Aug. 5th, 2003

shipperx: (amulet)
This was inspired by a question on a AtS list and by the sides for Ep 2 AtS. Now, don't expect this to be some organized essay. This is more of a stream of consciousness post as I try to puzzle this out.

Why do so many people (and David Fury) feel that it's possible to quantify guilt? And just to clarify, by "guilt" I don't mean the "we the jury hereby find the defendent guilty..." kind of guilt. I mean the "look into a man's face and read how he feels" kind of guilt.

"All we communicate to others is an orientation toward what is secret without ever being able to tell the truth objectively. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space


Guilt or innocence about whether a crime has been committed is a relatively straight forward question with some objective truth to it. However, judging and weighing what a person feels is quite different. Emotions aren't concrete and can be misinterpreted even by the person feeling them. It's just not that simple. People can feel guilt about things they shouldn't, or they can suppress a sense of guilt about one thing and it comes out as feeling guilty about another. But to go back to Season 5 BtVS "Weight of the World," guilt is just an emotion. It can be an important one if allowed to inform (or misinform) choices, but it's an emotion. It's not something that can be weighed, measured, counted.

"Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct." — Thomas Carlyle

A sense of guilt paralyzed Buffy into uselessness in "Weight of the World."

A sense of guilt sent Spike to Africa in order to become "a man who would never..."

In one situation, guilt was a hindrance, in another it was something that led to a laudable action. . .perhaps the operative words being "led" and "action."

And that's where I come in conflict with some of the sentiments expressed by some in the fandom (and by what I think may be part of David Fury's lines in "Just Rewards"). What is 100 years of guilt worth? Really?

Should Angel and Spike (and Anya... and Willow...and Andrew...and...and...and...) feel guilty for their past crimes? Yes. If they have no sense of guilt then how can they understand what they have done wrong? That seems to be to be the primary factor of "soullessness" in the Buffyverse, and when I tear myself away from my visceral distaste for Season 6, I have to think that was part of what Season 6 was about insofar as Spike's soul is concerned. If the soul is a metaphor ... then the fact that Spike even felt guilt in that crypt scene with Clem meant that Spike's "earning" a soul was really the official passport stamp on a journey Spike had just made.

So did Spike feel guilt in Season 6/7? Hell yes! It irks the hell out of me when there are those who say that he didn't feel guilt. Excuse me, what were the lines about self loathing? What was the self flagellation (not to mention some incineration). As Spike said in "Same Time, Same Place," he carried the sin.

So, antis, scream about it all you want. David Fury, belittle it all you can... but the guilt was there and it was expressed.

Which brings us back to the question of Angel's 100 years in the gutter (Well, it wasn't really in the gutter as flashbacks have shown us. The 100 years included a trip to Shanghai and efforts to rejoin the fanged four. It included saving a puppy, leaving several people to be tortured by a demon in the Hyperion, hanging out with the Rat Pack in Vegas, attending Elvis and Priscilla's wedding, some Barry Manilow concerts, and judging by his wardrobe at least one trip to the disco outfits from hell (not literal hell you understand) outlet mall).

So what's Angel's 100 years of brooding worth?

Guilt means something, but what does it mean? Back to "Weight of the World," in that case guilt was shown to paralyze Buffy into uselessness. This concept was shown again in "Selfless" when Bitca Buffy arrived to tell Spike that if he had a soul to get up and do something with it, wallowing in misery accomplished nothing, and proved nothing.

Hold on.

Are we back to the double standards that so often find their way into Mutant Enemy text? Or is it a case of the writers being completely unable to agree on...well... anything.

If, as stompy footed Buffy said in "Selfless" that if you have a soul prove it. . .what did 100 years of uselessness accomplish? Anything? What was its purpose? Did "feeling bad and expressing it ad nauseum" really do anything? Was itworth anything?

Yes, the guilt was important. The gypsies cursed Angel to feel guilt to stop him from being a murderous monster. It was important in that respect as it did stop Angel from being the rapist/murderer that was Angelus. But beyond that change... what was it worth?

When is enough guilt enough? Is there an equation? 100 years of regret and it's "okay" to move on, get over it, and take a job at a law firm? Who set the 100 year limit? What if you don't have 100 years to spend in the gutter? What if you don't have 100 years to waste before making a difference? What about all the years when differences could have been made but weren't? Why was it "okay" in 1998 to have "perfect happiness" but in, say, 1978 it was less acceptable because, hey, there could have been 20 more years of guilt?

There's no scale here that can be balanced. All the people that were killed are still dead. All the lives that were shattered didn't suddenly become unshattered. Guilt wasn't reparation for harm done and so there isn't a finish line or cosmic scale that's balanced. So what's the time limit?

There can't be one. There isn't one. It serves no purpose. 100 years in the gutter means nothing. There's nothing for it to mean.

Angel's epiphany in "Epiphany" said that quite clearly (and maybe David Fury and some others should go review that episode and that quite excellent epiphany). There is no "big win." Nothing you do changes what's been done so all that matters is what you do. Everything you do that eases someone else's suffering, that helps the world in some small way is all that matters.

Note the fact that it's "do". . .again we're back to action. So, what does guilt and inaction amount to? After initiating the difference in behavior and action, after it informs your world view, after it spurs you to change... what does wallowing accomplish but bad hair cuts and diets of vermin?

Was rat eating Angel in the throws of guilt really "better" than a Spike saving Xander from having his last eye poked out? Is Angel's inaction in the coffee shop guy's death better than Spike having helped Cassie as best he could?

How does that work? How is that "better"? Where is the rationale in that?

And the sad fact is, Spike didn't have a 100 years to spend in the gutter. He only lived a year after the souling. Was that year better spent in...oh... I don't know... SAVING THE WORLD, or in brooding?

"The force of character is cumulative." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In "Just Rewards" "It's not fair. I nearly died from guilt and you moaned in the basement" [paraphrased] dialog Angel seems to be playing a "who suffered more guilt" question which (as is quite clear by now) I find to be pointless.

On top of that Angel (or Fury) seems to be playing some revisionist history here. As stated Angel didn't spend 100 years in the gutter and Spike spent longer than "three weeks moaning in the basement" (plus there was some torture, insanity, more torture, a near assination, and a feiry death also involved).

Has Angel ever willingly given his life to save the world? (And, no, I'm not forgetting Becoming 2. Angel didn't actually die. Since when does a sword through the stomach kill a vampire? Plus, there's the little fact that he was stabbed to avert an apocalypse that he started! And in the end it sounded like he was just sucked into Quor Toth or something. (Hell, Connor got sucked into hell and he really didn't do anything to deserve it).

I'm not saying that Angel didn't have a rough row to hoe. He did. I just don't see how his rough path makes his experience "better" or more "laudable" than Spike's. If anything, if pressed on the matter I would end up saying the reverse.

However, I don't think it should be pressed to that point (which is why I resent Fury bringing up the issue.) Angel has a reason to feel bad that is above and beyond Spike's. Angel has to face the fact that he didn't seek a soul to be a better man or for love of Buffy. He didn't seek a soul three times. This has to be really awful knowlege for someone like Angel (by that I mean the souled, moral version of Angel not Angelus). He was (as Joss pointed out at Comic Con) "clotheslined." It wasn't that he was on a path that led one step to the next by choice. He was snatched up by fate and dumped into a set of circumstances. Spike on the other hand deliberately sought out change.

To give it sort of a Christian slant (and I'm not getting religious here. I'm not the least bit religious. I'm just making an analogy). Part of "redemption" in a Christian sense is asking Christ into your heart. That's not all that different from "seeking a soul." So there is a point of pride in having sought a soul. There is a bit of expiation of sin in choosing to cease sinning, in choosing to change, in consciously making the choice to turn away from evil by one's own volition. It's a crucial thing that at least allows one to say, "At least, I chose to leave that life behind."

Poor Angel can't say that. His is the burden of knowlege that he didn't choose to turn from evil. He was basically struck by cosmic (and karmic) lightening. . .three times. He can't say to himself "Yes, but I chose to turn from evil." The choice was made FOR him, by gypsies and by Willow. So Angel is faced with a set of circumstances that Season 7 Spike (and Season 7 Anya for that matter) don't have.

