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

Re: as if that reply wasn't long enough...

[rahirah]

Well, yeah, obviously S7 was a great improvement morally speaking--that goes without saying. But a great many people who like S7 Spike cite sensitivity and vulnerabilty amongst the reasons, and feel that AtS Spike was a huge step backwards in that respect. Whereas it seemed to me that the main reason that Spike was so sensitive and vulnerable in S7 was that he was one huge throbbing mass of unshelled emotional pain for the better part of the season.

I actually think Spike was reasonably content to throw in with the good guys, up until the point that the good guys cut him out of the resurrection plot. He seemed genuinely hurt when he confronted Xander about that, and that was the end of him working closely with them, although he still seems willing to help when asked. Of course once the affair started, Buffy made it clear that the only way he could have her was if none of her friends knew anything about it, which puts Spike in a position of "them or me."

For someone attempting to lure Buffy into the dark, Spike does a piss-poor job of it. After the initial debacle, he tries to be supportive boyfriend guy with the social worker. He kicks Buffy out when he realizes she's using him to escape her responsibilities--unfortunately, he isn't able to maintain that resolve. He consistently urges Buffy to tell her friends about them, even though he is aware that if it does come down to a choice, Buffy will almost certainly choose them. He very seldom does any actual luring--even in Dead Things, she's the one who leaves the others and goes up onto the balcony. Spike merely points out to her that this is what she keeps doing. In Doublemeat Palace, he's the only one who seems to notice or care that Buffy's new job is making her miserable. (And if his urging her to walk out on it is evil, then what are we to make of Riley asking her to do the exact same thing a few episodes later, and Buffy complying without a second thought?) He never attempts to use his position as her lover to get away with anything--he's obviously aware that she would be unhappy about the demon eggs.

Whatever the writers were aiming for, it doesn't come off to me so much that Spike wants Buffy dark as that Buffy IS dark, and Spike's willing to let her act that way because without a soul, he doesn't understand how it hurts her.

Re: as if that reply wasn't long enough...

[botias.livejournal.com]

But a great many people who like S7 Spike cite sensitivity and vulnerabilty amongst the reasons

Really there was no one on Angel for him to be sensitive and vulnerable around, except maybe Fred. Who else did he show that to but Buffy? Not that I'm a big fan of flayed!Spike or anything.

I agree that Spike was more or less content throwing in with the good guys, but I don't think he was ever put in a place where he had to reexamine his position of 'The only reason I'm not Big Bad is because of the chip, that's what I really want to be.' I think he got a start on it when he thought his chip was broken, but then it showed itself to be working and that was the end of that. I don't doubt he was relieved to set all that ambiguity aside for another day, preferably one that will never come. So he never committed himself to making a place among the white hats.

It seemed like his efforts were in encouraging Buffy to distance herself, to dwell in limbo with him, not in making himself a reasonable facsimile. I think in his assistance to the Scoobies, he at least told himself that he was just honoring his promise to Buffy, not trying to befriend them, and it didn't seem like he was putting himself forward that way at all. In all his scenes he's walking out on their requests for help, or insulting them, or making it clear he's only offering the minimum of assistance.

His disappointment when they kept him out of the loop might have told him otherwise. Maybe he would have tried if he had ever been in a place where he thought his Big Bad days were never going to come again, or if he tried to be Big Bad and realized that's not what he wanted anymore.

I'm guessing his chip being out would have ended in tragedy. I think he would have found his old ways too seductive still, at that point.

Re: as if that reply wasn't long enough...

[rahirah]

I always thought it was a real pity that they seemed to consider Tabula Rasa a throwaway bit of fluff. Stripped of his memory, Spike immediately assumes that he's one of the good guys, and when prestented with evidence that he's a bad guy, immediately rationalizes his way back to being one of the good guys. Of course, there's no saying what might have happened if he'd gotten really hungry, but stilll...that's pretty stunning.

