Only because other posters are exalting Spike, talking about how he has reformed or how he’s not really evil. In other words, this vitriol is a direct response to the pervasive Spike-worship. That’s why you see so many posts bashing Spike, and not as many bashing Buffy or Anya.
Context, context, context!
: shrug : I’m willing to say that Buffy was acting abusive as well. It doesn’t change my opinion of Spike any.
The question “…is Buffy somehow crossing over to the dark side?” is an interesting one. This, however, is the SPIKE thread. Comparisons to other characters are all well and good, but the moral standings of Buffy - or anyone else - are kinda changing the subject. If you want to start a Buffy thread and argue that Buffy is “EEEEVVVVIIIILLLL” (to use your term), I’ll be glad to read your reasons. I might even agree with you.
Feh! My last post was directed at pepperlandgirl. Damn simulposts.
Oh, and FTR… several posters have already pointed out that Buffy’s behavior was wrong, and that Anya’s “reformation” was disappointingly ambiguous. So really, I don’t think that pepperlandgirl’s argument helps the Spike-o-philes’ case.
Besides which, that argument would only show that the Spike-bashers are inconsistent in their evaluation of the characters. It would not show that they’re wrong in their view of Spike’s vicious vileness.
I was mainly refuting “what kind of message does it send out?” if allowing Spike to continue his abuse. The tone of many of the replies implies that Spike is the only one who is in the wrong, the only one acting abusive, and the only who is crossing the line into “creepiness”. I don’t think you can have a fair discussion about Spike unless you bring in the context of the show and all of the characters because I think the writers created the characters to mirror, balance, and counteract each other. I think that isolating Spike’s behaivor without looking at everybody’s behaivor doesn’t accomplish anything.
We can evaluate Spike’s behavior just fine without evaluating the others in the same breath. As Trion said, those other discussions can go in their own threads.
Besides, there’s a critical difference between Spike and the others. Nobody’s been putting Anya up on a pedestal, saying “Oh, look! Anya’s not really bad!” or “Xander was such a fool to pass up marring Anya!” Nor is anyone saying, “Buffy would be such a great catch! She’s a wonderful person.” Nobody’s going to great lengths to excuse either of these characters.
Hence the talk of “sending the wrong message.” It’s one thing for a TV character to act immorally. It’s another thing for TV viewers to make excuses for that character. When we go through moral contortions in an attempt to justify their behavior, then we are most certainly sending people the wrong message.
And FTR, while Giles make have let Buffy make her own decisions, that is not the same as trusting her judgment to be sound. In fact, he knows that Buffy can do foolish things, as evidenced by her getting drunk, or the way she hid Angel from the gang. Additionally, Giles has expressed disapproval on those occasions when Buffy chose to blow off patrolling, and he has a low view of her study attitude. So while Giles may let Buffy do her own thing, that’s only because he has no choice in the matter.
That was never my understanding of the curse or the nature of the vampires in the Buffyverse.
The way I see it is this-
When a human is embraced, they lose their soul and a demon takes its place. While a soul does not automatically make someone good (IIRC the Mayor was born a nomal human approx 1880), it makes it possible to be good. Thus, no vampire can ever be good.
The gypsy curse didn't stick some random soul in Angel. It returned *his* soul. He remains a vampire because he still contains a demon. As a mortal Angel was going through his drunken-frat-boy phase. After Darla embraced him, he eventually grew out of that phase (Remember Darla's disappointment when Angelus kills his father?Or the cocky way Angelus acts when he first meets the Master?). When his soul returned, Angel possessed all the memories of Angelus. That gave Angel a much more adult way of feeling and acting.
Young Angel was a party animal who thought nothing mattered because Dad’s money would always take care of it.
Post Curse Angel thought nothing mattered because he could never atone for his crimes. Then the unidentified demon tells Angel that he can be force for good and show him Buffy. This gives Angel hope and he gets his act together.
Of course Angel is evil without a soul. Without a soul a vampire is nothing more than a demon with access to human mind and body. His soul is the true Angel. When Faith swapped bodies with Buffy, she used Buffy’s body for her own ends. The true Buffy was stuck in Faith’s body. When the curse kicks in the soul, and thus the true Angel, get evicted from the body. All that’s left is a demon.
These things probably happpen in ATS right? I, unfortunately, have only seen a handful of episodes from Angel.
But we are implicitly accepting Buffy’s behaivor because one of the arguements is that he doesn’t have a soul. Therefore, he is incapable of being good. Buffy has a soul.
I’m just worried that anti-Spike people are getting to far into the Black V White or Non-Soul v Soul, and I’m concerned over those implications.
I think you misunderstood my comment about the “act” that would be sending this message. I blame myself for that, since I now realize that my phrasing was careless.
