I love me some vampires
May. 15th, 2003 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI've been thinking a lot about this thing on salon.com (which I still haven't read -- pillow fort!) and the negativity surrounding these final episodes of Buffy, and especially the Spike hate directed towards his character's possible future directions, after I discussed it here earlier this week. It's not negativity towards individual eps that bothers me, or characters, or whatever, but more a sum of these parts, an overarching sense of hatefulness that I'm not certain I understand. I don't think the show is going to end the way I want, as I mentioned in my review earlier. Not for Spike and Buffy, anyway. But as sad as that makes me, I'm sadder still that I'm leaving these people at all, because I can't ever remember loving any television show as much as I love this one. Nothing I've ever watched has made me feel the way this show has, the gamut of emotions from rage to despair to hysterical laughter to tears, all for these indelible characters who have become as real to me as my family and friends.
And I'm especially thinking of specific characters--but the one that jumps out at me is the one this week being blamed for every possible fault in the Buffy/Angel universe apparently: Spike. I tried to think of the reasons why I veered from "I just love Spike, he's so great" to "I am insanely in love with Spike and I want to marry him and have his undead spawn and write fanfic about him until my fingers bleed." Why I feel so defensive about him, or something like that. And found it really hard to articulate, but I tried.
What I see in Spike:
1. Someone who could change my mind. I never actually liked vampire stuff much at all. In fact I used to loathe it, the whole mythos surrounding the Rice characters especially that was skewered so deftly by Lie To Me in S2. But I'd enjoyed the parodic aspects of Buffy the movie so much that I figured it could be fun, and I was right. What really hooked me on the vampire ideal was early Angel -- I enjoyed his teasing presence in the earliest days, and then later his brooding avenger persona, and even more when he became Angelus. It showed me a side of vampires as characters I'd never been given before in the usual quest people made to show them as glamourous and mystique-laden as possible. I loved that, except for Angel, vampires were vain, cruel, soulless, vicious, evil, venal, and depthless. They were stake-fodder, and that was it. In season two, when Spike and Dru came on, we got to see an even more different side to vampires -- the dedicated lovers, a sickly vamp in need of care, and a sense of joie de un-vivre that made it entertaining to watch. Spike especially, by allying himself with Buffy in the end, by being vulnerable enough to have ended up in a wheelchair, by being hurt that Dru would be hot for Angelus, by being funny and sarky and beaten up by Buffy's mom while also being scary and frightening, by being adoring and worshipful of his lover, convinced me that vampires were actually the coolest things around. There's never been a vampire like him, with all his dichotomies, and probably never will.
2. Someone who loved enough to change. Mostly, I love love stuff. I love big, overpowering love stories with sweeping drama and intense emotions. BtVS gives me that, and they often give me that in their male vampire characters and the relationships they have with Buffy. I wasn't totally certain what I thought about Spike falling for Buffy, but what sold it to me was that he was willing to change. At first, it was funny -- trying to save "bleeding disaster victims" and hoping to get points for it, going to watch her get killed and then ending up helping her instead, becoming her ally again, this time against Glory. Mostly, trying to shoot her and ending up on her porch, comforting her. Few characters have ever had the ability to change as much as Spike has and make us believe it, make us keep watching. Part of it is JM's acting ability, and part of it is what he brings out in other actors around him. Some of it is plain chemistry. And some of it's the scripts. But no one else on the show, not even Buffy, has changed as much as he has over the years, and still maintained an ability to make most of us care about it.