If we take that the soul is truly what makes the difference, then souled Spike and Angel are as equals... but Angel has to live with the unsavory knowledge that he never CHOSE to change. For all that Angel loved Buffy, he never chose to change because of it. For all that Angel l--- Cordy, the return of Angelus showed essentially no evolution in Angelus.

Spike, as Joss said at Comic Con, was more of an evolution of character. Angel was ripped out of evil by fate and by gypsies. Spike's evolution was a ladder he climbed almost entirely by himself.


"Our lives teach us who we are." — Salman Rushdie, 20th-century Anglo-Indian novelist

When people say that Season 7 Spike wasn't "all that different", they are often looking at the wrong thing. Season 7 Spike evolved from the Season 6 Spike. If you want to see the "big difference" you don't compare Spike from "Chosen" to Spike from "Tabula Rasa." You compare Spike from "Touched" with... say... the Spike from "Harsh Light of Day." THEN you see the difference. The Spike of "Chosen" was the one who in Season 5 chose to protect Dawn and Buffy through torture and potential death. The Spike of chosen was one who decided to help the scoobs after Buffy was dead. It wasn't the "He was one thing and then the other" as Angelus/Angel were. Spike was painful steps up an evolutionary ladder. He learned over the years. He learned what it was to care again in Season 5. He learned what it was to consider someone's safety. He was of course, incredibly handicapped what with being soulless, but there are steps taken in a different direction so that by the time you reach "Grave," there have been a lot of things that Spike went through that lead him to the point where Joss said Spike realized that he really and truly had to change if he wanted to be a man "who would never..." Spike earned a soul, not just in the cave but in every step that led to his deciding to go to that cave to seek the soul.

That, I think, is part of the reason that there's a difference between the way Spike and Angel feel about their experiences and why they express them differently (that and the fact that just about everything in their personalities and behaviors are different). Spike can at least look back and say that he chose to change his ways. . .and that was a remarkable step. The Spike he became was the one made that pivotal choice in "Grave." He can own it. It's his. Plus, once souled, he was three years removed from killing (as opposed to poor Angel who was ripped out of a horrific incident with the gypsy girl). Spike had good deeds to hold onto -- he had helped avert apocalypses, he had protected Dawn, he had fought on the side of the white hats, he had chosen to change. In the dark moments post souling these things probably provide some small bit of comfort and even possible avenue toward self esteem.

Angel wasn't in that place.

Spike also had association with white hats and some idea of what he could do "to help" as he said in "Beneath You." Again, Angel didn't have that. He was thrown out into a sea of humanity with nothing but guilt and no knowlege of any other way he could live. He didn't have examples of those fighting against the forces of darkness. He had no path or purpose until Whistler showed up. . .and after that point Angel's path is probably about as expeditious as Spike's. It's being given a sense of direction, of believing there may be a way to do good to expiate some of the horrors they've done. Spike knew what he was going into whereas Angel was struck blind. Spike had examples to follow whereas Angel was lost.

The situations are different, and the circumstances of souling were different. Having sought a soul versus having been cursed with one probably factors into how Spike and Angel have different perspectives on souling and on their outlooks post soulling.

As for Anya... it's just that ME didn't seem to harp on the issues like they have with Spike. They tended to see her as just "comic relief" and thus simply ignored that since she started wars (as per Selfless) and 1000 years of vengeance under her belt, she probably had far more blood on her hands than Spike and Angel put together. . . it just wasn't as big an issue for ME with her, not because it isn't as big an issue, but because like other things they just ignored it (sort of like the way they ignored that Willow murdered Rack who actually had no culpability in Tara's death. he was a bad guy, true, but as Buffy intimated in "Smashed"... do all criminals deserve the death penalty? And who was Willow to decide she could just kill Rack? He's hardly a great loss for the world, but ME turned a blind eye to the fact that what Willow did was in fact murder and didn't even qualify as vengeance). Still, Anya too had the salve in Season 7 that at least the second time she knowingly and deliberately turned her back on evil. It may have been forced on her in Season 3, but in Season 7 it was a choice made of her own free will.

I would think it would weigh heavily on Angel that if choosing a soul is truly possible that he has never chosen that path. It's sort of an extra angst to bear. I would think that knowlege would have to ache. I don't see Angel accepting the whole concept very well and thus probably being hard on Spike because of it.

Ultimately, despite their pasts and preternatural histories, Spike and Angel have slightly different burdens to bear.
shipperx: (amulet)
This was inspired by a question on a AtS list and by the sides for Ep 2 AtS. Now, don't expect this to be some organized essay. This is more of a stream of consciousness post as I try to puzzle this out.

Why do so many people (and David Fury) feel that it's possible to quantify guilt? And just to clarify, by "guilt" I don't mean the "we the jury hereby find the defendent guilty..." kind of guilt. I mean the "look into a man's face and read how he feels" kind of guilt.

"All we communicate to others is an orientation toward what is secret without ever being able to tell the truth objectively. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space


Guilt or innocence about whether a crime has been committed is a relatively straight forward question with some objective truth to it. However, judging and weighing what a person feels is quite different. Emotions aren't concrete and can be misinterpreted even by the person feeling them. It's just not that simple. People can feel guilt about things they shouldn't, or they can suppress a sense of guilt about one thing and it comes out as feeling guilty about another. But to go back to Season 5 BtVS "Weight of the World," guilt is just an emotion. It can be an important one if allowed to inform (or misinform) choices, but it's an emotion. It's not something that can be weighed, measured, counted.

"Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct." — Thomas Carlyle

A sense of guilt paralyzed Buffy into uselessness in "Weight of the World."

A sense of guilt sent Spike to Africa in order to become "a man who would never..."

In one situation, guilt was a hindrance, in another it was something that led to a laudable action. . .perhaps the operative words being "led" and "action."

And that's where I come in conflict with some of the sentiments expressed by some in the fandom (and by what I think may be part of David Fury's lines in "Just Rewards"). What is 100 years of guilt worth? Really?

Should Angel and Spike (and Anya... and Willow...and Andrew...and...and...and...) feel guilty for their past crimes? Yes. If they have no sense of guilt then how can they understand what they have done wrong? That seems to be to be the primary factor of "soullessness" in the Buffyverse, and when I tear myself away from my visceral distaste for Season 6, I have to think that was part of what Season 6 was about insofar as Spike's soul is concerned. If the soul is a metaphor ... then the fact that Spike even felt guilt in that crypt scene with Clem meant that Spike's "earning" a soul was really the official passport stamp on a journey Spike had just made.

So did Spike feel guilt in Season 6/7? Hell yes! It irks the hell out of me when there are those who say that he didn't feel guilt. Excuse me, what were the lines about self loathing? What was the self flagellation (not to mention some incineration). As Spike said in "Same Time, Same Place," he carried the sin.

So, antis, scream about it all you want. David Fury, belittle it all you can... but the guilt was there and it was expressed.

Which brings us back to the question of Angel's 100 years in the gutter (Well, it wasn't really in the gutter as flashbacks have shown us. The 100 years included a trip to Shanghai and efforts to rejoin the fanged four. It included saving a puppy, leaving several people to be tortured by a demon in the Hyperion, hanging out with the Rat Pack in Vegas, attending Elvis and Priscilla's wedding, some Barry Manilow concerts, and judging by his wardrobe at least one trip to the disco outfits from hell (not literal hell you understand) outlet mall).

So what's Angel's 100 years of brooding worth?

Guilt means something, but what does it mean? Back to "Weight of the World," in that case guilt was shown to paralyze Buffy into uselessness. This concept was shown again in "Selfless" when Bitca Buffy arrived to tell Spike that if he had a soul to get up and do something with it, wallowing in misery accomplished nothing, and proved nothing.

Hold on.

Are we back to the double standards that so often find their way into Mutant Enemy text? Or is it a case of the writers being completely unable to agree on...well... anything.

If, as stompy footed Buffy said in "Selfless" that if you have a soul prove it. . .what did 100 years of uselessness accomplish? Anything? What was its purpose? Did "feeling bad and expressing it ad nauseum" really do anything? Was itworth anything?

