person who can tell him is this woman who doesn’t even really know who she is.
Forgive me.
As to what it will all mean...for us, for the future...that we can discuss. At length. In the days to come. But this is all I have now, and I didn’t even say it first.
Tonight, Spike became a kind of man. It’s exactly what Buffy deserves, and that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
ETA: It struck me that the big fight scene in 'Destiny' is the best proof of 'the soul does not turn them into different people' that there is. In Angel's case in particular - for once we see him not even attempting to hold back his darker side, the conversation a perfect continuation of the scene more than a hundred years previously. "You made me a monster!" says Spike, which if Angelus wasn't Angel would be a pointless accusation.
C) Because as a long-time science fiction fan, the trope of an alien trying to comprehend and fit into in a human society is deeply appealing to me. With a soul, Spike loses a great deal of that quality.
I can see the appeal very well - and f.ex. Spike is impossibly sweet as he tries to woo Buffy in ‘Crush’ by imitating what he thinks she would consider a date. The problem is that Spike isn’t an alien. In the Buffy verse, vampires are evil, and that’s that. However much he tries, Spike can only acclimatise so far. On the other hand... wasn’t this exactly the story we got with Anya? An alien trying to fit in. True she wasn’t evil anymore, but until late S6/early S7, she never understood what humans were really about and why her past doings were evil. Also, although technically human, she never really saw herself that way - even in ‘End of Days’ (7.21) when she’s talking with Andrew she speaks of humans as though they’re a different species. Hmmm, her speech is actually very similar to The Doctor’s in ‘The Empty Child’ from S1 of the new Doctor Who:
DOCTOR : Amazing.
NANCY (ordinary human girl): What is?
DOCTOR: 1941.... Right now, not very far from here, a German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it. Nothing. Until one, tiny, damp little island says 'no'. 'No'. Not here. A mouse in front of a lion. [He looks back at Nancy] You're amazing, the lot of you. Dunno what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me. Off you go then... do what you've gotta do. Save the world.
ANYA: And yet, here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting, but they do. They never... never quit. So I guess I will keep fighting, too.
Anya feels like an alien, but she grows to love humanity so much that she’ll fight on their behalf. As far as I can tell, Anya is the alien amongst the humans to a much greater extent that Spike.
D) Because the very impossibility of it takes my breath away. The fact that a soulless demon who shouldn't have been able to even understand the concept decided that he would try to be a good person when it is literally impossible for him to be a good person under his universe's metaphysical laws--that grabs me. And yes, yes, I know that Spike's motives were in some sense selfish...but damn, man, that he could come up with the idea at all impresses the hell out of me.
Now this is the bit where Spike’s soul quest takes *my* breath away. Yes it’s impossible - but he did it anyway! He literally did what shouldn’t have been able to do. (“Why does a man do what he mustn't?”) But - to return to the point. See in one way, I think that soulless redemption *is* possible. To borrow from the Bible, Abraham is ready to sacrifice Isaac because God asks him - and then at the very last second God intervenes. The *intention* or *decision* is enough. So yes, I can see where you come from. I think it’s treading water character and journey wise, but I can understand the desire to explore it. Anyway - I’ll come back to that.
E) Because works, to me, are more important than grace. The decision and the effort to do good in the face of impossible odds means more to me than when such a decision and effort is made with relatively little internal opposition. Even if the effort fails in the face of those odds. It is actually more impressive to me that Spike doesn't lick the bleeding accident victims while soulless than that he saves people while souled, because it is so very much harder for him to do when unsouled.
I already sort-of answered this above. And I absolutely get what you’re saying. It *is* a lot more impressive. But it’s like an alcoholic staying off the booze, quite simply because his wife asks him to, not because he acknowledges that he has a problem. And he might not ever drink again, but I still wish he’d realise that getting blind drunk is a bad thing. (Hmmm, not the best analogy, but I’m very tired. Also it yet again ties in with my main point that’ll come later...)
F) Because giving Spike a a soul allowed the writers to cry "Do-over!" and duck out of dealing with most of the emotional badness of S6 in any meaningful way.
Now this I don’t really get. It’s because he has a soul in S7 that he is able to comprehend what he did wrong in S6. It’s because of the soul that Buffy can say to her friends and Giles in particular: ”He can be a good man, Giles. I feel it. But he's never gonna get there if we don't give him the chance.” (‘First Date’, 7.14) (And it’s in S7 that she takes Spike under her wing in a way that she never, ever did before. Even the Potentials pick up on it). The soul wasn’t a ‘do-over’ it was a way of expanding the character’s understanding and showing how determined he was to change. The badness of S6 could never have been dealt with if Spike hadn’t been able to understand why it went wrong. See f.ex. ‘Never Leave Me’ (7.09):
BUFFY: You feeling sorry for yourself, Spike? That what this is about?
SPIKE: Feeling honest with myself. (pause) You used me.
Buffy bristles, but doesn't back away.
BUFFY: Yes.
SPIKE: You told me that, of course. Never understood, though. Not 'til now. (pause) You hated yourself, and you took it out on me.
BUFFY: You figured this out just now?
SPIKE: Soul's not all about moonbeams and penny whistles, luv.
(pause) It's about self-loathing I get it. Had to travel around the world, but I understand you now. I understand the violence inside.
BUFFY: Violence. (pause) William the Bloody now has insight into violence.
SPIKE: Not the same. (beat) Bad as I was, as evil and as wretched as I was, I never truly hated myself back then. (pause) Not like I do now.
It’s because of the soul that he understands why she broke up in ‘As You Were’ (6.15), why she walked away at the beginning of ‘Entropy’ (6.18), why she wouldn’t give in in ‘Seeing Red’ (6.19). She couldn’t let herself love him then and he never understood why - until he got the soul. And then he looked at himself and realised what he was. He never could before. (I think he got a glimpse in ‘Seeing Red’ and it was what spurred him onto the soul quest. It's the old you don't know what you don't know... until of course, you're faced with your ignorance. Also see this post.
(But - I’ll get back to this. Bet you’re getting tired of me saying that! *g*)
A good deal of my dissatisfaction with the soul option on BtVS is simply in the execution. I think they told that part of the story very poorly, to the point that to this day there are viewers who stubbornly insist that Spike was tricked into getting his soul. All in all, I would have preferred Spike to stay soulless, but there are ways in which they could have handled the soul thing which would have made me a lot happier with it.
Now this is much more personal and I don’t really agree with it, but as I said - I never had a problem with canon particularly. Although having recently met some of those fans who still believe that Spike was tricked into getting his soul, then I have to say that they appear to have been watching a different show.
In the end, I didn't just want Spike to be good, or be redeemed, or whatever. If that was all I wanted, all I'd have to do was write fic where Willow jammed a soul into him immediately, or turned him human. I wanted a story that went somewhere different and explored questions that Angel's story didn't explore. I would have preferred to see Spike blaze a new trail rather than follow perpetually in Angel's footsteps. I didn't get that, but I am more or less reconciled to what we did get. I certainly didn't abandon the character or the show because of it.
Now *I* don’t ‘just want Spike to be good, or redeemed, or whatever’. What *I* want is for him to grow and learn and realise that ‘I’m not good, but I’m OK’ isn’t enough. I would on no account want him ‘suddenly human’ or to have a soul jammed into him a la Angelus. One of the joys of Spike - to me - is that he’s on a journey the whole time, taking it one step at a time, and not stopping or skipping. The soul was a step - a big one, but the one that he had to take if he wanted to move forward. His story is so different to Angel’s that I think it’s almost like comparing apples and oranges. Except of course that they’re both fruits! (Ahem...)
And, I should add, because I don't believe in a cosmic balance where you can cancel out bad deeds by doing good one. I don't think Spike and Angel can ever make up for what they did in that sense. All they can do is do good here and now--and while remorse is an effective spur to doing good here and now, I'd hate to think that it's the only effective spur.
I agree with this. Very much. Not to mention the fact that it is deeply unfair that they should atone for things they ‘technically’ didn’t do. But such is the Joss verse...
The important thing though is what Angel says in ‘Epiphany’ (2.16):
Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda - worked it out. If there is no great glorious end to all this, if - nothing we do matters, - then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. - I fought for so long. For redemption, for a reward - finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it."
Kate: "And now you do?"
Angel: "Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because - I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness - is the greatest thing in the world."
And again in ‘Deep Down’ (4.01):
Angel: “...I did get time to think. About us, about the world. - Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. - It's harsh, and cruel. - But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”
That is why they fight - not because of the shanshu reward being dangled in front of them, and not because of their past sins (OK, maybe a little - they’re not perfect. But then perfection is boring - look at The Groosalug). They fight because they comprehend the suffering in the world and want to help stop it. And they can. Even if just for a moment. It’s what the fight in ‘Not Fade Away’ is all about.
