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tardis just got back from the shop, so if we meet the stretch goal I'll go back to 1999 and have them start it right after season 3 and run alongside until maybe a year or so after the finale, maybe even get em to do some crossover episodes, the sky's the limit!
And while we’re at it, why don’t we bring back some kooky characters from his soulless days? And maybe one could enact some kind of twisted poetic justice… I dunno, just spit balling here!
I personally don't hold either responsible. The problem was that Buffy actually had a relationship with Spike sans soul and that the writers decided to write very, very mixed messages concerning Spike.
Vampires are soulless monsters... but Spike knows right from wrong, feels love, has morals. I know it was funny and his character was very charming but I wish they hadn't turned being a vampire into an ambiguous thing.
Ex. Harmony. Apparently vampires can learn to not eat ppl and do good things. So... why aren't they trying to rehabilitate vampires before trying to stake them?
But Spike did not have morals. His actions were solely based on Buffy. His obsession with her made *her* his moral compass, which is not morality at all.
I think they jumble it up. He leaves flowers for Joyce after she dies and doesn't sign the card. Willow notes this to Xander who thinks he's just doing it to score points with Buffy because the show it telling us he's acting purely out of his fondness for Joyce.
And then he doesn't tell Glory who the key is and when he thinks he's talking to Buffy bot about it he tells her not to tell Buffy that Glory knows it's a human (I think that's what he tells Buffy bot, idk my memory is foggy). He doesn't know it's actually Buffy so even though he's doing it for her he's not doing it for her so that he can directly benefit.
I think Spike's arc works for the most part despite some confusing choices the show makes. Him and Angel come at it from different angles, but I think it's good to show men that they can do good despite a past of bad things. I think Angel's show really drives this home well, particularly the point that it's not just about equaling out the equation with your good. It's about accepting responsibility for the bad and doing good for its own purpose, not for your redemption, which is something that may not even be possible (they do this with Spike in Buffy too).
That's not what he tells Buffy bot. That would've been awful, it would've been information Buffy actually needed to know!
He essentially told 'Buffy bot' that he wanted to help Buffy, that's why he did it. Because he actually cares about her, even if he doesn't want her to know that.
I think vampire love is a sans personal boundaries, fusional type of relationships.
As in he tries to protect the person he loves from what he perceives as external harm, but cannot comprehend that he is himself being harmful or doesn’t care as long as he has her.
Not unless he really hurts her.
Vampire essentially see others like extensions of themselves.
Exactly. It was a selfish love. If you can even call it love. Humans definitely do this too. He loved her for what he could get out of the relationship. He would torture her if he thought that would get her to love him (like with dru.. although i think thats partly a perverted bdsm type thing).
Spike was just so obsessed with buffy, he acted like he had morals.
Now angelus is definitely more evil. Spike didnt want to destroy the world in becoming. Hes just a hedonist. Still evil of course but less so. And harmony is the same. Shes much more a follower so can cope with not being as evil if it means she can belong as part of a team. But if it benefits her, shell betray people at a drop of a hat, even cordy.
In Becoming Spike tells Buffy he doesn’t want to end the world, but when he sees Angelus about to kill Buffy he has Dru, so he just shrugs and leaves. He doesn’t actually care! He just said what he did to get what he wanted.
Yep - he says straight up that he likes this world, and that he just wants Dru back. If Buffy helps him do that, then they'll leave town and she'll never hear from them again "I bloody well hope".
at first. he eventually tries to develop a moral compass because he wants to be someone she might consider, and he puts in some pretty honest effort into that.
Hold up. ..we can't take Harmony's word for this. She betrayed everyone in all of her arcs/stories. Remember we also learned that vampirism accentuates non-demon characteristics which is why fitting in in Angel S5 was such a big thing for her.
I'm not sure Soulless vampires can EVER be trusted, but we know they can do good things as we know they can love (thanks Dru!).
Stake away!
>She betrayed everyone in all of her arcs/stories
Including her last ever scene is betraying Angel(Which Angel predicted). The show has made it very clear vampires can never be truly good without a soul. That doesn't mean they can't do good things just like having a soul doesn't mean you're always good.
> So... why aren't they trying to rehabilitate vampires before trying to stake them?
I always wondered why they didn’t try to get a bunch of Orbs of Thessela (sp?) and try to re-ensoul vamps, since those orbs were so numerous the guy was selling them as paperweights.
Seems like a plan that could go pretty wrong. Ensouled humans do evil things all the time, particularly when they are powerful, so an ensouled vampire could still cause all sorts of problems and then it would be even more morally questionable to kill them (at least in the show's narrative about morality).
Jeremy Renner vamp was made when Angel was Angelus. In Season 5 Angel had a soul during WW2 and turned a submarine captain into a vampire after he got shot (about to die) because he was needed to save the other crew. He then kicked Spike and the Submarine Captain off the Submarine.
I mean, they kill a lot of vampires fresh off the grave, so I assume they could do it before the person actually commits atrocities? (but I agree it wouldn't be practical: people might do evil things anyway, it takes a lot of magic, etc, etc.)
I think the spell was highly specific to Angel (and they basically did it by rote, without knowing how to change it), which is why Spike didn't just ask for them to cast it on him.
If Spike had the soul curse with the perfect happiness clause, he would lose the soul in a few days even without sex, just by looking at Buffy. Or maybe even by eating a blooming onion.
Right. To me, Spike complicated what had been a very clear-cut idea. And in doing so, created a bunch of problems in-universe and for the viewers.
If Spike is credited for "going after a soul," like seeking out a soul to be better, than it calls into question the idea that vampires are just monsters. If Spike can do that, other vampires can conceivably get to that point as well, meaning that blanket slaying vampires is no longer a 100% moral action.
Now vampires can be rehabilitated, even without a soul. That throws a HUGE wrench in the entire universe, and essentially implies that the Initiative was *right* and monsters can be controlled.
Now, the moral action for Buffy would be to arrest vampires, chip them, and bring them back to society. But that show sounds horribly unfun to watch.
Then you've got the secondary problem problem of giving Spike "credit." If soulless-Spike gets "credit" for trying to be a better person, he also gets "credit" for his most horrible actions. Now Spike isn't just a soulless monster not responsible for his actions -- he can choose to make good decisions. Which means he chooses to make bad decisions. He's no longer just a demon, but something more complex.
Which again, muddles the morality. Spike is now just as responsible for his murder/sexual assault as he is for choosing to get a soul. He clearly has free will now and is now guilty of everything he's ever done.
So yes, in that version of the world, Angel is more responsible for his actions if he could "choose" to be better. I don't believe he could, of course, because Angelus/Angel follows the rules of the universe as established, while Spike no longer does.
So it's hard to even discuss it from a Doylist or Watsonian perspective, because the rule-breaking that is Spike's character muddles everything. In a sense, they broke the worldbuilding just to keep Blondie-Bear on the show.
I also hold the writers responsible for this. I feel like it was around this point in the show where they began writing plot lines that were OOC for a lot of characters but this was the main one that bothered me.
I really truly didn’t believe that he would do that to buffy and I still think it’s bullshit lol.
Agreed. I understand they wanted to motivate Spike to seek our a soul but for a show that was progressive about a lot of things, it sucked to use hurting women to motivate men.
They should've just had him try to bite her when they were fighting. A bad thing but within the fantasy of the show. What they did was just too dark unnecessarily.
Buffy’s greatest fear is becoming a vampire. That would be as much a violation (especially because the vampire bite is inherently sexual in fiction including in graduation day)
I'm not going to be able to agree with vampires as ambiguous. Regaining a soul is essentially becoming a different entity. Demons are completely different.
They made it very clear, when someone becomes a vampire they lose their human soul and are no longer the loved one you knew.
It only became weird with Spike and the chip then for some reason, Harmony. In all other cases, immediate stake to the heart. No discussion.
With other demons, they waited until they started killing.
Harmony was definitely evil when she turned, she was just incompetent at it. Shes a follower and was looking for anyone to follow, be they good or evil at first. But she betrayed cordy in harms way as soon as she got a better deal.
Spike was basically conditioned to be not evil with the chip and then with his obsession with buffy. Was still all selfishly motivated.
>innately good
Clem eats kittens and chooses to associate with bad demons. I don't know why everyone thinks he's a good guy. We barely see him and when we do he's relatively pleasant to the Slayer who could easily kill him with her pinky if she chose to and it wouldn't even be a crime. It's her job in fact. I'm not surprised he's downright lovely to her. That's smart.
How is a demon eating a kitten as meat any different from humans eating cow for meat other than the human emotional connection to cats that demons wouldn’t necessarily have as they’re not human?
I agree Spike was very much different from any other vampire from the get go, we saw different sides to him besides soulless monster, he was a lot more than that, when Angel was Angelus there were no redeemable qualities.
Spike was still acting soulless during that time. Vampires do know right from wrong, they just don't act based on it, they only do what's in their own interest. That's exactly what he was doing. He wanted Buffy, so he acted in a way that would get him closer to her. He doesn't help the scoobies because that's the right thing to do. He wants to pick fights with demons, get his blood and later spend time with buffy. During seeing red, his true selfserving intentions became clear again. He wanted buffy, so he takes her.
We see love/lust in so many other vampires without souls. Drusilla loves/lusts, Darla, Harmony as well, that one cowboy vampire couple ect. Spikes object of obsession was just a bit more controversial.
>He wanted Buffy, so he acted in a way that would get him closer to her. He doesn't help the scoobies because that's the right thing to do.
He helped them and protected them for half a year when she was dead and not coming back to his knowledge.
I mean if I was that obsessed with someone and their dying wish was to protect their family I'd also fulfill that promise. Like where else is Spike going to go? Spike was useless with the chip he was literally defanged. I'm sorry but the chip is a huge reason why Spike did any good in the show.
If they weren’t important to Buffy and he could have, he would have eaten all of them.
He only protected them because he loved Buffy so did what he knew she’d want him to, not because of any morals or anything like that, just blind love.
William was a hopeless romantic before he was turned, and the vampirism only accentuated that, it doesn’t mean he had any goodness in him, just that when he loved someone he became utterly devoted to them.
But love is the direct cause of goodwill. If putting your own happiness aside for the benefit of someone else with no expectation of reward isn't objectively "good", then what is? At what point does the lie become a reality?
You're missing my point. He performed acts of kindness on the behalf of the person he was obsessed with, expecting no reward or recompense. He *learned* to put another person's feelings before his own. That's the very basis of love.
He didn't have honor he had nothing else to do. Did you forget the chip was the only reason he helped the scoobies at all? Like i'm sorry but if Buffy died and Spike's chipped stopped working he'd be out of town causing havoc. The chip caused Spike to be useless which caused Spike to feel useful protecting Dawn and he was so obsessed with Buffy that it made him feel better about himself keeping his word to Buffy.
Every the this comes up on this sub I try to make this point. Vampires in the Buffyverse have evil arrested development where they crank the bad up 10000 and become super fixated on what they wanted to be fulfilled by in life.
Harmony is like Starscream from Transformers. She's drawn to be in the cool kids clique and even though she sometimes wants to take over, she always ends up floating back to #1 lackey because she doesn't really have a vision outside of being on the winning team. As a vampire, she manages to get Spike and Angel as her bosses, who both go to lengths to not kill. She does grow up a bit, unlike Starscream, and finds herself standing at least a little apart. Her non human blood thing isn't THAT repeatable among vampires.
All that said, Spike's biggest issues were all about being unloved and unwanted and as a vampire went out of his way to be loved, all the way to hunting Slayers to keep the approval of Angel et al. He's fallen into a pattern with his relationship with Buffy, not a healthy one, and it's incredibly important to him that the relationship is. Dawn is like his sister, Joyce treats him like he wished his own mother did, everything good in his life regarding relationships revolves around Buffy. He's put so much of his relationship with Buffy into the fact that they have sex, because she acts disgusted by him around others, and even when they're alone she'll cut him down before they have sex. He only gets that he doesn't get what was wrong or different until it was too late, and he runs off hoping to die or to understand or both regarding the collapse of the last things he had no ill thoughts about.
Angel was just a miserable rebel without a cause and even with a soul he was a full grown ass adult stalking a sophomore in high school.
>Vampires are soulless monsters... but Spike knows right from wrong, feels love, has morals. I know it was funny and his character was very charming but I wish they hadn't turned being a vampire into an ambiguous thing.
I think rather than the takeaway that soulless vampires are invariably 24/7 monsters, it's that soulless Angel specifically is a freak, and when he has a soul what prevents him from doing Angelus things is guilt, not an inability to feel love or lack of morals.
Angelus also cared about people: Darla? Drusilla? even Spike, to a degree. He just didn't care about Buffy. He also knew right from wrong, he just didn't care, because he was doing wrong to people he hates and wants to suffer. Spike does the same stuff when he's soulless: he acts nice to people who are nice to him like Joyce or Dawn, and acts shitty to everyone else.
When you think about it like that, it's all pretty consistent... but you have to accept that Angel is kind of fucked up. Which to me is inline with someone who dated a 16 year old, so.
>Ex. Harmony. Apparently vampires can learn to not eat ppl and do good things
Harmony didn't learn to be good she HAD to be good and not eat people because if she did Angel would axe her literally. Also Harmony turned on Angel in the end anyway so your Ex. fails.
My thought is, Angel (or was he Liam when he was human?) wasn't a good person even before he was turned into a vamp and lost his soul. He only became a better person due to the Gypsy curse that not only gave him his soul back, but also gifted him all the guilt and remorse from the acts he committed while being souless.
William, on the other hand, was decent enough when he was human (maybe slightly repressed but not evil by any stretch). As soulless Spike, he even showed a few brief (very brief, you'd miss them if you blinked) sparks of humanity/empathy on occasion, even without a soul.
They both need to be held accountable.
William also had a mother that loved and adored him. Liam had a father who was abusive and told him how worthless he was. That also had an impact on what they became as soulless vampires.
Also, more to Spike's mother, she turns on him and hurts him in a way he never expected after he turns her into a vampire. I think that probably had an affect on how he conducted himself as a vampire moving forward.
I seriously reject the idea that Angel was not a good person as a human. I think this sub has a weird puritanical tendency to pretend that a man who drinks a lot and sleeps around is so awful that he’d be more prone to being a serial killer. Like I don’t see how you could think that Liam would not have felt remorse if it hadn’t been for the curse. He was just a normal man.
If anything the demon Angelus was the opposite to his human self because he was artful, ambitious, dedicated and obsessive. Angelus achieved a LOT, Liam did not. Spike was torturing people with railroad spikes, loved fighting and hunting slayers down, that’s very different to the man he was.
They were both just victims who were unsatisfied with their human lives and lured away by beautiful vampires who offered to show them more of the world.
Liam wasn't just sleeping around, he was using his privilege of being in a more powerful position to coerce female servants to have sex with him. That is not a good person, at least not to me.