Yes, the guilt was important. The gypsies cursed Angel to feel guilt to stop him from being a murderous monster. It was important in that respect as it did stop Angel from being the rapist/murderer that was Angelus. But beyond that change... what was it worth?

When is enough guilt enough? Is there an equation? 100 years of regret and it's "okay" to move on, get over it, and take a job at a law firm? Who set the 100 year limit? What if you don't have 100 years to spend in the gutter? What if you don't have 100 years to waste before making a difference? What about all the years when differences could have been made but weren't? Why was it "okay" in 1998 to have "perfect happiness" but in, say, 1978 it was less acceptable because, hey, there could have been 20 more years of guilt?

There's no scale here that can be balanced. All the people that were killed are still dead. All the lives that were shattered didn't suddenly become unshattered. Guilt wasn't reparation for harm done and so there isn't a finish line or cosmic scale that's balanced. So what's the time limit?

There can't be one. There isn't one. It serves no purpose. 100 years in the gutter means nothing. There's nothing for it to mean.

Angel's epiphany in "Epiphany" said that quite clearly (and maybe David Fury and some others should go review that episode and that quite excellent epiphany). There is no "big win." Nothing you do changes what's been done so all that matters is what you do. Everything you do that eases someone else's suffering, that helps the world in some small way is all that matters.

Note the fact that it's "do". . .again we're back to action. So, what does guilt and inaction amount to? After initiating the difference in behavior and action, after it informs your world view, after it spurs you to change... what does wallowing accomplish but bad hair cuts and diets of vermin?

Was rat eating Angel in the throws of guilt really "better" than a Spike saving Xander from having his last eye poked out? Is Angel's inaction in the coffee shop guy's death better than Spike having helped Cassie as best he could?

How does that work? How is that "better"? Where is the rationale in that?

And the sad fact is, Spike didn't have a 100 years to spend in the gutter. He only lived a year after the souling. Was that year better spent in...oh... I don't know... SAVING THE WORLD, or in brooding?

"The force of character is cumulative." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In "Just Rewards" "It's not fair. I nearly died from guilt and you moaned in the basement" [paraphrased] dialog Angel seems to be playing a "who suffered more guilt" question which (as is quite clear by now) I find to be pointless.

On top of that Angel (or Fury) seems to be playing some revisionist history here. As stated Angel didn't spend 100 years in the gutter and Spike spent longer than "three weeks moaning in the basement" (plus there was some torture, insanity, more torture, a near assination, and a feiry death also involved).

Has Angel ever willingly given his life to save the world? (And, no, I'm not forgetting Becoming 2. Angel didn't actually die. Since when does a sword through the stomach kill a vampire? Plus, there's the little fact that he was stabbed to avert an apocalypse that he started! And in the end it sounded like he was just sucked into Quor Toth or something. (Hell, Connor got sucked into hell and he really didn't do anything to deserve it).

I'm not saying that Angel didn't have a rough row to hoe. He did. I just don't see how his rough path makes his experience "better" or more "laudable" than Spike's. If anything, if pressed on the matter I would end up saying the reverse.

However, I don't think it should be pressed to that point (which is why I resent Fury bringing up the issue.) Angel has a reason to feel bad that is above and beyond Spike's. Angel has to face the fact that he didn't seek a soul to be a better man or for love of Buffy. He didn't seek a soul three times. This has to be really awful knowlege for someone like Angel (by that I mean the souled, moral version of Angel not Angelus). He was (as Joss pointed out at Comic Con) "clotheslined." It wasn't that he was on a path that led one step to the next by choice. He was snatched up by fate and dumped into a set of circumstances. Spike on the other hand deliberately sought out change.

To give it sort of a Christian slant (and I'm not getting religious here. I'm not the least bit religious. I'm just making an analogy). Part of "redemption" in a Christian sense is asking Christ into your heart. That's not all that different from "seeking a soul." So there is a point of pride in having sought a soul. There is a bit of expiation of sin in choosing to cease sinning, in choosing to change, in consciously making the choice to turn away from evil by one's own volition. It's a crucial thing that at least allows one to say, "At least, I chose to leave that life behind."

Poor Angel can't say that. His is the burden of knowlege that he didn't choose to turn from evil. He was basically struck by cosmic (and karmic) lightening. . .three times. He can't say to himself "Yes, but I chose to turn from evil." The choice was made FOR him, by gypsies and by Willow. So Angel is faced with a set of circumstances that Season 7 Spike (and Season 7 Anya for that matter) don't have.

If we take that the soul is truly what makes the difference, then souled Spike and Angel are as equals... but Angel has to live with the unsavory knowledge that he never CHOSE to change. For all that Angel loved Buffy, he never chose to change because of it. For all that Angel l--- Cordy, the return of Angelus showed essentially no evolution in Angelus.

Spike, as Joss said at Comic Con, was more of an evolution of character. Angel was ripped out of evil by fate and by gypsies. Spike's evolution was a ladder he climbed almost entirely by himself.


"Our lives teach us who we are." — Salman Rushdie, 20th-century Anglo-Indian novelist

When people say that Season 7 Spike wasn't "all that different", they are often looking at the wrong thing. Season 7 Spike evolved from the Season 6 Spike. If you want to see the "big difference" you don't compare Spike from "Chosen" to Spike from "Tabula Rasa." You compare Spike from "Touched" with... say... the Spike from "Harsh Light of Day." THEN you see the difference. The Spike of "Chosen" was the one who in Season 5 chose to protect Dawn and Buffy through torture and potential death. The Spike of chosen was one who decided to help the scoobs after Buffy was dead. It wasn't the "He was one thing and then the other" as Angelus/Angel were. Spike was painful steps up an evolutionary ladder. He learned over the years. He learned what it was to care again in Season 5. He learned what it was to consider someone's safety. He was of course, incredibly handicapped what with being soulless, but there are steps taken in a different direction so that by the time you reach "Grave," there have been a lot of things that Spike went through that lead him to the point where Joss said Spike realized that he really and truly had to change if he wanted to be a man "who would never..." Spike earned a soul, not just in the cave but in every step that led to his deciding to go to that cave to seek the soul.

That, I think, is part of the reason that there's a difference between the way Spike and Angel feel about their experiences and why they express them differently (that and the fact that just about everything in their personalities and behaviors are different). Spike can at least look back and say that he chose to change his ways. . .and that was a remarkable step. The Spike he became was the one made that pivotal choice in "Grave." He can own it. It's his. Plus, once souled, he was three years removed from killing (as opposed to poor Angel who was ripped out of a horrific incident with the gypsy girl). Spike had good deeds to hold onto -- he had helped avert apocalypses, he had protected Dawn, he had fought on the side of the white hats, he had chosen to change. In the dark moments post souling these things probably provide some small bit of comfort and even possible avenue toward self esteem.

Angel wasn't in that place.

Spike also had association with white hats and some idea of what he could do "to help" as he said in "Beneath You." Again, Angel didn't have that. He was thrown out into a sea of humanity with nothing but guilt and no knowlege of any other way he could live. He didn't have examples of those fighting against the forces of darkness. He had no path or purpose until Whistler showed up. . .and after that point Angel's path is probably about as expeditious as Spike's. It's being given a sense of direction, of believing there may be a way to do good to expiate some of the horrors they've done. Spike knew what he was going into whereas Angel was struck blind. Spike had examples to follow whereas Angel was lost.

The situations are different, and the circumstances of souling were different. Having sought a soul versus having been cursed with one probably factors into how Spike and Angel have different perspectives on souling and on their outlooks post soulling.

As for Anya... it's just that ME didn't seem to harp on the issues like they have with Spike. They tended to see her as just "comic relief" and thus simply ignored that since she started wars (as per Selfless) and 1000 years of vengeance under her belt, she probably had far more blood on her hands than Spike and Angel put together. . . it just wasn't as big an issue for ME with her, not because it isn't as big an issue, but because like other things they just ignored it (sort of like the way they ignored that Willow murdered Rack who actually had no culpability in Tara's death. he was a bad guy, true, but as Buffy intimated in "Smashed"... do all criminals deserve the death penalty? And who was Willow to decide she could just kill Rack? He's hardly a great loss for the world, but ME turned a blind eye to the fact that what Willow did was in fact murder and didn't even qualify as vengeance). Still, Anya too had the salve in Season 7 that at least the second time she knowingly and deliberately turned her back on evil. It may have been forced on her in Season 3, but in Season 7 it was a choice made of her own free will.