See Buffy could trust Spike to protect Dawn in ‘The Gift’ more than anyone else, because all he cared about was her. He made Buffy’s concerns his own. If he saved Dawn - even at the expense of the world - then he would have done his duty. It’s incredibly selfless, and yet not. With a soul he might still have done the same thing... but he would have understood the moral quandry.
Does any of that make sense? I think I’m going in circles now...
Now... if Spike is a soulless vampire occasionally working with Buffy and crew because it serves his interests (like the world not ending) and if there's an arc about whether they could tolerate the crimes he's going to commit as the price of doing business with him because he's got skills they need.
Well, that's pretty much what was going on in S4 and early S5, though without the Scoobs actually thinking about the implications of leaving him to roam free. For all we know, the little old ladies whom he tried to scare into handing over their wallets died of heart attacks when he went fangy on them.
Nothing to add here, really. I liked S4 and 5 very much.
I suppose the thing for me is that I don't see such a clear-cut line between hero and not-hero. Obviously if Spike is actively killing people, not a hero, even if he once helped Buffy save the world. If he's saving the world on weekdays and stealing cigarettes on Saturdays, and has gone off killing people for some sufficiently binding reason, I'm not exactly sure what to call that, but I find it pretty fascinating. When I write about unsouled Spike working with the Scoobs or shacking up with Buffy or whatever, I've got stuff I want to explore: innate vs. socially constructed ethics and the limitations of both, the degree to which one's responsible for someone else's moral instruction or conduct, whether it's advisable to take that kind of responsibility even if it's going above and beyond, whether or not the existence of potentially 'redeemable' vampires really does make the Slayer a mass murderer, yadda yadda. Making readers think Spike is a hero isn't really the goal, just making it believable that he's doing the things he's doing, good or bad--and they can draw their own conclusions from there.
Now this is where it gets interesting. I’ve answered part of it above already - a hero is someone who fights selflessly quite simply because (s)he can, with no hope of reward. Soulless Spike would never have understood that. Now that doesn’t mean that he isn’t heroic! He was willing to die for Dawn (and Buffy) in ‘The Gift’ (5.22), and that is quite amazing and spectacular. And I love him for it, absolutely. But - would he have been willing to die for... um... Parker? Or Knox? See we actually know that he would, later (from ‘Shells’ (5.16)):
ILLYRIA: You are the protector of these creatures?
ANGEL: Yes.
ILLYRIA: You'd fight for their lives?
ANGEL: Yes.
ILLYRIA (looks at Knox): Even this one?
KNOX (nervously): Is that an issue? Is my life in peril, boss? King?
ANGEL: You're about as low as it gets, Knox, but you're a part of humanity. That isn't always pretty, but it's a hell of a lot better than what came before. And if it comes down to a choice between you and him, then yes, I would fight for his life, just like any other human's. Because that's what people do. That's what makes us—
I think I can say that Angel speaks for Spike too in that instance. But to get back to where I was, it took a while for Spike to get there - I don’t think that his sacrifice in ‘Chosen’ was completely selfless. It is probably very close to Buffy’s sacrifice in ‘The Gift’. So the soul doesn’t make him instantly good and perfect, but it creates the possibility. The choice is his. And I don’t think he really gets up to Angel’s level in ‘Epiphany’ until ‘Shells’ (when, interestingly, Angel seems on a downward slope):
SPIKE: “This is what she would have wanted. (looks at Angel) It's what *I* want. I don't really like you. Suppose I never will. But this is important, what's happening here. Fred gave her life for it. The least I can do is give what's left of mine. The fight's comin', Angel. We both feel it... and it's gonna be a hell of a lot bigger than Illyria. Things are gonna get ugly. That's where I live.”
So as I’ve said like 5 times before... it’s the journey that I love watching - the evolution of a character. And to some degree it doesn’t really matter where that journey goes, as long as it’s a believable one, although I think I would have been very disappointed if they had not let Spike fulfill his potential. None of the characters on the show was the same in the end as when they began, and often they did terrible things as they grew. But most of them learned from their mistakes and were able to strive to do better - and none moreso than Spike.
Going back to this point:
Making readers think Spike is a hero isn't really the goal, just making it believable that he's doing the things he's doing, good or bad--and they can draw their own conclusions from there.
I get the that making the character believable is important, and that to follow that might be interesting, but I can’t help but think that he’d be going round in circles. Letting the audience draw their own conclusions is wonderful, except BtVS was never really that kind of show. Buffy is good. Buffy is a hero. She inspires others to be good and heroic too. If her role became one of supporting someone infinitely at the same level, I’m not sure how that would work... See I can see the attraction of the ‘everyday struggle’ (like an alcoholic f.ex.), but if there’s never any chance of the person growing more than an certain amount, then it would ultimately leave me very frustrated. Which is why I’m very glad they didn’t go with ‘soulless redemption’ on the show. Maybe they could have, if it was Spike’s show, but not otherwise. Anyway, that’s not my biggest problem. See having Buffy in a relationship with soulless Spike - a real relationship, rather than the mess of S6 - would never satisfy me (much as I love it in fanfiction). Because they wouldn’t be equals and never could be. There’s 2 reasons:
1) If she was morally responsible for him, or for his conduct, that puts him in an inferior place. Which is where the adult/child analogy comes in. I can see how it would be fascinating to explore - and I’d love reading about it - but ultimately what I love about Buffy and Spike is that they’re equals. If he’s not Buffy’s equal, then the relationship loses a great deal of its appeal for me.
2) He can never really understand her. Of course he has empathy enough for three Buffies, but he will never ‘get’ her on the most fundamental level. We can see him trying over and over again in S6, but a lot of the time he gets it terribly wrong. And yes with time he might get his responses right 95% of the time, but he *still* wouldn’t understand and Buffy, I think, needs someone who understands. (Angel maybe understood too much, since they tended to feed off each other’s angst.)
See come S7 Buffy gravitates towards Spike - a lot. Because he understands! She doesn’t have to explain herself, doesn’t have to put on a front with him - they’re two of a kind. (See the bit from ‘Never Leave Me’ above - before the soul he didn’t even understand why she was using him or what that meant.)
I don’t think I’d want Buffy permanently with an unsouled Spike. To put it bluntly: She deserves better - she deserves someone who’ll understand. (Of course that also means that I want Spike to be every bit as heroic as Buffy - fighting for fun and puppies is well and good, but I want him to understand her purpose.)
A simple metaphor that might or might not work for you - it’s like vampires are colour blind. They still see all the right colours, but not the hidden picture!
Souls and vampires.
Now a lot of people complained about the amount of bad people and good demons that we saw. If humans (all containing souls) are that horrible, then why on earth should Spike want one? By the end of S5 he was doing a lot better than a great number of humans, so what’s the point? That is a good argument, and I’ll been mulling it over for days now. But I think I have some sort of reply now...
I’ll have to divide the argument up into three categories: humans, vampires and demons.
First two obvious points:
1) Humans all have a soul (except apparently that kid in ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’).
2) A soul doesn’t automatically make you good.
Vampires are (in the Buffy verse) always evil. That can’t be changed. They can grow and care to some extent, and obviously have feelings - are even able to love in their own way - but there is a glass ceiling they can’t break through. Spike was unique amongst vampires, in that he had a chip which made him acclimatise to human life, and then fell in love with Buffy, making him strive to be better. I don’t think we can count on all vampires to fall in love with the Slayer.
Now Spike could be good up to a point, but no further. And this is where the soul comes in. To get all biblical for a moment, there’s an excellent passage from Genesis that amply illustrates my point:
"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
The soul is like that fruit - it affords a knowledge of good and evil that is internal rather than theoretical. You can be evil *with* a soul, but you can never be fully good *without* one. That is the distinction. (There is more to it, but that’s my point for now.) The soul gives you the opportunity to make an informed choice - the choice is up to you.
This was the point of the Jasmine arch: She took people’s choice away. If getting a soul meant becoming a happy, clappy smiley goody-two-shoes, like Jasmine’s followers, then I’d never want Spike to have one. What a horrible thought. But it isn’t. The Jasmine brainwash was the opposite of an unsouled vampire - pure ‘good’ without the informed choice to be bad.