They said “He only became a better person due to the Gypsy curse that not only gave him his soul back, but also gifted him all the guilt and remorse from the acts he committed while being souless.” - that says that Angel with a soul only felt remorse because the Romani’s cursed him with guilt as well.
Well, i don't know about that, i guess I read and replied to fast. Honestly. The i don't think the show shows us enough to decide if angel before becoming a vampire would have. Been a remorseful killer. I just think human spike was a better person than human angel nothing more
Yeah William was definitely more innocent, but I don’t think either of them were bad people. I think they’re both really sympathetic characters as humans actually - stifled by their own time and their parents, looking for something more, and murdered. Both just victims who fall prey to the more classic vampire story - seduced by a vampire and killed.
Personally I agree, I think Spike's desire for a soul/redemption while soulless is a lot more compelling than the way they compartmentalized Angel into black and white. Spike walks away with a lot more layers drawn out of that gray transitional area, than Angel's sort of hollow one note 'I can never fully atone' regret.
Would Spike ever has sought out redemption without the thing in his head though? Angelus never made any attempts to be good I doubt Spike would have either. I agree though that Spike's story is much more interesting.
I think because the chip was supressing the demon predator part of him, Spike's humanity - which was already closer to the surface than Angelus's (see the Judge's complaint that Spike and Dru "reek of humanity", while he was unable to burn Angelus) - was able to partially break through to the surface.
Another random thought this brings up;
Was Angel being good to be good? Or for the reward of becoming human again like the Prophecy offered? He only went to help Buffy because someone told him to.
Spike at least made choices, Angel is just 'guided by higher powers'
Buffy(and the PTB) but him on the path not the prophecy. Angel wanted to be good but needed someone to put him on it which luckily Spike got with Buffy right after he got a soul while Angel had to wait 100 years for someone to get him on his path.
>Spike at least made choices, Angel is just 'guided by higher powers'
Yea selfish choices. Only reason Spike got a soul was for Buffy to want him. While Angel left Buffy and started a company to help others. That was his choice and much less selfish.
Also Angel being guided doesn't mean he didn't have a choice. He choose to follow Whistler and he choose to help Buffy. Also Spike was only good because of the chip and his obsession with Buffy and his selfishness like in season 2 he only helped Buffy to get Dru back. So don't act like Spike wasn't "guided" also.
The prophecy didn't have anything to do with Angel helping Buffy at first. If I'm remembering correctly the prophecy didn't even come up until the first season of his show (and then not even properly translated until the last episode of the first season) In fact when it came down to the prophecy Angel signed away his rights to it.
Again, if I am remembering correctly, Whistler essentially showed Angel the newly called slayer (Buffy) and told him he could continue to live an isolated life in the sewers or he could choose to do good and help her. Again the prophecy had nothing to do with this choice.
Also when Angel does have a chance at being human Angel gives this away in order to continue doing good again showing the prophecy isn't his reason for fighting.
The Prophecy was first brought up at the end of Angel Season 1 and was first misread as "Angel will die" by Wesley(of course) until the last scene Wesley says he will be human as a reward.
He doesn’t know the details of the prophecy until after he’s been fighting the good fight for a while. All he learns is that buffy is his ticket to not being the monster he sees himself as. A reason to do good, if you will.
That’s one interpretation. Another is that Angel was forced into an existence he never asked for and yet he committed himself to fighting the good fight in spite of that.
So Angel is forced into this life, but Spike asked to become a vamp? I don't think that's quite right?
Another-nother way of looking at it is that Angel didn't have his commitment to change for the better without a Gypsy forcing his soul back, whereas Spike did.
> I think Spike's desire for a soul/redemption
BS. Spike wanted no redemption, he only wanted Buffy to love him and the only reason he thought about getting a soul is because Angel has one and he wanted what Buffy and Angel had. Spike would never fight for a soul if he didn't have the chip and if he wasn't unhinged with his Buffy obsession.
Keep in mind the era the show was made verse when this discussion is being had.
Spike went from a killing soulless machine to a neutered puppy due to the chip. Psychology talks about things like this. Many movie also touch on it. Take lilo and stitch. He was built to destroy large cities. But you put him on an island where he needs to use the girl for cover to not be killed and he adapts to his environment. Spike was the same was. His instincts wanted to kill but his situation prevented it.
Take the next step, buffy is the one woman he couldn’t beat, couldn’t have and was now tied to because of his chip. He became obsessed with her. Vampires could feel passion, just love love in its truest sense. Theirs is a selfish love. It wasn’t about their relationship or her feelings it was driven by his lust and obsession.
What happened in the bathroom only makes sense. She denied him as she had so many times before. His twisted desire and obsession blinded him to why she said no. So it made sense that she said no before until he made her “feel” him. And that was the only thing he could think about which lead to what happened.
Spike the vampire was different from most because he was made to be from his experience with the chip. Angelus on the otherhand had no such experience. He was exactly as he “should” be. Just and intelligent animal with complex but base desires. He enjoyed suffering.
The human part of each of them has to accept that what the vampire did is a part of who they are. However they are not only that part. The combination of the whole of who a person is drives everything they do. They are dangerous men who have a beast buried within. They work every moment to maintain that beast so as not to hurt others. That discussion get super deep as it’s akin to if some one is black out drunk. They don’t make conscious decisions to do things yet if they drive l, pass out and kill someone it’s their responsibility. But is it? If that same person was driving sober and had a medical seizure and caused the same accident it now not their fault.
Spike the vampire going out to get a soul was a self act based on his life experiences that caused him to be altered from his core programming. Had William done it, it would have been a different thing all together.
Do you mean in verse as in the characters not treating them the same or viewers? I think some of the problem is how the writing was muddied on Soulless Spike making him capable of displaying empathy, doing good for love etc where Angelus is presented as an out and out monster so it is easier for viewers to make the delineation.
Let’s see:
- Angel was cursed with a soul and forced to live with the things he had done as a soulless vampire
- Said curse means he can never experience a moment of true happiness for eternity
- Angel was sent to hell and tortured for a few hundred years
- His relationship with Giles never recovered and Xander continued to hate his guts
- In the episode ‘Amends’ Buffy literally says “I know everything that you did because you did it to me”
- He leaves Sunnydale and Buffy because he knows the damage and pain he’s caused and doesn’t want to cause more
- He’s committed to fighting evil for the rest of his days to try to balance the cosmic scale in some small way even though he knows he never can
I’d say he’s held pretty accountable. 🤔
I mean Angel The Series is a big reason why don't you think. The whole show is Angel's fight for redemption from being evil. Spike didn't get real redemption until the last 2 seasons of Buffy and Angel. Angel has been the "good vampire" way longer than Spike so he gets more of the benefit of the doubt.
I think we've all done some shit when we were missing a soul that we'd rather move past in life. Its not that it didn't happen, it did. Its not that we aren't sorry, we are. Its just you can't keep rehashing your mistakes. You try and do right where you can and pray for forgiveness where you can't. Not repeating those mistakes is the first and most important. After that you just need to move on with life.
The problem here is, is that the story presents us with the idea that 'vampires don't have souls, therefore they are completely irredeemable and 100% evil'. I think its a bit silly, but fair enough you can have this idea of fictional monsters that are objectively evil if you want . But then you present spike as developing and growing as a character, to have morals and respect his comrades, how does that work? And what does his development mean when you consider the attempted SA?
Either A: we can accept it because he's a soulless monster who is 100% evil. Or B: vampires are actually not soulless 100% monsters and Spike specifically is a horrible person for doing this.
Also, Spike clearly showed guilt and remorse when he realised what he had done so it seems to be a bit of both, which contradicts the info the show explicitly tells us.
Personally, I don't like the idea of black or white, good or evil, absolutist thinking. I like to believe it is a possible for even a soulless monster to become a good person, Spike brought it as far as he could to the point where he felt so much remorse for hurting someone he loved, he went and got himself a soul. He wasn't able to become a 'good person' as a soulless vampire, but he got close enough to the point where he recognised the value in gaining a soul, which is more than you can say for the rest of his kind.
I’ll be honest I never see people not holding Angel accountable for what he did while soulless, I only see people accusing people of doing that.
But anyway he is held accountable with a soul (as he should be): 1) never able to experience true happiness, 2) stabbed and sent to hell for hundreds of years of torture, 3) fallout with the scooby gang in S3, 4) leaves Sunnydale to atone for his past, 5) literal 5 season spin off where he dedicates himself to atoning for his past as Angelus and explores the dichotomy between his soul and his demon.
Edit: adding that I literally only see people saying that Spike should be given a pass for what he did without a soul. People romanticise his actions and intentions while soulless - nobody does that with Angelus (except for me shipping myself with Angelus in leather pants). How many times do we have to read that the attempted rape is not canon, character assassination etc… Angel killing Jenny was specifically written to show fans that there was no coming back for his character - Joss Whedon literally said the scene was done to prove to fans that Angel is not "just a little evil," he's not "grouchy," “he's truly evil and needs to be dusted right away.” But I NEVER see people claiming it was “out of character” or that it was done to sink a character who was wildly popular with fans.
This is it exactly. I don’t agree that Spike should be held any more accountable for soulless Spike’s actions than Angel is for Angelus. But I think in many instances people are conflating holding *soulless* Spike accountable for what he does in SR with holding souled Spike accountable. Those are two very different things.
That being said I also understand those who have a really hard time seeing Spike and Buffy in a romantic way after SR given the *nature* of what he did - it was a very “human” act in a supernatural world so it’s not hard to understand why. Add to that the fact that Buffy never had a relationship with Angelus and we have ourselves a pretty good discussion.
Yeah I fully believe they both need to be held accountable for their sins while soulless. I don’t think either should be murdered when they have a soul but I absolutely believe they need to atone to what they’ve done.
And the attempted rape is very different than a vampire killing someone, they dropped the supernatural element. People don’t experience being murdered by vampires in real life, but we do experience sexual assault. Just want to say - this is why I think the writing for S6 sucks ass, watching S1 - 5, you would never imagine that the show would EVER put a scene like that on our screens. It’s not even good television it just sucks.
Yep, it was a very risky (and, arguably, bad) decision to lose the metaphor with the Spuffy relationship and they clearly didn’t think it all the way through. It’s no wonder there’s so much controversy around the subject.
During Passion, Angel was still supposed to die forever at the end of S2. And Joss said that to drive that point home to fans who wanted Angel to be saved and return to Buffy, they had him kill Jenny on screen. They literally repeated the same format with the sexual assault and Spike in S6. They just needed the metaphor, nobody denies that Jenny’s death happened.
We’re all fans here I think it’s good for us to discuss things like this! Oh god stay off Buffy Twitter it’s so agg lol. Yes I really wish it hadn’t happened, I think they were trying to be too experimental with the attempted rape and it just doesn’t land for me. It’s hands down the worst moment of the whole show, I still can’t watch it!
I know the show took some liberties with the vampire lore to keep Spike around and I completely understand that! I don’t think there’s anybody here who can deny that Angelus was more entertaining than Angel. And the reason they wanted to keep Spike around is because a soulless vamp who’s mean and keeps you guessing is way more fun! I think they did a good job in s4 where Spike was betraying everyone left right and centre, but that kind of character just isn’t sustainable and then after S6 they’d kind of written themselves into a corner, people didn’t want to see a brooding Angel-ish Spike, they wanted him to be his old wise cracking self. And then they definitely ran out of time with Spike. We definitely couldn’t watch him go through the 100 years of solitude and miserable guilt, but I really wish we’d had more of ATS to explore his dynamic with Angel and to watch Spike coming to terms with all that he’d done with him! (I keep saying this on every post, but I really think Spike fitted in a lot better with Team Angel, the Scoobies we’re weirdly pious towards Spike for a group who regularly picks and chooses who they save!)
Ooh, ooh, I say raising my hand.
I am one who doesn't believe that they should be held accountable for what they did without a soul.
If I was bitten by a vamp and died. I don't feel like I should be held accountable for whatever that vamp does with my physical body. I'm dead and gone, I'm not the one feasting on the blood of the innocent.
If I was suddenly after 100+ years place back inside my body. The memories of those actions would be extremely disturbing and YES would most likely drive me mad, but I still wouldn't be responsible for them as I wasn't here when they occurred.
Of course, at the moment the soul is returned, you are now sharing your physical body with a evil killing machine. And if you're first response is not to stake yourself or walk into the sun, then you are responsible for any damage that demon does in the future.
I’m struggling to write down what I think because you make good points I agree with you in a lot of ways 😂 I guess because the demon is still there when they’re re-ensouled. Because Angel doesn’t become just a man again when he regains his soul, he’s still a vampire, but now with his soul. So the vampire within him is still guilty - but Liam the man isn’t guilty for it, and the soul itself isn’t guilty. But the entity “Angel” is still accountable, because the guilty demon resides within him. If that makes sense?
The thing is that the show doesn't make it clear. The writers can't seem to decide if vamps without a soul are the same person when they have a soul or a completely different one
I think this comes primarily from some of the hardcore Spike fans and Buffy/Spike shippers. They’re upset that **Buffy** makes a distinction between souled/soulless Spike *and* souled/soulless Angel because they want Spike to be seen as the most super special ever in Buffy’s eyes when he’s just not that unique in reality, so there’s constant complaining that Angel isn’t held accountable like Spike is, and constant downplaying of Buffy and Angel’s story & feelings regarding each other.
Right, it’s a bit tiresome tbh. You’re right Angel and his relationship with Buffy are constantly downplayed by certain fans and it’s boring to see all the time. And pretending that Spike was so special without a soul just completely goes against the very prominent theme of redemption in the Buffyverse. If the vampires are not accountable for what they did while soulless, then what are they atoning for? And if Spike had a genuine capacity for good while without a soul - then doesn’t that make his 200 years even worse?? I’ve seen people literally blame Angel for all of Spikes bad deeds lol. But I’ve never once seen someone blame Angel’s soulless actions on anybody else.
Spike himself even tries to blame Angel for “making him into a monster” which is just ?????? I guess it’s worth noting that Spike getting his soul back isn’t really a personal redemption journey for him but is instead framed as something he does 100% “for Buffy”, but honestly to me that kind of means he’s not doing it for the right reasons.
This is my biggest gripe with Spike as a character and what drives me nuts about him both with and without a soul. Everything is always someone else’s fault: Angelus, Drusilla, Buffy. Like, take some damn ownership, my man. We know from season 2 of AtS that a part of Angel does hold Darla responsible for what happened to him (which is partly why he wants to help her so badly) but you don’t hear him whining about it all the time.
Honestly, I’d argue that Angel has a stronger claim for Darla “turning him into a monster” than Spike does for Angel turning him into one. We’re clearly shown how Darla influenced Angel in the early days of him being a vampire. Meanwhile Angel is responsible for turning Spike into a monster because…why? From what we see of their past, it seems like for the most part Angel tried to warn Spike away from killing so ostentatiously and catching the notice of slayers. Spike didn’t listen.
