Real Name: Sarah
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Last Active: February 20, 2023
Membership Status: Member
Skin: dead poets society
Why I Love Spike:
As a character, he's all about becoming more than what he is, what he's told he is. Cecily tells him that he's beneath her, and that cuts him to the quick and stays with him for over a hundred years because being unworthy or inadequate are genuine insecurities, even fears, of his. As a man, they cripple him, making him the painfully shy, socially awkward mama's boy he is. As a vampire, he's finally able to move past it, feeling a sense of self-worth for the first time in his life, though Angelus is quick to learn that his feelings of inadequacy are still present, if slightly harder to get at.
However, when it comes down to it, he's the only one who ever thought he was worthy of anything at all. And when things start going to shit for him in Sunnydale, like failing to kill Buffy and Dru going back to Angelus, it just serves to reinforce those old notions of inadequacy he'd thought long buried and to fuck with the picture of himself that he'd had in is head for the last hundred years or so. That's why Dru leaving him the way she does breaks him up so much. It's why he treats Harmony so horribly, her very presence a continuous reminder of the disparity between what he thinks he deserves and what he actually has in reality, his every interaction with her an illustration of the war between his demon-fueled self-confidence and the recently rediscovered self-doubt he carried over from his human life.
Sunnydale continually challenges how he perceives himself, until finally, in one horrifying moment in Buffy's bathroom, clarity is reached and the vampire sees himself for the first time in his immortal life. He sees himself and must suddenly deal with the realization that his greatest fears have come true, that he is unworthy of his heart's desires, that he really has always been inadequate compared to the standards of those around him. He saw himself, the one thing a vampire should never be able to do, and was disgusted. He finally saw the man in the mirror and knew he had to change. He faced his fears, acknowledged his unworthiness, his many inadequacies, and he owned them, he overwrote them and decided that they would no longer define him.
I also love that his whole character arch is essentially the mirror image of Whedon and Co. deciding to keep Spike on the show in the first place. I'll forever be grateful to James Marsters for portraying Spike in such a way where his potential to be more than evil was evident from the start. He took a two dimensional villain and turned him into a beloved three dimensional antihero, from the Big Bad to a lost and lonely man full of love and hardly any sense. Bravo.
Why I Don't Hate Angel:
I think we can all agree that Angel has a lot more potential evilness inside him, be he soulful or soulless, than Spike at his worst. And yet, as soon as he's told it's even possible, he works constantly toward redemption, always wanting absolution, for the ghost of his father to finally say that he's proud of him, to finally feel like a man, a good man. Yeah, he fails, a lot, but that's what makes him compelling. He's always struggling to find enough faith in himself to make it through whatever challenge is before him, and the team around him struggles with the same thing. Sometimes he's deserving of their faith and sometimes not, but like a true family they manage to come back together and hold on to each other time and time again on the show.
It's so relatable, especially if you're a screw-up who's ever disappointed your parents, or pushed the people who love you away because you don't want to hurt them any more--because you're undeserving--only to have those people come back to you, to never give up on trying to save you, on trying to get you to save yourself. (Story of my life, really.)
And something else to realize about him is that he is naturally a rather shallow person. As a human he's pretty two dimensional, just a drunk layabout with daddy issues and a thing for barmaids and servant girls. Then losing his soul as a vampire only makes him even more shallow (in the sense of: "Daddy issues? I'll just kill my dad. There! No more daddy issues."). Gaining his soul back suddenly thrusts him into a depth of feeling he was never born with the temperament to handle in the first place. He has to go on the same sort of hero's journey as Buffy does, both going from an ordinary, simple, and simplistic person to a one-of-a-kind superhuman with the weight of innumerable lives to bear (though, granted, for him that weight is felt in a vastly different way than it is for her).
And honestly, finding a fifteen-year-old girl any kind of attractive is hardly even a blip on the pervert radar. And stalking done by vampires is admittedly not as creepy in my mind as perhaps it ought to be, so just whatever on that front.
Inspired by a challenge from knightowl:
When Buffy dies at the hands of the Master her Slayer side goes into shock and hides. This makes everyone, even the Council think that she has lost her powers. Her friends and Giles draw away from her so that she can have a 'normal' life and to protect her from everything. Letting Buffy see that all they really liked about her was her Slayer side. Kendra is sent to Sunnydale to replace Buffy and Angel starts to stalk her instead of Buffy, allowing her to see how creepy that is. Buffy becomes depressed and realises that she liked being the Slayer but that everything she thought she knew about her life and her friends was wrong.
Enter Spike, who hates Dru a little because the whole Prague thing only happened because Dru finally decided to break up with him just to then let herself be hurt knowing Spike would have to stay and look after her.
Spike and Buffy meet, both a little depressed and angry at how their lives are at the moment.
Or a lot depressed, if you ask me.
I like to think of this story as fun, sweet, and effed up all rolled into one angsty teen/vampire romance. So, basically, it's a retelling of S2 with Spike as the male lead. Fun times.
Extra warnings include talks about self-harm (no graphic depictions) and harm to a child (because of course Dawn is always a magnet for trouble). Oh, and the Drug Use warning is only for marijuana.
Artists: None
Characters: Angel, Billy Fordham, Buffy, Cordelia, Dawn, Drusilla, Ensemble, Giles, Joyce, Kendra, Original Characters, Other, Oz, Spike, Willow, Willy the Snitch, Xander
Genres: Angst, Dark, Dramedy, Hurt/Comfort, POV, Romance
Warnings: Adult Language, Blood Play, Buffy/Other (Temp), Character Death, Cheating/Infidelity, Substance Use/Addiction, Spike/Other (Temp), Violence
Challenges: Slayer in hiding
Event: 2019 Challenge Month
Completed: No Chapters: 2 Table of Contents
Word count: 18,792 Hit Count: 1,911 ePub Downloads: 42
Published: April 24, 2019 Updated: May 24, 2019