A different example - take f.ex. the case of Andrew. If Andrew had been a vampire Buffy would have staked him and never thought twice about it. But he was human, and that meant that he ‘could be saved’. Now Andrew didn’t so much choose to be evil, as just slide down that path with no resistance. When things got ‘serious’ (in Dead Things’, 6.13) he did the very human thing of covering up the truth with a nice story and never stopped - until ‘Storyteller’ (7.16). Now for a moment go back to ‘Dead Things’. Buffy and Spike have this exchange:
BUFFY: You can't understand why this is killing me, can you?
SPIKE: Why don't you explain it?
She never even tried - it would be pointless. It’s not the sort of thing that needs explaining. See she tried with Faith after the accidental killing of Allen, but Faith refused to listen and told herself a nice story about how Slayers are supposed to kill things and that she didn’t care. It wasn’t until much later that she stopped lying to herself. When Buffy forced Andrew to confront himself and his deeds, he knew exactly why what he had done was wrong - and when he stopped running away from his deeds ‘they were killing him’.
To briefly touch upon ‘demons’ generally, then they have to be judged on a demon by demon basis. Some are harmless (Clem), some are good (the protector demon in ‘Judgement’ (AtS 2.1) f.ex), but most are bad. They get judged by their actions, since it’s impossible to tell if they have souls, and whether that makes a difference. If you want to contemplate Buffy as mass murderer, thinking about demons would be more interesting than vampires.
Now about souls and vampires... firstly, a soul is a thoroughly nasty thing for a vampire to have, in pretty much every way. The soul itself was probably perfectly happy in some sort of heavenly dimension, and then it got shoved into a vampire to be burdened with mind-crushingly heavy guilt - and if the vampire dies, the soul will spend eternity in Hell, paying for sins it never committed. The Buffy verse is a real bitch! Going back to my Genesis quote above (‘for when you eat of it you will surely die’), it is echoed in 'Hellbound' (5.04):
Pavayne: "Beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you... damns you to suffer - forever."
So Spike and Angel were infinitely better off unsouled. But - I’m not sure that’s what I want. I want my vampires to reach their full potential. Unsouled, that is quite simply impossible. Unsouled Spike is like Lorne I think, more or less. Character wise they’re vastly different, but Lorne helps out because his friends happen to fight evil. Caritas welcomed everyone, remember? Even baby eating monstrosities - as long as they didn’t eat them *there* Lorne wasn’t too bothered. I love Lorne greatly, but he could never be a hero.
Now about redemption... redemption is a tricky word. Everyone means something different. And I can definitely see the merits of ‘soulless redemption’ - it’d be a lot better from Spike’s POV for a start. Although I’m not sure it’d be redemption at all really - and (as I said at the start) I’m not sure a soulless Spike would need redeeming. Soulless Spike is OK. See this is where we get into the whole ‘can any vampire be redeemed, and is Buffy a murderer?’
Having mulled this over, I think Buffy only has two choices - either to kill any vamps she comes across, or to soul them the moment they rise, before they can kill anyone. Staking vampires only kills the demon, which is evil anyway - the person’s soul is safely in heaven (I guess?). The other option is to let the vampire live but give it a soul - but this has to be done before the vamp has time to walk around maiming and killing. First of all it would traumatise the ‘soul’ once it got back and also (if the killing was great) it would condemn the soul to hell. Such are the rules of the verse, and they are harsh. Now some people (like Ford) would obviously like to continue living, even as a vampire. This is all hypothetical of course, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea to be immortal on those terms (see ‘Eternity’, 1.17). As Buffy said in ‘Afterlife’ - it was her time. She might have a wonderful life, but still I think her time in heaven will always fill her with longing.
Humans and souls.
Anyway - back to souls and good and evil: People can be more evil than demons. Demons - vampires - might generally do worse things, but - in a way they can’t help it. As Spike says re. tasting his nose blood: “It’s blood - it’s what I do.” Vampires revel in evil, they enjoy it. Humans should enjoy ice creams and snuggles. So when a human deliberately decides to be evil, it’s a lot worse, because he (or she) makes an informed choice. Which is why I would consider Warren more evil that Angelus.
This is also why Christianity teaches that the devil is a fallen angel - the higher up you are, the further there is to fall. Or put another way: The more potential there is for good, the more there also is for evil. Take f.ex. a Fyarl Demon. If you could somehow make it ‘good’, it would never be able to be a champion - it’s not even very evil, it just likes smashing stuff. Now take Angel - when evil he was recorded as being the most vicious vampire that ever lived. Vampires have great potential, although most of it goes untapped.
There is a reason The Vampire With A Soul is so important - if he willingly, and knowing all implications, chooses to go down the road to darkness, then that is far more powerful than anything a normal vampire could ever do. A souled Angel going bad would be far, far worse than Angelus. Which is of course why there’s a prophecy. A Champion gone dark is pretty much a bad as you can get - just look a Darth Vader!
To quote Angel himself in ‘Amends’ (3.10):
“Look, I'm weak. I've never been anything else. It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man.”
Pondering this, I think it might have something to do with the later seasons in particular... seasons 6 and 7 are all about the internal struggle, rather than the external one. In the early seasons (the High School years in particular), the demons Buffy faces are often representations of real troubles. But demons are easy to slay - and Buffy is the hero who wins every time. When you’re a teenager it might feel like the end of the world if someone dumps you, but you’ll get over it. The battles you have to fight when you’re grown up are a lot harder and have much bigger fallout.
I think one of the reasons I love season 6 so very much is because it pushes all the boundaries to breaking point - and beyond. How good can you make someone inherently evil? How evil can you make someone inherently good? What happens when the hero behaves like a monster and vice versa? What if all of our good guys fall and stumble because of their inherent failings? What if the ‘Big Bad’ is just a sad loser, who’s more self-absorbed and deluded than any demon we’ve seen so far? What if the sweet little geek with the big potential lets out her rage? What if the writers break pretty much all the rules and the characters they’ve made?
The biggest break of course being Spike. In S6 his fall from darkness goes into freefall (or maybe it’s more yo-yo like?), until he hits that glass ceiling. Only to break through it at the end.
Then we get S7 as the counter balance - trying to slowly put all the pieces back where they belonged. The cracks will always be there, but I like my heroes to be a bit worn and broken.
Because S7 is quite literally the season of redemption. Not in an overly way, but one where all the main characters know that they screwed up, and that they might not ever be able to fix what they broke, but that wailing won't help. So they quite simply just try to do what they can - to utilise their talents as much as possible. It's not easy of course (frenchani’s theory about the FE being a manifestation of people fears is a truly excellent idea) but they keep going - and pick themselves and each other up when they fall.
And this is where Andrew becomes so important. All the others know that they screwed up royally, but they internalise most of it. Andrew keeps pretending that things are fine, so Buffy has to force him to face the facts. He’s the Storyteller - and within his own story, he manages to tell the story of everyone else too. If we look at his and Buffy’s conversation we can place any Scoobie in his place and know how they feel (from Storyteller, 7.16):
BUFFY: When your blood pours out, it might save the world. What do you think about that? Does it buy it all back? Are you redeemed?
ANDREW: (crying) No.
BUFFY: Why not?
ANDREW: (sobbing, his face is tear-streaked) Because I killed him. Because I listened to Warren, and I pretended I thought it was him, but I knew—I knew it wasn't. And I killed Jonathan. And now you're gonna kill me. And I'm scared, and I'm going to die. And this—this is what Jonathan felt.
There is no way to undo what you did. You murder someone, or you really, seriously hurt the person you love, betraying their trust, you can never make up for it (depends on what you did of course, it’s hard to talk about thing in a general way when the deeds are so different). Saying 'sorry' won't fix anything. All you can do is to carry on, try to make very day count. As Andrew learns:
ANDREW: Here's the thing. I killed my best friend. There's a big fight coming, and I don't know what's going to happen. I don't even think I'm going to live through it. (looks down) That's, uh, probably the way it should be. I guess I'm—
The Scoobies and Spike all know this. But none of them ever mention redemption - it is only Andrew who talks about it, which makes sense since he is the guy representing all of our fallen characters. Only redemption isn't a shiny prize you get after a sacrifice, it's the daily grind. Or something - the more I try to pin down what redemption is, the more confused I get. So I guess in some way we do agree, except I want Spike to have the understanding Andrew found. Without his soul, he never would. With the soul he did - and more.
To finish:
My Spike will always be a lover and a fighter. But more than that he’s a Champion. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. :)
Another thing that I feel like pointing out, is that as a fan I was always easy to please. I liked Buffy and I enjoyed watching it. I never had any set ideas of where I wanted the show to go or what I ‘needed’ to see happen. I wanted to be taken on a journey and if it suddenly veered of to the left I found it an added thrill. So the argument of ‘but it should have happened in such and such a way instead of what we got’ never made much sense to me. It was never ‘my show’ in that sense (and thank goodness for that because Joss is a far, far better story teller than I could ever hope to be), I was just a grateful viewer.
