Why the huge Spike hate?

[Silverspike]

I don't suppose it helped that at the time I was active in the fan conventions having spent time with him did not leave me with a favourable impression. So whenever I saw him on screen as Spike I was reminded of that.

Oh thats a shame. There's nothing as disappointing as finally meeting a celeb you've liked only to end up being disappointed by them.

I felt that about Tom Link who I met at a con. But then maybe he was just having a bad day. 🙂

I have to say I've met Marsters many times at events down the years and on the whole had a great time.

 

[bespangeled]

Yes, he does do that, doesn't he? I can't remember anything specifically, but I think he even says he feels he has "redeemed" himself for his previous actions at some point...not in those specific words, but more or less.

redemption though, what is it? There is no omniscent God in the sky who decides when we get it or not. And what do other people matter? If they don't pardon us, what does that matter? Do they really know us well enough (and all of our internal conflicts and thoughts etc.) to be able redeem us? And do they know "the Truth", so that they know their judgment is not in error? Who else can really grant us redemption but ourselves?

But yeah, your Spike point makes sense. We might grant ourselves redemption, but some of us do so without having really earned it (and if a person was honest he would have to admit it). There is no easy answer to how one "earns" redemption either, but honest people know themselves well enough to be able to look themselves in the mirror and with a straight face tell themselves if they earned it.

I love Glory too btw. She's my favorite big bad.

---------- Post added at 07:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:50 PM ----------

I'll just add quickly that the redemption angle is an interesting way to scrutinize Angel and Spike. Spike has the kind of personality where he can just shrug off things (like his past) and move on and not feel guilt for it. This ability can be a virtue sometimes (not always of course though). I kind of like Nietzsche's thoughts on overcoming feelings of guilt (e.g. in his concept of Ubermensch). I believe in being a good person too, but guilt is a problematic thing actually, and in many cases I don't think guilt is productive or makes you a better person for having it. I don't agree with everything Nietzsche said on the topic (and he wrote quite a lot on that topic too) but if anything he demonstrated how it is a much more complicated and problematic issue than the layman (and sometimes other philosophers) consider it to be.

And then there is Angel, who especially in the beginning is overcome with tremendous quantities of guilt over his past. He simply can't shed his past as easily as a guy like Spike can. Angel isn't wrong to feel that way either. It makes him an interesting personality type to consider and ponder. And sometimes the situation and context and specific person requires a period of time to feel deeply guilty about something. In Angel's case he comes out better for it in my opinion. That's why I love studying various people and types. There is no right or wrong answer, just an infinite number of ways to live and interpret one's life, and an infinite amount of ways to give it meaning. And no answer to the important questions will ever be exactly the same for any two people. Which is part of the reason why I'm not interested in judging people, and try to avoid it.

You have some really excellent points here!

I tend to see more of what Spike had going for him, things Angel never had.

To start with, everyone, including Spike, had an idea that there could be a souled vampire and how a soul would affect a vampire. Such a thing had never happened when Angel was cursed - he had to create his souled life without a blueprint. Spike, OTH, had a complete support network, including Buffy who told him off the bat that he wasn't responsible for what he had done unsouled. He had the example of his sire - and I see Spike as following Angel, kicking and screaming but following - and how little guilt had helped him. Most important, he had a purpose. He didn't have ninety years to brood and feel guilt. He had to get his butt in gear to fight a big bad. And then he was ashes.

Angel had no support, no purpose, no battle - just decades of unimaginable guilt and pain. So while I agree that their basic natures are different, I also think their circumstances are very different. And I truly believe that Spike has barely adjusted to getting a soul. Given some real down time, he would be going through a lot of what Angel went through. Angel deals well with down time, and it drives Spike insane so he resists even that. But after Damage, he finally opens his eyes to what he did.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

@bespangled I wish the discussion about Spike (and everyone else actually) would turn more in the direction like this. Less judgmental (pro or con), and more interest in analyzing these different and interesting character types/archetypes and trying to mine together in the spirit of cooperation what insights into ourselves and the human condition they can avail ourselves of. I treat literary characters the same way. Arguing why we merely like a character or not or trying to prove a character is this or that and just getting lost in plot details for support is boring. I want to learn more about people. I want to broaden my understanding about them.

A lot of people are pretty good about it, in this long thread for example. But sometimes the "discussions" about characters and things take on that quality I don't like that I just described.