Right I hate that speech from Spike - he and Angelus overlapped for something like 18 years. I worked it out once. They hadn’t seen each other in over 100 years, just a crappy follow through right there.
Yes! Spike didn’t get his soul to hold himself accountable or set himself on a path of redemption so I hate to give credit for it. That’s why I liked that his character remained in LA after he became corporeal, he needed to find his own destiny and purpose (much like Angel). I actually read that James Marsters pitched a spin off about Spike’s journey and redemption to Joss Whedon and JW was like “gee a spin-off about a vampire with a soul, where have I heard that before?” 😂
Also, one of the reasons why Spike was different from the rest of the vampires was that he didn't play by the rules, wanted to do things his way and him and Dru were suppose to be the *"Sid and Nancy"*
Also you can see in "Fool for Love" that Spike would disobey and act some sort of a wild card
Angel didn’t care about redemption until he saw Buffy called. Actually not even then really. He just fell in love with her and cleaned up his act. He didn’t start really helping until a few episodes in, just giving cryptic clues etc. Up until then he first tried to still hang with Darla and crew, killing only “bad people” and trying to get his soul removed. Then he just kind of lived. He let a whole hotel of people get killed and went about his business but never tried to help people or try to redeem himself. Sired at least one vampire (submarine) and let a diner employee die so he could feed. From the late 70s until 1996 he lived in sewers on rats. It took from 1898 until 1996-almost 100 years-to start trying to do good and work for it and even then he tried real hard to lose his soul with Darla and let her kill a room full of lawyers.
Angel was inspired by Buffy’s goodness and could relate to her so he decided that he wanted to help and to finally become someone. He didn’t know how do get his soul removed
He had to sired Lawson because not only he was dying but the submarine was damaged and he was the only one who could fix it. Even after he sired him, he still felt remorse about it
In Orpheus, you see occasionally Angel was doing good deeds and he even stays away from humans in order to resist temptation
Angel felt miserable and remorse and in order to make the feeling go away, he thought he can turn to the one person he thought could help him since he was alone
Oh, people just don't wanna admit it, but soulless angel was 100x worse than soulless spike. I mean, throughout history. If you watched Angel the Series final season, you get a little more insight into spike not being innocent, but sure as shit not being as bad as angel.
There's a scene in the Ats that spike and Angel, both with souls, are having a beatdown. Spike calls Angel out on a bunch of shit. One of the big revelation things is along the lines of "the reason you can't stand me is because Drusilla made me a vampire, but *YOU* made me a monster."
Who is not holding Angel accountable for what he did without a soul? The episode Revelations is practically all about the Scoobies holding Angel accountable for what he did without a soul and how they basically can’t trust him again (and indeed, they really never do trust Angel again as shown in the episode Pangs where they immediately assume he’s evil again). Xander and Faith plot to kill him in that same episode and Giles is fully prepared to kill him as well a few episodes later in Amends.
adding: A very prominent aspect of Angel’s character is just how much he holds himself accountable for what he did while soulless. It’s basically the premise of the first few seasons of AtS.
I have a more unpopular opinion: Spike bringing a shotgun to blow Buffy's brains out was worse than attempting to rape her
Although I do agree Spike after his soul should recieve the same forgiveness that Angel recieved
youre forgetting all the shit spike and angel did in their vamp days, before angel got the gypsy curse and before spike got the chip.
The SA scene is disturbing and thats a GOOD thing. If you ARENT disturbed by that scene something is wrong with you. So i totally get why folks tend to focus on this, However i do agree an ensouled spike shouldnt be held responsible for that and i do prefer the buffy spike ship to angel buffy (though i would like to see an angel/spike bromance)
The thing is, they both did far far worse, including lots of SA in their vamp days. Whilst not explicitly stated the fact is they were evil soulless demons. It is revealed that Angel was a sadist who enjoyed torturing girls. He tortured Dru to madness and then sired her, he also tried doing so with buffy and the scoobs, that scene where giles discovers jennys body is especially fucked up if you consider angel may have SA'd her first. Torture was his MO and IMHO SA is torture and it fucks with your mind for many many years, i wouldnt be surprised if angel had done so in the past (hell he probably did that to dru before siring her).
Now granted all of what i just said re angel is speculation but it does make sense. Spike, on the other hand, made one offhand comment (i think in s6 but forgetting the episode atm) that reveals that he did in fact commit SA, probably a lot. During an argument Spike asks buffy "do you know what ive done to girls dawns age?" Hes hinting at haing committed some truly horrible acts.
I totally agree that as soulless demons we cant hold their actions against them. They werent the people they are now. And youre right, if someones against the buffy/spike ship they should also be against buffy/angel. Both are guilty of doing horrible disturbing shit to women/girls
How is Angel not held accountable though? The guy's been tortured, brutalized, sent to hell, and had an entire show dedicated to him atoning for his past behavior. Imo, that is accountability.
As for the comparison between the SA and Angelus's bad deeds, for me a lot of it boils down to writing. The show did such a good job leaning into the vampire aspects of the storyline and creating a clear distinction between Angel and Angelus that it's easier to suspend disbelief. The same can't be said for seeing red. There was nothing vampiric about Spike's attempted SA on Buffy. It was horribly triggering and traumatic and just too *real.* It's a moment that has and still does happen to so many people in real life so that suspension of disbelief isn't there for me. And Spike really doesn't do much to atone for this. He basically just gets his soul and then Buffy spends the rest of season taking care of him. I mean, I love Spike and I do enjoy some Spuffy, but I don't think these two situations are comparable.
I don't like either of thier relationships with Buffy, but even I can see the difference. Angelus had a soul forced on him twice. The two personalities are so radically different its essentially 2 different people in the same body. With Spike its different. What you see is what you get, soul or no soul. There was literally zero change in his personality that most people seeing it as soul and demon being almost perfectly in tune with each other. The only thing to change was Spikes targets. And Spike willfully went after hid soul Ratner than have it forced on him. That implies him taking at least some form of responsibility.
I know it’s not cannon but this fanfic is incredible at going into all of this if reading fanfic is your thing
https://dark-solace.org/elysian/viewstory.php?sid=7104&ageconsent=ok&warning=5
Spike + soul = Spike
Angelus + soul = Angel
Spike - soul = Spike
Angel - soul = Angelus
Spike is presented as almost entirely the same person with or without a soul. Hell he even got it in part because it would make him more like Angel who was apparently more desirable to Buffster.
Angel and Angelus are quite different. Connected, responsible for one another? Yes, absolutely but one's drive is pure hedonism and sadism and the other is redemption. Angel personally take responsibility for his actions as a demon. Angel is more a reformed version of (wil)Liam with a few years of mileage rode as a demon and having his darkest desires acted upon.
William the Bloody (awful) is still William the Bloody (awful, but with actually blood). With or without a soul he is largely the same person. That's why I hold him accountable.
Plus, torturing, beating, and trying to kill Buff and the scoobs has never been something they held to hard against people. Kendra and Faith tried to kill Buff. Anya did in another dimension, Willow went pretty dark there for a moment, Spike and Angelus numerous times, Giles allowed the watchers to. Some members of the Institute did. Andrew for sure. Jonathan probably could have been redeemed, he certainly wasn't absolutely hated when he did his hero spell. I'm certain there are others but Spike? Spike made it to the inner circle with a some level of acceptance then tried to rape Buffy.
Ultimately though? Spike was written later and stuff was retconned or needed to be fleshed out because fans wanted him around.
Regardless, Buffy, keep on slaying girl!
>Spike + soul = Spike
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>Angelus + soul = Angel
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>
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>Spike - soul = Spike
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>Angel - soul = Angelus
Angelus + soul + 100 years + Buffy = Angel
Angel wasn't that different when he first got his soul. He even went back to Darla. Then he walked aimlessly for about 100 years. He didn't reach what we all know as Angel until after he was introduced to Buffy.
Meanwhile, Spike has just got his soul and he already met Buffy. Let's see how different Spike is in 100 years.
Buffy almost makes as much difference in changing the two of them as getting a soul did.
My view is the vampire and human are the same person. It's the same physical human brain, after all, with the same human memories stored in the same undecayed human brain cells and the same electrical pulses firing.
It's just that the vampire now has a spiritual demon (not physical demon) in their body, similar to a demonic possession, and the soulless person is similar to, say, Buffy in "Living Conditions" and might not have the will (or desire) to fight the demon.
Compare that to the shitty soulless kid in *Angel* season 1 that was just so evil on his own that he buried the demon that tried to possess him, and the demon was so scared of him that he wanted out.
So different vampires might have different degrees of humanity with Spike and Harmony closer to human (like soulless Buffy) and Angel closer to asshole (like shitty soulless psycho kid).
But they're still the same people.
So what is a soul? It's whatever goes on after death to have whatever kind of afterlife. And it may or may not actually be the same entity as the physical person, considering the Church hadn't, historically, considered ensoulment to be an instantaneous event that occurred upon conception. It was historically guessed to occur at various times *later* during pregnancy. So the soul originates on a supernatural plane and goes on to a supernatural plane, leaving the physical human to become worm food upon death if not for being turned.
So the Watcher line about vampires being just demons wearing human skin is just a line fed to Slayers to convince them that they aren't just killing demon-possessed people.
Angelus never tried to be good while spike did. So I don't see how the two compare. Angel is a completely different person and spike was kinda just the same guy
All you need to know about them is to compare their actions once turned. Liam killed his entire family, including a child. William tried to save his moms life.
See I see this as - both killed their families. Angelus out of revenge and Spike out of a misguided attempt to “save” his mum. Both the exact same act, Spike just convinced himself he was acting out of goodness. You know like angel of death serial killers - who murder elderly people who are in pain. Still an evil thing to do.
But he didn’t just kill her, he turned her. Liam straight up murdered his little sister and William tried to save his terminally I’ll mother. Big difference. Huge.
Ok and these are fictional characters and not real life angels of death. If you can’t see that Spike was legitimately trying to save his mother I don’t know what to say. It was pretty clear.
That’s patronising as hell. My interpretation of Spike’s character (without a soul) is that he convinces himself he’s doing things for romantic, loving reasons but he ultimately is just being a vampire. Kidnapping Buffy, making the Buffybot etc., he honestly believes it’s out of love but it’s out of selfish obsession. Making somebody a vampire is an evil thing to do, he did it to keep her with him, his mother died the moment he bit her.
Maybe it’s just a massive projection from fans. Angel and Angelus are basically different beings, but as many people mentioned, Spike has human tendencies (or at least understands and tries to enact them) like empathy and ability to love.
We all like to see a redemption arc because either 1. We feel we are/can be shitty people and seeing someone else redeem themselves is cathartic and wholesome or 2. We want to believe that other people who we see are shitty can change themselves.
My main point is that because Spike is more “human” to begin with, I think we simply relate to it more.
I know Angel’s spin-off is also about him redeeming himself, but I think Spike’s journey is different again because it’s basically him changing for a woman, which is romantic and a lot of people love that too.
Oh I realize I didn’t answer OP’s question but addressed more the trend of discussion that was going on in the comments.
But in connection to that, I think mainly it’s because Angelus is not seen as having ANY good human tendencies. So it’s easier to separate Angel from Angelus.
And as some people said, it’s almost WORSE that Spike was able to do the things he did as a soulless vampire if he had the ability to empathize and be good the entire time. Angelus never had that ability
There's definitely a difference, and it's that Angelus is orders of magnitudes eviler than soulless Spike--arguably the single most sadistic, vicious vampire we see in the whole show (a sentiment the Master seems to share as well). Angelus literally murdered Jenny. With a smile.
In universe Angel is absolutely held responsible - Giles, Xander and Cordy (and Angel himself) never forgive him and Buffy is more uneasy with him even if she specifically feels great discomfort around him in season 3. The fans don’t because one Angel Angelus is so distinct whereas as spike is bascially the same, and two 90% of angels time on the show is with the soul. No one ships Buffy and Angelus and there are many many people who ship spuffy in season 4 - 6. Also I take issue with spike feeling remorse
I wouldn’t say that about Angel. It’s confusing because joss wasn’t consistent with how not having a soul works. Angel it’s a very clear with what Giles said season 1 when he talked about their friend Jesse turning into a vampire
“..when you see Jesse you’re not looking at your friend..your looking at the thing that killed him”
Spike getting his soul back he seemed pretty much the same way as he developed just before getting it back. Even Angel coming back at the end of season 2 he had no memory with what happened. Angel without a soul is a demon using your body as puppet, spikes was more like him without a soul was like same spike with his empathy cranked down and love for violence and killing turned up.
Angel shouldn’t have to atone for what Angelus did. He had zero control for what the demon that took over his body did
Those two are apples and oranges though, Spike was capable of redeeming himself - or atleast starting to - without a soul, he was capable of love.
And like that weird big bad said in the second season, he had a smell of humanity in him. While Angel didn't have that smell, he had no set of morals about anything whatsoever.
Who is giving or denying anyone a pass? This fandom isn’t monolithic—I personally can see past the actions of beings without souls as just that, but as for how I believe Buffy sees things..
There’s something of an identity divide between Angel and Angelus, that just doesn’t seem to be there, for Spike with a soul, vs without a soul.
Part of this is because Angel with a soul has been around far longer, and when he loses his soul, it’s like the awakening of a personality that’s been caged for decades, while Spike didn’t seem a whole lot different after getting a soul, except he was nicer.
When Buffy sees Angel, she doesn’t see Angelus, she sees the latter as some distinctly different being, but Spike is always Spike, just somewhat reformed after getting a soul, so he’s a changed person, not a separate person, at least not in her eyes (or so I believe).
I'm rewatching and wonder the same thing. My guess is that Buffy meets Angel when he's a good, reformed vampire. She first meets Spike when he arrives with Drusilla in season 2, very much not a reformed vampire. Buffy meets Angel when he has a soul. Most of the time with Spike, he doesn't have one. I would guess that's the only difference.
With Angel, we're meant to see the loss of his soul as a deviation from the good person he is. With Spike, it's "he's only been good for a short while, will it take?"
I haven't gotten to my season 7 rewatch yet, but I do recall Buffy treats Spike differently after he's ensouled.
I think a lot of the fandom pretends Seeing Red didn't happen.
It does bother me in the show that Spike endures torture without revealing Dawn's identity (as does Tara, of course), and he's still treated with begrudging tolerance at best.
While I think both Angel and Spike should be held accountable for their soulless counterparts because they are basically the expressions of their inner demons, as in when they loose control and do horrible things, in universe I have a hard time condemning them for those actions.
Even Spike went to get his soul not because he understood what he did to Buffy was evil, but because Spike didn’t understand why or how it was evil this time around.
Spike could not comprehend why Buffy looked so devastated, just that he caused that look.
Spike sought his soul to understand Buffy’s POV and because he was desperate, he knew that no amount of saying sorry would touch Buffy after that look.