Another facsinating bit was a comment in an inverview with Drew Z. Greenberg (the guy who wrote Smashed) to the effect that if the chip really hadn't been working, Spike would have killed Alley Woman "and then probably felt bad about it afterwards." No offense to Alley Woman, but I really wish they'd gone in that direction. Had Spike kill her, and have him realize that he does feel bad, and freak out. And then have Buffy find out he'd killed someone. That would have made for a glorious tangle of moral dilemmas all around.

Re: as if that reply wasn't long enough...

[botias.livejournal.com]

I thought he kicked her out because he realized that she had only come to him because she was invisible and no one could see her with him, even herself really. There's a blow to the ego. He realizes that she's brought him only her lust, and tells her if he can't have all of her than she should just get out.

He seemed blind to her responsibilities to me. Not surprising given that vampires don't really have any. He encourages her to neglect Dawn after their first night together, and when he entreats her to 'come outside', and when he tries to get her to walk away from her job, and when he has sex with her on her break, you can bet that would have gotten her fired if she'd gotten caught.

I noticed the parallel, but leaving your job because you don't like it, presumably to make a living trafficing demon eggs and mugging people vs. to save lives by slaying demons, however enjoyable, is not really the same.

What's really sad about Spike's luring, such as it is, is that he can't lure her to the dark side. He's not there himself. The scourge of Europe is now only the scourge of kittens, and people who wander around at night carrying cash.

Re: as if that reply wasn't long enough...

[rahirah]

I don't think Spike agreed with Buffy's priorities, which was not always a good thing. But he spent a hundred years taking care of Drusilla, so I think he understands responsibility in a general sense. Spike's not happy about Buffy only coming to him because she's invisible, but she specifically says that being invisibible makes her free of rules and reports, free of her life. Spike replies caustically that there's another word for that--dead. And it's only after that that he tells her to get out, because he doesn't want her if he can't have all of her. He's well aware that she's running away from her life with the invisibility, and does not consider it a good thing. After all, he wants one of them to be living.

He does encourage her to stay with him on several occasions, and Buffy always uses Dawn as an excuse for leaving. In the case of Wrecked, I think Buffy's in the right; she's been out all night without calling. In later instances, though, it's hard to tell whether Dawn isn't just a convenient "left the chillun on the stove" excuse. Dawn certainly doesn't say anything about Buffy being late, or feeling neglected, in AYW; she just seems disappointed that it's Doublemeat again.

Buffy creates a dichotomy in her own mind: I can spend time with Spike or I can spend time with Dawn. But the dichotomy is false. There's nothing preventing her from saying "No, I can't have sex with you now. But you can come in and watch us eat our crappy Doublemeat dinner if you want." Except, of course, for her desire to keep Spike cordoned off from the rest of her life, which in turn puts Spike into competition with her friends and family for her time.

Buffy would have gotten fired if they'd caught her having sex on her break. (But let's note there is no luring on Spike's part there, either, unless one counts just strolling past as lureful.) But she also would have gotten fired for walking out mid-shift with no warning. At least, if she weren't blackmailing them into letting her work there to begin with. Both Spike and Riley encourage Buffy to walk out on her job--Riley because he wanted her help, Spike because he wanted to help her. I don't remember Riley expressing any worry about Buffy losing her only source of income because of him; Spike offers to help her out.

Now, it's perfectly true that Spike's idea of financial aid was dubious at best, and Buffy's quite within her rights to tell him that she can't accept stolen money. However, I can't see Spike's motives as being selfish here. He doesn't bring sex into it. He just tells her that this job will hurt her, that she's better than this. To all appearences, he's really concerned about her wellbeing.

Buffy may decide that "I don't like it" is a less worthy reason for leaving her job than "Riley needs me!" She may well be right. But that's a seperate issue from Spike's and Riley's motives for asking her to leave, and in this case, I don't think that Spike's reasons are any less worthy than Riley's--it's a case of apples and oranges.