Now about this post: it ties back to
peasant_’s post a few weeks ago, which asked why do some people feel so strongly about soulless redemption? There were a lot of fascinating replies, but rahirah’s comment was possibly the most comprehensive and it just kept going in circles in my head until I began writing my thoughts down, using her comment as a jumping off point (her comments in bold). Thank you Barb! :) So this is sort of the opposite (an explanation of why I think the soul was so important) so I’m bound to disagree a fair bit I’m afraid. But a lot of it is quite simply because we have different perspectives and want different things from our stories. Having thought about it, I think it comes down to who our Spike is!
Also I vainly tried to impose some sort of structure on this monstrosity: first come my responses to rahirah’s comments and then various musings on the nature of souls and redemption and stuff. If you get to the end I’ll give you a sticker! *g*
Rahirah’s comments.
My standard response to this is 'define redemption.' What I mean by the term is not what Alane over at BAPS means. What Alane means is not what the folks at TWOP mean. And so on. My personal definition has always been closer to "Spike makes the informed and conscious decision to work with the good guys on a long-term-to-permanent basis, and can be trusted to a reasonable degree not to eat people if dechipped." This is a far, far, cry from what some other folks mean by redemption.
This is of course one of the main problems - no one can agree on a definition. (And coming from a Christian background makes the whole thing even more confusing). Also I’m not sure unsouled Spike can be redeemed (although I’ve found a way that I’ll explain further down), and this is mostly because I don’t think he needs it, really. If he helps out in the way described above, that is pretty much all unsouled Spike is able to do - he doesn’t need to atone. Why should he? He doesn’t feel particularly bad about what he did, and if he dies he’ll quite simply go ‘poof’ and that’s that. No hellfire for him. So yeah, redemption almost becomes a moot point. I think it’s more where people want the character to go. Which of course brings us to...
Why did I want to see that?
A) Because the soul story had already been told. We know exactly what happens when a vampire gets a soul, and there's very little that can be explored with Spike getting one that hasn't already been explored at much greater length with Angel. Souled Spike is always going to be, to some degree, Angel Lite.
See I disagree already. Well more or less. Yes of course we already have a souled vampire - but Angel and Spike have always been opposites, even when evil, and having another souled vampire - someone to challenge Angel’s rather superior stance - is *fascinating*! For that reason I loved AtS S5 - differences create good sparks! Angel was cursed with a soul - Spike fought for his. Angel was pulled and prodded and handed shiny prophecies, but Spike fought quite simply because it was the right thing to do (and for Buffy’s sake of course! Without her nothing would have happened.). To be honest the Spike/Angel dynamic is possibly even more fascinating to me than Spike/Buffy. There is a family vibe between them that you don’t really get with any other characters on the show. They both had/have what the other wanted, are jealous and petty and yet incredibly loyal and understanding when the chips are down - very much like brothers.
During AtS S5 they go from this:
FRED: What did he mean, "saving the world"?
ANGEL: Oh, that—well—Buffy did most of the work. Well, he helped, but—
‘Just Rewards’ 5.02
To this:
DROGYN: The power to draw back Illyria lies in there. It requires a champion who has travelled from where it lies to where it belongs.
ANGEL: You got two of those right here.
‘A Hole In The World’ 5.15
Not to mention that in AtS S5 Spike pretty much *is* the hero, (see
thedeadlyhook’s essay), we even have David Fury’s word that Spike is ‘morally superior’ to Angel. There are layers and layers and layers to their interactions, and personally I find it utterly mesmerising. ETA: About the above point, then I didn't quite formulate it very well I'm afraid. Thankfully
thedeadlyhook explained it beautifully:In saying things like "Spike took S5" and "Spike is the hero", what I meant was that this is how it looks to Angel. Because obviously Angel is THE hero of that story; it's his story, his name is on it, but by S5 he'd graduated into such a state of reasoned, complicated, brooding elder statesmanship, like a medieval king, that Spike, by contrast, ends up looking more like a recognizable "hero." In other words, the sort of person Angel used to be, back when he had fewer ideas about the real complexity of the mission. Spike's presence points out the extent of Angel's current gray state, shows how carefully he weighs things now.
Also if we’re talking about ‘singular’ characters, what about Buffy? Buffy was The Slayer, but I never felt that exploring the stories of Kendra and Faith somehow lessened Buffy’s story. Having the contrast there only pointed out more sharply why I loved her. And my heart had plenty of space for the other slayers too! Faith’s story in particular brought out a lot of interesting facets, that I would not have wanted to be without.
Basically it never struck me as a problem or a reason not to go down that route. Finally I just want to point people in the direction of this essay by
the_royal_anna, which probably better than anything I’ve ever read manages to spell out the differences between our two heroes. B) Because previously established soul canon re: Angel and Angelus strongly implies that a souled vampire is a different person than an unsouled one. Now, I do think that the writers changed and modified this idea considerably as the series went on, but originally, it's fairly clear that Angel and Angelus were conceived of as two separate beings, and this interpretation is still in play as late as S4 of AtS. William is a nice guy, but he's not Spike, and Spike is the character I was emotionally invested in. If Spike gains a soul and is no longer Spike, then quite frankly I don't care about him as much.
Well I don’t think so. And neither do Angel or Spike. Is Angel Liam? No. Is Spike William? Even more no. The soul adds to their characters, makes them more than what they were. (“I tried to find it, of course. The spark. The missing... the piece that fit. That would make me fit.”) Neither ever tries to pretend that it was ‘someone else’ who committed their crimes. Both of them consistently use the word ‘I’ when describing their unsouled selves. I think the ‘split character’ thing comes mainly from Angel trying to find a way of coping with who he was.
spikewriter put it very well recently:Angel is a construct -- but he is a construct created by Angel as a way to a) do what the soul points to as right vs. wrong and b) as an emotional and psychological way of dealing with what he's done. It's sort of "It wasn't me, it was Angelus, but I am ultimately responsible for what Angelus does."
Angel (in the hundred years he sits around brooding) builds very high walls around his demon, which I think is probably a natural way of dealing with such a big trauma. Also it might have something to do with the nature of the curse.
lmbossy has a very interesting theory:I'm prone to believe that the difference between Angel and Angelus comes down to how he got his soul - both Spike and Darla reacted differently, and didn't change greatly with or without their souls (aside from the gut-wrenching guilt) ... however gypsy curses are tricky things and I wouldn't be surprised if by pushing his soul back into his body, they forced the parts of him that made up Angelus (and Liam to a certain extent) out.
I think it's more like Angel is a cut-down, but shinier version of Angelus.
Basis for it: in the soul restoration spell, you have the line "Gods, bind him. Cast his heart from the evil realm" - I think this effectively binds the Angelus part of his personality, and locks it away from his conscious mind, preventing him from being able to revel in it as Darla did when she first came back as human. There's then the part "Return to the body what distinguishes Man from the beast!", however I think this can only be done after "Angelus" has been bound.
Still, Angel never denies that he’s the same guy as Angelus (From ‘Angel’. (BtVS 1.07):
“For a hundred years I offered an ugly death to everyone I met. And I did it with a song in my heart. And then I made an error of judgement. Fed on a girl about your age. Beautiful. Dumb as a post, but a favorite among her clan. [...] When you become a vampire, the demon takes your body. But it doesn't get the soul. That's gone. No conscience, no remorse . . . it's an easy way to live. You have no idea what it's like to have done the things I've done, and to care.”
And souled Angel still has all the same instincts:
“I can walk like a man but I'm not one. I wanted to kill you tonight.”
Of course he doesn’t kill her - the soul would never let him. This is the first instance we hear of the soul and there is not a hint that Angel conceives of himself as two separate beings. He’s still a vampire with a vampire’s blood lust, but the soul adds another dimension, forcing him to ‘behave’ (with time it will also make him a fighter for good, but it takes Whistler, Buffy and Doyle to get him to go in the right direction).
What’s interesting though, is that the more he tries to become a part of the world, the more worried he is about ‘slipping’:
From ‘Guise Will Be Guise’ (2.06) when Angel and the fake swami are sparring:
Magev: “Fight!"
Angel: "I am fighting!"
Magev: "Yourself. You're fighting yourself. Fight me! Why are you holding back? Why can't you let go?"
Angel: "Because."
Magev: "Why?"