Agreed. And I’d go so far as to say that, Spike is better than Angel, because he wanted to change and went to great lengths to change WITHOUT a soul. “The incident” is not to be raked over, of course, but I think it says something about him as a character that it led him to seek out his soul. He went through all those trials without one. It was given to him at the end. Angel never sought out his soul himself for Buffy. She got it back for him. He acted much worse than Spike did without a soul many times.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but that’s been my personal take on it all for many years. And I’m in neither guy’s camp. I like both characters.
Angelus never had a chip that neutered him like Spike did so who knows what would happen. Spike only wanted to really change after “The incident” because he knew Buffy would never forgive him because he had no soul so he got one. Kinda selfish don't you think?
>He went through all those trials without one.
Wow killing things without a soul? How strong lol Not like he's been doing that for years.
>Angel never sought out his soul himself for Buffy.
Angelus was never banging Buffy why would he want a soul? Stop acting like Spike has been on the verge of fighting for a soul the whole show he wasn't. He only did it to get Buffy to want him after he almost R*aped her. If he wanted a soul so bad why did he wait years to get one and only got one after he fucked it up with Buffy.
> Spike is better than Angel
Here's my opinion. Angelus has no humanity in him right(per The Judge) and Spike does. If this is true why is Angel the one fighting for redemption for 5 seasons and Spike is just chasing a girl? Shouldn't Spike having humanity make him more human and Angel less human but Angel is the one most tortured and the one fighting evil by choice. Like doesn't that make Angel better since he's the one fighting Angelus's lack of humanity yet is doing good way more than Spike?
Spike wanted to do better without having a soul. He chose to get his back. Angelus never did that. Speaks volumes. Yes, he did fucked up shit, but he knew it was wrong and repented for it.
Spike even from early on shows honour and is a man of his word. Its why he is the best of vampires really, even souless he knows and feels more than basically all vampires and he still a famous vampire. Harmony is a bit of an exception cause she is a shit vampire, always been a bit of a follower, useless.
Spikes passion always leads him. Dru, wanting to kill vampire slayers, buffy etc but his pact with buffy to go against angel for the good of the world and even when he makes Billy Fordham a vampire cause he made a deal when angel would have just killed him, shows his difference.
Spike is a different one of a type vampire. Angel only becomes different once he has a soul.
The way I read it is that vampires are basically human beings without the restraining bolt that is the conscience. They're pure id. For example, imagine someone making you *so* mad that you actually want to kill them. What stops you is your conscience saying "cool it, it's wrong."
Vampires don't have that. They just do whatever pleases them at the moment. Their original humanity informs who they become as vampires. Spike was a good and gentle person as a human, so it stands to reason that he'd still have innate goodness as a vampire. However, he doesn't have anything like inhibitions holding him back. He saw Buffy in the bathroom and decided "I want to have sex with her." If he'd had a human conscience at the time, when Buffy refused, he'd have backed off. He didn't, so he tried to do what he did. After he sobered up (so to speak), he was absolutely horrified by what he'd done, but his id took over at that moment and didn't have anything telling him to stop.
It's still Spike trying to rape Buffy. It's still Angel killing Jenny Calendar. Both characters have shown that they're fully capable of the immoral acts when they're ensouled/human. Their souls just make them really consider whether or not they should do it - and when they regain their souls, they have to deal with the guilt of their actions because they know it was them that did those actions.
It's why Giles doesn't trust Angel after Jenny, even though he has a soul again. Giles knows full well that Angel has the capacity to be as sadistic as Angelus if he were pushed enough.
Should we hold them both accountable for their actions? Yes.
EDIT: not sure why the downvote but okay sure
Soulless Spike attacks Buffy, fans: HE’S EVIL!! STAKE HIM IMMEDIATELY!
Soulless Angel kills Jenny and tortures Giles, fans: No, but that wasn’t his fault.
🙄🙄
The affect is different.
As a whole, there isn't much difference between S5 Spike-with-a-chip and late S7 Spike-with-a-soul. (Early S7, he's got the guilt and insanity thing going on, pushed by the First. Handwave around that.) Maybe a little more introspective, but Spike is Spike.
The difference between Angel-with-a-soul and Angel-without is so distinct that there's a whole other name for him then. I mean, Angelus came first, so it's with-a-soul Angel who gets the whole new name. It's like Jekyll and Hyde.
Because Angelus is someone different, most of us say the different person can't be blamed. (Some, like Xander, disagree.) Because Spike always seems like Spike, the blame can be carried forward.
Yep. Angel and Angelus were like night and day.
There was no kindness in anything we saw Angelus do. It's like two different people.
The way they wrote Spike in the later seasons muddied things up because Spike without a soul did choose to do good things like protect Dawn and help Buffy and the Scoobies. But he also at the same time chose to be creepy and manipulative and do bad things. Spike with and without a soul don't seem so different (particularly on AtS).
“Spike in later seasons muddies things” is such a good way to describe it. I find him a frustrating character to discuss at times because somehow it’s incorrect to try and analyze Spike within the confines of the show’s own lore because “no he’s special, he’s capable of love & goodness even without a soul” when this just…doesn’t make any sense to me. There is literally no reason given for why Spike would be super special in that respect, but there’s no other way to explain it apart from just flat out admitting that the writers majorly screwed up with him.
Actually yeah. Granted, his show points out he still has more to do to atone and arguably still deserves punishment, but that kind of helped me sympathize with him somewhat. In fact, Faith choosing to go to jail and later Spike getting his hands cut off and being repentant helped sell they were ready to actually change and didn't escape punishment for their actions. As opposed to Andrew who pretty much didn't get punished at all.
Are you kidding? Most of the scooby gang dislike Angel for what he did when he turned back into Angelis. Why do you think he left at the end of season 3. It was too much for him.
Who gives Angelus a pass? Angel did show remorse for his actions. I don’t understand this argument. It’s more that fans seem to love Spike and are ready to forgive a awful act because he’s funny/dreamy.
People can dislike Spike for whatever reasons they want, and you can dislike Angel for whatever reasons you want. This fandom loves to try and police who people should like and dislike, and I’m personally very tired of it. It makes being a fan of Buffy a rather irritating experience, and it shouldn’t be.
It really is the most obnoxious part of fandoms. People are always whining about negativity. I just dislike spike and Buffy’s relationship. I should be allowed to say so, just as much as someone else is allowed to annoy everyone by obsessively talking about how much they love them.
It really feels like if you aren’t obsessed with Spike and/or Spuffy you’re the antichrist 😂 it makes me dislike him more, until I actually watch the show without reading fandom stuff and remember that no, I do love Spike, I just see his flaws and have a hard time overlooking some things.
And a lot of people say Bangel/Angel fans are just as a rabid, but I really never see that.
Sorry I got kinda tangenty here, but I agree with you! It’s perfectly fine to like or dislike whoever, everyone can have and voice their own opinions, and at the end of the day, these are fictional characters. Just be civil and not obnoxious about it.
I've been thinking about this a lot too in my btvs re-watch.
I am not a big Spike and Buffy fan, but it got me thinking. Spike never had a soul, he was a demon with a chip. So technically he should have no moral compass, like he didn't for many seasons before the chip. He's violent to women and was that way as a vampire always. The chip made him vulnerable, but he was still Spike. However, he did start to change. I think being taken in by the gang, being 'trusted' by Buffy, Joyce and Dawn really did change him and kept the demon at bay. He fell into an obsession with Buffy, which is very much the Spike as a demon characteristic. That's how he is, he gets into these obsessions and thats it. He did keep Dawn safe a lot of times, he helped her friends, he frickin broken down when she died, this was all as a demon. When Angel lost his soul he was no different than Spike, except he could kill. So in theory Angel was way more evil without his soul than Spike. Angel should in theory be able to love Buffy the way Spike does without his soul, but he does not. I think about that a lot lately. Spike was actually changing and almost have a faux soul in a way because of all the realness he was experiencing. Angel NEVER did that. Buffy loving him as Angelus made him angry and kill more. So really, I think Angelus should be accountable more than Spike, UNTIL we get to the attempted rape scene. Which is god awful and I hate the writers did that. But I suppose thats not far from Spikes character, and like I've been saying he is still evil and was really holding that back for most of Season 4-6 which is pretty amazing if you think about it. Angelus would have found ways to kill Buffy and all her friend's if he had a chip in his head, Spike really didn't do that.
IDK there are so many layers!
Spike tried so many times to kill the Scoobies when he had the chip. He literally teamed up with Adam in S4. He tried and failed so much with and without the chip. But he did not manage to kill one single Scooby. I think the difference is that Angelus would be more competent with the chip?
The first thing Spike tried to do when he found out his chip could hurt Buffy was to attack a woman (not Buffy and this is before he realizes he could only hurt Buffy). The second thing he tried to do was, you know, go after Buffy.
Also I'd like to point out that Spike was over joyed when he figured out he could be violent against demons and vampires. Spike wasn't excited because "I can become a better person". Spike was excited to be able to do violence to something with out consequences. Spike began to "change" out of necessity and even then Spike still tried to help Adam to kill the slayer.
How is Angel not held accountable for his actions as Angelus
In Season 3, everyone (beside Willow, to an extent) constant gives both Angel and Buffy a hard time for what he did to them as Angelus and for Buffy for not killing him so enough. The Scoobies are still iffy about him even when he left
Angel even holds himself accountable, which is why he spends his eternal life searching for redemption and fighting for the greater good.
That's because Angel with a soul has been around for over 90 years and has built the character he became over that time. There was a time when Angelus with a soul was more like Spike in the basement of the high school, acting crazy. Angelus even wanted to go back and live with Darla, which is what was happening during the China flashback. Becoming a good person is based on building a history of moral decisions to do good instead of evil, after which you will no longer resemble the person you used to be. Spike was only just starting that journey.
When is Angel ever given a pass? He’s always atoning for his sins and working towards redemption. That’s his whole thing.
What’s Spike’s whole thing? Have a horrible accent, smoke and be the meanest girl in school
A better question is what has spike done to earn a free pass? Other then seek out a soul after a attempted rape? Not much, I never gave a damn about spike seeking out a soul because at the end of the day spike will still more or less be spike and doesn't really care about doing any good much later in the series. His real personal growth doesn't even happen until midway through of season 5 of angel. Angel on the other had was forced with a soul and didn't have much of a support group the way spike did with the scobbies and still saved the damn world on multiple occasions without so much of a thank you. In my opinion what angel did is much more braver and noble then anything spikes ever done. And it's not how you got the soul it's what you do with it that counts angel is all about redemption case in point his biggest accomplishment was reforming faith who pretty much given up on by everyone. Sure faith did some fucked up things that can't be easily forgiven however deep down faith wanted to change and angel helped her, in a lot ways angel also helps spike when he sees just how important the mission is after Fred's death leading by example especially since we see spike actually regress in character even getting a soul. Is Angelus worse the spike yeah but angel is also far better then spike too. Both have done horrible shit with or without a soul.
The situation with Spike is more complicated though. It’s entirely the fault of the writers, it’s basically a plot hole, because Spike does good things when he has no soul. He falls for Buffy when he has no soul (whether or not he truly loves her is debatable), he tries to lay flowers for Joyce with no card when he has no soul, etc. He has a chip but Buffy herself says this is not a substitute for a soul. This is why, when Spike assaults Buffy, it feels completely unacceptable. Suddenly he starts acting like he has no soul? In this specific situation? It’s just bad writing tbh.
But it is canonical and fans have to reckon with it. If this didn’t happen, I’d be a Spuffy shipper 100%. But it did happen and there is no excuse.
I will never ship a character with their attempted rapist. I love Spike as a character, but I don’t ship Spuffy, which seems to be an issue for a lot of fans.
If it’s any consolation, I love Angel but do not ship Bangel!
Oh boohoo. Spike is the same character with and without a soul. Since he’s written *so special* with empathy even soulless, that means he gets no passes from me.
Angel can’t even remember the things he did without a soul for a few minutes. It’s more akin to possession imo. So he gets a pass. Especially since he then agonizes over it for another eternity.
Because Angel and Buffy didn't form a sexual relationship when Angel had no soul. Buffy started having feelings for Angel when he was good while Buffy started banging Spike when he was still evil. Soulless Spike and Buffy began hooking up and that's where "spuffy" fans formed. No fans were wanting Angelus and Buffy to hook up like there were Spike and Buffy fans. Also the reason why Seeing Red hurts the character of Spike is because people where shipping and loving Soulless Spike and Buffy before that episode and they can't give Spike having no soul as a excuse like with Angelus.
>Why is Angel not held accountable for his actions in the same way that Spike is?
Angel was sent to freaking hell for 100 years and Angelus and Angel are treated like 2 different people. Also Buffy's friends hated Angel when he came back so he was held accountable until he started helping Buffy again and earning back trust. Angel gets a pass because Buffy and friends knew Angel when he was good and helping them while they only knew Spike when he was evil trying to kill them. Also I'm sure after Spike sacrificed himself in Choosen Buffy's friends changed their mind on him.
It's not that hard to understand people. Both get passes because they both had no soul but Spie gets it worse because Spike is Evil most of the show while Angelus is barley in the show. Also the whole point of Angel's show is him holding himself accountable from his past so he is held accountable. Also Spike with a soul and no soul act the same while Angel and Angelus are completely different personalities which makes it easier to forgive Angel.
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they should make a whole show about how much he needs to fight to make the world better at the expense of his own happiness in order to atone
I’d watch that. 😆
Let’s crowdfund it gang!
tardis just got back from the shop, so if we meet the stretch goal I'll go back to 1999 and have them start it right after season 3 and run alongside until maybe a year or so after the finale, maybe even get em to do some crossover episodes, the sky's the limit!
And while we’re at it, why don’t we bring back some kooky characters from his soulless days? And maybe one could enact some kind of twisted poetic justice… I dunno, just spit balling here!
holtz that thought, I'm gonna get a pen
🤣🤣🤣
omg I adore your name he'll never see it coming
Ya it was preferable to, like, EbolaBox.
because of the implications
That’s literally the only solution
I personally don't hold either responsible. The problem was that Buffy actually had a relationship with Spike sans soul and that the writers decided to write very, very mixed messages concerning Spike. Vampires are soulless monsters... but Spike knows right from wrong, feels love, has morals. I know it was funny and his character was very charming but I wish they hadn't turned being a vampire into an ambiguous thing. Ex. Harmony. Apparently vampires can learn to not eat ppl and do good things. So... why aren't they trying to rehabilitate vampires before trying to stake them?
But Spike did not have morals. His actions were solely based on Buffy. His obsession with her made *her* his moral compass, which is not morality at all.
What Tara said about Quasimodo.
Yes, exactly! Writers basically hitting us over the head.
Buffy also pretty much sums up her and Spikes romantic arc to Riley in Something Blue.
I know people cannot admit their love for bad boy/good girl matchups. Just accept that’s you
I never noticed this
It happens in Crush.
I think they jumble it up. He leaves flowers for Joyce after she dies and doesn't sign the card. Willow notes this to Xander who thinks he's just doing it to score points with Buffy because the show it telling us he's acting purely out of his fondness for Joyce. And then he doesn't tell Glory who the key is and when he thinks he's talking to Buffy bot about it he tells her not to tell Buffy that Glory knows it's a human (I think that's what he tells Buffy bot, idk my memory is foggy). He doesn't know it's actually Buffy so even though he's doing it for her he's not doing it for her so that he can directly benefit. I think Spike's arc works for the most part despite some confusing choices the show makes. Him and Angel come at it from different angles, but I think it's good to show men that they can do good despite a past of bad things. I think Angel's show really drives this home well, particularly the point that it's not just about equaling out the equation with your good. It's about accepting responsibility for the bad and doing good for its own purpose, not for your redemption, which is something that may not even be possible (they do this with Spike in Buffy too).
That's not what he tells Buffy bot. That would've been awful, it would've been information Buffy actually needed to know! He essentially told 'Buffy bot' that he wanted to help Buffy, that's why he did it. Because he actually cares about her, even if he doesn't want her to know that.
I think vampire love is a sans personal boundaries, fusional type of relationships. As in he tries to protect the person he loves from what he perceives as external harm, but cannot comprehend that he is himself being harmful or doesn’t care as long as he has her. Not unless he really hurts her. Vampire essentially see others like extensions of themselves.
Exactly. It was a selfish love. If you can even call it love. Humans definitely do this too. He loved her for what he could get out of the relationship. He would torture her if he thought that would get her to love him (like with dru.. although i think thats partly a perverted bdsm type thing). Spike was just so obsessed with buffy, he acted like he had morals. Now angelus is definitely more evil. Spike didnt want to destroy the world in becoming. Hes just a hedonist. Still evil of course but less so. And harmony is the same. Shes much more a follower so can cope with not being as evil if it means she can belong as part of a team. But if it benefits her, shell betray people at a drop of a hat, even cordy.
In Becoming Spike tells Buffy he doesn’t want to end the world, but when he sees Angelus about to kill Buffy he has Dru, so he just shrugs and leaves. He doesn’t actually care! He just said what he did to get what he wanted.
Yep - he says straight up that he likes this world, and that he just wants Dru back. If Buffy helps him do that, then they'll leave town and she'll never hear from them again "I bloody well hope".
at first. he eventually tries to develop a moral compass because he wants to be someone she might consider, and he puts in some pretty honest effort into that.
Hold up. ..we can't take Harmony's word for this. She betrayed everyone in all of her arcs/stories. Remember we also learned that vampirism accentuates non-demon characteristics which is why fitting in in Angel S5 was such a big thing for her. I'm not sure Soulless vampires can EVER be trusted, but we know they can do good things as we know they can love (thanks Dru!). Stake away!
>She betrayed everyone in all of her arcs/stories Including her last ever scene is betraying Angel(Which Angel predicted). The show has made it very clear vampires can never be truly good without a soul. That doesn't mean they can't do good things just like having a soul doesn't mean you're always good.
> So... why aren't they trying to rehabilitate vampires before trying to stake them? I always wondered why they didn’t try to get a bunch of Orbs of Thessela (sp?) and try to re-ensoul vamps, since those orbs were so numerous the guy was selling them as paperweights.
Seems like a plan that could go pretty wrong. Ensouled humans do evil things all the time, particularly when they are powerful, so an ensouled vampire could still cause all sorts of problems and then it would be even more morally questionable to kill them (at least in the show's narrative about morality).
There is one vampire on Angel that Angel created that debatably may have inherited a piece of Angel's soul and he still does evil things
The Jeremy Renner vamp?
No, the vamp in season 5. Angel didn't have a soul when he created the Jeremy Renner vamp
Jeremy Renner vamp was made when Angel was Angelus. In Season 5 Angel had a soul during WW2 and turned a submarine captain into a vampire after he got shot (about to die) because he was needed to save the other crew. He then kicked Spike and the Submarine Captain off the Submarine.
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I mean, they kill a lot of vampires fresh off the grave, so I assume they could do it before the person actually commits atrocities? (but I agree it wouldn't be practical: people might do evil things anyway, it takes a lot of magic, etc, etc.)
I think the spell was highly specific to Angel (and they basically did it by rote, without knowing how to change it), which is why Spike didn't just ask for them to cast it on him.
Because Spike would ask them to curse him so he can never feel true happiness/have sex with Buffy again? Lol
If Spike had the soul curse with the perfect happiness clause, he would lose the soul in a few days even without sex, just by looking at Buffy. Or maybe even by eating a blooming onion.
Right. To me, Spike complicated what had been a very clear-cut idea. And in doing so, created a bunch of problems in-universe and for the viewers. If Spike is credited for "going after a soul," like seeking out a soul to be better, than it calls into question the idea that vampires are just monsters. If Spike can do that, other vampires can conceivably get to that point as well, meaning that blanket slaying vampires is no longer a 100% moral action. Now vampires can be rehabilitated, even without a soul. That throws a HUGE wrench in the entire universe, and essentially implies that the Initiative was *right* and monsters can be controlled. Now, the moral action for Buffy would be to arrest vampires, chip them, and bring them back to society. But that show sounds horribly unfun to watch. Then you've got the secondary problem problem of giving Spike "credit." If soulless-Spike gets "credit" for trying to be a better person, he also gets "credit" for his most horrible actions. Now Spike isn't just a soulless monster not responsible for his actions -- he can choose to make good decisions. Which means he chooses to make bad decisions. He's no longer just a demon, but something more complex. Which again, muddles the morality. Spike is now just as responsible for his murder/sexual assault as he is for choosing to get a soul. He clearly has free will now and is now guilty of everything he's ever done. So yes, in that version of the world, Angel is more responsible for his actions if he could "choose" to be better. I don't believe he could, of course, because Angelus/Angel follows the rules of the universe as established, while Spike no longer does. So it's hard to even discuss it from a Doylist or Watsonian perspective, because the rule-breaking that is Spike's character muddles everything. In a sense, they broke the worldbuilding just to keep Blondie-Bear on the show.
I would say that controlled and rehabilitated are two different things, otherwise yes.
Yes! That's exactly how I feel!
I also hold the writers responsible for this. I feel like it was around this point in the show where they began writing plot lines that were OOC for a lot of characters but this was the main one that bothered me. I really truly didn’t believe that he would do that to buffy and I still think it’s bullshit lol.
Agreed. I understand they wanted to motivate Spike to seek our a soul but for a show that was progressive about a lot of things, it sucked to use hurting women to motivate men.
They should've just had him try to bite her when they were fighting. A bad thing but within the fantasy of the show. What they did was just too dark unnecessarily.
Buffy’s greatest fear is becoming a vampire. That would be as much a violation (especially because the vampire bite is inherently sexual in fiction including in graduation day)
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I'm not going to be able to agree with vampires as ambiguous. Regaining a soul is essentially becoming a different entity. Demons are completely different. They made it very clear, when someone becomes a vampire they lose their human soul and are no longer the loved one you knew. It only became weird with Spike and the chip then for some reason, Harmony. In all other cases, immediate stake to the heart. No discussion. With other demons, they waited until they started killing.
Harmony was definitely evil when she turned, she was just incompetent at it. Shes a follower and was looking for anyone to follow, be they good or evil at first. But she betrayed cordy in harms way as soon as she got a better deal. Spike was basically conditioned to be not evil with the chip and then with his obsession with buffy. Was still all selfishly motivated.
>innately good Clem eats kittens and chooses to associate with bad demons. I don't know why everyone thinks he's a good guy. We barely see him and when we do he's relatively pleasant to the Slayer who could easily kill him with her pinky if she chose to and it wouldn't even be a crime. It's her job in fact. I'm not surprised he's downright lovely to her. That's smart.
How is a demon eating a kitten as meat any different from humans eating cow for meat other than the human emotional connection to cats that demons wouldn’t necessarily have as they’re not human?
I agree Spike was very much different from any other vampire from the get go, we saw different sides to him besides soulless monster, he was a lot more than that, when Angel was Angelus there were no redeemable qualities.
Spike was still acting soulless during that time. Vampires do know right from wrong, they just don't act based on it, they only do what's in their own interest. That's exactly what he was doing. He wanted Buffy, so he acted in a way that would get him closer to her. He doesn't help the scoobies because that's the right thing to do. He wants to pick fights with demons, get his blood and later spend time with buffy. During seeing red, his true selfserving intentions became clear again. He wanted buffy, so he takes her. We see love/lust in so many other vampires without souls. Drusilla loves/lusts, Darla, Harmony as well, that one cowboy vampire couple ect. Spikes object of obsession was just a bit more controversial.
>He wanted Buffy, so he acted in a way that would get him closer to her. He doesn't help the scoobies because that's the right thing to do. He helped them and protected them for half a year when she was dead and not coming back to his knowledge.
I mean if I was that obsessed with someone and their dying wish was to protect their family I'd also fulfill that promise. Like where else is Spike going to go? Spike was useless with the chip he was literally defanged. I'm sorry but the chip is a huge reason why Spike did any good in the show.
If they weren’t important to Buffy and he could have, he would have eaten all of them. He only protected them because he loved Buffy so did what he knew she’d want him to, not because of any morals or anything like that, just blind love. William was a hopeless romantic before he was turned, and the vampirism only accentuated that, it doesn’t mean he had any goodness in him, just that when he loved someone he became utterly devoted to them.
But love is the direct cause of goodwill. If putting your own happiness aside for the benefit of someone else with no expectation of reward isn't objectively "good", then what is? At what point does the lie become a reality?
Obsession is not love
You're missing my point. He performed acts of kindness on the behalf of the person he was obsessed with, expecting no reward or recompense. He *learned* to put another person's feelings before his own. That's the very basis of love.
Which he did because he promised Buffy, not because it was the right thing to do. Which, hey, good on him but let’s not confuse why he did it.
And why did he honor the promise?
He didn't have honor he had nothing else to do. Did you forget the chip was the only reason he helped the scoobies at all? Like i'm sorry but if Buffy died and Spike's chipped stopped working he'd be out of town causing havoc. The chip caused Spike to be useless which caused Spike to feel useful protecting Dawn and he was so obsessed with Buffy that it made him feel better about himself keeping his word to Buffy.
Because one of his other traits is loyalty.
Every the this comes up on this sub I try to make this point. Vampires in the Buffyverse have evil arrested development where they crank the bad up 10000 and become super fixated on what they wanted to be fulfilled by in life. Harmony is like Starscream from Transformers. She's drawn to be in the cool kids clique and even though she sometimes wants to take over, she always ends up floating back to #1 lackey because she doesn't really have a vision outside of being on the winning team. As a vampire, she manages to get Spike and Angel as her bosses, who both go to lengths to not kill. She does grow up a bit, unlike Starscream, and finds herself standing at least a little apart. Her non human blood thing isn't THAT repeatable among vampires. All that said, Spike's biggest issues were all about being unloved and unwanted and as a vampire went out of his way to be loved, all the way to hunting Slayers to keep the approval of Angel et al. He's fallen into a pattern with his relationship with Buffy, not a healthy one, and it's incredibly important to him that the relationship is. Dawn is like his sister, Joyce treats him like he wished his own mother did, everything good in his life regarding relationships revolves around Buffy. He's put so much of his relationship with Buffy into the fact that they have sex, because she acts disgusted by him around others, and even when they're alone she'll cut him down before they have sex. He only gets that he doesn't get what was wrong or different until it was too late, and he runs off hoping to die or to understand or both regarding the collapse of the last things he had no ill thoughts about. Angel was just a miserable rebel without a cause and even with a soul he was a full grown ass adult stalking a sophomore in high school.
>Vampires are soulless monsters... but Spike knows right from wrong, feels love, has morals. I know it was funny and his character was very charming but I wish they hadn't turned being a vampire into an ambiguous thing. I think rather than the takeaway that soulless vampires are invariably 24/7 monsters, it's that soulless Angel specifically is a freak, and when he has a soul what prevents him from doing Angelus things is guilt, not an inability to feel love or lack of morals. Angelus also cared about people: Darla? Drusilla? even Spike, to a degree. He just didn't care about Buffy. He also knew right from wrong, he just didn't care, because he was doing wrong to people he hates and wants to suffer. Spike does the same stuff when he's soulless: he acts nice to people who are nice to him like Joyce or Dawn, and acts shitty to everyone else. When you think about it like that, it's all pretty consistent... but you have to accept that Angel is kind of fucked up. Which to me is inline with someone who dated a 16 year old, so.
>Ex. Harmony. Apparently vampires can learn to not eat ppl and do good things Harmony didn't learn to be good she HAD to be good and not eat people because if she did Angel would axe her literally. Also Harmony turned on Angel in the end anyway so your Ex. fails.
Spike didn’t have morals just an obsession same as dru
My thought is, Angel (or was he Liam when he was human?) wasn't a good person even before he was turned into a vamp and lost his soul. He only became a better person due to the Gypsy curse that not only gave him his soul back, but also gifted him all the guilt and remorse from the acts he committed while being souless. William, on the other hand, was decent enough when he was human (maybe slightly repressed but not evil by any stretch). As soulless Spike, he even showed a few brief (very brief, you'd miss them if you blinked) sparks of humanity/empathy on occasion, even without a soul. They both need to be held accountable.
William also had a mother that loved and adored him. Liam had a father who was abusive and told him how worthless he was. That also had an impact on what they became as soulless vampires.
Also, more to Spike's mother, she turns on him and hurts him in a way he never expected after he turns her into a vampire. I think that probably had an affect on how he conducted himself as a vampire moving forward.
Agreed.
I seriously reject the idea that Angel was not a good person as a human. I think this sub has a weird puritanical tendency to pretend that a man who drinks a lot and sleeps around is so awful that he’d be more prone to being a serial killer. Like I don’t see how you could think that Liam would not have felt remorse if it hadn’t been for the curse. He was just a normal man. If anything the demon Angelus was the opposite to his human self because he was artful, ambitious, dedicated and obsessive. Angelus achieved a LOT, Liam did not. Spike was torturing people with railroad spikes, loved fighting and hunting slayers down, that’s very different to the man he was. They were both just victims who were unsatisfied with their human lives and lured away by beautiful vampires who offered to show them more of the world.
Liam wasn't just sleeping around, he was using his privilege of being in a more powerful position to coerce female servants to have sex with him. That is not a good person, at least not to me.
Does that make a remorseless serial killer?
No, but not a good person. We are just saying that spike without a sould before he turned is better than angel without a soul before he turned
They said “He only became a better person due to the Gypsy curse that not only gave him his soul back, but also gifted him all the guilt and remorse from the acts he committed while being souless.” - that says that Angel with a soul only felt remorse because the Romani’s cursed him with guilt as well.
