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Old-fashioned fandom identification.
I'm very glad I waited so long to watch Buffy, because as much as I knew Spike would be one of my favorite characters - as it turns out, not just the show, but pretty much anywhere - I wouldn't have easily been able to articulate my attachment to him. I know in middle and high school, I'd have fallen for him hard, and I might even have been glad for that, and even now I'm happy to see him. Maybe I'd have used him when I was younger, that I can't say. What I can say is how much of what I love about him is due to him being a vampire, being very much a product of genre fiction. The things I love most about him are pretty much impossible to find outside of genre fiction.
Beyond him being a monster whose ability to express his feelings was deliberately broken - he had the feelings but no way to act on them without being hurt, and even if they were some of the most horrible feelings possible, they were still his.
Beyond him never not wanting to be a monster, someone who reveled in that even while he knew it cut him off from things he wanted and people he wanted to be with, because he was genuinely happy with what he was.
Beyond him being something everyone, including him, agrees is a monster who's done terrible things and deserves terrible things done to him but still has the chance to make himself better, to be accepted, even if he doesn't want to change his fundamental nature, because he wants to be a better person without stopping being a monster.
Spike is a demonstration that monstrosity isn't a prohibition against being a person.
Because Spike is one of three characters I know of - the other two are Shadowchild from Digger and Chava from The Golem and the Djinni - who developed a sense of morality through deliberate work and conscious intelligence. Without any innate awareness of right and wrong, without an intuitive grasp on the subject, he still managed to piece something together, with the kicker being he never denies his emotions. Spike is consistently a deeply emotional character, even before getting ensouled, and it's those emotions which pushed him out of his amoral state into a place where he wanted to do better, and be better, so he struggled to change himself. Even in genre fiction, most characters who come to morality consciously aren't necessarily emotional. But Spike is. And Spike stays emotional, even while trying to figure out what's expected of him, what he's supposed to do. Even without that innate grasp on the concepts involved, he still tries to understand them.
His emotions are never denied or repressed; they're always present and intense. He decided to become moral because of his emotional ties to the people around him, without his emotions being able to tell him how to be a good person, and he figured that out through deduction, observation, and conscious intelligence.
It's the internal division of morality, emotion, and intelligence without any of those parts being ignored or denied, but all of them allowed to remain, and inform each other, as he develops and changes. The decision to behave morally before developing the internalized sense of how to do so is a very compelling narrative, and one that doesn't happen much outside of fantasy.
I wouldn't have had the words to say how much seeing it would have meant to me.
Beyond him being a monster whose ability to express his feelings was deliberately broken - he had the feelings but no way to act on them without being hurt, and even if they were some of the most horrible feelings possible, they were still his.
Beyond him never not wanting to be a monster, someone who reveled in that even while he knew it cut him off from things he wanted and people he wanted to be with, because he was genuinely happy with what he was.
Beyond him being something everyone, including him, agrees is a monster who's done terrible things and deserves terrible things done to him but still has the chance to make himself better, to be accepted, even if he doesn't want to change his fundamental nature, because he wants to be a better person without stopping being a monster.
Spike is a demonstration that monstrosity isn't a prohibition against being a person.
Because Spike is one of three characters I know of - the other two are Shadowchild from Digger and Chava from The Golem and the Djinni - who developed a sense of morality through deliberate work and conscious intelligence. Without any innate awareness of right and wrong, without an intuitive grasp on the subject, he still managed to piece something together, with the kicker being he never denies his emotions. Spike is consistently a deeply emotional character, even before getting ensouled, and it's those emotions which pushed him out of his amoral state into a place where he wanted to do better, and be better, so he struggled to change himself. Even in genre fiction, most characters who come to morality consciously aren't necessarily emotional. But Spike is. And Spike stays emotional, even while trying to figure out what's expected of him, what he's supposed to do. Even without that innate grasp on the concepts involved, he still tries to understand them.
His emotions are never denied or repressed; they're always present and intense. He decided to become moral because of his emotional ties to the people around him, without his emotions being able to tell him how to be a good person, and he figured that out through deduction, observation, and conscious intelligence.
It's the internal division of morality, emotion, and intelligence without any of those parts being ignored or denied, but all of them allowed to remain, and inform each other, as he develops and changes. The decision to behave morally before developing the internalized sense of how to do so is a very compelling narrative, and one that doesn't happen much outside of fantasy.
I wouldn't have had the words to say how much seeing it would have meant to me.
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Thank you!
Also I think the point that 'This story is only available in genre fiction' is a great point because I think the tendency of some fans to judge characters as though they were real people is even worse when there's something that's only true in a fictional context (he didn't have a soul and then he got one) -- they feel the need to discount the fantastic element from their reading of the story. (ie, if you accept that Spike is killing under the influence of his vampire nature, you must be a fan of murderers in real life.) I hope that makes some sense!
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And yes, that makes sense. Context is deeply important when it comes to fictional narratives, because you can't read a story about a vampire without some fantasy being involved.
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