I would think it would weigh heavily on Angel that if choosing a soul is truly possible that he has never chosen that path. It's sort of an extra angst to bear. I would think that knowlege would have to ache. I don't see Angel accepting the whole concept very well and thus probably being hard on Spike because of it.

Ultimately, despite their pasts and preternatural histories, Spike and Angel have slightly different burdens to bear.
shipperx: (amulet)
This was inspired by a question on a AtS list and by the sides for Ep 2 AtS. Now, don't expect this to be some organized essay. This is more of a stream of consciousness post as I try to puzzle this out.

Why do so many people (and David Fury) feel that it's possible to quantify guilt? And just to clarify, by "guilt" I don't mean the "we the jury hereby find the defendent guilty..." kind of guilt. I mean the "look into a man's face and read how he feels" kind of guilt.

"All we communicate to others is an orientation toward what is secret without ever being able to tell the truth objectively. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space


Guilt or innocence about whether a crime has been committed is a relatively straight forward question with some objective truth to it. However, judging and weighing what a person feels is quite different. Emotions aren't concrete and can be misinterpreted even by the person feeling them. It's just not that simple. People can feel guilt about things they shouldn't, or they can suppress a sense of guilt about one thing and it comes out as feeling guilty about another. But to go back to Season 5 BtVS "Weight of the World," guilt is just an emotion. It can be an important one if allowed to inform (or misinform) choices, but it's an emotion. It's not something that can be weighed, measured, counted.

"Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct." — Thomas Carlyle

A sense of guilt paralyzed Buffy into uselessness in "Weight of the World."

A sense of guilt sent Spike to Africa in order to become "a man who would never..."

In one situation, guilt was a hindrance, in another it was something that led to a laudable action. . .perhaps the operative words being "led" and "action."

And that's where I come in conflict with some of the sentiments expressed by some in the fandom (and by what I think may be part of David Fury's lines in "Just Rewards"). What is 100 years of guilt worth? Really?

Should Angel and Spike (and Anya... and Willow...and Andrew...and...and...and...) feel guilty for their past crimes? Yes. If they have no sense of guilt then how can they understand what they have done wrong? That seems to be to be the primary factor of "soullessness" in the Buffyverse, and when I tear myself away from my visceral distaste for Season 6, I have to think that was part of what Season 6 was about insofar as Spike's soul is concerned. If the soul is a metaphor ... then the fact that Spike even felt guilt in that crypt scene with Clem meant that Spike's "earning" a soul was really the official passport stamp on a journey Spike had just made.

So did Spike feel guilt in Season 6/7? Hell yes! It irks the hell out of me when there are those who say that he didn't feel guilt. Excuse me, what were the lines about self loathing? What was the self flagellation (not to mention some incineration). As Spike said in "Same Time, Same Place," he carried the sin.

So, antis, scream about it all you want. David Fury, belittle it all you can... but the guilt was there and it was expressed.

Which brings us back to the question of Angel's 100 years in the gutter (Well, it wasn't really in the gutter as flashbacks have shown us. The 100 years included a trip to Shanghai and efforts to rejoin the fanged four. It included saving a puppy, leaving several people to be tortured by a demon in the Hyperion, hanging out with the Rat Pack in Vegas, attending Elvis and Priscilla's wedding, some Barry Manilow concerts, and judging by his wardrobe at least one trip to the disco outfits from hell (not literal hell you understand) outlet mall).

So what's Angel's 100 years of brooding worth?

Guilt means something, but what does it mean? Back to "Weight of the World," in that case guilt was shown to paralyze Buffy into uselessness. This concept was shown again in "Selfless" when Bitca Buffy arrived to tell Spike that if he had a soul to get up and do something with it, wallowing in misery accomplished nothing, and proved nothing.

Hold on.

Are we back to the double standards that so often find their way into Mutant Enemy text? Or is it a case of the writers being completely unable to agree on...well... anything.

If, as stompy footed Buffy said in "Selfless" that if you have a soul prove it. . .what did 100 years of uselessness accomplish? Anything? What was its purpose? Did "feeling bad and expressing it ad nauseum" really do anything? Was itworth anything?

Yes, the guilt was important. The gypsies cursed Angel to feel guilt to stop him from being a murderous monster. It was important in that respect as it did stop Angel from being the rapist/murderer that was Angelus. But beyond that change... what was it worth?

When is enough guilt enough? Is there an equation? 100 years of regret and it's "okay" to move on, get over it, and take a job at a law firm? Who set the 100 year limit? What if you don't have 100 years to spend in the gutter? What if you don't have 100 years to waste before making a difference? What about all the years when differences could have been made but weren't? Why was it "okay" in 1998 to have "perfect happiness" but in, say, 1978 it was less acceptable because, hey, there could have been 20 more years of guilt?

There's no scale here that can be balanced. All the people that were killed are still dead. All the lives that were shattered didn't suddenly become unshattered. Guilt wasn't reparation for harm done and so there isn't a finish line or cosmic scale that's balanced. So what's the time limit?

There can't be one. There isn't one. It serves no purpose. 100 years in the gutter means nothing. There's nothing for it to mean.

Angel's epiphany in "Epiphany" said that quite clearly (and maybe David Fury and some others should go review that episode and that quite excellent epiphany). There is no "big win." Nothing you do changes what's been done so all that matters is what you do. Everything you do that eases someone else's suffering, that helps the world in some small way is all that matters.

Note the fact that it's "do". . .again we're back to action. So, what does guilt and inaction amount to? After initiating the difference in behavior and action, after it informs your world view, after it spurs you to change... what does wallowing accomplish but bad hair cuts and diets of vermin?

Was rat eating Angel in the throws of guilt really "better" than a Spike saving Xander from having his last eye poked out? Is Angel's inaction in the coffee shop guy's death better than Spike having helped Cassie as best he could?

How does that work? How is that "better"? Where is the rationale in that?

And the sad fact is, Spike didn't have a 100 years to spend in the gutter. He only lived a year after the souling. Was that year better spent in...oh... I don't know... SAVING THE WORLD, or in brooding?

"The force of character is cumulative." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In "Just Rewards" "It's not fair. I nearly died from guilt and you moaned in the basement" [paraphrased] dialog Angel seems to be playing a "who suffered more guilt" question which (as is quite clear by now) I find to be pointless.

On top of that Angel (or Fury) seems to be playing some revisionist history here. As stated Angel didn't spend 100 years in the gutter and Spike spent longer than "three weeks moaning in the basement" (plus there was some torture, insanity, more torture, a near assination, and a feiry death also involved).

Has Angel ever willingly given his life to save the world? (And, no, I'm not forgetting Becoming 2. Angel didn't actually die. Since when does a sword through the stomach kill a vampire? Plus, there's the little fact that he was stabbed to avert an apocalypse that he started! And in the end it sounded like he was just sucked into Quor Toth or something. (Hell, Connor got sucked into hell and he really didn't do anything to deserve it).

I'm not saying that Angel didn't have a rough row to hoe. He did. I just don't see how his rough path makes his experience "better" or more "laudable" than Spike's. If anything, if pressed on the matter I would end up saying the reverse.

However, I don't think it should be pressed to that point (which is why I resent Fury bringing up the issue.) Angel has a reason to feel bad that is above and beyond Spike's. Angel has to face the fact that he didn't seek a soul to be a better man or for love of Buffy. He didn't seek a soul three times. This has to be really awful knowlege for someone like Angel (by that I mean the souled, moral version of Angel not Angelus). He was (as Joss pointed out at Comic Con) "clotheslined." It wasn't that he was on a path that led one step to the next by choice. He was snatched up by fate and dumped into a set of circumstances. Spike on the other hand deliberately sought out change.

To give it sort of a Christian slant (and I'm not getting religious here. I'm not the least bit religious. I'm just making an analogy). Part of "redemption" in a Christian sense is asking Christ into your heart. That's not all that different from "seeking a soul." So there is a point of pride in having sought a soul. There is a bit of expiation of sin in choosing to cease sinning, in choosing to change, in consciously making the choice to turn away from evil by one's own volition. It's a crucial thing that at least allows one to say, "At least, I chose to leave that life behind."