I went to school for philosophy. Away from the undergraduates (with professors and graduate students after guest lectures for example) we were always far less interested in whether a philosopher's ideas were right or wrong and going through the pedantic process of proving it. That was always a secondary issue at best. Freshmen undergraduates are the ones preoccupied with that. Everyone with experience understands that no philosopher is always right, and more importantly that many topics and issues are so complicated that there isn't necessarily one right answer or interpretation (in my opinion there is always more than one valid interpretation). The philosophy discussions I participated in were in the spirit of trying to learn and gain what we could from a certain philosopher's perspective and point of view. Sometimes that required questioning and criticizing certain positions they held, but always with the idea that we are trying to find what is useful and interesting in that perspective to augment our own. Which is why I do not consider myself a dogmatic member of a certain school of philosophy, but rather an individual who has, for his own purposes and also specific problems in life, has tried to make use of a lot of different perspectives all at once. So it's kind of an (imperfect) analogy. I'm not interested in judging/proving once and for all the merit of any one character (which to me is far less interesting and misses the greater point) but rather I look at each one first and foremost as another opportunity to gain more insight into the nature of people and the human condition. When you do this, whether a character is even likeable or not becomes beside the point. Each character (despicable or not) are all equally educational.

Of course, I like and dislike characters too. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. But I'm dissatisfied with just stopping there.

 

[Firstina]

I have a little problem with Spike. I can't say that I hate him but I have some mixed feelings about representation of this character.
It's kind of annoying to me that he has a lot of episodes where he does some disgusting things which within the exact same episode are overweight by very sympathetic situation.

For example:
Fool for love. He tells the story of killing two Slayers with such pleasure that I want to punch him in the face. And so does Buffy - she is disgusted and in her right to feel that way. Hell, I want to feel that way. But then they reverse that exact scene in a way where Buffy is some sort of awful person who treats villains like shit. I mean, seriously? This guy just told my beloved Slayer how he killed two of her kind with explicit satisfaction and this is played like "Poor Spike, women treat you like shit, they think you are beneath them".
Intervention. Come on, BuffyBot is awful. I am supposed to be allowed to hate Spike with all my hate. But then again - in the exact same episode - he is beaten by Glory, all covered in wounds - that is very sympathetic.
Beneath you (yeah, I khow he has a soul in that one but still). He unsults my female lead about very traumatic situation in her life and punches her. And 20 minutes later he gets the most touching scene in the church. I mean, again???

Writers, give me a break. Don't overweight his awful deeds with over-sympathetic stuff within the same episode. It's not fair.😉😡
We have some villains with a soft spots. Like Mayor and his touching relationship with Faith. Or I can feel sorry for Lilah in Billy episode. But by the end of the day they are still Big Bads.
With Spike it's like he is helping Dawn-helping Buffy-all-so-noble-tortured-getting beaten up by everybody............ oh, and by the waaaay, he is evil. No balance at all😛

 

[jom]

I have a little problem with Spike. I can't say that I hate him but I have some mixed feelings about representation of this character.
It's kind of annoying to me that he has a lot of episodes where he does some disgusting things which within the exact same episode are overweight by very sympathetic situation.

For example:
Fool for love. He tells the story of killing two Slayers with such pleasure that I want to punch him in the face. And so does Buffy - she is disgusted and in her right to feel that way. Hell, I want to feel that way. But then they reverse that exact scene in a way where Buffy is some sort of awful person who treats villains like shit. I mean, seriously? This guy just told my beloved Slayer how he killed two of her kind with explicit satisfaction and this is played like "Poor Spike, women treat you like shit, they think you are beneath them".
Intervention. Come on, BuffyBot is awful. I am supposed to be allowed to hate Spike with all my hate. But then again - in the exact same episode - he is beaten by Glory, all covered in wounds - that is very sympathetic.
Beneath you (yeah, I khow he has a soul in that one but still). He unsults my female lead about very traumatic situation in her life and punches her. And 20 minutes later he gets the most touching scene in the church. I mean, again???

Writers, give me a break. Don't overweight his awful deeds with over-sympathetic stuff within the same episode. It's not fair.😉😡
We have some villains with a soft spots. Like Mayor and his touching relationship with Faith. Or I can feel sorry for Lilah in Billy episode. But by the end of the day they are still Big Bads.
With Spike it's like he is helping Dawn-helping Buffy-all-so-noble-tortured-getting beaten up by everybody............ oh, and by the waaaay, he is evil. No balance at all😛

It is a nicely put post. Most of the unbalanced things you mention are him with out a soul. In the buffyverse no matter how noble the human the minute that he/she is turned into a vampire, he/she becomes a merciless monster, so we can assume that being evil is a vampire nature. Drinking human blood is a vampire nature, it is almost obligatory to survive, thou you can live on less desirable animal blood. Now we have established the nature of a vampire, like a lion eating a cute bunny.

