Re: Douchebag characters considered "Nice Guys" - example 1: Xander Ha
But, no matter how much it all seemed destructive, a few things to consider here: 1) before they started their relationship, she was uninterested in living, and even suicidal (in OMWF), he at least made her interested in living again,
Nope. Her bonds with her friends is what made her interested in living again. It's her bonds that allowed her to resist the pull of both him trying to get her to break them, and the utter despair that she was feeling.
The orgasms is just what got her through the day.
2) whatever happened between them, nobody else got hurt (there were no dead Jennys as a result),
Wrong. There were multiple dead Jennys. Do remember the demon eggs Spike was selling "for a friend". We just didn't see them.
And he STILL didn't get dusted; got did Buffy keep going further down in the dumps.
3) Spike realized his mistakes and actively sought a change so he could be a better man,
Nope, he didn't.
4) they were able to come back from all the awful stuff that had happened, put it all behind them and be extremely close to each other in S7.
Which of course, was one of the many reasons why S7 wasn't only horrifyingly bad, it was also just plain disgusting. I've seen many a things on tv, from operations to death and destruction, hell, I work in a meat-processing plant, I've seen, smelt, and picked up some disgusting things.
There's been only one thing that ever gave me urges to hurl that wasn't a disease or alcohol poisoning, from just watching something: Buffy S7.
Only if by "no different" you mean that he didn't have a complete personality transplant and lose every character trait that made him who he was. (Fortunately.) Or maybe you needed him to mope around and talk about guilt and redemption in every episode, so you could say "oh see, he's different!"
Except of course that he got no personality transplant, and kept all character traits that made him who he was. From over dramatic lying bullshit, to happily stand back and let humans die in a fight - until Buffy tells him that's a bad thing, to threatening to kill people, to continuing to want to go back into Buffy's pants, and being overall a grade A dick, douche and bastard.
He's the exact same guy pre- and post-ensouling.
The difference, however, was huge. Soulless Spike was already quite human-like in many ways,
No, he wasn't.
he was capable of love and loyalty,
No, he wasn't.
but he lacked an internal moral compass. (Just like many humans do, BTW.) Besides himself, he only cared about a few people he cared about - first it was Drusilla, later Buffy, Dawn and to extent Joyce - and didn't have a moral compass beyond trying to please them.
Interestingly, he had that problem even before he got turned into a vampire. Remember that bit about the more evil the human, the less different the vampire?
Oh, and no, it isn't so much caring, as being obsessed by.
He still didn't realize that killing humans to feed on them was inherently wrong.
Post-soul he had the same problem.
Soulless Spike casually referred to eating a decorator once, and thought that the first thing he should do without a chip is try to bite a stranger to prove himself that he can still be a monster.
And if it Buffy didn't care about such things, he would be claiming the very same things when he had a soul.
Souled Spike knew about right and wrong without having to be told by Buffy,
Except of course when he had to be told by Buffy, you know, when he was going to let Wood die in a fight, and Buffy had to tell him to go help Wood. Or the time when he had to go get his Slayer-killing trophy after Buffy told him he needed a killer. Wow, what a souled guy; spends his time with the trophy of one of the women he killed, or he can't be man enough. Then there's that whole thing about happily willing to kill Wood - and continuing to wear the man's mother's coat as a trophy, right in front of his face, you know, the mother he killed.
Such knowledge of right and wrong, truly.
and asked her to stake him when he was afraid he would continue killing people (telling her honestly about his past crimes in no uncertain terms, instead of being silent about them or only reluctantly admit to them once she asked about it).
Overacting bullshit to get her to believe him, that he's sweety good guy now, and really does have a soul. Of course, his surprise about having a soul through the amulet shows he was lying about that after all. Okay, it turned out to be true after all, but as far as Spike was concerned, he thought he was lying.
Soulless Spike was aggressively pursuing Buffy and desperately trying to get any kind of sign of love out of her. Souled Spike was not only not trying to force anything, but was very restrained and not even asking anything out of her unless she made the first move; he offered to leave before she said she wanted him to stay. Souled Spike was able to express his love only for her sake and without asking anything in return.
Except that's where you're wrong. Spike didn't change one bit about getting into Buffy's panties, and he was doing it just as aggressive before and after his soul. It's just that his approach changed.
In season 2, Buffy told him he was pathetic because he only cared if he got his girlfriend, Drusilla, back, instead of being concerned about the world. At the end of season 7, Spike was dying to save the world not in order to gain Buffy's love - he didn't even believe her when she finally told him she loved him and didn't seem too concerned about it - it wasn't about pleasing Buffy or anyone anymore, he was doing it for its own sake.
Except of course for that annoying problem that he was pinned to the floor, he, a vampire, by a massive column of concentrated sunlight. In other words: he wasn't going anywhere. He didn't choose to die to save the world, the choice was taken away from him. He just spent his time spinning it as if it was his choice to... a, oh yeah, impress his obsession.
One-trick-pony there.
[qutoe]Angel/Angelus makes even less sense if you take it in metaphysical sense. What is Angelus then? A demon? Where does he/it come from? Does every human have some sort of demon double that takes over their body once they are sired?[/quote]
From the siring, the blood of the other demon. Think of it like cellular mythosis, blood of demon goes in corpse, and a new demon is born from it.
How come those demons happen to have so many of the personality traits of the original human, only twisted?