Poor Angel can't say that. His is the burden of knowlege that he didn't choose to turn from evil. He was basically struck by cosmic (and karmic) lightening. . .three times. He can't say to himself "Yes, but I chose to turn from evil." The choice was made FOR him, by gypsies and by Willow. So Angel is faced with a set of circumstances that Season 7 Spike (and Season 7 Anya for that matter) don't have.

If we take that the soul is truly what makes the difference, then souled Spike and Angel are as equals... but Angel has to live with the unsavory knowledge that he never CHOSE to change. For all that Angel loved Buffy, he never chose to change because of it. For all that Angel l--- Cordy, the return of Angelus showed essentially no evolution in Angelus.

Spike, as Joss said at Comic Con, was more of an evolution of character. Angel was ripped out of evil by fate and by gypsies. Spike's evolution was a ladder he climbed almost entirely by himself.


"Our lives teach us who we are." — Salman Rushdie, 20th-century Anglo-Indian novelist

When people say that Season 7 Spike wasn't "all that different", they are often looking at the wrong thing. Season 7 Spike evolved from the Season 6 Spike. If you want to see the "big difference" you don't compare Spike from "Chosen" to Spike from "Tabula Rasa." You compare Spike from "Touched" with... say... the Spike from "Harsh Light of Day." THEN you see the difference. The Spike of "Chosen" was the one who in Season 5 chose to protect Dawn and Buffy through torture and potential death. The Spike of chosen was one who decided to help the scoobs after Buffy was dead. It wasn't the "He was one thing and then the other" as Angelus/Angel were. Spike was painful steps up an evolutionary ladder. He learned over the years. He learned what it was to care again in Season 5. He learned what it was to consider someone's safety. He was of course, incredibly handicapped what with being soulless, but there are steps taken in a different direction so that by the time you reach "Grave," there have been a lot of things that Spike went through that lead him to the point where Joss said Spike realized that he really and truly had to change if he wanted to be a man "who would never..." Spike earned a soul, not just in the cave but in every step that led to his deciding to go to that cave to seek the soul.

That, I think, is part of the reason that there's a difference between the way Spike and Angel feel about their experiences and why they express them differently (that and the fact that just about everything in their personalities and behaviors are different). Spike can at least look back and say that he chose to change his ways. . .and that was a remarkable step. The Spike he became was the one made that pivotal choice in "Grave." He can own it. It's his. Plus, once souled, he was three years removed from killing (as opposed to poor Angel who was ripped out of a horrific incident with the gypsy girl). Spike had good deeds to hold onto -- he had helped avert apocalypses, he had protected Dawn, he had fought on the side of the white hats, he had chosen to change. In the dark moments post souling these things probably provide some small bit of comfort and even possible avenue toward self esteem.

Angel wasn't in that place.

Spike also had association with white hats and some idea of what he could do "to help" as he said in "Beneath You." Again, Angel didn't have that. He was thrown out into a sea of humanity with nothing but guilt and no knowlege of any other way he could live. He didn't have examples of those fighting against the forces of darkness. He had no path or purpose until Whistler showed up. . .and after that point Angel's path is probably about as expeditious as Spike's. It's being given a sense of direction, of believing there may be a way to do good to expiate some of the horrors they've done. Spike knew what he was going into whereas Angel was struck blind. Spike had examples to follow whereas Angel was lost.

The situations are different, and the circumstances of souling were different. Having sought a soul versus having been cursed with one probably factors into how Spike and Angel have different perspectives on souling and on their outlooks post soulling.

As for Anya... it's just that ME didn't seem to harp on the issues like they have with Spike. They tended to see her as just "comic relief" and thus simply ignored that since she started wars (as per Selfless) and 1000 years of vengeance under her belt, she probably had far more blood on her hands than Spike and Angel put together. . . it just wasn't as big an issue for ME with her, not because it isn't as big an issue, but because like other things they just ignored it (sort of like the way they ignored that Willow murdered Rack who actually had no culpability in Tara's death. he was a bad guy, true, but as Buffy intimated in "Smashed"... do all criminals deserve the death penalty? And who was Willow to decide she could just kill Rack? He's hardly a great loss for the world, but ME turned a blind eye to the fact that what Willow did was in fact murder and didn't even qualify as vengeance). Still, Anya too had the salve in Season 7 that at least the second time she knowingly and deliberately turned her back on evil. It may have been forced on her in Season 3, but in Season 7 it was a choice made of her own free will.

I would think it would weigh heavily on Angel that if choosing a soul is truly possible that he has never chosen that path. It's sort of an extra angst to bear. I would think that knowlege would have to ache. I don't see Angel accepting the whole concept very well and thus probably being hard on Spike because of it.

Ultimately, despite their pasts and preternatural histories, Spike and Angel have slightly different burdens to bear.
shipperx: (amulet)
It was so darn late when I finished rambling last night, I never did proof what I had written. I'll have to get around to it some time. Knowing the way I type stream of consciousness, I'm sure the thing is riddled with mistakes.
shipperx: (amulet)
It was so darn late when I finished rambling last night, I never did proof what I had written. I'll have to get around to it some time. Knowing the way I type stream of consciousness, I'm sure the thing is riddled with mistakes.
shipperx: (amulet)
It was so darn late when I finished rambling last night, I never did proof what I had written. I'll have to get around to it some time. Knowing the way I type stream of consciousness, I'm sure the thing is riddled with mistakes.
shipperx: (Default)
Well, I'm having to scrounge around for an old post of mine about the way I have come to rationalize the Whedonverse soul(after a long struggle with the issue and the contradictions within it). Not everyone will agree with it, but it's the only way I've come to terms with what I honestly believe to be a contradictory mess on Mutant Enemy's part.

*******************************************************

The Whedonverse is a sticky place. At one time or another, nearly every character has been pushed into some incredibly dark action. Gunn murdered Fred’s professor. Wesley imprisoned Justine in his closet. Willow murdered two men. Faith should still be in prison, and we have our beloved vampires with souls. The list goes on. If real world ethics were applied, all of the characters would probably be in jail.

However, in the Whedonverse crimes, battles, and monsters have metaphorical qualities and are judged in that context. A fictional universe has its own rules and codes. Soul canon is evidence of that. For a moral or ethical code to have any justice, rules must be uniformly applied. This is where I sometimes find myself confused by events on the shows.

In “Once More with Feeling” Xander performed a spell to ensure his own happy ending. This spell resulted in the deaths of several people. Xander also avoided taking responsibility for the spell until Sweet was ready to drag Dawn off. This was swept under the rug, never addressed, and was never shown to have any consequences. Xander’s mistake didn’t count.

I have also read Marti Noxon say the Scoobs uncaring treatment of Spike during his insanity and various and sundry tortures was due to his attempt to kill Willow in Season 4. I accept that explanation. However, Willow tried to kill Buffy, Dawn, and Giles in Season 6. She tried to destroy the world (which contains a few billion people), but after a summer in Bath, Willow returned home to be greeted with open arms. Again, I’m not criticizing Willow. Willow had a prior relationship with Buffy and the Scoobs. But there remains the fact that the rules were applied differently even though Spike had acquired a soul. Of course, Willow’s murderous rampage lasted only a few days and, although murder can’t exactly be quantified (one killing still makes one a murderer), it’s difficult to resist the urge to do so …which brings me to Angel.

Angel was an unsouled, actively killing vampire for approximately 145 years, and Angel is considered a “good guy.” This, as writers and fans have stated ad nauseum, is because Angel has a soul.

As I have come to understand it, though the vampire is informed by the person they were in life, when vamped something essential is lost. In my own mind I have equated soullessness with clinical psychopathy. Research indicates damage to the frontal lobe can cause a normally moral person to exhibit violently anti-social behavior, and abnormally low neural activity in the frontal lobe is a root cause for a psychopath’s lack of conscience. Through illness or injury, a good person can become a psychopath, someone physically incapable of processing information in the same way as a normal person. This, to me, seems roughly equivalent to soulless vampirism in the Buffyverse. “Soulling” would then be the metaphysical cure for this problem, restoring the vampire to his true, whole self. This would explain the souled/unsouled dichotomy in a way that makes sense to me.