Angel over their locked staffs: "If I let it, it'll kill you."
Magev: "It?"
Angel disengages and steps back: "The demon."
Magev: "Ha! But the demon is you!"
Angel: "No."
Magev: "Yes! That's the thing you spend so much energy trying to conceal!"
Angel shakes his head: "No, I just - I can't let it control me."
Magev nods: "Ah. I see. (Hits Angel's knee hard then hooks the staff behind his legs to drop him onto his back) You *don't* think it controls you?"
But what happens if he lets it out? In S2 of AtS we find that out, when Angel punches a giant big hole in the wall he erected, and - for a short while - is Angel The Vampire (with a soul, but screw that). From ‘Redefinition’ (2.11) after Angel has set Darla and Dru alight:
Dru: "I'm burning. Make it stop, please."
Darla: "Shh. Shh. That wasn't Angel."
Dru: "He's gone. He's all gone. Oh - it hurts! It hurts!"
Darla: "Wasn't Angelus either."
Dru: "Darla, help me. Help me, please! Please. Please."
Darla: "Who was that?"
So - getting a soul doesn’t turn the vampire into an essentially different person. As Darla says in ‘The Prodigal’ (AtS 1.15) , after Angelus has killed his family:
“What we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts even if they no longer beat. Simple death won’t change that.”
A simple souling won’t either - and we saw Angel seek out his vampire family after getting his soul, desperately trying to fight against what he’d become. His conscience wouldn’t let him, in the end, but he still felt the pull to the dark side.
Even Darla, when human, is just herself. From ‘Dear Boy’ (2.05):
Darla: “What do you expect? They're only human."
Angel smiles at her: "You better embrace that mediocrity, honey. You're talking about your own kind now."
Darla walks towards him with a smile: "But I'm still me. And I remember everything, Angel. Everything we did. Everything we can do."
Later, as her soul begins to weigh on her, Darla begins to wonder who she is - because all she remembers is being a vampire (‘Darla’ 2.07):
Darla: "It wasn't my name when I was human. - The first time when I was human, I mean."
Lindsey: "What was your name?"
Darla: "Hmm - I don't remember. (Shakes her head) I'm not her, whoever she was. I was Darla for so long - then I wasn't. I - I wasn't anything. I just stopped. - He killed me. I was done. (Turns to look at Lindsey) Then you brought be back."
Lindsey: "Yes."
Darla steps closer: "What did you bring back, Lindsey? What am I? Did you bring back that girl, whose name I can't remember? - Or did you bring back something else? - The other thing."
Lindsey: "Both. - Neither. - You're just you. Whatever that is."
Darla doesn’t even remember who she used to be... so the soul she has been given does not change her ‘back’ in any way. It confuses her, and she tries to fight it. What the soul in the end gives her is understanding - and the ability to let go. Which I think came into play with Connor.
Anyway, lets look at Spike. I’ve always thought that Spike was completely different to Angel in how he dealt with his soul, but thinking through all this, maybe there is some semblance amongst the differences. Let me explain.
Firstly of course, Spike deals better overall because of these factors:
1) He asked for a soul.
2) He has always loved in some way and doesn’t consider love an abomination.
3) He had someone to go back to who helped him, and who valued the soul.
Now what I noticed was the way Spike behaves between ‘Him’ and ‘Get It Done’. He is quiet and cautious. He is afraid of unleashing ‘it’. He no longer wears his duster. It is possible that he was trying to subconsciously build walls around his demon, in the same way that Angel did. This is of course pure speculation, but whatever the case might be he was putting a dampener on himself.
Until Buffy calls him on it in ‘Get It Done’ (7.15):
SPIKE: All this speechifying doesn't really apply to me, does it? (walks away)
BUFFY: (calls after him) Fine. Take a cell phone. That way, if I need someone to get weepy or whaled on, I can call you.
SPIKE: (turns to Buffy) If you've got something to say—
BUFFY: Just said it. You keep holding back, you might as well walk out that door.
SPIKE: Holding back? You're blind. I've been here, right in it—fighting, scrapping...
BUFFY: Since you got your soul back?
SPIKE: Well, as a matter of fact, I haven't quite been relishing the kill the way I used to.
BUFFY: You were a better fighter then.
SPIKE: I did this for you. The soul, the changes—it's what you wanted.
BUFFY: What I want is the Spike that's dangerous. The Spike that tried to kill me when we met.
SPIKE: (angrily) Oh, you don't know how close you are to bringing him out.
BUFFY: I'm nowhere near him.
Yes she’s mean. Incredibly so. But I’m beginning to think that it was possibly the best favour she ever did him. Because she forced him to bring the demon forth without it taking over. To quote ‘Guise will be Guise’ (2.06) again:
Magev: "Ha! But the demon is you!"
Angel: "No."
Magev: "Yes! That's the thing you spend so much energy trying to conceal!"
Angel shakes his head: "No, I just - I can't let it control me."
Spike learned how to use the demon without letting it take control, and it was feasibly his first real lesson post-soul and a very important one. Also, look again at what Buffy says:
“if I need someone to get weepy or whaled on, I can call you.”
Now call me what you will, but that does sound rather a lot like Angel in the early seasons of BtVS. Angel was very much ‘the mission’s true love’. He got hurt, he got kidnapped, he needed looking after... basically he was a bit of a wimpire. (Since we later found out just what he was capable of, then it is obvious that he was holding back the entire time.)
And here is Spike’s reply:
“I did this for you. The soul, the changes—it's what you wanted.”
That is - ‘I tried to be like Angel, because I thought that was what you wanted.’ But - Buffy doesn’t need Angel anymore, Buffy doesn’t need a boyfriend, she needs a partner. She has no use for someone who is a burden, but only for someone who can fight right along side her without her having to worry.
So yeah, I think she did a good thing in a nasty way. Of course it wasn’t plain sailing, as LMPTM showed particulary, but he learned how to live with himself. Then when ‘Damage’ came he was able to take a step back to where he was before, but without worrying about his demon. But I’ll get back to Spike.
To focus briefly on Angel again, then after his epiphany in S2, he went back to walling up Angelus. Until... until S5 I’d say. S5 of Angel show us a much darker Angel than we have before.
makd argues superbly in this essay that he was beginning to put his two halves together.Finally, about Spike and who he is post-soul I’m going to indulge in this terribly long quote from a review of ‘Beneath You’ (7.2) by Hunter Maxin, written after the episode first aired. It encapsulates almost everything I love about that scene and souled!Spike:
So this is how Spike has decided to wrestle with his demons: he’s spliced himself into halves.
On one side, we have William...tortured by the things he’s done. Soft at heart. Weak and misguided. Living in the past. Tormented. Unkempt hair.
On the other, we have Spike. Neutered Spike, yes, but still Spike. British cool. Devious, yet charming. Misplaced. Misguided. In love with Buffy.
Last week, I was sure that Spike’s reference to "just the three of us" meant Buffy, himself, and the big evil lurking in the shadows. Now, I’m not so certain. Now, I think it might just be Spike, William, and Buffy.
And how much more interesting is that?
In the end, however, I think the two came together. Maybe not for the first time, but the first for us. In the end, Spike met William half way and became something not entirely not unlike...a man.
Flawed and lost. Strong and with purpose. Confused about who he is in relation to what he wants. Vulnerable and pathetic, and all the more worthy of our love...if only because he is real.
The evolution was fast and furious, however, and I spent much of the last half of the night wondering what, exactly, I had witnessed. Then came the last five minutes...five of the coolest minutes of BtVS I have ever seen.
For starters, JM has gotten so good that...what? What can you actually say about him? He transcends, now. At this point, more than any other slight the show has received, his lack of recognition borders on criminal. We watched him swing, quickly back and forth, from William to Spike, arguing with himself, pleading with God, helpless to hopeless to threatening...with the smoothest of transitions and subtle, subtle power.
The performance itself left me confused. As if I could possibly write about something else. Because tonight I felt I saw JM truly come into being. And I was somewhat awed.
[transcript church scene]
Honestly, what can you say after that? What can you write? My friend, Jack Blair, who was watching with me, said it best – Spike has become the greatest vampire in all of movies and television. His character is so evolved, so complex, so, for lack of a better word, real, that to dissect him...to say that this is what he means and this is what he is offends.
People – real people – can’t be explained so easily. Only characters can.
Angel is a character. A beloved one, to be sure, but limited and confined by his motivations. I am a vampire with a soul. I atone for my past transgressions. The memories haunt me everyday. I brood therefore I am.
