There is no home for me in canon

[botias]

OK 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.

Comments

[botias.livejournal.com]

I came late to the game, but I love writer interviews. I track down as many as I can. Your synopsis here is yummy stuff for me. I can almost see how the writers would be surprised. I mean, Buffy slays vampires, it's what she does, so what's a little beating and emotional abuse? Duh, it's beating and emotional abuse, people. Slaying is supposed to be to protect human safety, period.

I can tolerate a certain amount of vampire abuse from Buffy because she knows that every vampire she goes up against wants to kill her and maybe rape her. But her behavior in S6 was far too far. I don't know how they couldn't see that. Especially since it was made clear that the vampire in question would never intentionally harm or kill Buffy given how he mourned her death and suffered so that she would not.

OMG when I heard reference to the relevant incident of Marti's I assumed that she'd tried on some exciting bad boy in her youth who turned out to be, well, bad, an abuser or date rapist. It astounds me that they didn't see what an impact reversing the sexes would make, or how much farther that scene went than Spike just being Mr. Bad Touch. And they went there on purpose. Buffy is stronger than Spike, about as a man is to a woman, so for Spike to make unwelcome sexual advances to her would be a similar scenario to Marti's. But they went out of their way to make Buffy unable to stop him.

They should have stuck with the original arc, it sounds like the two things I disliked the most, the AR and the 'magic crack' were deviations. They made a mess of my beautiful Spike. :( I wish I could say that the AR was not believable to me, but for them to make him incapable of doing something like that to Buffy would have been believable too. Grrr.

[rahirah]

I never found the AR unbelievable; I mean, there are plenty of fucked-up human guys who might make a similar bad call if they'd been drinking too much. For a demon whose ethical brake lines have been cut, the astonishing thing is really that it took that much to make him snap. (And that's another thing the writers can't agree on; Espenson thinks it happened because the demon made Spike do it; DeKnight says it was a human failing, because Spike's self-worth was entirely bound up in making Buffy see him... I tend to interpret it as some of both, myself.)

And they really did go out of their way to victimize Buffy, and show her whimpering and crying instead of, say, reacting the way she reacted to Hyena!Xander. Which I find, in a way, even more revolting.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Espenson thinks it happened because the demon made Spike do it; DeKnight says it was a human failing...

I do notice that they had him in human face the whole time, which may or may not mean anything. I love Espenson! I read that at a convention she said that she thought Darla was Angel's big love... which leaves Buffy for Spike. :) Spike always seemed very much an amalgam of demon and human to me. He is capable of love, but does so in a fierce, obsessive, ammoral way.

Her reaction didn't seem out of character. Buffy seemed like she might start whimpering and crying if she dropped her shampoo bottle at the point in her life, but you're right, they were definitely making the whole thing as awful as they could.

[quietpoet.livejournal.com]

i read a fanfic somewhere (blanking on the name or where I read it) that made the AR the Powers That Be behind the reins of Spike as a test for Buffy.

I tend to agree with you, that it was a mixture of human and demon parts of Spike. I think he was also going on the mentality that sex was the only way to reach Buffy, so in a way he was only doing what he knew worked, up until this point. I hated that they made Buffy the victim because she was hurt, but not so badly that she couldn't take Spike, tears and all. Sigh. Wanks a-plenty, years later.