3. He's a dork and he's making up for lost time. The other day,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elz wrote a great list of all the reasons why Spike is really a dork and a loser, not cool. I can't add anything, except to say that in a lot of ways, the "cool" persona he created for himself as a vampire, which always, always comes back to bite him in the ass because it never fully works (usually failing him at the worst possible times), always seemed to me like a way to make up for what he never had as a human. He overcompensats with the punk rock 'tude and the sarcasm and the violence, because he's so desperate to leave what he really is behind. He's living proof (or, rather, unliving) of what Angel hinted at in Doppelgangland -- that the human doesn't really leave the demon -- because the soft underbelly of William is never really far from the hard outer shell of Spikeness. He spends so much time fighting against it, and finally with the soul has learned to embrace it a little, and make it work for him. He's kind of like most of us -- trying to hide our failings from the view of others, not letting others see who we really are in case they then don't like us. He's a guy fans especially can relate to. Inside his inner loser rages, and his whole existence is spent trying to quash that loser's spirit. He's a loser, but he's a loser with panache and flair, and that makes us love him.
4. He's an incurable romantic. It's hard for most women not to respond to the over the top romantic quality of the guy. He goes to insane lengths to cure Dru. He allies himself with his worst enemy to keep her for himself and save the world he loves. He again goes to insane lengths to get Dru back when she leaves him, and even admits he's love's bitch. When he thinks he's in love with Buffy, he's all over her like the most perfect boyfriend ever. And when he finally falls for real, he stands by her side, trying to prove himself in his own misguided way, through torture and misery and ostracism. He carries on with this mission even after his love object is dead. He may be borderline stalkerish, but for the most part, he's the kind of devoted guy I always dreamed of meeting and never have.
5. He's an outsider, wanting to connect. He admits in Becoming that he loves this world -- some of it, purely selfish, like viewing humans as happy meals. But underneath that there's a self-awareness and a sense of understanding of his place in the world that few characters have ever shown on this program. He connects first with other demons, then when he has to, to humans. His level of human contact is unheard of. And he doesn't seem to mind. It's only natural that he'd fall for a human woman, because he's probably more open to possibilities than any other vampire could be. That's really one of his great qualities -- he's open-minded. Not a lot fazes him, and he seems willing to entertain ideas no one else would. Many of us in fandom feel like outsiders because of what we like, and we want to connect with other people through cons, the net, wherever. So we can identify with a guy who's had massive crap dumped on him, and still tries to connect no matter how far on the outside he feels he is.
6. He's hot. Spike's not even normally my type -- he talks too much, he's littler and thinner than I usually like, the bleach is so two decades ago, blah blah. But he projects an attitude and charisma (again, that thin veneer of what people think is cool but is really just a covering coat of paint) that take his already normally good looks to a different level. I had a boss like that once -- she was about 5 feet tall, her face was lopsided, and she was slightly overweight, but everyone thought she was taller, more gorgeous, and sexier than anyone else in the room. She projected this attitude and had such charisma that I didn't even know she was only 5 feet tall until she told me -- I thought she was taller, too. It was just something about her, and Spike has that. A lot of people responded to him, and his fan base grew so fast, not just because of JM's acting ability and his astonishing cheekbones; but because the actor projects something into the character that makes him come alive for so many people, makes him hotter and cooler and sexier than he really actually is.
7. He's funny. He's usually the funniest guy in the room, he's got sarcasm and quick wit and the Brit accent and rapid-fire delivery, and he expresses himself with flair. He loves to skewer people's pretentions, if not his own, and because he's so perspicacious about people, he can zero in and hit buttons with superior skill. He makes us laugh, and that's incredibly attractive.
8. We can identify with him. In some ways, Spike's kind of an everyvampire. He has a lot of the same faults and makes the same mistakes that many of us do, he doesn't know how to make himself lovable to the one person he loves, he's often lonely and isolated, like so many of us feel in our lives. He reflects a lot of inner fears, and I think the pathos of his story can sometimes almost be frightening to people in how easy it is to identify with. He's frequently horrible, wrong, stupid, and basically all the things most of us fear being in our day to day lives. Angel, in some ways, reflects the darkest parts of ourselves that we fear letting loose in the world; Spike may be a reflection of our ids run amok, the person we could be if we didn't have superegos to keep us in check.