Spike is a vampire without a soul, he's not killing anyone in the scenes that you mentioned albeit mainly because of the chip, but he's also falling inlove and demostrating some noble traits. He's evil and has enjoyed it a lot but now he's fighting a losing battle and he's getting confused and that has made him very unbalanced. He tells Buffy how he enjoyed killing those slayers and then asks if she wants to dance with him although you can also interpret his rudeness of the slayer story as him telling Buffy the cold hard truth so she can protect herself better. In anycase you are right he is very unbalance in the time that mention. One minute he wants to kill Buffy with shotgun for insulting him and the next minute he's consoling her. He's evil and he is fighting a losing battle, the same battle that he has always lost whether human or vampire, he's falling in love.

 

[bespangeled]

I have a little problem with Spike. I can't say that I hate him but I have some mixed feelings about representation of this character.
It's kind of annoying to me that he has a lot of episodes where he does some disgusting things which within the exact same episode are overweight by very sympathetic situation.

For example:
Fool for love. He tells the story of killing two Slayers with such pleasure that I want to punch him in the face. And so does Buffy - she is disgusted and in her right to feel that way. Hell, I want to feel that way. But then they reverse that exact scene in a way where Buffy is some sort of awful person who treats villains like shit. I mean, seriously? This guy just told my beloved Slayer how he killed two of her kind with explicit satisfaction and this is played like "Poor Spike, women treat you like shit, they think you are beneath them".
Intervention. Come on, BuffyBot is awful. I am supposed to be allowed to hate Spike with all my hate. But then again - in the exact same episode - he is beaten by Glory, all covered in wounds - that is very sympathetic.
Beneath you (yeah, I khow he has a soul in that one but still). He unsults my female lead about very traumatic situation in her life and punches her. And 20 minutes later he gets the most touching scene in the church. I mean, again???

Writers, give me a break. Don't overweight his awful deeds with over-sympathetic stuff within the same episode. It's not fair.😉😡
We have some villains with a soft spots. Like Mayor and his touching relationship with Faith. Or I can feel sorry for Lilah in Billy episode. But by the end of the day they are still Big Bads.
With Spike it's like he is helping Dawn-helping Buffy-all-so-noble-tortured-getting beaten up by everybody............ oh, and by the waaaay, he is evil. No balance at all😛

I can see your point. One thing about Spike that I love is that he can be incredibly insightful, and then turn around and be a huge idiot. Fool for Love is a perfect example of that. In fact, all of those can be a perfect example of that. FFL - he knows Buffy is in trouble if she is asking him for help, he worries that she is getting too complacent - so he tries to scare her....and then he wants her to jump into the sack with him.....right....can we remember the term insane troll logic? Because on occasion insane unsouled vamp logic is even weirder.

Then there are the times he decides he wants to be a total a**hole.

I think what I like about Spike is that anti-hero aspect. It's the way life drags him, kicking and screaming, and following Angel's path. I like his struggles to define his reality, his way of ignoring what he knows too well, then giving in and then doing it all again. It's his warty spots that I like as much as his shiny spots. Same goes for Angel in fact. Because they are given the chance to really walk the spectrum of good and evil, I get a far more visceral impression of age and experience. And they know each other so well - idiot and ponce. 😉

 

[thetopher]

Fool for love. He tells the story of killing two Slayers with such pleasure that I want to punch him in the face. And so does Buffy - she is disgusted and in her right to feel that way. Hell, I want to feel that way. But then they reverse that exact scene in a way where Buffy is some sort of awful person who treats villains like shit. I mean, seriously? This guy just told my beloved Slayer how he killed two of her kind with explicit satisfaction and this is played like "Poor Spike, women treat you like shit, they think you are beneath them".

Y'see this is why S5 Spike is such a great character- he's conflicted and the audience is conflicted about him. In this episode he's still trying to figure things out and he does that by primary try to connect with the slayer- to built something between them; 'I know you wanna dance' and so forth.

I honestly don't think that he's worried for Buffy's well-being at this point (that's giving him a bit too much credit and such an early stage) but he is trying to push her buttons all the way through the episode. He explains, in his own view' the slayer/vampire relationship, that intimate 'dance' as he see's it. After all he was there when two women very much like Buffy met their end- he was the cause of it.

Spike wants Buffy to feel that connection too.Hhe wants her to see that, in the end, it will all be about her and him and that intimacy. He's doing the only thing at this stage that he knows how to do- using the oppurtunity of Buffy needing info from him to draw it out.
.
And then he gets rejected- justifiably imo- by a disgusted Buffy and we feel sorry for him because we see the mirror of what happened to poor, sweet, sappy William (Buffy didn't 'see' that part). And we see Spike react to that old hurt and then decide to try and end Buffy once and for all.
But it's too late- he can't bring himself to even attempt it when he sees that she's upset. A pretty human reaction and a very good episode.