It seems to me that if Angel is forgiven for his actions in his unsouled state, then Spike must also be. There’s a reason why the image of justice is blindfolded. Justice should never depend upon who you are. It is unjust if Angel is given special dispensation because he is the title character. It is unjust Spike if is judged by different criteria. That’s favoritism not justice.

Angel isn’t perfect. He’s been shown doing a black magic spell for his own purposes which was the direct cause of an innocent bystander’s death. He played judge and jury with everyone in the wine cellar and locked them in to be killed by Darla and Dru. He was also shown post-souling as seeking out Darla in Shanghai because he wanted to join the old gang, and he admitted to having killed criminals for food. In a Season 2 AtS episode, Angel became disappointed in mankind and decided to try to lose his soul by screwing Darla, despite knowing what happened the last time he lost his soul. To me, these are morally ambiguous actions. I’m not advocating diminishing Angel’s hero status. I like Angel a great deal. What bothers me is when these actions are ignored and discounted, but every transgression of Spike’s is judged far more harshly and unforgivingly. A coat that Buffy pretty much bullied Spike into resuming wearing with her publicly humiliating “Only the killer was useful” speech in “Get it Done” seems to be judged as more unforgivable than Angel seeking Darla out in Shanghai or leaving people with a demon in the Hyperion. I find this perplexing.

I understand that the Whedonverse does not need two identical characters. However, it’s never seemed to me that Spike and Angel were identical. The humans, Gunn and Wesley, are allowed to be individuals, so I am unclear why Angel and Spike are not also allowed to be. It seems somehow unjust (and given their histories somewhat illogical) to make the distinctions between them a simplistic moral divide. To play favorites between the characters means creating a caste system where Angel is the ‘elect’ no matter his mistakes and Spike the damned, no matter how he tries. To me, the truly fascinating differences are in their personalities not in subjugating one character to the other.

I have often thought that if Spike and Angel were analyzed by Myers-Briggs personality types, they wouldn't come out the same. (Myers-Briggs breaks someone into 4 categories -- Introvert or Extrovert, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perception.)

I would think that Angel falls into Sensing (facts and experience) whereas Spike is Intuition (aspiration, change)

Angel is Thinking (decides on principal, objective observer, decides on long term view), where Spike is Feeling (subjective, decides on value, a participant, decides on the current situation).

Angel is Judging (decides, organizes, controls). Spike is perception (explores, inquires, flexible, spontaneous).

These things, these personality traits account for why Angel and Spike approach things differently and make different choices. As soulless vampires both were killers -- Angel plotted and planned "clean kills" while Spike flew into crowds with "fists and fangs.” As soulless lovers of Buffy, Angelus-- Sensing/Thinking/Judging—found the prospect of being influenced by emotion to be abhorrent. "She made me feel like a man. You don't just forgive that." Angel's decision making processes are based on principles (albeit when soulless, they were amoral principles) and to be swayed by emotion would be unacceptable. Angelus must cut it out.

Spike on the other hand is an emotional creature whose decision making processes tend to be based on feeling. He is a Sensor/Feeler. It's how he has always decided things. "I may be love's bitch, but I'm man enough to admit it."

Now, soulless BOTH Angel and Spike had their value systems warped. As Angelus the principles that Angel judged by were not principles the souled Angel would use. Soulless, the decisions that Spike's emotions led him to were not the same as those he would reach souled. Souled William cared for his mother and took care of her. Unsouled, that same emotion and need to take care of her led to the horrific decision to turn her to a vampire. Though he still made decisions based on emotions, his decision making processes were skewed because he was soulless.

However, given Spike's personality type, in the crypt scene in "Seeing Red," Spike was is in full crisis as his emotional/feeling decision making processes became stressed to the limits as they came in conflict with his amorality. He was an uncontrollable monster. He saw that and intellectually understood that’s what a soulless creature should be. But emotion pulled at him, and because of his personality type, he could act on intuition, feeling, and spontaneity (as opposed to Angel’s personality type whose decisions are based on experience, logic, and control). Spike, following his personality type, sought an unconventional answer – a soul.

To me, it seems it would be better to use Angel’s and Spike’s personality differences to compare and contrast them rather than take a Calvinist “there are the predestined elect and the damned unchosen” approach. To consistently weight all judgments and stories in one character’s favor isn’t justice and can reduce dramatic tension. After all Angel always wins. Spike always loses. To say that Angel’s status must be preserved because he’s the star of the show and designated ‘hero,’ and Spike must be condemned as inferior because he is not, is difficult for many fans to accept because it feels unfair. Different rules for different people isn’t a particularly ethical system. It’s apartheid. . . and it alienates fans who feel for the character who is never allowed to find acceptance or love, the one left to die alone.

Angel is a character who has had fate intervene. He doesn’t want to fail the high expectations imposed on him or the responsibilities that he has. Spike is a character who has had to make his own fate, who has nothing, and who has rarely had any helping hand. Nothing is ever expected of Spike except that he fail. His struggle is to be someone who is valued, and seen, someone who has worth, someone who can be loved. That’s a difference between Angel and Spike, and one that doesn’t require a caste system. I simply find it difficult to understand how William could be a good man and Spike the vampire who chose to seek a soul and yet somehow these two positives result in his being considered inferior to Angel in every way.

There are those who identify with Angel’s fear of failure, and there are those who identify with Spike as the character who struggles to be seen and to matter at all. For Spike never to have any happiness, recognition, or acceptance feels as though the Whedonverse only favors those who are the elect. If Spike isn’t considered worthy of redemption after his efforts, sufferings, and after willingly dying to save the world how is it that Angel—despite his mistakes, and transgressions—is to have a happy predestined ending? Is Angel going to top dying to save the world or is it that Angel’s life is simply considered more valuable than Spike’s? One person matters more? That’s a caste system.

No one says that since Gunn is there, Wes must be inferior because you can’t have two humans on the show. Gunn and Wes are treated as individuals. Cannot Spike be afforded equal opportunity? It seems to diminish both Angel and Spike that somehow Angel’s heroism can’t withstand having Spike around unless Spike is forced into an inferior position. It diminishes the sacrifices of a character who has changed through his own efforts and without benefit intervention from Whistler or Doyle, a character who suffered, lost, and died.

Can’t Angel and Spike be treated as individuals rather than the elect and the damned?
shipperx: (Default)
Well, I'm having to scrounge around for an old post of mine about the way I have come to rationalize the Whedonverse soul(after a long struggle with the issue and the contradictions within it). Not everyone will agree with it, but it's the only way I've come to terms with what I honestly believe to be a contradictory mess on Mutant Enemy's part.

*******************************************************

The Whedonverse is a sticky place. At one time or another, nearly every character has been pushed into some incredibly dark action. Gunn murdered Fred’s professor. Wesley imprisoned Justine in his closet. Willow murdered two men. Faith should still be in prison, and we have our beloved vampires with souls. The list goes on. If real world ethics were applied, all of the characters would probably be in jail.

However, in the Whedonverse crimes, battles, and monsters have metaphorical qualities and are judged in that context. A fictional universe has its own rules and codes. Soul canon is evidence of that. For a moral or ethical code to have any justice, rules must be uniformly applied. This is where I sometimes find myself confused by events on the shows.

In “Once More with Feeling” Xander performed a spell to ensure his own happy ending. This spell resulted in the deaths of several people. Xander also avoided taking responsibility for the spell until Sweet was ready to drag Dawn off. This was swept under the rug, never addressed, and was never shown to have any consequences. Xander’s mistake didn’t count.

I have also read Marti Noxon say the Scoobs uncaring treatment of Spike during his insanity and various and sundry tortures was due to his attempt to kill Willow in Season 4. I accept that explanation. However, Willow tried to kill Buffy, Dawn, and Giles in Season 6. She tried to destroy the world (which contains a few billion people), but after a summer in Bath, Willow returned home to be greeted with open arms. Again, I’m not criticizing Willow. Willow had a prior relationship with Buffy and the Scoobs. But there remains the fact that the rules were applied differently even though Spike had acquired a soul. Of course, Willow’s murderous rampage lasted only a few days and, although murder can’t exactly be quantified (one killing still makes one a murderer), it’s difficult to resist the urge to do so …which brings me to Angel.

