There is no home for me in canon
May. 17th, 2006 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
botiasOK so you got this guy. And you treated him really bad, and then he did something REALLY awful to you, ‘cause, well, he is bad. But then he felt bad, and went to get his soul.
And you forgive him, and you help him out, save his life really, defend him to your family and friends, stand with him against overwhelming evidence, you let him know that he’s your hero, and Wind Beneath My Wings is playing in your head the whole time. Finally you fricken hold hands with him even though he’s fricken on fire and standing in a fricken collapsing mouth of hell and, what the heck, you go ahead and say it out loud besides. You love him.
And then he doesn’t call. He doesn’t write. Oh, but he has plenty of time for a nooner with his ex. And so the verdict is in. Now that he’s gotten his soul, made the changes, Spike is no longer ‘Hillside Strangler meets Hells Angel’ on the boyfriend scale. The arrow is moving, it’s moving… Ding, ding, ding! Congratulations! You’re now the ‘Guy That Doesn’t Call’. Hello Parker!Spike. Vast improvement I have to say.
Now many folks contend that Spike was being self-sacrificing, not troubling Buffy with his bad self . Or that he didn’t think she cared much one way or the other (when he was frickin on fire dammit.) I’m fine with him not getting on the boat, so far as that goes. But to not call or write?
Setting aside the whole ‘I love you’ thing, if Spike could really look back on everything Buffy did for him in S7, going above and beyond and even against the call of her duty to give him a chance at a good life, and still think that it wasn’t extremely important to Buffy whether he was alive or dead, than that gives gives him the emotional intelligence of a one-celled organism. I just can’t want Paramecium!Spike or Parker!Spike for Buffy. To my mind… Spike’s wedding tackle shrunk 3 sizes that day. And given Buffy’s trust issues, it’s hard for me to imagine her ever letting him in again.
I know the non-contact thing was largely dictated by external realities. It’s pretty impossible to assume that if Spike wrote or called, that Buffy wouldn’t show up. The Angel writers could have gone to the trouble of having them meet off-screen, but I doubt that the issue of whether Buffy, a non-character, would ever trust Spike, a secondary character, again was a big priority for them.
And so I just write off canon after Chosen. And for post NFA fics? I just suspend belief I guess.
And you forgive him, and you help him out, save his life really, defend him to your family and friends, stand with him against overwhelming evidence, you let him know that he’s your hero, and Wind Beneath My Wings is playing in your head the whole time. Finally you fricken hold hands with him even though he’s fricken on fire and standing in a fricken collapsing mouth of hell and, what the heck, you go ahead and say it out loud besides. You love him.
And then he doesn’t call. He doesn’t write. Oh, but he has plenty of time for a nooner with his ex. And so the verdict is in. Now that he’s gotten his soul, made the changes, Spike is no longer ‘Hillside Strangler meets Hells Angel’ on the boyfriend scale. The arrow is moving, it’s moving… Ding, ding, ding! Congratulations! You’re now the ‘Guy That Doesn’t Call’. Hello Parker!Spike. Vast improvement I have to say.
Now many folks contend that Spike was being self-sacrificing, not troubling Buffy with his bad self . Or that he didn’t think she cared much one way or the other (when he was frickin on fire dammit.) I’m fine with him not getting on the boat, so far as that goes. But to not call or write?
Setting aside the whole ‘I love you’ thing, if Spike could really look back on everything Buffy did for him in S7, going above and beyond and even against the call of her duty to give him a chance at a good life, and still think that it wasn’t extremely important to Buffy whether he was alive or dead, than that gives gives him the emotional intelligence of a one-celled organism. I just can’t want Paramecium!Spike or Parker!Spike for Buffy. To my mind… Spike’s wedding tackle shrunk 3 sizes that day. And given Buffy’s trust issues, it’s hard for me to imagine her ever letting him in again.
I know the non-contact thing was largely dictated by external realities. It’s pretty impossible to assume that if Spike wrote or called, that Buffy wouldn’t show up. The Angel writers could have gone to the trouble of having them meet off-screen, but I doubt that the issue of whether Buffy, a non-character, would ever trust Spike, a secondary character, again was a big priority for them.
And so I just write off canon after Chosen. And for post NFA fics? I just suspend belief I guess.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-22 03:02 am (UTC)1. While Buffy does use Spike, she is also genuinely attracted to him. She can't reconcile her feelings with the fact that he was evil, and this exacerbated her post-heaven malaise and her conviction that if she felt like this for someone evil that must make her bad too. On some level she knows she is hurting him as much or more as she's hurting herself. If she really believed he was a thing, she wouldn't feel so bad about using him.