Intervention. Come on, BuffyBot is awful. I am supposed to be allowed to hate Spike with all my hate. But then again - in the exact same episode - he is beaten by Glory, all covered in wounds - that is very sympathetic.

Yes, on the one hand we have Spike and the BuffyBot which is twisted and shallow and not even real. I mean, it's obvious that the robot is nothing like Buffy- Buffy has never acted this way- but Spike doesn't care because well, she's a close aproxamation.

Then he gets captured and tortured and we finally see depth to his feelings for her, and at the end of the ep so does Buffy.

Beneath you (yeah, I khow he has a soul in that one but still). He unsults my female lead about very traumatic situation in her life and punches her. And 20 minutes later he gets the most touching scene in the church. I mean, again???

I agree, I hate him in this episode. It makes zero sense for Spike to hide the fact that he has a soul from everybody (since he wants to help and therefore wouldn't it be better if those he was trying to help could trust him?), then he attacks Anya when she was going to reveal it, taunts Buffy about their S6 antics and then we get the 'pity poor me' speech in the church.
He's pretty loathsome here, that's for sure.

 

[Silverspike]

Well he was newly souled and so I cut him some slack. I saw it as Spike wrestling with himself. His old self that could hurt with his words as well as his fists and the new Spike who was totally lost and seeking direction.

 

[white avenger]

.



Yes, on the one hand we have Spike and the BuffyBot which is twisted and shallow and not even real. I mean, it's obvious that the robot is nothing like Buffy- Buffy has never acted this way- but Spike doesn't care because well, she's a close

I always thought that a lot of the reason that the Buffybot acted the way that it did was pretty much for the same reason that Faith acted so differently when she was wearing Buffy's body. By doing that, the change in character would be so more obvious. As to why they portrayed the Buffybot as being such a total air head, remember who programed it. Warren wasn't what you would call deeply insightful in actual female behavior. All of his bots acted that way.

I've always thought that, if Spike had had his way, Buffybot would have been much more like Faith/Buffy, though more passionate and less teasing.

 

[bespangeled]

Well he was newly souled and so I cut him some slack. I saw it as Spike wrestling with himself. His old self that could hurt with his words as well as his fists and the new Spike who was totally lost and seeking direction.

I think he said it himself - it was very private. And he was there to help Buffy, not everyone, IMO. So, it was Buffy's call who she told - what he didn't want was having it revealed in a restaurant by Anya. I do love Anya's reaction.

As for making sense, this is newly souled crazy Spike, the school basement dweller. He was trying to be old Spike - but he fell apart. Even he knew what a lousy job he was doing. 

I always thought that a lot of the reason that the Buffybot acted the way that it did was pretty much for the same reason that Faith acted so differently when she was wearing Buffy's body. By doing that, the change in character would be so more obvious. As to why they portrayed the Buffybot as being such a total air head, remember who programed it. Warren wasn't what you would call deeply insightful in actual female behavior. All of his bots acted that way.

I've always thought that, if Spike had had his way, Buffybot would have been much more like Faith/Buffy, though more passionate and less teasing.

Well, I always liked the fact that he had the bot programmed to fight. But yeah - definitely skeevy!

 

[jom]

i think the buffybot acted exactly like Spike wanted her to act except for bot thing. She was exactly like buffy except she was dedicated to Spike and hated Angel. If Warren had the technology to make his bots act exactly like a human, the buffybot would had been exactly like Buffy, maybe Buffy from season 6?

 

[thetopher]

Well he was newly souled and so I cut him some slack. I saw it as Spike wrestling with himself.

Spike was 'together' enough to put on a front and lie about his current condition and his behaviour in the school basemnt- again his motivation for doing this was so he could help Buffy- 'I've changed Buffy'- and yet he isn't going to tell her how he changed? It's an utterly illogical move.

I always thought that a lot of the reason that the Buffybot acted the way that it did was pretty much for the same reason that Faith acted so differently when she was wearing Buffy's body.

Very different situations and acting to be honest. Faith acts very much like Faith in Buffy's body (because she's Faith- the lines start to blur after the Bronze) but nobody notices because the idea of a body swap is kinda out there at this stage. Only Tara realises the truth.

Buffy-bot acts like a robot and the Scooby's, who know all about robot-April and yet don't figure out that Buffy is a robot? Consequently the Scooby's come off as stupid and Spike's 'love' comes off as shallow because it's obviously NOT Buffy.