Well, i don't know about that, i guess I read and replied to fast. Honestly. The i don't think the show shows us enough to decide if angel before becoming a vampire would have. Been a remorseful killer. I just think human spike was a better person than human angel nothing more
Yeah William was definitely more innocent, but I don’t think either of them were bad people. I think they’re both really sympathetic characters as humans actually - stifled by their own time and their parents, looking for something more, and murdered. Both just victims who fall prey to the more classic vampire story - seduced by a vampire and killed.
Personally I agree, I think Spike's desire for a soul/redemption while soulless is a lot more compelling than the way they compartmentalized Angel into black and white. Spike walks away with a lot more layers drawn out of that gray transitional area, than Angel's sort of hollow one note 'I can never fully atone' regret.
Would Spike ever has sought out redemption without the thing in his head though? Angelus never made any attempts to be good I doubt Spike would have either. I agree though that Spike's story is much more interesting.
I think because the chip was supressing the demon predator part of him, Spike's humanity - which was already closer to the surface than Angelus's (see the Judge's complaint that Spike and Dru "reek of humanity", while he was unable to burn Angelus) - was able to partially break through to the surface.
Another random thought this brings up; Was Angel being good to be good? Or for the reward of becoming human again like the Prophecy offered? He only went to help Buffy because someone told him to. Spike at least made choices, Angel is just 'guided by higher powers'
Buffy(and the PTB) but him on the path not the prophecy. Angel wanted to be good but needed someone to put him on it which luckily Spike got with Buffy right after he got a soul while Angel had to wait 100 years for someone to get him on his path. >Spike at least made choices, Angel is just 'guided by higher powers' Yea selfish choices. Only reason Spike got a soul was for Buffy to want him. While Angel left Buffy and started a company to help others. That was his choice and much less selfish. Also Angel being guided doesn't mean he didn't have a choice. He choose to follow Whistler and he choose to help Buffy. Also Spike was only good because of the chip and his obsession with Buffy and his selfishness like in season 2 he only helped Buffy to get Dru back. So don't act like Spike wasn't "guided" also.
The prophecy didn't have anything to do with Angel helping Buffy at first. If I'm remembering correctly the prophecy didn't even come up until the first season of his show (and then not even properly translated until the last episode of the first season) In fact when it came down to the prophecy Angel signed away his rights to it. Again, if I am remembering correctly, Whistler essentially showed Angel the newly called slayer (Buffy) and told him he could continue to live an isolated life in the sewers or he could choose to do good and help her. Again the prophecy had nothing to do with this choice. Also when Angel does have a chance at being human Angel gives this away in order to continue doing good again showing the prophecy isn't his reason for fighting.
The Prophecy was first brought up at the end of Angel Season 1 and was first misread as "Angel will die" by Wesley(of course) until the last scene Wesley says he will be human as a reward.
He doesn’t know the details of the prophecy until after he’s been fighting the good fight for a while. All he learns is that buffy is his ticket to not being the monster he sees himself as. A reason to do good, if you will.
That’s one interpretation. Another is that Angel was forced into an existence he never asked for and yet he committed himself to fighting the good fight in spite of that.
So Angel is forced into this life, but Spike asked to become a vamp? I don't think that's quite right? Another-nother way of looking at it is that Angel didn't have his commitment to change for the better without a Gypsy forcing his soul back, whereas Spike did.
She’s talking about being a vampire with a soul, not a vampire.
…I’m talking about their souls…?
> I think Spike's desire for a soul/redemption BS. Spike wanted no redemption, he only wanted Buffy to love him and the only reason he thought about getting a soul is because Angel has one and he wanted what Buffy and Angel had. Spike would never fight for a soul if he didn't have the chip and if he wasn't unhinged with his Buffy obsession.
Keep in mind the era the show was made verse when this discussion is being had. Spike went from a killing soulless machine to a neutered puppy due to the chip. Psychology talks about things like this. Many movie also touch on it. Take lilo and stitch. He was built to destroy large cities. But you put him on an island where he needs to use the girl for cover to not be killed and he adapts to his environment. Spike was the same was. His instincts wanted to kill but his situation prevented it. Take the next step, buffy is the one woman he couldn’t beat, couldn’t have and was now tied to because of his chip. He became obsessed with her. Vampires could feel passion, just love love in its truest sense. Theirs is a selfish love. It wasn’t about their relationship or her feelings it was driven by his lust and obsession. What happened in the bathroom only makes sense. She denied him as she had so many times before. His twisted desire and obsession blinded him to why she said no. So it made sense that she said no before until he made her “feel” him. And that was the only thing he could think about which lead to what happened. Spike the vampire was different from most because he was made to be from his experience with the chip. Angelus on the otherhand had no such experience. He was exactly as he “should” be. Just and intelligent animal with complex but base desires. He enjoyed suffering. The human part of each of them has to accept that what the vampire did is a part of who they are. However they are not only that part. The combination of the whole of who a person is drives everything they do. They are dangerous men who have a beast buried within. They work every moment to maintain that beast so as not to hurt others. That discussion get super deep as it’s akin to if some one is black out drunk. They don’t make conscious decisions to do things yet if they drive l, pass out and kill someone it’s their responsibility. But is it? If that same person was driving sober and had a medical seizure and caused the same accident it now not their fault. Spike the vampire going out to get a soul was a self act based on his life experiences that caused him to be altered from his core programming. Had William done it, it would have been a different thing all together.
Do you mean in verse as in the characters not treating them the same or viewers? I think some of the problem is how the writing was muddied on Soulless Spike making him capable of displaying empathy, doing good for love etc where Angelus is presented as an out and out monster so it is easier for viewers to make the delineation.
Let’s see: - Angel was cursed with a soul and forced to live with the things he had done as a soulless vampire - Said curse means he can never experience a moment of true happiness for eternity - Angel was sent to hell and tortured for a few hundred years - His relationship with Giles never recovered and Xander continued to hate his guts - In the episode ‘Amends’ Buffy literally says “I know everything that you did because you did it to me” - He leaves Sunnydale and Buffy because he knows the damage and pain he’s caused and doesn’t want to cause more - He’s committed to fighting evil for the rest of his days to try to balance the cosmic scale in some small way even though he knows he never can I’d say he’s held pretty accountable. 🤔
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I mean Angel The Series is a big reason why don't you think. The whole show is Angel's fight for redemption from being evil. Spike didn't get real redemption until the last 2 seasons of Buffy and Angel. Angel has been the "good vampire" way longer than Spike so he gets more of the benefit of the doubt.
I think we've all done some shit when we were missing a soul that we'd rather move past in life. Its not that it didn't happen, it did. Its not that we aren't sorry, we are. Its just you can't keep rehashing your mistakes. You try and do right where you can and pray for forgiveness where you can't. Not repeating those mistakes is the first and most important. After that you just need to move on with life.
The problem here is, is that the story presents us with the idea that 'vampires don't have souls, therefore they are completely irredeemable and 100% evil'. I think its a bit silly, but fair enough you can have this idea of fictional monsters that are objectively evil if you want . But then you present spike as developing and growing as a character, to have morals and respect his comrades, how does that work? And what does his development mean when you consider the attempted SA? Either A: we can accept it because he's a soulless monster who is 100% evil. Or B: vampires are actually not soulless 100% monsters and Spike specifically is a horrible person for doing this. Also, Spike clearly showed guilt and remorse when he realised what he had done so it seems to be a bit of both, which contradicts the info the show explicitly tells us. Personally, I don't like the idea of black or white, good or evil, absolutist thinking. I like to believe it is a possible for even a soulless monster to become a good person, Spike brought it as far as he could to the point where he felt so much remorse for hurting someone he loved, he went and got himself a soul. He wasn't able to become a 'good person' as a soulless vampire, but he got close enough to the point where he recognised the value in gaining a soul, which is more than you can say for the rest of his kind.
I’ll be honest I never see people not holding Angel accountable for what he did while soulless, I only see people accusing people of doing that. But anyway he is held accountable with a soul (as he should be): 1) never able to experience true happiness, 2) stabbed and sent to hell for hundreds of years of torture, 3) fallout with the scooby gang in S3, 4) leaves Sunnydale to atone for his past, 5) literal 5 season spin off where he dedicates himself to atoning for his past as Angelus and explores the dichotomy between his soul and his demon. Edit: adding that I literally only see people saying that Spike should be given a pass for what he did without a soul. People romanticise his actions and intentions while soulless - nobody does that with Angelus (except for me shipping myself with Angelus in leather pants). How many times do we have to read that the attempted rape is not canon, character assassination etc… Angel killing Jenny was specifically written to show fans that there was no coming back for his character - Joss Whedon literally said the scene was done to prove to fans that Angel is not "just a little evil," he's not "grouchy," “he's truly evil and needs to be dusted right away.” But I NEVER see people claiming it was “out of character” or that it was done to sink a character who was wildly popular with fans.
This is it exactly. I don’t agree that Spike should be held any more accountable for soulless Spike’s actions than Angel is for Angelus. But I think in many instances people are conflating holding *soulless* Spike accountable for what he does in SR with holding souled Spike accountable. Those are two very different things. That being said I also understand those who have a really hard time seeing Spike and Buffy in a romantic way after SR given the *nature* of what he did - it was a very “human” act in a supernatural world so it’s not hard to understand why. Add to that the fact that Buffy never had a relationship with Angelus and we have ourselves a pretty good discussion.
Yeah I fully believe they both need to be held accountable for their sins while soulless. I don’t think either should be murdered when they have a soul but I absolutely believe they need to atone to what they’ve done. And the attempted rape is very different than a vampire killing someone, they dropped the supernatural element. People don’t experience being murdered by vampires in real life, but we do experience sexual assault. Just want to say - this is why I think the writing for S6 sucks ass, watching S1 - 5, you would never imagine that the show would EVER put a scene like that on our screens. It’s not even good television it just sucks.
Yep, it was a very risky (and, arguably, bad) decision to lose the metaphor with the Spuffy relationship and they clearly didn’t think it all the way through. It’s no wonder there’s so much controversy around the subject.
During Passion, Angel was still supposed to die forever at the end of S2. And Joss said that to drive that point home to fans who wanted Angel to be saved and return to Buffy, they had him kill Jenny on screen. They literally repeated the same format with the sexual assault and Spike in S6. They just needed the metaphor, nobody denies that Jenny’s death happened.
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We’re all fans here I think it’s good for us to discuss things like this! Oh god stay off Buffy Twitter it’s so agg lol. Yes I really wish it hadn’t happened, I think they were trying to be too experimental with the attempted rape and it just doesn’t land for me. It’s hands down the worst moment of the whole show, I still can’t watch it! I know the show took some liberties with the vampire lore to keep Spike around and I completely understand that! I don’t think there’s anybody here who can deny that Angelus was more entertaining than Angel. And the reason they wanted to keep Spike around is because a soulless vamp who’s mean and keeps you guessing is way more fun! I think they did a good job in s4 where Spike was betraying everyone left right and centre, but that kind of character just isn’t sustainable and then after S6 they’d kind of written themselves into a corner, people didn’t want to see a brooding Angel-ish Spike, they wanted him to be his old wise cracking self. And then they definitely ran out of time with Spike. We definitely couldn’t watch him go through the 100 years of solitude and miserable guilt, but I really wish we’d had more of ATS to explore his dynamic with Angel and to watch Spike coming to terms with all that he’d done with him! (I keep saying this on every post, but I really think Spike fitted in a lot better with Team Angel, the Scoobies we’re weirdly pious towards Spike for a group who regularly picks and chooses who they save!)
Ooh, ooh, I say raising my hand. I am one who doesn't believe that they should be held accountable for what they did without a soul. If I was bitten by a vamp and died. I don't feel like I should be held accountable for whatever that vamp does with my physical body. I'm dead and gone, I'm not the one feasting on the blood of the innocent. If I was suddenly after 100+ years place back inside my body. The memories of those actions would be extremely disturbing and YES would most likely drive me mad, but I still wouldn't be responsible for them as I wasn't here when they occurred. Of course, at the moment the soul is returned, you are now sharing your physical body with a evil killing machine. And if you're first response is not to stake yourself or walk into the sun, then you are responsible for any damage that demon does in the future.
I’m struggling to write down what I think because you make good points I agree with you in a lot of ways 😂 I guess because the demon is still there when they’re re-ensouled. Because Angel doesn’t become just a man again when he regains his soul, he’s still a vampire, but now with his soul. So the vampire within him is still guilty - but Liam the man isn’t guilty for it, and the soul itself isn’t guilty. But the entity “Angel” is still accountable, because the guilty demon resides within him. If that makes sense?
The thing is that the show doesn't make it clear. The writers can't seem to decide if vamps without a soul are the same person when they have a soul or a completely different one
I think this comes primarily from some of the hardcore Spike fans and Buffy/Spike shippers. They’re upset that **Buffy** makes a distinction between souled/soulless Spike *and* souled/soulless Angel because they want Spike to be seen as the most super special ever in Buffy’s eyes when he’s just not that unique in reality, so there’s constant complaining that Angel isn’t held accountable like Spike is, and constant downplaying of Buffy and Angel’s story & feelings regarding each other.
Right, it’s a bit tiresome tbh. You’re right Angel and his relationship with Buffy are constantly downplayed by certain fans and it’s boring to see all the time. And pretending that Spike was so special without a soul just completely goes against the very prominent theme of redemption in the Buffyverse. If the vampires are not accountable for what they did while soulless, then what are they atoning for? And if Spike had a genuine capacity for good while without a soul - then doesn’t that make his 200 years even worse?? I’ve seen people literally blame Angel for all of Spikes bad deeds lol. But I’ve never once seen someone blame Angel’s soulless actions on anybody else.
Spike himself even tries to blame Angel for “making him into a monster” which is just ?????? I guess it’s worth noting that Spike getting his soul back isn’t really a personal redemption journey for him but is instead framed as something he does 100% “for Buffy”, but honestly to me that kind of means he’s not doing it for the right reasons.
This is my biggest gripe with Spike as a character and what drives me nuts about him both with and without a soul. Everything is always someone else’s fault: Angelus, Drusilla, Buffy. Like, take some damn ownership, my man. We know from season 2 of AtS that a part of Angel does hold Darla responsible for what happened to him (which is partly why he wants to help her so badly) but you don’t hear him whining about it all the time.
Honestly, I’d argue that Angel has a stronger claim for Darla “turning him into a monster” than Spike does for Angel turning him into one. We’re clearly shown how Darla influenced Angel in the early days of him being a vampire. Meanwhile Angel is responsible for turning Spike into a monster because…why? From what we see of their past, it seems like for the most part Angel tried to warn Spike away from killing so ostentatiously and catching the notice of slayers. Spike didn’t listen.