Or 2: Buffy is using Spike to feel, pure and simple. She is not ashamed of the fact that she is hurting him; she believes or has convinced herself that he is a thing, incapable of real feelings. She cannot really hurt him; there is no real person in there to be hurt. This is the whole reason she's using him and not some human guy. Nevertheless she is ashamed of the fact that she consorting with an evil creature to get herself through the day. That is what's killing her. When she tells Tara that it's killing her, she's telling the truth, but it never occurs to her that it's killing Spike too.
Either way, she would think that it was wrong to use Spike. Either way, breaking up with him would be the right thing to do.
Because the writers spent so much time and effort beating me over the head with the fact that Spike and Buffy together were WRONG and Buffy couldn't possibly love an evil disgusting thing, I decided I'd take them at their word. I went into season seven convinced that Buffy never felt anything for Spike but lust and a bizarre kind of possessiveness. Ironically, in accepting that Buffy did not have any feelings for Spike, I was forced into a far worse intepretation of her behavior than I imagine the writers would have liked. And I remained sourly unwilling to accept the Spuffy crumbs they tossed me for the rest of the season. I was willing to believe that Buffy regretted her actions and was doing her best to help Spike out of guilt and responsibility, but love? Uh uh.
And even if she did love him by the end of the season, the sad truth is I just don't care as much. Souled Spike is a nice enough guy. But he's not my Spike--not my fabulous quixotic monster who reached for an unreachable star. He's just another guilt-ridden, subdued guy with a tragic past to atone for. In a very real way, the Spike I loved died in a cave in Africa.
I have never been a proponent of "Buffy is a bitch for not loving Spike." No one is ever obliged to love anyone else; love cannot be forced. But I do think that Buffy did have one obligation to Spike: to remember that what he did for her and Dawn was real, and never to forget that. In telling Spike that he was a thing with nothing good about him, a thing who could never change, she broke that promise--and that broken promise, not her failure to love him, is what I find it very hard to forgive her. Even after she broke up with Spike, she continued to dismiss his feelings as not just unreciprocated, but unreal. That "I'm sure they're real... for you" speech was the thing that made me wash my hands of Buffy when I originally watched season six--not the alley beating, not her breaking up with Spike, but her casual dismissal of his feelings (and therefore him) as unreal--that and her absolutely loathsome cowardice in allowing Xander to slag off Anya rather than reveal her own dirty little secret.
Buffy's behavior towards Spike is the model of the 'straight-acting' queer who takes out their internalized self-hatred on their more 'out' brethern. It's a very emotional and unpleasant archetype for me. Tt's not a perfect analogy because vampires really are evil--but it's a metaphor the writers were playing with before deciding to reduce the whole thing to Buffy Good and Right, Spike Bad and Wrong.
I can understand why Buffy does all the things she does, and I can pity her. I can appreciate how hard it was for her to help Spike, and she deserves all the credit in the world for what she did in S7. But the things she did in S6 press every hot button I've got, and I've never gotten back to liking her again.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 11:19 pm (UTC)I think you have a good point, but I don't know how the break-up scene could be read this way. What would motivate Buffy to go to the effort to break up with, and apologize to, and address by their 'real person' name, something that she thought had no more real feeling than a dildo?
That "I'm sure they're real... for you" speech
I felt that line like a knife. Ouch! But I'm not sure if I would have been much more tactful in Buffy's shoes, assuming the depression, the months of stalking, her self-loathing about being involved in the relationship. There really was something (s) important missing from Spike's love, as they chose to portray it in the show.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 02:23 am (UTC)I admit I hold Buffy to a higher standard, because she does have a soul, and that should make a difference. I don't mind characters screwing up and doing terrible things. It's just that when that happens, I like to have some indication that the writers know that the characters are coming off badly, and are doing it on purpose. In this case, I'm never entirely sure.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 04:10 am (UTC)It's very interesting, it's really the show from a Buffy sympathetic position vs. from a Spike sympathetic position. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 05:22 am (UTC)If only Jane Espenson had been in charge. I really like what I've seen of her, I think I would make her leader of the free world. She could hardly do worse...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 11:21 pm (UTC):P Dorky writers. I think this would have been a really cool and apt thing to address.