9. He loves my Buffy. It doesn't take much more than that for me, sometimes -- Angel loved her and I liked that he did, Spike loved her and it made me love him more.
10. He's a fanboy. The very first time we meet him, he's talking about watching TV (the end of School Hard, when he tells Dru "Let's go see what's on TV.") He watches soaps and Dawson's Creek and knows about Falcon Crest and makes great pop culture references and knows his Monty Python. How can you not love a guy who understands your desire to have no one interfere with watching your shows?
And I'm especially thinking of specific characters--but the one that jumps out at me is the one this week being blamed for every possible fault in the Buffy/Angel universe apparently: Spike. I tried to think of the reasons why I veered from "I just love Spike, he's so great" to "I am insanely in love with Spike and I want to marry him and have his undead spawn and write fanfic about him until my fingers bleed." Why I feel so defensive about him, or something like that. And found it really hard to articulate, but I tried.
What I see in Spike:
1. Someone who could change my mind. I never actually liked vampire stuff much at all. In fact I used to loathe it, the whole mythos surrounding the Rice characters especially that was skewered so deftly by Lie To Me in S2. But I'd enjoyed the parodic aspects of Buffy the movie so much that I figured it could be fun, and I was right. What really hooked me on the vampire ideal was early Angel -- I enjoyed his teasing presence in the earliest days, and then later his brooding avenger persona, and even more when he became Angelus. It showed me a side of vampires as characters I'd never been given before in the usual quest people made to show them as glamourous and mystique-laden as possible. I loved that, except for Angel, vampires were vain, cruel, soulless, vicious, evil, venal, and depthless. They were stake-fodder, and that was it. In season two, when Spike and Dru came on, we got to see an even more different side to vampires -- the dedicated lovers, a sickly vamp in need of care, and a sense of joie de un-vivre that made it entertaining to watch. Spike especially, by allying himself with Buffy in the end, by being vulnerable enough to have ended up in a wheelchair, by being hurt that Dru would be hot for Angelus, by being funny and sarky and beaten up by Buffy's mom while also being scary and frightening, by being adoring and worshipful of his lover, convinced me that vampires were actually the coolest things around. There's never been a vampire like him, with all his dichotomies, and probably never will.
2. Someone who loved enough to change. Mostly, I love love stuff. I love big, overpowering love stories with sweeping drama and intense emotions. BtVS gives me that, and they often give me that in their male vampire characters and the relationships they have with Buffy. I wasn't totally certain what I thought about Spike falling for Buffy, but what sold it to me was that he was willing to change. At first, it was funny -- trying to save "bleeding disaster victims" and hoping to get points for it, going to watch her get killed and then ending up helping her instead, becoming her ally again, this time against Glory. Mostly, trying to shoot her and ending up on her porch, comforting her. Few characters have ever had the ability to change as much as Spike has and make us believe it, make us keep watching. Part of it is JM's acting ability, and part of it is what he brings out in other actors around him. Some of it is plain chemistry. And some of it's the scripts. But no one else on the show, not even Buffy, has changed as much as he has over the years, and still maintained an ability to make most of us care about it.
3. He's a dork and he's making up for lost time. The other day,
elz wrote a great list of all the reasons why Spike is really a dork and a loser, not cool. I can't add anything, except to say that in a lot of ways, the "cool" persona he created for himself as a vampire, which always, always comes back to bite him in the ass because it never fully works (usually failing him at the worst possible times), always seemed to me like a way to make up for what he never had as a human. He overcompensats with the punk rock 'tude and the sarcasm and the violence, because he's so desperate to leave what he really is behind. He's living proof (or, rather, unliving) of what Angel hinted at in Doppelgangland -- that the human doesn't really leave the demon -- because the soft underbelly of William is never really far from the hard outer shell of Spikeness. He spends so much time fighting against it, and finally with the soul has learned to embrace it a little, and make it work for him. He's kind of like most of us -- trying to hide our failings from the view of others, not letting others see who we really are in case they then don't like us. He's a guy fans especially can relate to. Inside his inner loser rages, and his whole existence is spent trying to quash that loser's spirit. He's a loser, but he's a loser with panache and flair, and that makes us love him.4. He's an incurable romantic. It's hard for most women not to respond to the over the top romantic quality of the guy. He goes to insane lengths to cure Dru. He allies himself with his worst enemy to keep her for himself and save the world he loves. He again goes to insane lengths to get Dru back when she leaves him, and even admits he's love's bitch. When he thinks he's in love with Buffy, he's all over her like the most perfect boyfriend ever. And when he finally falls for real, he stands by her side, trying to prove himself in his own misguided way, through torture and misery and ostracism. He carries on with this mission even after his love object is dead. He may be borderline stalkerish, but for the most part, he's the kind of devoted guy I always dreamed of meeting and never have.
5. He's an outsider, wanting to connect. He admits in Becoming that he loves this world -- some of it, purely selfish, like viewing humans as happy meals. But underneath that there's a self-awareness and a sense of understanding of his place in the world that few characters have ever shown on this program. He connects first with other demons, then when he has to, to humans. His level of human contact is unheard of. And he doesn't seem to mind. It's only natural that he'd fall for a human woman, because he's probably more open to possibilities than any other vampire could be. That's really one of his great qualities -- he's open-minded. Not a lot fazes him, and he seems willing to entertain ideas no one else would. Many of us in fandom feel like outsiders because of what we like, and we want to connect with other people through cons, the net, wherever. So we can identify with a guy who's had massive crap dumped on him, and still tries to connect no matter how far on the outside he feels he is.
6. He's hot. Spike's not even normally my type -- he talks too much, he's littler and thinner than I usually like, the bleach is so two decades ago, blah blah. But he projects an attitude and charisma (again, that thin veneer of what people think is cool but is really just a covering coat of paint) that take his already normally good looks to a different level. I had a boss like that once -- she was about 5 feet tall, her face was lopsided, and she was slightly overweight, but everyone thought she was taller, more gorgeous, and sexier than anyone else in the room. She projected this attitude and had such charisma that I didn't even know she was only 5 feet tall until she told me -- I thought she was taller, too. It was just something about her, and Spike has that. A lot of people responded to him, and his fan base grew so fast, not just because of JM's acting ability and his astonishing cheekbones; but because the actor projects something into the character that makes him come alive for so many people, makes him hotter and cooler and sexier than he really actually is.
7. He's funny. He's usually the funniest guy in the room, he's got sarcasm and quick wit and the Brit accent and rapid-fire delivery, and he expresses himself with flair. He loves to skewer people's pretentions, if not his own, and because he's so perspicacious about people, he can zero in and hit buttons with superior skill. He makes us laugh, and that's incredibly attractive.
8. We can identify with him. In some ways, Spike's kind of an everyvampire. He has a lot of the same faults and makes the same mistakes that many of us do, he doesn't know how to make himself lovable to the one person he loves, he's often lonely and isolated, like so many of us feel in our lives. He reflects a lot of inner fears, and I think the pathos of his story can sometimes almost be frightening to people in how easy it is to identify with. He's frequently horrible, wrong, stupid, and basically all the things most of us fear being in our day to day lives. Angel, in some ways, reflects the darkest parts of ourselves that we fear letting loose in the world; Spike may be a reflection of our ids run amok, the person we could be if we didn't have superegos to keep us in check.
9. He loves my Buffy. It doesn't take much more than that for me, sometimes -- Angel loved her and I liked that he did, Spike loved her and it made me love him more.
10. He's a fanboy. The very first time we meet him, he's talking about watching TV (the end of School Hard, when he tells Dru "Let's go see what's on TV.") He watches soaps and Dawson's Creek and knows about Falcon Crest and makes great pop culture references and knows his Monty Python. How can you not love a guy who understands your desire to have no one interfere with watching your shows?
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 04:41 pm (UTC)came, saw, and fell for it, muttering "picked my brain, she did...".
I don't think the show is going to end the way I want, as I mentioned in my review earlier. Not for Spike and Buffy, anyway
Yes. This much is certain. But...you're not alone. If you want to feel a bit of the Spuffy love, check out
But as sad as that makes me, I'm sadder still that I'm leaving these people at all, because I can't ever remember loving any television show as much as I love this one. Nothing I've ever watched has made me feel the way this show has, the gamut of emotions from rage to despair to hysterical laughter to tears, all for these indelible characters who have become as real to me as my family and friends.
Absolutely. This is The One for me when it comes to shows. TXF was my first love, a good show, but Buffy burns so much brighter because, layered and powerful as it is, it manages to evoke so much thoughts and emotions.
And I'm especially thinking of specific characters--but the one that jumps out at me is the one this week being blamed for every possible fault in the Buffy/Angel universe apparently: Spike. I tried to think of the reasons why I veered from "I just love Spike, he's so great" to "I am insanely in love with Spike and I want to marry him and have his undead spawn and write fanfic about him until my fingers bleed." Why I feel so defensive about him, or something like that. And found it really hard to articulate, but I tried.
I only elaborated on a fraction of my personal feelings for Spike (and Buffy) (http://www.livejournal.com/users/monanotlisa/15295.html#cutid1); it's really a huge topic, enough to keep your fingers on the keyboard for hours and hours...
Kudos to you for actually taking the time, Gwyn.
1. Someone who could change my mind.
Yeah...although I've got nothing against the Anne Rice vampires if you don't take 'em seriously, the BtVS vampire definition was definitely different: quirky, more profound, fascinating.
2. Someone who loved enough to change.
And that's a powerful character in itself, even in concept, but I agree, our love stems from scripts and portrayal just as much as from the idea they developed...
But no one else on the show, not even Buffy, has changed as much as he has over the years, and still maintained an ability to make most of us care about it
And how much we care...indeed.
3. He's a dork and he's making up for lost time
Oh so true... It's about compensation, about trying to recreate yourself but falling back to what you are-- which is fine, because he keeps fighting, he doesn't accept fate or desitiny, and he has all this passion in this attempt.
4. He's an incurable romantic
He may be borderline stalkerish, but for the most part, he's the kind of devoted guy I always dreamed of meeting and never have.
Hm... maybe this kind of passion and devotion comes with this very price of a tenuous hold on full mental sanity-- (skip the personal tale if you feel like it) my first boyfriend and the only one I ever really loved was this fierce, wonderful, passionate boy, a dork at heart, incredibly smart but borderline maniac-depressive; we fell hard for each other, and he did everything for me-- to this day, it was the best time of my life. I remember crying once because it was just so incredibly intense, but it was all I had ever longed for and never believed would exist. Looking closer, I can see a few of his traits in Spike, though he had much more self-confidence than our favourite vampire...
(continued in post below)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 04:42 pm (UTC)Definitely; this is something both tugging at our heartstrings and making us remember our own experiences.
6. He's hot.
LOL. He's actually JUST my type, in everything physical but the bleach. But yes. It's not the looks, it's something that transcends it-- charisma, as you put it.
7. He's funny
He makes us laugh, and that's incredibly attractive Spot-on. Comic relief early on, he STILL does it. ("It's the Holy Grail-- or the Holy Handgranade, or Whatever")
8. We can identify with him.
Very true; this actually shines through all the points above and really is what makes us connect to him, what connects him to the audience. Really sure you didn't like (or maybe didn't read) Deepa's and my Ultimate Spike Post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/monanotlisa/15295.html)?