Angel was an unsouled, actively killing vampire for approximately 145 years, and Angel is considered a “good guy.” This, as writers and fans have stated ad nauseum, is because Angel has a soul.

As I have come to understand it, though the vampire is informed by the person they were in life, when vamped something essential is lost. In my own mind I have equated soullessness with clinical psychopathy. Research indicates damage to the frontal lobe can cause a normally moral person to exhibit violently anti-social behavior, and abnormally low neural activity in the frontal lobe is a root cause for a psychopath’s lack of conscience. Through illness or injury, a good person can become a psychopath, someone physically incapable of processing information in the same way as a normal person. This, to me, seems roughly equivalent to soulless vampirism in the Buffyverse. “Soulling” would then be the metaphysical cure for this problem, restoring the vampire to his true, whole self. This would explain the souled/unsouled dichotomy in a way that makes sense to me.

It seems to me that if Angel is forgiven for his actions in his unsouled state, then Spike must also be. There’s a reason why the image of justice is blindfolded. Justice should never depend upon who you are. It is unjust if Angel is given special dispensation because he is the title character. It is unjust Spike if is judged by different criteria. That’s favoritism not justice.

Angel isn’t perfect. He’s been shown doing a black magic spell for his own purposes which was the direct cause of an innocent bystander’s death. He played judge and jury with everyone in the wine cellar and locked them in to be killed by Darla and Dru. He was also shown post-souling as seeking out Darla in Shanghai because he wanted to join the old gang, and he admitted to having killed criminals for food. In a Season 2 AtS episode, Angel became disappointed in mankind and decided to try to lose his soul by screwing Darla, despite knowing what happened the last time he lost his soul. To me, these are morally ambiguous actions. I’m not advocating diminishing Angel’s hero status. I like Angel a great deal. What bothers me is when these actions are ignored and discounted, but every transgression of Spike’s is judged far more harshly and unforgivingly. A coat that Buffy pretty much bullied Spike into resuming wearing with her publicly humiliating “Only the killer was useful” speech in “Get it Done” seems to be judged as more unforgivable than Angel seeking Darla out in Shanghai or leaving people with a demon in the Hyperion. I find this perplexing.

I understand that the Whedonverse does not need two identical characters. However, it’s never seemed to me that Spike and Angel were identical. The humans, Gunn and Wesley, are allowed to be individuals, so I am unclear why Angel and Spike are not also allowed to be. It seems somehow unjust (and given their histories somewhat illogical) to make the distinctions between them a simplistic moral divide. To play favorites between the characters means creating a caste system where Angel is the ‘elect’ no matter his mistakes and Spike the damned, no matter how he tries. To me, the truly fascinating differences are in their personalities not in subjugating one character to the other.

I have often thought that if Spike and Angel were analyzed by Myers-Briggs personality types, they wouldn't come out the same. (Myers-Briggs breaks someone into 4 categories -- Introvert or Extrovert, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perception.)

I would think that Angel falls into Sensing (facts and experience) whereas Spike is Intuition (aspiration, change)

Angel is Thinking (decides on principal, objective observer, decides on long term view), where Spike is Feeling (subjective, decides on value, a participant, decides on the current situation).

Angel is Judging (decides, organizes, controls). Spike is perception (explores, inquires, flexible, spontaneous).

These things, these personality traits account for why Angel and Spike approach things differently and make different choices. As soulless vampires both were killers -- Angel plotted and planned "clean kills" while Spike flew into crowds with "fists and fangs.” As soulless lovers of Buffy, Angelus-- Sensing/Thinking/Judging—found the prospect of being influenced by emotion to be abhorrent. "She made me feel like a man. You don't just forgive that." Angel's decision making processes are based on principles (albeit when soulless, they were amoral principles) and to be swayed by emotion would be unacceptable. Angelus must cut it out.

Spike on the other hand is an emotional creature whose decision making processes tend to be based on feeling. He is a Sensor/Feeler. It's how he has always decided things. "I may be love's bitch, but I'm man enough to admit it."

Now, soulless BOTH Angel and Spike had their value systems warped. As Angelus the principles that Angel judged by were not principles the souled Angel would use. Soulless, the decisions that Spike's emotions led him to were not the same as those he would reach souled. Souled William cared for his mother and took care of her. Unsouled, that same emotion and need to take care of her led to the horrific decision to turn her to a vampire. Though he still made decisions based on emotions, his decision making processes were skewed because he was soulless.

However, given Spike's personality type, in the crypt scene in "Seeing Red," Spike was is in full crisis as his emotional/feeling decision making processes became stressed to the limits as they came in conflict with his amorality. He was an uncontrollable monster. He saw that and intellectually understood that’s what a soulless creature should be. But emotion pulled at him, and because of his personality type, he could act on intuition, feeling, and spontaneity (as opposed to Angel’s personality type whose decisions are based on experience, logic, and control). Spike, following his personality type, sought an unconventional answer – a soul.

To me, it seems it would be better to use Angel’s and Spike’s personality differences to compare and contrast them rather than take a Calvinist “there are the predestined elect and the damned unchosen” approach. To consistently weight all judgments and stories in one character’s favor isn’t justice and can reduce dramatic tension. After all Angel always wins. Spike always loses. To say that Angel’s status must be preserved because he’s the star of the show and designated ‘hero,’ and Spike must be condemned as inferior because he is not, is difficult for many fans to accept because it feels unfair. Different rules for different people isn’t a particularly ethical system. It’s apartheid. . . and it alienates fans who feel for the character who is never allowed to find acceptance or love, the one left to die alone.

Angel is a character who has had fate intervene. He doesn’t want to fail the high expectations imposed on him or the responsibilities that he has. Spike is a character who has had to make his own fate, who has nothing, and who has rarely had any helping hand. Nothing is ever expected of Spike except that he fail. His struggle is to be someone who is valued, and seen, someone who has worth, someone who can be loved. That’s a difference between Angel and Spike, and one that doesn’t require a caste system. I simply find it difficult to understand how William could be a good man and Spike the vampire who chose to seek a soul and yet somehow these two positives result in his being considered inferior to Angel in every way.

There are those who identify with Angel’s fear of failure, and there are those who identify with Spike as the character who struggles to be seen and to matter at all. For Spike never to have any happiness, recognition, or acceptance feels as though the Whedonverse only favors those who are the elect. If Spike isn’t considered worthy of redemption after his efforts, sufferings, and after willingly dying to save the world how is it that Angel—despite his mistakes, and transgressions—is to have a happy predestined ending? Is Angel going to top dying to save the world or is it that Angel’s life is simply considered more valuable than Spike’s? One person matters more? That’s a caste system.

No one says that since Gunn is there, Wes must be inferior because you can’t have two humans on the show. Gunn and Wes are treated as individuals. Cannot Spike be afforded equal opportunity? It seems to diminish both Angel and Spike that somehow Angel’s heroism can’t withstand having Spike around unless Spike is forced into an inferior position. It diminishes the sacrifices of a character who has changed through his own efforts and without benefit intervention from Whistler or Doyle, a character who suffered, lost, and died.

Can’t Angel and Spike be treated as individuals rather than the elect and the damned?
shipperx: (Default)
Well, I'm having to scrounge around for an old post of mine about the way I have come to rationalize the Whedonverse soul(after a long struggle with the issue and the contradictions within it). Not everyone will agree with it, but it's the only way I've come to terms with what I honestly believe to be a contradictory mess on Mutant Enemy's part.

*******************************************************

The Whedonverse is a sticky place. At one time or another, nearly every character has been pushed into some incredibly dark action. Gunn murdered Fred’s professor. Wesley imprisoned Justine in his closet. Willow murdered two men. Faith should still be in prison, and we have our beloved vampires with souls. The list goes on. If real world ethics were applied, all of the characters would probably be in jail.

However, in the Whedonverse crimes, battles, and monsters have metaphorical qualities and are judged in that context. A fictional universe has its own rules and codes. Soul canon is evidence of that. For a moral or ethical code to have any justice, rules must be uniformly applied. This is where I sometimes find myself confused by events on the shows.