Once again; because the corpse that's there, has a brain, that has the chemical, biological brain patterns there. That is what it uses to mold itself its own personality.
It's not surprising that this particular concept of soul was pretty much abandoned after S2, because, well, it never made any sense. And it was contradicted by all those episodes, before and after "Becoming" (Buffy S2, AtS), where it was made clear that Angel remembers everything he did while he was Angelus (before he was cursed by the Gypsies) as well as his life as Liam.
Once again, that's because the soul gets to access the third set of memories, the chemical, biological, physical ones, that is the brain. The demon lays those memories there, the soul gets back, and gets to access them.
So no, it was not contradicted, in fact, they spent their time hammering down how completely different the two are.
AGAIN: "Buffy, I feel like I haven't seen you in months." THAT'S BECAUSE HE HASN'T SEEN HER IN MONTHS.
AGAIN: there's Eyghon. Remember Eyghon? Demon takes over sleeping people and corpses. Remember him jumping in Angel? Remembering two demons fighting it out inside angel while he was just along for the ride, and showed completely separate emotions on his face from fighting it out against a vicious creature? That second demon would be
Angelus, and the fact that Angel himself wasn't fighting and was just sitting there along for the right proves:
they are two separate entities.
And it's not like Spike had a motive to believe that the demon had nothing to do with his mother...
I'm sure that his mother loved him. But she might have also thought deep inside, while she was alive, that he was a little bit too attached to her and that he should find a woman and get married instead. And maybe she also didn't want her son to live an eternal un-life as a momma's boy. Maybe the 'demon' in her only gave her strength to force him to finally cut the umbilical cord for once and all. He came to the right conclusion, but for wrong reasons.
If anything, this scene is the proof of the opposite, since William still wasn't that different in personality right after he was sired, and more importantly, it is something that souled Spike remembers as having happened to him, not to some strange demon who came out of nowhere and took possession of his body. He clearly thinks of himself as having been the same person all his life and un-life.[/quote]
Oh, so wrong. You see, Spike is the exception that states the rule. Remember that bit about the demon twisting everything good into evil and making everything bad worse? Remember that bit about the worse the human, the less difference there is with the vampire afterward?
Let's see: female obsession 1; mother, female obsession 2; Drusilla, female obsession 3; Buffy.
I'm noticing a pattern here, notice the first obsession being before Spike got turned.
And remember how Spike is no different after the ensouling, and after the turning. Remember Spike's surprise at having soul? Proving he could never tell the difference between having one and not, despite it means he's a completely different entity?
That's right; here we've got a guy so twisted and evil, the demon could not change him.
I can't make any sense out of this.
Teach your kid that lying is good, and telling the truth is bad, punish them when they speak the truth and reward them for lies, and they will be feeling guilty when they speak the truth, and good when they lie.
Angelus is similar to this, only it's a lot more than just lying. Give him a conscience, and he'll get one that drives him to torture and kill more.
What are you talking about?
Straw man argument. Are you confusing me with
hyzmarka?
Because he had a chip that kept him from hurting people, he was thus a useful tool to be used. Of course, he showed he could have hurt them indirectly, or find a way to get rid of the chip, so letting him live for so long, is one of the reasons he and all the Scoobies look stupid, and the show idiotic.
I believe Willow said it at some point about staking Spike: "It's icky. We know him." I've seen people wonder why Buffy didn't try to stake Harmony or Drusilla in season 5 when she had the chance, and I thought it was the same reason (in-universe reason, of course - apart from not wanting to lose a character on the show, that is...). Dusting vampires becomes a lot more difficult when you
know them - they stop being faceless vamps and you start seeing them as
people. You don't have to like them, it's enough to see them as individuals, and it suddenly feels like killing a human, even if you tell yourself it's not - unless they are posing a clear and immediate danger to a human.
Except of course, it didn't keep Buffy from dusting her friend from Hemery when he rose out of his grave.
Of course, the fact that Willow and Buffy started looking at Spike as people instead of something to be annihilated shows the problem. You don't ever let yourself look at them like that, look before that happens: dust. Aka, the moment he didn't have any more intelligence to share, in that bathtub: dust. That's he where really he should have been dust.
Of course, your reasoning doesn't work with Xander; he said he never forgot what Spike was.
You can't blur the lines between demons and human. That's the main flaw of the show. There's two reasons; one there isn't anything human. They're like a virus, a blight upon the world. And two; blurring the lines, meant that instead of having heroes, we have a bunch of murdering psychopaths.
In other words, you can't deal with any complexity or moral ambiguity. You must have really hated the show after season 1.
I can handle complexity and moral ambiguity just fine.
The last scene of "Lie to Me" sums it all up (this was, BTW, the episode that made me change my opinion of the show from "fun, witty, entertaining" to "great show!")
BUFFY: Does it ever get easy?
(casually stakes Ford who rises from a grave behind her)
GILES: You mean life?
BUFFY: Yeah. Does it get easy?
GILES: What do you want me to say?
BUFFY: Lie to me.
GILES: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
BUFFY: Liar.
But the demons are still demons. Just because humans can be bad as well, doesn't mean the demons aren't still demons, and especially the vampire ones.
When this show was on the air for the first time, I either didn't have the Internet or barely ever used it. I also couldn't have written about it as well as I can now since I was significantly less articulate back then.
)... just look in a dictionary.