But not Spike. Not anymore. He is William and he is Spike, that which is beneath Buffy. But unlike Angel, in which Angelus was just a variation on a theme, this Spike, this current William, they are different. At opposites. And in the middle is just this...man.
A tired, tired man who just wants someone to explain to him what it’s all for. What it all means? Who is he here? Who is he now? And he suspects the only person who can tell him is this woman who doesn’t even really know who she is.
Forgive me.
As to what it will all mean...for us, for the future...that we can discuss. At length. In the days to come. But this is all I have now, and I didn’t even say it first.
Tonight, Spike became a kind of man. It’s exactly what Buffy deserves, and that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
ETA: It struck me that the big fight scene in 'Destiny' is the best proof of 'the soul does not turn them into different people' that there is. In Angel's case in particular - for once we see him not even attempting to hold back his darker side, the conversation a perfect continuation of the scene more than a hundred years previously. "You made me a monster!" says Spike, which if Angelus wasn't Angel would be a pointless accusation.
C) Because as a long-time science fiction fan, the trope of an alien trying to comprehend and fit into in a human society is deeply appealing to me. With a soul, Spike loses a great deal of that quality.
I can see the appeal very well - and f.ex. Spike is impossibly sweet as he tries to woo Buffy in ‘Crush’ by imitating what he thinks she would consider a date. The problem is that Spike isn’t an alien. In the Buffy verse, vampires are evil, and that’s that. However much he tries, Spike can only acclimatise so far. On the other hand... wasn’t this exactly the story we got with Anya? An alien trying to fit in. True she wasn’t evil anymore, but until late S6/early S7, she never understood what humans were really about and why her past doings were evil. Also, although technically human, she never really saw herself that way - even in ‘End of Days’ (7.21) when she’s talking with Andrew she speaks of humans as though they’re a different species. Hmmm, her speech is actually very similar to The Doctor’s in ‘The Empty Child’ from S1 of the new Doctor Who:
DOCTOR : Amazing.
NANCY (ordinary human girl): What is?
DOCTOR: 1941.... Right now, not very far from here, a German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it. Nothing. Until one, tiny, damp little island says 'no'. 'No'. Not here. A mouse in front of a lion. [He looks back at Nancy] You're amazing, the lot of you. Dunno what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me. Off you go then... do what you've gotta do. Save the world.
ANYA: And yet, here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting, but they do. They never... never quit. So I guess I will keep fighting, too.
Anya feels like an alien, but she grows to love humanity so much that she’ll fight on their behalf. As far as I can tell, Anya is the alien amongst the humans to a much greater extent that Spike.
D) Because the very impossibility of it takes my breath away. The fact that a soulless demon who shouldn't have been able to even understand the concept decided that he would try to be a good person when it is literally impossible for him to be a good person under his universe's metaphysical laws--that grabs me. And yes, yes, I know that Spike's motives were in some sense selfish...but damn, man, that he could come up with the idea at all impresses the hell out of me.
Now this is the bit where Spike’s soul quest takes *my* breath away. Yes it’s impossible - but he did it anyway! He literally did what shouldn’t have been able to do. (“Why does a man do what he mustn't?”) But - to return to the point. See in one way, I think that soulless redemption *is* possible. To borrow from the Bible, Abraham is ready to sacrifice Isaac because God asks him - and then at the very last second God intervenes. The *intention* or *decision* is enough. So yes, I can see where you come from. I think it’s treading water character and journey wise, but I can understand the desire to explore it. Anyway - I’ll come back to that.
E) Because works, to me, are more important than grace. The decision and the effort to do good in the face of impossible odds means more to me than when such a decision and effort is made with relatively little internal opposition. Even if the effort fails in the face of those odds. It is actually more impressive to me that Spike doesn't lick the bleeding accident victims while soulless than that he saves people while souled, because it is so very much harder for him to do when unsouled.
I already sort-of answered this above. And I absolutely get what you’re saying. It *is* a lot more impressive. But it’s like an alcoholic staying off the booze, quite simply because his wife asks him to, not because he acknowledges that he has a problem. And he might not ever drink again, but I still wish he’d realise that getting blind drunk is a bad thing. (Hmmm, not the best analogy, but I’m very tired. Also it yet again ties in with my main point that’ll come later...)
F) Because giving Spike a a soul allowed the writers to cry "Do-over!" and duck out of dealing with most of the emotional badness of S6 in any meaningful way.
Now this I don’t really get. It’s because he has a soul in S7 that he is able to comprehend what he did wrong in S6. It’s because of the soul that Buffy can say to her friends and Giles in particular: ”He can be a good man, Giles. I feel it. But he's never gonna get there if we don't give him the chance.” (‘First Date’, 7.14) (And it’s in S7 that she takes Spike under her wing in a way that she never, ever did before. Even the Potentials pick up on it). The soul wasn’t a ‘do-over’ it was a way of expanding the character’s understanding and showing how determined he was to change. The badness of S6 could never have been dealt with if Spike hadn’t been able to understand why it went wrong. See f.ex. ‘Never Leave Me’ (7.09):
BUFFY: You feeling sorry for yourself, Spike? That what this is about?
SPIKE: Feeling honest with myself. (pause) You used me.
Buffy bristles, but doesn't back away.
BUFFY: Yes.
SPIKE: You told me that, of course. Never understood, though. Not 'til now. (pause) You hated yourself, and you took it out on me.
BUFFY: You figured this out just now?
SPIKE: Soul's not all about moonbeams and penny whistles, luv.
(pause) It's about self-loathing I get it. Had to travel around the world, but I understand you now. I understand the violence inside.
BUFFY: Violence. (pause) William the Bloody now has insight into violence.
SPIKE: Not the same. (beat) Bad as I was, as evil and as wretched as I was, I never truly hated myself back then. (pause) Not like I do now.
It’s because of the soul that he understands why she broke up in ‘As You Were’ (6.15), why she walked away at the beginning of ‘Entropy’ (6.18), why she wouldn’t give in in ‘Seeing Red’ (6.19). She couldn’t let herself love him then and he never understood why - until he got the soul. And then he looked at himself and realised what he was. He never could before. (I think he got a glimpse in ‘Seeing Red’ and it was what spurred him onto the soul quest. It's the old you don't know what you don't know... until of course, you're faced with your ignorance. Also see this post.
(But - I’ll get back to this. Bet you’re getting tired of me saying that! *g*)
A good deal of my dissatisfaction with the soul option on BtVS is simply in the execution. I think they told that part of the story very poorly, to the point that to this day there are viewers who stubbornly insist that Spike was tricked into getting his soul. All in all, I would have preferred Spike to stay soulless, but there are ways in which they could have handled the soul thing which would have made me a lot happier with it.
Now this is much more personal and I don’t really agree with it, but as I said - I never had a problem with canon particularly. Although having recently met some of those fans who still believe that Spike was tricked into getting his soul, then I have to say that they appear to have been watching a different show.
In the end, I didn't just want Spike to be good, or be redeemed, or whatever. If that was all I wanted, all I'd have to do was write fic where Willow jammed a soul into him immediately, or turned him human. I wanted a story that went somewhere different and explored questions that Angel's story didn't explore. I would have preferred to see Spike blaze a new trail rather than follow perpetually in Angel's footsteps. I didn't get that, but I am more or less reconciled to what we did get. I certainly didn't abandon the character or the show because of it.
Now *I* don’t ‘just want Spike to be good, or redeemed, or whatever’. What *I* want is for him to grow and learn and realise that ‘I’m not good, but I’m OK’ isn’t enough. I would on no account want him ‘suddenly human’ or to have a soul jammed into him a la Angelus. One of the joys of Spike - to me - is that he’s on a journey the whole time, taking it one step at a time, and not stopping or skipping. The soul was a step - a big one, but the one that he had to take if he wanted to move forward. His story is so different to Angel’s that I think it’s almost like comparing apples and oranges. Except of course that they’re both fruits! (Ahem...)
And, I should add, because I don't believe in a cosmic balance where you can cancel out bad deeds by doing good one. I don't think Spike and Angel can ever make up for what they did in that sense. All they can do is do good here and now--and while remorse is an effective spur to doing good here and now, I'd hate to think that it's the only effective spur.
I agree with this. Very much. Not to mention the fact that it is deeply unfair that they should atone for things they ‘technically’ didn’t do. But such is the Joss verse...
The important thing though is what Angel says in ‘Epiphany’ (2.16):
Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda - worked it out. If there is no great glorious end to all this, if - nothing we do matters, - then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. - I fought for so long. For redemption, for a reward - finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it."
Kate: "And now you do?"