In “Once More with Feeling” Xander performed a spell to ensure his own happy ending. This spell resulted in the deaths of several people. Xander also avoided taking responsibility for the spell until Sweet was ready to drag Dawn off. This was swept under the rug, never addressed, and was never shown to have any consequences. Xander’s mistake didn’t count.

I have also read Marti Noxon say the Scoobs uncaring treatment of Spike during his insanity and various and sundry tortures was due to his attempt to kill Willow in Season 4. I accept that explanation. However, Willow tried to kill Buffy, Dawn, and Giles in Season 6. She tried to destroy the world (which contains a few billion people), but after a summer in Bath, Willow returned home to be greeted with open arms. Again, I’m not criticizing Willow. Willow had a prior relationship with Buffy and the Scoobs. But there remains the fact that the rules were applied differently even though Spike had acquired a soul. Of course, Willow’s murderous rampage lasted only a few days and, although murder can’t exactly be quantified (one killing still makes one a murderer), it’s difficult to resist the urge to do so …which brings me to Angel.

Angel was an unsouled, actively killing vampire for approximately 145 years, and Angel is considered a “good guy.” This, as writers and fans have stated ad nauseum, is because Angel has a soul.

As I have come to understand it, though the vampire is informed by the person they were in life, when vamped something essential is lost. In my own mind I have equated soullessness with clinical psychopathy. Research indicates damage to the frontal lobe can cause a normally moral person to exhibit violently anti-social behavior, and abnormally low neural activity in the frontal lobe is a root cause for a psychopath’s lack of conscience. Through illness or injury, a good person can become a psychopath, someone physically incapable of processing information in the same way as a normal person. This, to me, seems roughly equivalent to soulless vampirism in the Buffyverse. “Soulling” would then be the metaphysical cure for this problem, restoring the vampire to his true, whole self. This would explain the souled/unsouled dichotomy in a way that makes sense to me.

It seems to me that if Angel is forgiven for his actions in his unsouled state, then Spike must also be. There’s a reason why the image of justice is blindfolded. Justice should never depend upon who you are. It is unjust if Angel is given special dispensation because he is the title character. It is unjust Spike if is judged by different criteria. That’s favoritism not justice.

Angel isn’t perfect. He’s been shown doing a black magic spell for his own purposes which was the direct cause of an innocent bystander’s death. He played judge and jury with everyone in the wine cellar and locked them in to be killed by Darla and Dru. He was also shown post-souling as seeking out Darla in Shanghai because he wanted to join the old gang, and he admitted to having killed criminals for food. In a Season 2 AtS episode, Angel became disappointed in mankind and decided to try to lose his soul by screwing Darla, despite knowing what happened the last time he lost his soul. To me, these are morally ambiguous actions. I’m not advocating diminishing Angel’s hero status. I like Angel a great deal. What bothers me is when these actions are ignored and discounted, but every transgression of Spike’s is judged far more harshly and unforgivingly. A coat that Buffy pretty much bullied Spike into resuming wearing with her publicly humiliating “Only the killer was useful” speech in “Get it Done” seems to be judged as more unforgivable than Angel seeking Darla out in Shanghai or leaving people with a demon in the Hyperion. I find this perplexing.

I understand that the Whedonverse does not need two identical characters. However, it’s never seemed to me that Spike and Angel were identical. The humans, Gunn and Wesley, are allowed to be individuals, so I am unclear why Angel and Spike are not also allowed to be. It seems somehow unjust (and given their histories somewhat illogical) to make the distinctions between them a simplistic moral divide. To play favorites between the characters means creating a caste system where Angel is the ‘elect’ no matter his mistakes and Spike the damned, no matter how he tries. To me, the truly fascinating differences are in their personalities not in subjugating one character to the other.

I have often thought that if Spike and Angel were analyzed by Myers-Briggs personality types, they wouldn't come out the same. (Myers-Briggs breaks someone into 4 categories -- Introvert or Extrovert, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perception.)

I would think that Angel falls into Sensing (facts and experience) whereas Spike is Intuition (aspiration, change)

Angel is Thinking (decides on principal, objective observer, decides on long term view), where Spike is Feeling (subjective, decides on value, a participant, decides on the current situation).

Angel is Judging (decides, organizes, controls). Spike is perception (explores, inquires, flexible, spontaneous).

These things, these personality traits account for why Angel and Spike approach things differently and make different choices. As soulless vampires both were killers -- Angel plotted and planned "clean kills" while Spike flew into crowds with "fists and fangs.” As soulless lovers of Buffy, Angelus-- Sensing/Thinking/Judging—found the prospect of being influenced by emotion to be abhorrent. "She made me feel like a man. You don't just forgive that." Angel's decision making processes are based on principles (albeit when soulless, they were amoral principles) and to be swayed by emotion would be unacceptable. Angelus must cut it out.

Spike on the other hand is an emotional creature whose decision making processes tend to be based on feeling. He is a Sensor/Feeler. It's how he has always decided things. "I may be love's bitch, but I'm man enough to admit it."

Now, soulless BOTH Angel and Spike had their value systems warped. As Angelus the principles that Angel judged by were not principles the souled Angel would use. Soulless, the decisions that Spike's emotions led him to were not the same as those he would reach souled. Souled William cared for his mother and took care of her. Unsouled, that same emotion and need to take care of her led to the horrific decision to turn her to a vampire. Though he still made decisions based on emotions, his decision making processes were skewed because he was soulless.

However, given Spike's personality type, in the crypt scene in "Seeing Red," Spike was is in full crisis as his emotional/feeling decision making processes became stressed to the limits as they came in conflict with his amorality. He was an uncontrollable monster. He saw that and intellectually understood that’s what a soulless creature should be. But emotion pulled at him, and because of his personality type, he could act on intuition, feeling, and spontaneity (as opposed to Angel’s personality type whose decisions are based on experience, logic, and control). Spike, following his personality type, sought an unconventional answer – a soul.

To me, it seems it would be better to use Angel’s and Spike’s personality differences to compare and contrast them rather than take a Calvinist “there are the predestined elect and the damned unchosen” approach. To consistently weight all judgments and stories in one character’s favor isn’t justice and can reduce dramatic tension. After all Angel always wins. Spike always loses. To say that Angel’s status must be preserved because he’s the star of the show and designated ‘hero,’ and Spike must be condemned as inferior because he is not, is difficult for many fans to accept because it feels unfair. Different rules for different people isn’t a particularly ethical system. It’s apartheid. . . and it alienates fans who feel for the character who is never allowed to find acceptance or love, the one left to die alone.

Angel is a character who has had fate intervene. He doesn’t want to fail the high expectations imposed on him or the responsibilities that he has. Spike is a character who has had to make his own fate, who has nothing, and who has rarely had any helping hand. Nothing is ever expected of Spike except that he fail. His struggle is to be someone who is valued, and seen, someone who has worth, someone who can be loved. That’s a difference between Angel and Spike, and one that doesn’t require a caste system. I simply find it difficult to understand how William could be a good man and Spike the vampire who chose to seek a soul and yet somehow these two positives result in his being considered inferior to Angel in every way.

There are those who identify with Angel’s fear of failure, and there are those who identify with Spike as the character who struggles to be seen and to matter at all. For Spike never to have any happiness, recognition, or acceptance feels as though the Whedonverse only favors those who are the elect. If Spike isn’t considered worthy of redemption after his efforts, sufferings, and after willingly dying to save the world how is it that Angel—despite his mistakes, and transgressions—is to have a happy predestined ending? Is Angel going to top dying to save the world or is it that Angel’s life is simply considered more valuable than Spike’s? One person matters more? That’s a caste system.

No one says that since Gunn is there, Wes must be inferior because you can’t have two humans on the show. Gunn and Wes are treated as individuals. Cannot Spike be afforded equal opportunity? It seems to diminish both Angel and Spike that somehow Angel’s heroism can’t withstand having Spike around unless Spike is forced into an inferior position. It diminishes the sacrifices of a character who has changed through his own efforts and without benefit intervention from Whistler or Doyle, a character who suffered, lost, and died.

Can’t Angel and Spike be treated as individuals rather than the elect and the damned?

April 2022

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24 252627282930

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 27th, 2025 06:27 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios