Huh. Epiphany.

[shipperx]

Huh. You know how your mind wanders into strange territory sometimes? While pondering Deadwood characters -- specifically the tightasses -- my mind somehow wandered back to my kinkathon fic (which I know I didn't post a chapter this weekend. I'm slow. I'm sorry). Anyway, I was thinking about the fact that I dropped that thing in the story about Gorbach and his mother (another touch of that in the upcoming chapter). And, certainly, there's an ongoing plot point with William/Spike and his mother. While I have the story mapped out, I'm sometimes surprised by details that I put in that weren't planned (Gorbach's dependence on the idea that his mother [and Halfrek] will 'fix things' was such a detail). I don't always know why those things show up. Sometimes the subconscious provides. But, while thinking about it, I discovered that it has a point.

So often antis (you know, Spike haters) point to William's relationship with his mother, Anne, as a Norman Bates thing. "See, he was poised to be a serial killer! He was close to his mother!" My reaction is always "WTF?!"

While pondering the aforementioned thing with Gorbach, it struck me why Spike/Anne's relationship (close as it is) doesn't come off the least bit Norman Bates.

It's Anne.

Anne isn't a dominating/domineering mother figure. That's why, for all the "mammas boy" trappings the situation has for a lot of people, it doesn't ring true as grand dysfunction.

The whole thing with Anne was that William was trying to 'take care' of her. It wasn't that she was a domineering mother figure (though the post-vamped one took on those qualities). She wasn't. If anything she was retiring, passive, . . .weak. That reshaped the relationship into something not the least bit Norman Bates-like. It simply wasn't.

(I'll confess I'm still confused by vamp Anne in LMPTM. Knowing ME, it was never thought out from her POV. The story was clearly set up to turn Spike's psyche 'just so' for Fury. And I still have my quibbles. I'm not sure the changes from pre-vamp Anne to post-vamp Anne fit the same person. I understand it in concept, but not from a personality construct of Anne in her own right rather than a post-vamp Anne created to further Spike's story. Not that I'm going to bother changing it, it's just that Anne's personality change strikes me as far less convincing than William's, Liam's, Darla's, or Dru's. But then those characters were conceived in different ways for different purposes.)

Conclusion -- Anne/William's relationship is characterized by Anne not as a domineering/controlling person but as someone who William perceived as needing a protector. That's a different thing from the Norman Bates set up (and that may even by why I subconsciously have demented child Gorbach's dependence on his mother . . .though I didn't plan it out. Still, it makes some kind of sense. At least to me.)

Comments

[spacedoutlooney.livejournal.com]

I think ME thought through Anne's characterization, but left things wide open to interpretation to inspire fun debate. And I suspect that co-writer Goddard was the one to write most of the flashback scenes, as the flashbacks were originally supposed to be in Never Leave Me, which he wrote himself. I try not to pay Fury too much mind, he's written one brilliant episode, a couple really good ones, and several good ones, but in interviews/commentaries, he doesn't seem to "get it." Anyway, I'm not going to worry what goes on in his head.

Aaanyway, I've never heard of a Spike-Norman Bates comparison. Huh.

I think there are any number of interpretations for what happened between Spike and his mom, but I think she goaded him into staking her. She had a death wish as a human, evidenced by her not wanting Spike to call a doctor. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her days with Spike taking care of her. As soon as he broke off the stake she stopped struggling with him, like she was just waiting for him to do it. So all the nastiness and coming on to him and so forth was to convince him to stake her and end her existence as well as taking vengeance on him for turning her.

A couple of key quotes:

Spike: Look at you
Spike’s Mom: Mm, yes. All better.
Spike: You're glowing.
Spike’s Mom: Am I? Well, I suppose I have you to thank for that, don't I? How ever will I repay you?
Spike: Seeing you like this is payment enough.
Spike’s Mom: Oh, William, you're so... tender.
Spike: Well, this is as it should be, mother. You and I together. All of London laid out before us.
Spike’s Mom: Ah, yes. Us.

Spike: Tell me, what's your pleasure?
Spike’s Mom: Pleasure? To take my leave of you, of course. "The lark hath spake from twixt its wee beak?" You honestly thought I could bear an eternity listening to that twaddle? I feel extraordinary. It's as though I've been given new eyes. I see everything. Understand... everything. I hate to be cruel— No, I don't. I used to hate to be cruel in life. Now, I find it rather freeing. Nothing less will pry your greedy little fingers off my apron strings, will it?

Spike’s Mom: Perhaps you’d like the chance to finish what you started.

Spike’s Mom: There, there, precious. It will only hurt for a moment.

Well, that's what I think.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I always have a very difficult time separating that whole sequence from Anne Rice's novel "The Vampire Lestat." I predicted that scene almost exactly from that novel. We had gotten some snippet of a scene in casting sides (not that scene but an Anne Scene) and I predicted the whole sequence of Anne/William based entirely on "The Vampire Lestat" because while not exactly what happened in the Rice novel (Lestat's mom just went traipsing off on her own for the next 200 years instead of being killed) the general relationship was exactly the same from her having consumption, to his trying to save her, to her subsequent rejection of the son. I don't believe Fury consciously ripped off the plot point... but as it was the second plot point that reads like a lift from Rice, I do wonder whether he ever read her early books. (For the moment, I've forgotten what the other Ricean rip-off was, but I'll remember at some point).

And, yeah, there is a distinct possibility she goaded Spike into staking her. But that's vague enough as to be something that will always be a matter of interpretation. I could see it argued either way.