The act in question is the attempt (or attempts) to justify Spike’s abuse, or to minimize its evilness, or to say that Buffy should love him anyway. Such appeals most definitely send the wrong message.
IMHO I think that the fact Angel turns into an evil bastard when he is robbed of his soul is a pretty solid indicator that the “demon” in the vampire can not be reformed or turned good.
Of course she has a soul. Does that automatically make her actions good? Of course not, and nobody has claimed that.
I think you’re committing the fallacy known as “affirming the consequent.” “A implies B” does not mean that “Not B implies Not A.” Not having a soul makes you evil; however, having a soul does not make you good, and nobody has been saying that it does.
Additionally, even if we claim that Buffy is basically “good,” that doesn’t mean that every single thing she does is hunky-dory. The fact that several posters have lamented her actions shows otherwise.
pepperlandgirl, I absolutely agree that Buffy is treating Spike badly. Yes, she physically abuses Spike just as he physically abuses her. As uncomfortable as that makes me, it’s pretty clear that they both get off on whaling on each other. That’s not actually what bothers me so much about Spike.
What really gets me is his emotional manipulation. When he says, “You’re bad, you came back wrong, your friends will never understand you,” etc. And it seems to work. The scene where Buffy was begging Tara not to forgive her because she was bad and wrong gave me chills.
I like Spike. I think he’s a really interesting and nuanced character. However, I cannot see his relationship with Buffy as romantic or loving or sexy or anything other than seriously fucked up. Obviously, YMMV.
Also, call me an old-fashioned girl, but tying your ex-girlfriend to a chair and torturing her, for whatever reason, is pretty damn evil in my book.
Druisilla likes that sort of thing.
Darn tootin’. Darn right.
Yes, I know it’s just a TV show. Still, who wouldn’t be disturbed any attempts to dismiss that act as being less than despicable? Especially when the proposed rationale is that she was asking for it… that she wanted to be treated roughly. Shudder. Ugh.
Are you talking about Dru? We all remember that Dru is the evil, psycho, deranged, ruthless, bloodthirsty, insane vampire, right? Shoot, “torture” was probably foreplay for them!
Yes it was. Because Spike, like Dru, is evil, ruthless and bloodthirsty. He, unlike Dru, has retained some semblance of sanity (though his current Slayer fetish suggests that that’s slipping. :p).
On the other hand, he’s still bloody evil.
I’m not, BTW, a Spike Basher. I love Spike. He’s a fascinating character, and pretty damn sexy in a slightly sick way.
He’s possibly even redeemable.
BUT:
To say he’s not evil, or that his relationship with Buffy is healthy for either one of them, or a path to his redemption…no. He’s shown time and again that he’s still an evil, sick bastard, who doesn’t care for most of the Scoobies beyond the fact that they’re close to Buffy and Dawn. He and Buffy have a sick, mutually abusive relationship that’s not healthy for either of them, and probably feeds the more negative parts of Spike’s personality.
In other words, abusing her was okay because she wanted it? I’m sorry, but that’s just sickening. Depraved, despicable and sickening. How can anyone deign to justify that behavior?
The parallels to abusive real-world boyfriends just keep getting better.
In my opinion: Yes, it was. (and here’s where I disagree with you)
The difference is that in a real life situation the phrase “she was asking for it” is used when the victim was clearly not asking for it.
To go back to the paralell I used before - Spike killing the Slayers. Even if those women were suicidal, Spike does not have the right to kill them. They have the right to jump off a high building if they want, but Spike doesn not have the right to take their lives. Unless - and here’s the important part - they really really ask him to do so. Specifically, directly and verbally. If they walked up to Spike and said “I want to die. Please kill me.” then Spike can do the deed. They have expressed a desire to die in this manner and made the decision on their own with no coersion from Spike and Spike is not taking it upon himself to descide what they “really want”.
With Dru, I can easily believe that she would express a desire to be tortured by Spike in a sexual manner. She’s sick weird, twisted and evil herself. If she has expressed this desire to Spike in no uncertain terms, then this is not proof that Spike is evil. Sick, weird and perverse? Sure. But what two consenting vampires do in the privacy of their own crypt is of no concern to me.
Well, I’ll disagree with you, Trion. IMO, it’s not right to kill someone even if that person asks for it… and I’m saying that as someone who narrowly escaped committing suicide a while back! Ditto for torture. There may be extreme cases where it’s warranted, but merely asking for it is not sufficient justification, IMO.
However, I’m glad that we do agree that Spike’s killing of those two slayers was indeed unjustified… and in that respect, he was acting very much like an abusive boyfriend who seeks to rationalize his abuse.