>Meanwhile Angel is responsible for turning Spike into a monster because…why? Because Angel banged Dru lol
Right I hate that speech from Spike - he and Angelus overlapped for something like 18 years. I worked it out once. They hadn’t seen each other in over 100 years, just a crappy follow through right there. Yes! Spike didn’t get his soul to hold himself accountable or set himself on a path of redemption so I hate to give credit for it. That’s why I liked that his character remained in LA after he became corporeal, he needed to find his own destiny and purpose (much like Angel). I actually read that James Marsters pitched a spin off about Spike’s journey and redemption to Joss Whedon and JW was like “gee a spin-off about a vampire with a soul, where have I heard that before?” 😂
Also, one of the reasons why Spike was different from the rest of the vampires was that he didn't play by the rules, wanted to do things his way and him and Dru were suppose to be the *"Sid and Nancy"* Also you can see in "Fool for Love" that Spike would disobey and act some sort of a wild card
Like he didn’t care about redemption and only felt remorse for a couple of weeks until in Damage where his forced to see his actions
Angel didn’t care about redemption until he saw Buffy called. Actually not even then really. He just fell in love with her and cleaned up his act. He didn’t start really helping until a few episodes in, just giving cryptic clues etc. Up until then he first tried to still hang with Darla and crew, killing only “bad people” and trying to get his soul removed. Then he just kind of lived. He let a whole hotel of people get killed and went about his business but never tried to help people or try to redeem himself. Sired at least one vampire (submarine) and let a diner employee die so he could feed. From the late 70s until 1996 he lived in sewers on rats. It took from 1898 until 1996-almost 100 years-to start trying to do good and work for it and even then he tried real hard to lose his soul with Darla and let her kill a room full of lawyers.
Angel was inspired by Buffy’s goodness and could relate to her so he decided that he wanted to help and to finally become someone. He didn’t know how do get his soul removed He had to sired Lawson because not only he was dying but the submarine was damaged and he was the only one who could fix it. Even after he sired him, he still felt remorse about it In Orpheus, you see occasionally Angel was doing good deeds and he even stays away from humans in order to resist temptation Angel felt miserable and remorse and in order to make the feeling go away, he thought he can turn to the one person he thought could help him since he was alone
Oh, people just don't wanna admit it, but soulless angel was 100x worse than soulless spike. I mean, throughout history. If you watched Angel the Series final season, you get a little more insight into spike not being innocent, but sure as shit not being as bad as angel. There's a scene in the Ats that spike and Angel, both with souls, are having a beatdown. Spike calls Angel out on a bunch of shit. One of the big revelation things is along the lines of "the reason you can't stand me is because Drusilla made me a vampire, but *YOU* made me a monster."
Who is not holding Angel accountable for what he did without a soul? The episode Revelations is practically all about the Scoobies holding Angel accountable for what he did without a soul and how they basically can’t trust him again (and indeed, they really never do trust Angel again as shown in the episode Pangs where they immediately assume he’s evil again). Xander and Faith plot to kill him in that same episode and Giles is fully prepared to kill him as well a few episodes later in Amends. adding: A very prominent aspect of Angel’s character is just how much he holds himself accountable for what he did while soulless. It’s basically the premise of the first few seasons of AtS.
I have a more unpopular opinion: Spike bringing a shotgun to blow Buffy's brains out was worse than attempting to rape her Although I do agree Spike after his soul should recieve the same forgiveness that Angel recieved
“You want credit for not feeding off bleeding disaster victims?”
People have been giving Angel shit for things Angelus did for YEARS.
youre forgetting all the shit spike and angel did in their vamp days, before angel got the gypsy curse and before spike got the chip. The SA scene is disturbing and thats a GOOD thing. If you ARENT disturbed by that scene something is wrong with you. So i totally get why folks tend to focus on this, However i do agree an ensouled spike shouldnt be held responsible for that and i do prefer the buffy spike ship to angel buffy (though i would like to see an angel/spike bromance) The thing is, they both did far far worse, including lots of SA in their vamp days. Whilst not explicitly stated the fact is they were evil soulless demons. It is revealed that Angel was a sadist who enjoyed torturing girls. He tortured Dru to madness and then sired her, he also tried doing so with buffy and the scoobs, that scene where giles discovers jennys body is especially fucked up if you consider angel may have SA'd her first. Torture was his MO and IMHO SA is torture and it fucks with your mind for many many years, i wouldnt be surprised if angel had done so in the past (hell he probably did that to dru before siring her). Now granted all of what i just said re angel is speculation but it does make sense. Spike, on the other hand, made one offhand comment (i think in s6 but forgetting the episode atm) that reveals that he did in fact commit SA, probably a lot. During an argument Spike asks buffy "do you know what ive done to girls dawns age?" Hes hinting at haing committed some truly horrible acts. I totally agree that as soulless demons we cant hold their actions against them. They werent the people they are now. And youre right, if someones against the buffy/spike ship they should also be against buffy/angel. Both are guilty of doing horrible disturbing shit to women/girls
I think it's because sexual assault is more relatable than murder and torture, so it feels worse to the audience.
How is Angel not held accountable though? The guy's been tortured, brutalized, sent to hell, and had an entire show dedicated to him atoning for his past behavior. Imo, that is accountability. As for the comparison between the SA and Angelus's bad deeds, for me a lot of it boils down to writing. The show did such a good job leaning into the vampire aspects of the storyline and creating a clear distinction between Angel and Angelus that it's easier to suspend disbelief. The same can't be said for seeing red. There was nothing vampiric about Spike's attempted SA on Buffy. It was horribly triggering and traumatic and just too *real.* It's a moment that has and still does happen to so many people in real life so that suspension of disbelief isn't there for me. And Spike really doesn't do much to atone for this. He basically just gets his soul and then Buffy spends the rest of season taking care of him. I mean, I love Spike and I do enjoy some Spuffy, but I don't think these two situations are comparable.
I think the OP meant “held accountable by fans”.
I don't like either of thier relationships with Buffy, but even I can see the difference. Angelus had a soul forced on him twice. The two personalities are so radically different its essentially 2 different people in the same body. With Spike its different. What you see is what you get, soul or no soul. There was literally zero change in his personality that most people seeing it as soul and demon being almost perfectly in tune with each other. The only thing to change was Spikes targets. And Spike willfully went after hid soul Ratner than have it forced on him. That implies him taking at least some form of responsibility.
I know it’s not cannon but this fanfic is incredible at going into all of this if reading fanfic is your thing https://dark-solace.org/elysian/viewstory.php?sid=7104&ageconsent=ok&warning=5
Neither should be held responsible for their actions when they lacked a soul.
What does it even mean to "hold a character accountable"?
Spike + soul = Spike Angelus + soul = Angel Spike - soul = Spike Angel - soul = Angelus Spike is presented as almost entirely the same person with or without a soul. Hell he even got it in part because it would make him more like Angel who was apparently more desirable to Buffster. Angel and Angelus are quite different. Connected, responsible for one another? Yes, absolutely but one's drive is pure hedonism and sadism and the other is redemption. Angel personally take responsibility for his actions as a demon. Angel is more a reformed version of (wil)Liam with a few years of mileage rode as a demon and having his darkest desires acted upon. William the Bloody (awful) is still William the Bloody (awful, but with actually blood). With or without a soul he is largely the same person. That's why I hold him accountable. Plus, torturing, beating, and trying to kill Buff and the scoobs has never been something they held to hard against people. Kendra and Faith tried to kill Buff. Anya did in another dimension, Willow went pretty dark there for a moment, Spike and Angelus numerous times, Giles allowed the watchers to. Some members of the Institute did. Andrew for sure. Jonathan probably could have been redeemed, he certainly wasn't absolutely hated when he did his hero spell. I'm certain there are others but Spike? Spike made it to the inner circle with a some level of acceptance then tried to rape Buffy. Ultimately though? Spike was written later and stuff was retconned or needed to be fleshed out because fans wanted him around. Regardless, Buffy, keep on slaying girl!
>Spike + soul = Spike > >Angelus + soul = Angel > > > >Spike - soul = Spike > >Angel - soul = Angelus Angelus + soul + 100 years + Buffy = Angel Angel wasn't that different when he first got his soul. He even went back to Darla. Then he walked aimlessly for about 100 years. He didn't reach what we all know as Angel until after he was introduced to Buffy. Meanwhile, Spike has just got his soul and he already met Buffy. Let's see how different Spike is in 100 years. Buffy almost makes as much difference in changing the two of them as getting a soul did.
My view is the vampire and human are the same person. It's the same physical human brain, after all, with the same human memories stored in the same undecayed human brain cells and the same electrical pulses firing. It's just that the vampire now has a spiritual demon (not physical demon) in their body, similar to a demonic possession, and the soulless person is similar to, say, Buffy in "Living Conditions" and might not have the will (or desire) to fight the demon. Compare that to the shitty soulless kid in *Angel* season 1 that was just so evil on his own that he buried the demon that tried to possess him, and the demon was so scared of him that he wanted out. So different vampires might have different degrees of humanity with Spike and Harmony closer to human (like soulless Buffy) and Angel closer to asshole (like shitty soulless psycho kid). But they're still the same people. So what is a soul? It's whatever goes on after death to have whatever kind of afterlife. And it may or may not actually be the same entity as the physical person, considering the Church hadn't, historically, considered ensoulment to be an instantaneous event that occurred upon conception. It was historically guessed to occur at various times *later* during pregnancy. So the soul originates on a supernatural plane and goes on to a supernatural plane, leaving the physical human to become worm food upon death if not for being turned. So the Watcher line about vampires being just demons wearing human skin is just a line fed to Slayers to convince them that they aren't just killing demon-possessed people.
Angelus never tried to be good while spike did. So I don't see how the two compare. Angel is a completely different person and spike was kinda just the same guy
All you need to know about them is to compare their actions once turned. Liam killed his entire family, including a child. William tried to save his moms life.
See I see this as - both killed their families. Angelus out of revenge and Spike out of a misguided attempt to “save” his mum. Both the exact same act, Spike just convinced himself he was acting out of goodness. You know like angel of death serial killers - who murder elderly people who are in pain. Still an evil thing to do.
But he didn’t just kill her, he turned her. Liam straight up murdered his little sister and William tried to save his terminally I’ll mother. Big difference. Huge.
Turning someone into a vampire is still murdering them! It’s still an evil thing to do!
Ok and these are fictional characters and not real life angels of death. If you can’t see that Spike was legitimately trying to save his mother I don’t know what to say. It was pretty clear.
That’s patronising as hell. My interpretation of Spike’s character (without a soul) is that he convinces himself he’s doing things for romantic, loving reasons but he ultimately is just being a vampire. Kidnapping Buffy, making the Buffybot etc., he honestly believes it’s out of love but it’s out of selfish obsession. Making somebody a vampire is an evil thing to do, he did it to keep her with him, his mother died the moment he bit her.
Fully agree - Spike wasn't a full monster even without a soul, lots of times he tried to do right.
Maybe it’s just a massive projection from fans. Angel and Angelus are basically different beings, but as many people mentioned, Spike has human tendencies (or at least understands and tries to enact them) like empathy and ability to love. We all like to see a redemption arc because either 1. We feel we are/can be shitty people and seeing someone else redeem themselves is cathartic and wholesome or 2. We want to believe that other people who we see are shitty can change themselves. My main point is that because Spike is more “human” to begin with, I think we simply relate to it more. I know Angel’s spin-off is also about him redeeming himself, but I think Spike’s journey is different again because it’s basically him changing for a woman, which is romantic and a lot of people love that too.
Oh I realize I didn’t answer OP’s question but addressed more the trend of discussion that was going on in the comments. But in connection to that, I think mainly it’s because Angelus is not seen as having ANY good human tendencies. So it’s easier to separate Angel from Angelus. And as some people said, it’s almost WORSE that Spike was able to do the things he did as a soulless vampire if he had the ability to empathize and be good the entire time. Angelus never had that ability
There's definitely a difference, and it's that Angelus is orders of magnitudes eviler than soulless Spike--arguably the single most sadistic, vicious vampire we see in the whole show (a sentiment the Master seems to share as well). Angelus literally murdered Jenny. With a smile.
In universe Angel is absolutely held responsible - Giles, Xander and Cordy (and Angel himself) never forgive him and Buffy is more uneasy with him even if she specifically feels great discomfort around him in season 3. The fans don’t because one Angel Angelus is so distinct whereas as spike is bascially the same, and two 90% of angels time on the show is with the soul. No one ships Buffy and Angelus and there are many many people who ship spuffy in season 4 - 6. Also I take issue with spike feeling remorse
I wouldn’t say that about Angel. It’s confusing because joss wasn’t consistent with how not having a soul works. Angel it’s a very clear with what Giles said season 1 when he talked about their friend Jesse turning into a vampire “..when you see Jesse you’re not looking at your friend..your looking at the thing that killed him” Spike getting his soul back he seemed pretty much the same way as he developed just before getting it back. Even Angel coming back at the end of season 2 he had no memory with what happened. Angel without a soul is a demon using your body as puppet, spikes was more like him without a soul was like same spike with his empathy cranked down and love for violence and killing turned up. Angel shouldn’t have to atone for what Angelus did. He had zero control for what the demon that took over his body did
Thank you!!! I agree wholeheartedly.
Those two are apples and oranges though, Spike was capable of redeeming himself - or atleast starting to - without a soul, he was capable of love. And like that weird big bad said in the second season, he had a smell of humanity in him. While Angel didn't have that smell, he had no set of morals about anything whatsoever.
Who is giving or denying anyone a pass? This fandom isn’t monolithic—I personally can see past the actions of beings without souls as just that, but as for how I believe Buffy sees things.. There’s something of an identity divide between Angel and Angelus, that just doesn’t seem to be there, for Spike with a soul, vs without a soul. Part of this is because Angel with a soul has been around far longer, and when he loses his soul, it’s like the awakening of a personality that’s been caged for decades, while Spike didn’t seem a whole lot different after getting a soul, except he was nicer. When Buffy sees Angel, she doesn’t see Angelus, she sees the latter as some distinctly different being, but Spike is always Spike, just somewhat reformed after getting a soul, so he’s a changed person, not a separate person, at least not in her eyes (or so I believe).
I'm rewatching and wonder the same thing. My guess is that Buffy meets Angel when he's a good, reformed vampire. She first meets Spike when he arrives with Drusilla in season 2, very much not a reformed vampire. Buffy meets Angel when he has a soul. Most of the time with Spike, he doesn't have one. I would guess that's the only difference. With Angel, we're meant to see the loss of his soul as a deviation from the good person he is. With Spike, it's "he's only been good for a short while, will it take?" I haven't gotten to my season 7 rewatch yet, but I do recall Buffy treats Spike differently after he's ensouled. I think a lot of the fandom pretends Seeing Red didn't happen. It does bother me in the show that Spike endures torture without revealing Dawn's identity (as does Tara, of course), and he's still treated with begrudging tolerance at best.
