Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 6

[aadler]

 
Continuing the meme/challenge begun and tracked here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 6

In your own space, create a fanwork. A drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. A picspam. Something. Leave a comment in this [the assignment] post saying you did it.

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Meta: “Seeing Red” and Spike

There are a couple of things that I’ve seen more than once in various fandom-related posts, and they both seem to go back to the same central issue. I’ll name them, then go into my own opinions on the subject.

The first was actually about some stories of my own. I did “Shock to the System” in 2013, and “Rough Trade” late last year, both Spike-centered stories, and in each case, recs of the story elsewhere contained the qualifier … Spike is still evil at this point …

The second had to do with various observations regarding problems different people were having with the bathroom scene (yes, attempted rape) in the BtVS episode 6-19 “Seeing Red”; the most recent one I saw even included some observation as to how that scene utterly obliterated that viewer’s ability to see Spike as any kind of romantic hero.

Well … yeah.

Spike was evil. Did we ever forget that? He liked being evil, he got a huge kick out of it, he got offended whenever anyone forgot that was what he was. He enjoyed being evil, and never apologized for it, and even seemed to draw some satisfaction from rubbing people’s faces in it. Spike spent five Buffy seasons being evil (okay, just the single appearance in Season 3, but he was still what he was), and then one being not-evil (followed by his presence in Angel’s final season). So, okay, six seasons as a frequent or regular character, and evil for the first four of them.

Spike and Dru were supposed to be there-and-gone villains on Buffy. They stayed because they were so popular. Spike became a breakout star, rather to my own annoyance: I wanted to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not the Spike and Buffy Show. But he became popular because of what he was, and what he was came down to four things:

1. handsome
2. snarky
3. vampire
4. EVIL.

He was evil. No getting around it, and the show writers never actually tried. He killed people and enjoyed killing them. He hurt people and enjoyed hurting them (though always as an appetizer to, rather than a substitute for, killing them). He killed two Slayers, but most of the people he killed were helpless, and he did it because it was fun.

Did the show writers put the chip into Spike so they could keep him around as a regular character without him remaining the evil adversary that Buffy just somehow never managed to kill? or were they already planning the long arc that would take him to where he eventually arrived? Either way, the chipping part came about long after there had been many, many, MANY fanfics ’shipping Spike and Buffy. And, however the ficcers may have rationalized it in the individual stories, I couldn’t escape the sense that it kept coming down to Spike & Buffy totes belong 2gethr bekoz he’s just so GORGEOUS.

Uh-huh. She’s a defender of humanity, protecting the helpless against the evil, demonic creatures that prey on them. And he’s one of those evil, demonic creatures — humans are “Happy Meals with legs” to him — and the only thing he likes better than killing people is terrorizing and torturing them before killing them. But he’s really pretty, so the two of them definitely belong together.

Yeah. Got it.

When Spike and Buffy actually did begin together as a couple, in canon, it was almost a textbook example of the flip line, Figure out what the fans want, and then give it to them hard. The Spike-and-Buffy relationship was horrible and horrifying. He hit her at her lowest ebb, he took advantage of a trauma victim, he found someone who was (from her own perspective) in Hell and explicitly tried to drag her — he put it that way himself — deeper into the darkness. On her side of it, she was screwing something she was supposed to hate, purely because she hated herself, she was committing slow-motion suicide because her own life was killing her (or, at least, that was how she felt). There was nothing romantic about it, and the moment it stopped being a death-spiral was the same moment she found the strength to break away from it.

Spike was evil. I keep stressing that. He was evil. That was the point.

And that was why his character journey was so extraordinary. The attempted rape in “Seeing Red” wasn’t a bump on that journey, but the most crucial part of it.

Spike was always more than just another vampire. He was unusual even among his own kind for his unstoppable determination, his utter ferocity, the zest he took in ‘living’, and — tied up in all that — his devotion to Drusilla. The Judge (BtVS ep. 2-13) disapprovingly found that affection to reek of humanity. When it unexpectedly transferred to Buffy … well, talk about a train-wreck! Spike wanted Buffy, hated her, hated wanting her, hated himself for wanting her … In “Fool for Love” (BtVS ep. 5-07), he made his best play for her, was rejected, came back to kill her with a shotgun (could he have pulled the trigger before the chip paralyzed him? he was at least willing to try), and then had his determination undercut by finding her in pain and wanting to help.

His ability to love didn’t make him any less evil. It did, however, begin to pit one part of his nature against the rest.

What he accomplished from there on was magnificent. He willingly underwent torture rather than betray, not Buffy, but someone Buffy cared for (BtVS ep. 5-19). There seems little doubt that he would have willingly given his life to save Buffy at the end of Season 5. At the beginning of Season 6, he was still there in the fight even though all his reason was gone: protecting Dawn because he’d promised Buffy he would, helping the Scoobies because … well, because she’d have liked that.

Perversely, his regression began once Buffy was brought back from the dead. Except it wasn’t exactly regression: he continued to grow, but the growth was dark. When she had been unattainable, he had done his best to be worthy of what he could never have, or at least to properly worship it; on her return, it seemed possible that she might be attainable after all. And that … oh, that didn’t go well.

He used her while she was vulnerable. When she finally began to recover, he resisted that part of the recovery that had her ending the destructive sexual relationship (and any relationship that went beyond partners in battle). And then the bathroom scene …

That was the crux. That was when everything changed. That was when it was made clear to him, in terms that he couldn’t deny or ignore or mistake for anything else, that what he wanted was made impossible by what he was. He had come far, had achieved much, had gone beyond his essential nature to an extent that should have been impossible. He had loved, fully and genuinely, as no other vampire ever had or ever could. (The milk-and-water soppiness James and Elizabeth showed for each other — A:tS ep. 3-01 — didn’t even begin to compare.) But he had already done as much as he could; he was up against the dead-end of his own nature. In an unexpected paradox, he had got as close as he possibly could, only to discover he was farther away than ever. He could do no more, he had been doomed to failure before he began, because he was evil.

So he set out to change his own nature.

That was breathtaking. That was stunning. Angel had become a champion because of his efforts, once a soul was reattached to the demon, to atone for the things Angelus had done. Spike, though, set himself to chain the demon while he still was the demon.

Okay, so — at least from my perspective — Spike became enormously less interesting once he had a soul. (Maybe that was a different aspect of a problem script writers have been dealing with for decades: after all that time spent with UST, what do you do with your couple once they’re finally together?) It doesn’t change the fact that what he did, why he did it, the insurmountable obstacle he faced and the way he surmounted it, was astounding character development, a mini-epic in a show that had more than its share of those.

So, no, “Seeing Red” isn’t a barrier to being able to accept Spike as a romantic hero. The events in that episode, and his response to them, were what finally made him one.
 

Comments

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Excellent meta. The fact that you're a straight male and not blinded by abs and cheekbones makes it all the more worthwhile. A very balanced look at the character, IMHO.

[aadler]

Straight male, oh yeah. Not just exclusively but enthusiastically heterosexual. Wouldn’t dream of kicking Clare Kramer or Juliet Landau out of bed … but that doesn’t mean I’d ever believe — or try to convince anyone else — that Glory or Drusilla was just the perfect match for Xander.

All the same, Spike’s character journey was unbelievably well done. Only Willow’s (from stammering nerd to world-threatening Big Bad) can even be offered up for comparison. (And now I have to recommend brutti_ma_buoni’s “A Half-Formed Thing” as a peek into that journey.)

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Everything Brutti does is amazing. She's so prolific, I can't keep up!