Like I said, that's the point of the ending- it gives much-needed depth to Spike's feelings for the slayer, but before that? Never thought it was that real, just obsession.

 

[bespangeled]

Spike was 'together' enough to put on a front and lie about his current condition and his behaviour in the school basemnt- again his motivation for doing this was so he could help Buffy- 'I've changed Buffy'- and yet he isn't going to tell her how he changed? It's an utterly illogical move.

You do realize he tells her at the end of that episode. I assume he didn't want Anya to out him in the middle of a crowded restaurant. He tried to warn her off, then tried to get away, then punched her. Demon to demon. As for taunting Buffy, no idea if that was the demon, or a sign that Spike was kinda losing his mind...which he did in the next scene. It was a bad thing though.😱

Very different situations and acting to be honest. Faith acts very much like Faith in Buffy's body (because she's Faith- the lines start to blur after the Bronze) but nobody notices because the idea of a body swap is kinda out there at this stage. Only Tara realises the truth.

Buffy-bot acts like a robot and the Scooby's, who know all about robot-April and yet don't figure out that Buffy is a robot? Consequently the Scooby's come off as stupid and Spike's 'love' comes off as shallow because it's obviously NOT Buffy.

Like I said, that's the point of the ending- it gives much-needed depth to Spike's feelings for the slayer, but before that? Never thought it was that real, just obsession.

I see this as more of a general learning curve thing. Kind of just a chance to invent another version of Buffy. She had to make the same sort of changes - body, voice, etc.

Spike's love (obsession) was demon. He knew he would never get Buffy, so he tried to solve the problem in his own way....weird and skeevy, yeah. For a guy who could be very intuitive, he could be very dim as well.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

I still hate it. Those scenes. There was no dramatic tension because it was 'spoiled' already. It would have been much better if you were as clueless as Buffy as to what is happening. If you never saw him go to get his soul. Just see him flee in the night and then wind up in the basement rambling. THAT would have made it quality. Otherwise its just melodrama.

 

[thetopher]

You do realize he tells her at the end of that episode.

I think the point is that he tried. They were together on the street, he wants Buffy to trust him so he can help her- there's nobody around so why try and decieve her? He told her in the end only because he had no choice- his 'costume' had failed and he was broken so he revealed all to her (almost literally).

As for that scene at the Bronze, Spike could've walked away from Anya or shouted at her to stop, or at least try and change the subject. Attacking her seems really harsh (I can't even recall if he knew that Anya was a vengeance demon at this point. If he didn't that it's even more serious) and then he goes and turns on Buffy.

It's just a really unpleasent scene that I find hard to care about, add to that the church finale and it's all seems like blatent manipulation, 'Spike is a victim now so just cut him some slack already.'

 

[Firstina]

I need some devoted Spike/Spuffy fan to consult me, please. I can't recall if Spike ever got a warm hug from anyone within the series. I do remember the Touched scene but beside that? It is a little bit silly question I know It's just curiosity.

 

[thetopher]

Andrew hugs Spike in 'Damage'- I remember that one. Andrew is Spike's number 1 fan.

 

[Firstina]

Oh, thanks. I was starting to feel sorry for him. At least we got one🙂

 

[Silverspike]

"Attacking her seems really harsh (I can't even recall if he knew that Anya was a vengeance demon at this point. If he didn't that it's even more serious) and then he goes and turns on Buffy."

Well Spikes a Demon (with all that entails) and at that point so was Anya.

 

[Wesley Pryce]

I think the point is that he tried. They were together on the street, he wants Buffy to trust him so he can help her- there's nobody around so why try and decieve her? He told her in the end only because he had no choice- his 'costume' had failed and he was broken so he revealed all to her (almost literally).

As for that scene at the Bronze, Spike could've walked away from Anya or shouted at her to stop, or at least try and change the subject. Attacking her seems really harsh (I can't even recall if he knew that Anya was a vengeance demon at this point. If he didn't that it's even more serious) and then he goes and turns on Buffy.

It's just a really unpleasent scene that I find hard to care about, add to that the church finale and it's all seems like blatent manipulation, 'Spike is a victim now so just cut him some slack already.'

I do like the line in that scene though where spike says."Angel—he should've warned me" Always gives me goosbumps, just the delivery by James really makes it so emotional. 
Also I don't hate Spike one single bit, he's awesome. I love Angel more, but I still love him a lot. Even though I have said that his redemption arc was mishandled in season 7, and I stand by that, He still was one of only a few characters in season seven who was even entertaining. I just don't know if I have ever clarified my position on Spike..there ya go. 😛