9. He loves my Buffy
I do believe it's part of the package that he doesn't only love Buffy; he loves Buffy the way she is, darkness, light, girl, Slayer-- he admires every part of her ("You're a hell of a woman") and really accepts everything about her; while I concede this may be true for Angel, we've hardly ever seen Angel really get to know her deeply and explore her, maybe just because he really hasn't been around that much...
10. He's a fanboy.
That's an amusing part; to me, it is right next to the No. 3. And again, we feel the connection. If Buffy came on in his world, he'd love it. & ;-)
Sooo...just some mindless replies because I really felt this deserved feedback (much more in depth than I can, for time reasons, provide, I'm afraid).
Thanks a lot--
Mona
no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 09:02 pm (UTC)I look at Angel the character and see the classic tragic hero - operatic really - destined never to be happy. Camus's version of Sisyphus. He will be pushing that rock up that hill forever. Because he was cursed by gypsies and they really know their stuff.
But Spike is on a Fool's journey. Or Parcival's. It heartbreaking and hopeful. And not a curse though it may often feel like one to him.
I love them both. And I still love Buffy. So there.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 09:35 pm (UTC)Oh yeah! And that's the attraction, I think -- I figured I was getting too long-winded, so I didn't say this, but one of the things that's interesting in a comparative character study is Angel's role as that classic hero, that Mythical Archetype. He really is the champion, he's larger than life in many ways, which is why his suffering is so operatic. But we can't identify with that -- we can like it, and think it's cool, but it means that, since most of us will never be Heroic Archetypes with capital letters, we can't really identify with him or share his feelings. And a lot of people just knee jerk hate the hero types (HL fans know what I'm talking about!)
But Spike -- the reason we can identify with him is because he is just like us -- he can act heroically, but it's not archetypal, not mythical in nature. His heroism comes from his own struggles and his desire to be loved and to love, to do something greater like Parcival. So despite his egregious errors and mistakes, he really is us, just with different (or no) conscience, ethics, etc. until he got the soul. We can look at him and see ourselves trying to fulfill a greater role, which I'm sure makes a lot of people have contempt for him, because he's so ordinary, so why care about his struggle? It's easier to dismiss him because he is or was evil. Which is ironic, because that's what makes him extraordinary, really -- we might never do the things he's been willing to do. But we can see ourselves in him. And for me that makes him even more romantic in both the little r and the big r sense.
Sigh. I sometimes wonder about myself that I could talk about and analyze these things to death. It's tv! But it's such goooood tv. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-16 03:08 am (UTC)Plus, to be a bit more shallow for a moment: he's a sexy bad-ass wrapped around a gooey geek-and-poet center; passionate in everything he does, right and wrong; who manages to be both seductively smooth and endearingly clumsy; who wears his heart on his sleeve and is willing and able to let love bring out the best in him. I marvel more at the fact that there are those who haven't fallen hard for him.
He loves my Buffy. It doesn't take much more than that for me, sometimes
Amen. Not long ago I was discussing this elsewhere: I liked Spike fine, enjoyed and was intrigued by his character as it developed over the seasons, but I didn't really love him until he fell in love with Buffy. That was the clincher, for me.
He can be irritating and an asshole and smug and disgusting and dumb, but he's the most fascinating and appealing dope I've ever seen portrayed anywhere.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-16 01:18 pm (UTC)There was one other point I could easily have added related to this:
11. He's a Weeble. He wobbles, but he doesn't fall down. The one thing he's been consistently is strong, in the face of some pretty huge obstacles. But no matter how bad things get -- whether he's nearly killed and ends up in a wheelchair, whether he's devasted by Buffy locking him out of her house, or whether he's been dumped by Dru or beaten up by demons or tortured by hell gods, he still comes back. Some of it's stupid stubbornness and that almost-stalkerish quality, but a lot of it is plain strength and dedication to the ones he loves. Where as Angel is that more mythical hero, Spike is like David -- he's strong enough to take on the giant, but he's also still the little guy, like us. And he just keeps taking a licking and keeps on ticking.