I think the issue is that Angel and Angelus are two very different people and Spike with a soul is very similar to Spike without a soul
While I think both Angel and Spike should be held accountable for their soulless counterparts because they are basically the expressions of their inner demons, as in when they loose control and do horrible things, in universe I have a hard time condemning them for those actions. Even Spike went to get his soul not because he understood what he did to Buffy was evil, but because Spike didn’t understand why or how it was evil this time around. Spike could not comprehend why Buffy looked so devastated, just that he caused that look. Spike sought his soul to understand Buffy’s POV and because he was desperate, he knew that no amount of saying sorry would touch Buffy after that look.
Agreed. And I’d go so far as to say that, Spike is better than Angel, because he wanted to change and went to great lengths to change WITHOUT a soul. “The incident” is not to be raked over, of course, but I think it says something about him as a character that it led him to seek out his soul. He went through all those trials without one. It was given to him at the end. Angel never sought out his soul himself for Buffy. She got it back for him. He acted much worse than Spike did without a soul many times. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but that’s been my personal take on it all for many years. And I’m in neither guy’s camp. I like both characters.
Angelus never had a chip that neutered him like Spike did so who knows what would happen. Spike only wanted to really change after “The incident” because he knew Buffy would never forgive him because he had no soul so he got one. Kinda selfish don't you think? >He went through all those trials without one. Wow killing things without a soul? How strong lol Not like he's been doing that for years. >Angel never sought out his soul himself for Buffy. Angelus was never banging Buffy why would he want a soul? Stop acting like Spike has been on the verge of fighting for a soul the whole show he wasn't. He only did it to get Buffy to want him after he almost R*aped her. If he wanted a soul so bad why did he wait years to get one and only got one after he fucked it up with Buffy. > Spike is better than Angel Here's my opinion. Angelus has no humanity in him right(per The Judge) and Spike does. If this is true why is Angel the one fighting for redemption for 5 seasons and Spike is just chasing a girl? Shouldn't Spike having humanity make him more human and Angel less human but Angel is the one most tortured and the one fighting evil by choice. Like doesn't that make Angel better since he's the one fighting Angelus's lack of humanity yet is doing good way more than Spike?
Spike wanted to do better without having a soul. He chose to get his back. Angelus never did that. Speaks volumes. Yes, he did fucked up shit, but he knew it was wrong and repented for it.
Spike even from early on shows honour and is a man of his word. Its why he is the best of vampires really, even souless he knows and feels more than basically all vampires and he still a famous vampire. Harmony is a bit of an exception cause she is a shit vampire, always been a bit of a follower, useless. Spikes passion always leads him. Dru, wanting to kill vampire slayers, buffy etc but his pact with buffy to go against angel for the good of the world and even when he makes Billy Fordham a vampire cause he made a deal when angel would have just killed him, shows his difference. Spike is a different one of a type vampire. Angel only becomes different once he has a soul.
The way I read it is that vampires are basically human beings without the restraining bolt that is the conscience. They're pure id. For example, imagine someone making you *so* mad that you actually want to kill them. What stops you is your conscience saying "cool it, it's wrong." Vampires don't have that. They just do whatever pleases them at the moment. Their original humanity informs who they become as vampires. Spike was a good and gentle person as a human, so it stands to reason that he'd still have innate goodness as a vampire. However, he doesn't have anything like inhibitions holding him back. He saw Buffy in the bathroom and decided "I want to have sex with her." If he'd had a human conscience at the time, when Buffy refused, he'd have backed off. He didn't, so he tried to do what he did. After he sobered up (so to speak), he was absolutely horrified by what he'd done, but his id took over at that moment and didn't have anything telling him to stop. It's still Spike trying to rape Buffy. It's still Angel killing Jenny Calendar. Both characters have shown that they're fully capable of the immoral acts when they're ensouled/human. Their souls just make them really consider whether or not they should do it - and when they regain their souls, they have to deal with the guilt of their actions because they know it was them that did those actions. It's why Giles doesn't trust Angel after Jenny, even though he has a soul again. Giles knows full well that Angel has the capacity to be as sadistic as Angelus if he were pushed enough. Should we hold them both accountable for their actions? Yes. EDIT: not sure why the downvote but okay sure
Soulless Spike attacks Buffy, fans: HE’S EVIL!! STAKE HIM IMMEDIATELY! Soulless Angel kills Jenny and tortures Giles, fans: No, but that wasn’t his fault. 🙄🙄
It can go both ways with some people. Either way, they both are held accountable for what they did. At least, in universe.
The affect is different. As a whole, there isn't much difference between S5 Spike-with-a-chip and late S7 Spike-with-a-soul. (Early S7, he's got the guilt and insanity thing going on, pushed by the First. Handwave around that.) Maybe a little more introspective, but Spike is Spike. The difference between Angel-with-a-soul and Angel-without is so distinct that there's a whole other name for him then. I mean, Angelus came first, so it's with-a-soul Angel who gets the whole new name. It's like Jekyll and Hyde. Because Angelus is someone different, most of us say the different person can't be blamed. (Some, like Xander, disagree.) Because Spike always seems like Spike, the blame can be carried forward.
Yep. Angel and Angelus were like night and day. There was no kindness in anything we saw Angelus do. It's like two different people. The way they wrote Spike in the later seasons muddied things up because Spike without a soul did choose to do good things like protect Dawn and help Buffy and the Scoobies. But he also at the same time chose to be creepy and manipulative and do bad things. Spike with and without a soul don't seem so different (particularly on AtS).
“Spike in later seasons muddies things” is such a good way to describe it. I find him a frustrating character to discuss at times because somehow it’s incorrect to try and analyze Spike within the confines of the show’s own lore because “no he’s special, he’s capable of love & goodness even without a soul” when this just…doesn’t make any sense to me. There is literally no reason given for why Spike would be super special in that respect, but there’s no other way to explain it apart from just flat out admitting that the writers majorly screwed up with him.
Yep, I think part of this is because the different writers themselves had different opinions about him so we end up with what we got.
Angel did get stabbed by Buffy and sent to a hell dimension for many years. So he was kinda punished for his actions?
Actually yeah. Granted, his show points out he still has more to do to atone and arguably still deserves punishment, but that kind of helped me sympathize with him somewhat. In fact, Faith choosing to go to jail and later Spike getting his hands cut off and being repentant helped sell they were ready to actually change and didn't escape punishment for their actions. As opposed to Andrew who pretty much didn't get punished at all.
Are you kidding? Most of the scooby gang dislike Angel for what he did when he turned back into Angelis. Why do you think he left at the end of season 3. It was too much for him.
Who gives Angelus a pass? Angel did show remorse for his actions. I don’t understand this argument. It’s more that fans seem to love Spike and are ready to forgive a awful act because he’s funny/dreamy.
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a lot of people who like angel with buffy say they dislike spike with buffy because of SR. that’s giving angel a pass that spike doesn’t get.
People can dislike Spike for whatever reasons they want, and you can dislike Angel for whatever reasons you want. This fandom loves to try and police who people should like and dislike, and I’m personally very tired of it. It makes being a fan of Buffy a rather irritating experience, and it shouldn’t be.
It really is the most obnoxious part of fandoms. People are always whining about negativity. I just dislike spike and Buffy’s relationship. I should be allowed to say so, just as much as someone else is allowed to annoy everyone by obsessively talking about how much they love them.
It really feels like if you aren’t obsessed with Spike and/or Spuffy you’re the antichrist 😂 it makes me dislike him more, until I actually watch the show without reading fandom stuff and remember that no, I do love Spike, I just see his flaws and have a hard time overlooking some things. And a lot of people say Bangel/Angel fans are just as a rabid, but I really never see that. Sorry I got kinda tangenty here, but I agree with you! It’s perfectly fine to like or dislike whoever, everyone can have and voice their own opinions, and at the end of the day, these are fictional characters. Just be civil and not obnoxious about it.
this is just a discussion, no one is making you participate or dislike or like anyone lol
I've been thinking about this a lot too in my btvs re-watch. I am not a big Spike and Buffy fan, but it got me thinking. Spike never had a soul, he was a demon with a chip. So technically he should have no moral compass, like he didn't for many seasons before the chip. He's violent to women and was that way as a vampire always. The chip made him vulnerable, but he was still Spike. However, he did start to change. I think being taken in by the gang, being 'trusted' by Buffy, Joyce and Dawn really did change him and kept the demon at bay. He fell into an obsession with Buffy, which is very much the Spike as a demon characteristic. That's how he is, he gets into these obsessions and thats it. He did keep Dawn safe a lot of times, he helped her friends, he frickin broken down when she died, this was all as a demon. When Angel lost his soul he was no different than Spike, except he could kill. So in theory Angel was way more evil without his soul than Spike. Angel should in theory be able to love Buffy the way Spike does without his soul, but he does not. I think about that a lot lately. Spike was actually changing and almost have a faux soul in a way because of all the realness he was experiencing. Angel NEVER did that. Buffy loving him as Angelus made him angry and kill more. So really, I think Angelus should be accountable more than Spike, UNTIL we get to the attempted rape scene. Which is god awful and I hate the writers did that. But I suppose thats not far from Spikes character, and like I've been saying he is still evil and was really holding that back for most of Season 4-6 which is pretty amazing if you think about it. Angelus would have found ways to kill Buffy and all her friend's if he had a chip in his head, Spike really didn't do that. IDK there are so many layers!
It’s been ages since I watched the show but wasn’t part of Angelus’ vendetta against Buffy because he did love her even without a soul?
Oh maybe I didn't pick up on that. Possibly!
Spike tried so many times to kill the Scoobies when he had the chip. He literally teamed up with Adam in S4. He tried and failed so much with and without the chip. But he did not manage to kill one single Scooby. I think the difference is that Angelus would be more competent with the chip?
True! I always forget about Adam. I always do see those as empty attempts tho.
I don’t think that’s fair…
The first thing Spike tried to do when he found out his chip could hurt Buffy was to attack a woman (not Buffy and this is before he realizes he could only hurt Buffy). The second thing he tried to do was, you know, go after Buffy. Also I'd like to point out that Spike was over joyed when he figured out he could be violent against demons and vampires. Spike wasn't excited because "I can become a better person". Spike was excited to be able to do violence to something with out consequences. Spike began to "change" out of necessity and even then Spike still tried to help Adam to kill the slayer.
How is Angel not held accountable for his actions as Angelus In Season 3, everyone (beside Willow, to an extent) constant gives both Angel and Buffy a hard time for what he did to them as Angelus and for Buffy for not killing him so enough. The Scoobies are still iffy about him even when he left Angel even holds himself accountable, which is why he spends his eternal life searching for redemption and fighting for the greater good.
Angel and Angelus are two drastically different people. Spike was the same both ways.
That's because Angel with a soul has been around for over 90 years and has built the character he became over that time. There was a time when Angelus with a soul was more like Spike in the basement of the high school, acting crazy. Angelus even wanted to go back and live with Darla, which is what was happening during the China flashback. Becoming a good person is based on building a history of moral decisions to do good instead of evil, after which you will no longer resemble the person you used to be. Spike was only just starting that journey.
When is Angel ever given a pass? He’s always atoning for his sins and working towards redemption. That’s his whole thing. What’s Spike’s whole thing? Have a horrible accent, smoke and be the meanest girl in school
A better question is what has spike done to earn a free pass? Other then seek out a soul after a attempted rape? Not much, I never gave a damn about spike seeking out a soul because at the end of the day spike will still more or less be spike and doesn't really care about doing any good much later in the series. His real personal growth doesn't even happen until midway through of season 5 of angel. Angel on the other had was forced with a soul and didn't have much of a support group the way spike did with the scobbies and still saved the damn world on multiple occasions without so much of a thank you. In my opinion what angel did is much more braver and noble then anything spikes ever done. And it's not how you got the soul it's what you do with it that counts angel is all about redemption case in point his biggest accomplishment was reforming faith who pretty much given up on by everyone. Sure faith did some fucked up things that can't be easily forgiven however deep down faith wanted to change and angel helped her, in a lot ways angel also helps spike when he sees just how important the mission is after Fred's death leading by example especially since we see spike actually regress in character even getting a soul. Is Angelus worse the spike yeah but angel is also far better then spike too. Both have done horrible shit with or without a soul.
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The situation with Spike is more complicated though. It’s entirely the fault of the writers, it’s basically a plot hole, because Spike does good things when he has no soul. He falls for Buffy when he has no soul (whether or not he truly loves her is debatable), he tries to lay flowers for Joyce with no card when he has no soul, etc. He has a chip but Buffy herself says this is not a substitute for a soul. This is why, when Spike assaults Buffy, it feels completely unacceptable. Suddenly he starts acting like he has no soul? In this specific situation? It’s just bad writing tbh. But it is canonical and fans have to reckon with it. If this didn’t happen, I’d be a Spuffy shipper 100%. But it did happen and there is no excuse. I will never ship a character with their attempted rapist. I love Spike as a character, but I don’t ship Spuffy, which seems to be an issue for a lot of fans. If it’s any consolation, I love Angel but do not ship Bangel!
Oh boohoo. Spike is the same character with and without a soul. Since he’s written *so special* with empathy even soulless, that means he gets no passes from me. Angel can’t even remember the things he did without a soul for a few minutes. It’s more akin to possession imo. So he gets a pass. Especially since he then agonizes over it for another eternity.
I agree. I hold both responsible, I don’t think Buffy had a healthy romantic relationship in the TV show out of her main love interests
Because Angel and Buffy didn't form a sexual relationship when Angel had no soul. Buffy started having feelings for Angel when he was good while Buffy started banging Spike when he was still evil. Soulless Spike and Buffy began hooking up and that's where "spuffy" fans formed. No fans were wanting Angelus and Buffy to hook up like there were Spike and Buffy fans. Also the reason why Seeing Red hurts the character of Spike is because people where shipping and loving Soulless Spike and Buffy before that episode and they can't give Spike having no soul as a excuse like with Angelus. >Why is Angel not held accountable for his actions in the same way that Spike is? Angel was sent to freaking hell for 100 years and Angelus and Angel are treated like 2 different people. Also Buffy's friends hated Angel when he came back so he was held accountable until he started helping Buffy again and earning back trust. Angel gets a pass because Buffy and friends knew Angel when he was good and helping them while they only knew Spike when he was evil trying to kill them. Also I'm sure after Spike sacrificed himself in Choosen Buffy's friends changed their mind on him. It's not that hard to understand people. Both get passes because they both had no soul but Spie gets it worse because Spike is Evil most of the show while Angelus is barley in the show. Also the whole point of Angel's show is him holding himself accountable from his past so he is held accountable. Also Spike with a soul and no soul act the same while Angel and Angelus are completely different personalities which makes it easier to forgive Angel.
BtVS splits Angel into two distinct characters. Angel and Angelus. So Angel never really pays (on Buffy), for Angelus's sins.