Angel: "Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because - I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness - is the greatest thing in the world."
And again in ‘Deep Down’ (4.01):
Angel: “...I did get time to think. About us, about the world. - Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. - It's harsh, and cruel. - But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”
That is why they fight - not because of the shanshu reward being dangled in front of them, and not because of their past sins (OK, maybe a little - they’re not perfect. But then perfection is boring - look at The Groosalug). They fight because they comprehend the suffering in the world and want to help stop it. And they can. Even if just for a moment. It’s what the fight in ‘Not Fade Away’ is all about.
See Buffy could trust Spike to protect Dawn in ‘The Gift’ more than anyone else, because all he cared about was her. He made Buffy’s concerns his own. If he saved Dawn - even at the expense of the world - then he would have done his duty. It’s incredibly selfless, and yet not. With a soul he might still have done the same thing... but he would have understood the moral quandry.
Does any of that make sense? I think I’m going in circles now...
Now... if Spike is a soulless vampire occasionally working with Buffy and crew because it serves his interests (like the world not ending) and if there's an arc about whether they could tolerate the crimes he's going to commit as the price of doing business with him because he's got skills they need.
Well, that's pretty much what was going on in S4 and early S5, though without the Scoobs actually thinking about the implications of leaving him to roam free. For all we know, the little old ladies whom he tried to scare into handing over their wallets died of heart attacks when he went fangy on them.
Nothing to add here, really. I liked S4 and 5 very much.
I suppose the thing for me is that I don't see such a clear-cut line between hero and not-hero. Obviously if Spike is actively killing people, not a hero, even if he once helped Buffy save the world. If he's saving the world on weekdays and stealing cigarettes on Saturdays, and has gone off killing people for some sufficiently binding reason, I'm not exactly sure what to call that, but I find it pretty fascinating. When I write about unsouled Spike working with the Scoobs or shacking up with Buffy or whatever, I've got stuff I want to explore: innate vs. socially constructed ethics and the limitations of both, the degree to which one's responsible for someone else's moral instruction or conduct, whether it's advisable to take that kind of responsibility even if it's going above and beyond, whether or not the existence of potentially 'redeemable' vampires really does make the Slayer a mass murderer, yadda yadda. Making readers think Spike is a hero isn't really the goal, just making it believable that he's doing the things he's doing, good or bad--and they can draw their own conclusions from there.
Now this is where it gets interesting. I’ve answered part of it above already - a hero is someone who fights selflessly quite simply because (s)he can, with no hope of reward. Soulless Spike would never have understood that. Now that doesn’t mean that he isn’t heroic! He was willing to die for Dawn (and Buffy) in ‘The Gift’ (5.22), and that is quite amazing and spectacular. And I love him for it, absolutely. But - would he have been willing to die for... um... Parker? Or Knox? See we actually know that he would, later (from ‘Shells’ (5.16)):
ILLYRIA: You are the protector of these creatures?
ANGEL: Yes.
ILLYRIA: You'd fight for their lives?
ANGEL: Yes.
ILLYRIA (looks at Knox): Even this one?
KNOX (nervously): Is that an issue? Is my life in peril, boss? King?
ANGEL: You're about as low as it gets, Knox, but you're a part of humanity. That isn't always pretty, but it's a hell of a lot better than what came before. And if it comes down to a choice between you and him, then yes, I would fight for his life, just like any other human's. Because that's what people do. That's what makes us—
I think I can say that Angel speaks for Spike too in that instance. But to get back to where I was, it took a while for Spike to get there - I don’t think that his sacrifice in ‘Chosen’ was completely selfless. It is probably very close to Buffy’s sacrifice in ‘The Gift’. So the soul doesn’t make him instantly good and perfect, but it creates the possibility. The choice is his. And I don’t think he really gets up to Angel’s level in ‘Epiphany’ until ‘Shells’ (when, interestingly, Angel seems on a downward slope):
SPIKE: “This is what she would have wanted. (looks at Angel) It's what *I* want. I don't really like you. Suppose I never will. But this is important, what's happening here. Fred gave her life for it. The least I can do is give what's left of mine. The fight's comin', Angel. We both feel it... and it's gonna be a hell of a lot bigger than Illyria. Things are gonna get ugly. That's where I live.”
So as I’ve said like 5 times before... it’s the journey that I love watching - the evolution of a character. And to some degree it doesn’t really matter where that journey goes, as long as it’s a believable one, although I think I would have been very disappointed if they had not let Spike fulfill his potential. None of the characters on the show was the same in the end as when they began, and often they did terrible things as they grew. But most of them learned from their mistakes and were able to strive to do better - and none moreso than Spike.
Going back to this point:
Making readers think Spike is a hero isn't really the goal, just making it believable that he's doing the things he's doing, good or bad--and they can draw their own conclusions from there.
I get the that making the character believable is important, and that to follow that might be interesting, but I can’t help but think that he’d be going round in circles. Letting the audience draw their own conclusions is wonderful, except BtVS was never really that kind of show. Buffy is good. Buffy is a hero. She inspires others to be good and heroic too. If her role became one of supporting someone infinitely at the same level, I’m not sure how that would work... See I can see the attraction of the ‘everyday struggle’ (like an alcoholic f.ex.), but if there’s never any chance of the person growing more than an certain amount, then it would ultimately leave me very frustrated. Which is why I’m very glad they didn’t go with ‘soulless redemption’ on the show. Maybe they could have, if it was Spike’s show, but not otherwise. Anyway, that’s not my biggest problem. See having Buffy in a relationship with soulless Spike - a real relationship, rather than the mess of S6 - would never satisfy me (much as I love it in fanfiction). Because they wouldn’t be equals and never could be. There’s 2 reasons:
1) If she was morally responsible for him, or for his conduct, that puts him in an inferior place. Which is where the adult/child analogy comes in. I can see how it would be fascinating to explore - and I’d love reading about it - but ultimately what I love about Buffy and Spike is that they’re equals. If he’s not Buffy’s equal, then the relationship loses a great deal of its appeal for me.
2) He can never really understand her. Of course he has empathy enough for three Buffies, but he will never ‘get’ her on the most fundamental level. We can see him trying over and over again in S6, but a lot of the time he gets it terribly wrong. And yes with time he might get his responses right 95% of the time, but he *still* wouldn’t understand and Buffy, I think, needs someone who understands. (Angel maybe understood too much, since they tended to feed off each other’s angst.)
See come S7 Buffy gravitates towards Spike - a lot. Because he understands! She doesn’t have to explain herself, doesn’t have to put on a front with him - they’re two of a kind. (See the bit from ‘Never Leave Me’ above - before the soul he didn’t even understand why she was using him or what that meant.)
I don’t think I’d want Buffy permanently with an unsouled Spike. To put it bluntly: She deserves better - she deserves someone who’ll understand. (Of course that also means that I want Spike to be every bit as heroic as Buffy - fighting for fun and puppies is well and good, but I want him to understand her purpose.)
A simple metaphor that might or might not work for you - it’s like vampires are colour blind. They still see all the right colours, but not the hidden picture!
Now a lot of people complained about the amount of bad people and good demons that we saw. If humans (all containing souls) are that horrible, then why on earth should Spike want one? By the end of S5 he was doing a lot better than a great number of humans, so what’s the point? That is a good argument, and I’ll been mulling it over for days now. But I think I have some sort of reply now...
I’ll have to divide the argument up into three categories: humans, vampires and demons.
First two obvious points:
1) Humans all have a soul (except apparently that kid in ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’).
2) A soul doesn’t automatically make you good.
Vampires are (in the Buffy verse) always evil. That can’t be changed. They can grow and care to some extent, and obviously have feelings - are even able to love in their own way - but there is a glass ceiling they can’t break through. Spike was unique amongst vampires, in that he had a chip which made him acclimatise to human life, and then fell in love with Buffy, making him strive to be better. I don’t think we can count on all vampires to fall in love with the Slayer.
Now Spike could be good up to a point, but no further. And this is where the soul comes in. To get all biblical for a moment, there’s an excellent passage from Genesis that amply illustrates my point:
"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
The soul is like that fruit - it affords a knowledge of good and evil that is internal rather than theoretical. You can be evil *with* a soul, but you can never be fully good *without* one. That is the distinction. (There is more to it, but that’s my point for now.) The soul gives you the opportunity to make an informed choice - the choice is up to you.
This was the point of the Jasmine arch: She took people’s choice away. If getting a soul meant becoming a happy, clappy smiley goody-two-shoes, like Jasmine’s followers, then I’d never want Spike to have one. What a horrible thought. But it isn’t. The Jasmine brainwash was the opposite of an unsouled vampire - pure ‘good’ without the informed choice to be bad.
A different example - take f.ex. the case of Andrew. If Andrew had been a vampire Buffy would have staked him and never thought twice about it. But he was human, and that meant that he ‘could be saved’. Now Andrew didn’t so much choose to be evil, as just slide down that path with no resistance. When things got ‘serious’ (in Dead Things’, 6.13) he did the very human thing of covering up the truth with a nice story and never stopped - until ‘Storyteller’ (7.16). Now for a moment go back to ‘Dead Things’. Buffy and Spike have this exchange:
BUFFY: You can't understand why this is killing me, can you?
SPIKE: Why don't you explain it?
She never even tried - it would be pointless. It’s not the sort of thing that needs explaining. See she tried with Faith after the accidental killing of Allen, but Faith refused to listen and told herself a nice story about how Slayers are supposed to kill things and that she didn’t care. It wasn’t until much later that she stopped lying to herself. When Buffy forced Andrew to confront himself and his deeds, he knew exactly why what he had done was wrong - and when he stopped running away from his deeds ‘they were killing him’.
To briefly touch upon ‘demons’ generally, then they have to be judged on a demon by demon basis. Some are harmless (Clem), some are good (the protector demon in ‘Judgement’ (AtS 2.1) f.ex), but most are bad. They get judged by their actions, since it’s impossible to tell if they have souls, and whether that makes a difference. If you want to contemplate Buffy as mass murderer, thinking about demons would be more interesting than vampires.
Now about souls and vampires... firstly, a soul is a thoroughly nasty thing for a vampire to have, in pretty much every way. The soul itself was probably perfectly happy in some sort of heavenly dimension, and then it got shoved into a vampire to be burdened with mind-crushingly heavy guilt - and if the vampire dies, the soul will spend eternity in Hell, paying for sins it never committed. The Buffy verse is a real bitch! Going back to my Genesis quote above (‘for when you eat of it you will surely die’), it is echoed in 'Hellbound' (5.04):
Pavayne: "Beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you... damns you to suffer - forever."
So Spike and Angel were infinitely better off unsouled. But - I’m not sure that’s what I want. I want my vampires to reach their full potential. Unsouled, that is quite simply impossible. Unsouled Spike is like Lorne I think, more or less. Character wise they’re vastly different, but Lorne helps out because his friends happen to fight evil. Caritas welcomed everyone, remember? Even baby eating monstrosities - as long as they didn’t eat them *there* Lorne wasn’t too bothered. I love Lorne greatly, but he could never be a hero.
Now about redemption... redemption is a tricky word. Everyone means something different. And I can definitely see the merits of ‘soulless redemption’ - it’d be a lot better from Spike’s POV for a start. Although I’m not sure it’d be redemption at all really - and (as I said at the start) I’m not sure a soulless Spike would need redeeming. Soulless Spike is OK. See this is where we get into the whole ‘can any vampire be redeemed, and is Buffy a murderer?’
Having mulled this over, I think Buffy only has two choices - either to kill any vamps she comes across, or to soul them the moment they rise, before they can kill anyone. Staking vampires only kills the demon, which is evil anyway - the person’s soul is safely in heaven (I guess?). The other option is to let the vampire live but give it a soul - but this has to be done before the vamp has time to walk around maiming and killing. First of all it would traumatise the ‘soul’ once it got back and also (if the killing was great) it would condemn the soul to hell. Such are the rules of the verse, and they are harsh. Now some people (like Ford) would obviously like to continue living, even as a vampire. This is all hypothetical of course, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea to be immortal on those terms (see ‘Eternity’, 1.17). As Buffy said in ‘Afterlife’ - it was her time. She might have a wonderful life, but still I think her time in heaven will always fill her with longing.
Anyway - back to souls and good and evil: People can be more evil than demons. Demons - vampires - might generally do worse things, but - in a way they can’t help it. As Spike says re. tasting his nose blood: “It’s blood - it’s what I do.” Vampires revel in evil, they enjoy it. Humans should enjoy ice creams and snuggles. So when a human deliberately decides to be evil, it’s a lot worse, because he (or she) makes an informed choice. Which is why I would consider Warren more evil that Angelus.
This is also why Christianity teaches that the devil is a fallen angel - the higher up you are, the further there is to fall. Or put another way: The more potential there is for good, the more there also is for evil. Take f.ex. a Fyarl Demon. If you could somehow make it ‘good’, it would never be able to be a champion - it’s not even very evil, it just likes smashing stuff. Now take Angel - when evil he was recorded as being the most vicious vampire that ever lived. Vampires have great potential, although most of it goes untapped.
There is a reason The Vampire With A Soul is so important - if he willingly, and knowing all implications, chooses to go down the road to darkness, then that is far more powerful than anything a normal vampire could ever do. A souled Angel going bad would be far, far worse than Angelus. Which is of course why there’s a prophecy. A Champion gone dark is pretty much a bad as you can get - just look a Darth Vader!
To quote Angel himself in ‘Amends’ (3.10):
“Look, I'm weak. I've never been anything else. It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man.”
Pondering this, I think it might have something to do with the later seasons in particular... seasons 6 and 7 are all about the internal struggle, rather than the external one. In the early seasons (the High School years in particular), the demons Buffy faces are often representations of real troubles. But demons are easy to slay - and Buffy is the hero who wins every time. When you’re a teenager it might feel like the end of the world if someone dumps you, but you’ll get over it. The battles you have to fight when you’re grown up are a lot harder and have much bigger fallout.
I think one of the reasons I love season 6 so very much is because it pushes all the boundaries to breaking point - and beyond. How good can you make someone inherently evil? How evil can you make someone inherently good? What happens when the hero behaves like a monster and vice versa? What if all of our good guys fall and stumble because of their inherent failings? What if the ‘Big Bad’ is just a sad loser, who’s more self-absorbed and deluded than any demon we’ve seen so far? What if the sweet little geek with the big potential lets out her rage? What if the writers break pretty much all the rules and the characters they’ve made?
The biggest break of course being Spike. In S6 his fall from darkness goes into freefall (or maybe it’s more yo-yo like?), until he hits that glass ceiling. Only to break through it at the end.
Then we get S7 as the counter balance - trying to slowly put all the pieces back where they belonged. The cracks will always be there, but I like my heroes to be a bit worn and broken.
Because S7 is quite literally the season of redemption. Not in an overly way, but one where all the main characters know that they screwed up, and that they might not ever be able to fix what they broke, but that wailing won't help. So they quite simply just try to do what they can - to utilise their talents as much as possible. It's not easy of course (
frenchani’s theory about the FE being a manifestation of people fears is a truly excellent idea) but they keep going - and pick themselves and each other up when they fall. And this is where Andrew becomes so important. All the others know that they screwed up royally, but they internalise most of it. Andrew keeps pretending that things are fine, so Buffy has to force him to face the facts. He’s the Storyteller - and within his own story, he manages to tell the story of everyone else too. If we look at his and Buffy’s conversation we can place any Scoobie in his place and know how they feel (from Storyteller, 7.16):
BUFFY: When your blood pours out, it might save the world. What do you think about that? Does it buy it all back? Are you redeemed?
ANDREW: (crying) No.
BUFFY: Why not?
ANDREW: (sobbing, his face is tear-streaked) Because I killed him. Because I listened to Warren, and I pretended I thought it was him, but I knew—I knew it wasn't. And I killed Jonathan. And now you're gonna kill me. And I'm scared, and I'm going to die. And this—this is what Jonathan felt.
There is no way to undo what you did. You murder someone, or you really, seriously hurt the person you love, betraying their trust, you can never make up for it (depends on what you did of course, it’s hard to talk about thing in a general way when the deeds are so different). Saying 'sorry' won't fix anything. All you can do is to carry on, try to make very day count. As Andrew learns:
ANDREW: Here's the thing. I killed my best friend. There's a big fight coming, and I don't know what's going to happen. I don't even think I'm going to live through it. (looks down) That's, uh, probably the way it should be. I guess I'm—
The Scoobies and Spike all know this. But none of them ever mention redemption - it is only Andrew who talks about it, which makes sense since he is the guy representing all of our fallen characters. Only redemption isn't a shiny prize you get after a sacrifice, it's the daily grind. Or something - the more I try to pin down what redemption is, the more confused I get. So I guess in some way we do agree, except I want Spike to have the understanding Andrew found. Without his soul, he never would. With the soul he did - and more.
To finish:
My Spike will always be a lover and a fighter. But more than that he’s a Champion. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. :)
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