More Faith and Spike and Buffy thoughts

[itsnotmymind]

I have thoughts an opinion I've seen a few times in my explorations in BtVS fandom. Specifically, the idea that Faith and Spike are held more accountable for their bad behavior towards Buffy than Buffy is in her bad behavior towards them. I have some thoughts on what it is about the way the show is structured that might encourage some fans to react that way.

The first obvious fact: Faith and Spike are both murderers, who have done a lot of evil to people within Buffy's social circle, but even more evil to people outside of Buffy and her social circle. Faith didn’t kill anyone we, the viewers, actually know. Neither did Spike. That's fairly typical for BtVS. Anya didn't kill anyone we know, either. Andrew is an exception, since Jonathon was a sympathetic character whom the viewers now, although he was Andrew's own friend and not a member of the Scoobies. Willow kills someone we know, but Warren is total sleaze who killed her girlfriend. Angel killed someone we know, Jenny Calendar, but the narrative encourages us to see souled and soulless Angel as two different people. I think the show makes more sense if you view Angel and Angelus as the same person (both more sense in terms of Angel's psychology and more sense in terms of the mythology of the show), but both BtVS and AtS are both inconsistent in that regard, and the narrative encourages a certain amount of distance between the two that doesn't exist with any of the other murderers on the show, including other vampires like Spike or Darla. By AtS, Angel even starts using different names depending on whether he has his soul or not.

And just in case I haven't disclaimed enough (and unending fannish feuds seem to make such disclaimers necessary), I want to emphasize that I am not saying that I think, on a Watsonian level, that Spike is better at taking responsibility as a souled being for his actions while soulless--that seems to depend largely on what storyline you are looking at, and sometimes Angel is better at it than Spike--but that there is a narrative distance between Angel and Angelus that does not exist between Spike and, uh, Spike.

Or between Darla and Darla. I don't think it's a coincidence that in Angel S3, when there’s a storyline about Angel and Darla murdering an innocent women and her children, and we see, in flashbacks, the full of horror of it, Darla does not survive the storyline. Darla, who does not have the same divide between her souled and soulless self that Angel does, commits suicide after expressing remorse for what she did to that family. Darla dies, and for once, stays dead.

Faith and Spike do not kill characters we know. They do not kill characters that are beloved by the Scoobies or Angel’s gang (even Andrew didn’t kill anyone beloved by the Scoobies). It would be harder for the audience to sympathize with them, and harder for the Scoobies and Angel’s gang to forgive them, if they did. But when it comes time for these characters be the center of a redemption story, a human face is needed to represent the victims. One way of dealing with is problem is to have a character like Holtz or Wood introduced who lost loved ones to them. That’s one of handling it. Another way of handling it is to could use major characters who have been hurt by the characters in need of redemption in non-fatal way to represent the victims. You know, like Buffy Summers.

In “Sanctuary”, and in early S7 (from “Beneath You” through “Never Leave Me”), Buffy (along with Wesley, for Faith) represents the victims of Faith and Spike respectively. In the church scene in “Beneath You”, Spike conflates earning forgiveness from Buffy with earning forgiveness from all the other people he wronged (“And she shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love… and he will be loved.”). This sets the tone for the next several episodes. In “Help”, “Seeing Red” is treated as soulless Spike's worst moment (Spike even says, "I hurt the girl", as if Buffy were the only girl he hurt). In “Never Leave Me”, Spike's other victims are discussed and he explicitly says the Buffy got off easy compared to his other victims, but she is still used to represent all his victims.

But the things Faith and Spike did to Buffy are not as bad as the things they did to people outside Buffy's show. The things they did to Buffy, are horrid, but when the show treats them as the worst things they ever did, or as representative of all their crimes, it makes them both look much better than they actually are.

On the other hand, Buffy has to represent the innocent victim. Which means that she is portrayed as forgiving and taking back Spike and Faith, while her own crimes towards them are downplayed, just as their crimes towards people outside her circle (or, in some cases, inside her circle--i.e. Faith's assault of Xander which more or less got dropped by the narrative) are downplayed.

So that's my interpretation. I think the narrative choice of sometimes using Buffy to representing all the people wronged by Faith and Spike makes Buffy look better than she actually is--and makes Faith and Spike look better than they actually are.

Comments

[kikimay]

Interesting opinion!
I really don't think that Buffy represents all the victims of Faith and Spike (And also Angelus) but, for me, was really a necessity show throu her eyes (she's always the protagonist, the things that happened to her are the rilevant one for the story) the badness of the character. It's like she said to Angel in Amends: I know what you did, because you did it to me. How can she actually forgives Spike or Faith, for example, (How can we viewers really forgive them) if she doesn't know what she's talking about? Buffy gives her forgiveness because she want to do so, but other characters can feel differently and so the viewers.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's a bit strong to say that she "represents all of the victims". She represents a human face for the victims. And not all the time, because obviously, when Spike faces off with Robin Wood, Buffy isn't being used to represent Spike's victims. But some of the time.

It's like she said to Angel in Amends: I know what you did, because you did it to me. How can she actually forgives Spike or Faith, for example, (How can we viewers really forgive them) if she doesn't know what she's talking about?

But the thing is that she doesn't know what she's talking about. Or she knows some of it, but not all of it. She tells Angel, "I know everything that you did, because you did it to me." But she doesn't know everything. There's lots of horrible things Angel did to people that he never did to her. She only knows some things.

I remember in "Never Leave Me", Spike starts talking about what he used to do to girls Dawns age, and Buffy looks away. And when I saw that, I thought that if Spike had hurt Dawn, he would be dead. But he didn't hurt Dawn. None of the half-dead teenage girls he did unspeakable things to happened to be the Slayer's little sister. So he's still alive.

And I don't know--I'm not arguing that Buffy should have killed him. Because he became a hero. So surely her mercy was the right decision? But I just don't know.

Buffy gives her forgiveness because she want to do so, but other characters can feel differently and so the viewers.

I agree. :)

[kikimay]

Yes, you absolutely right: both Angelus and Spike show some aspect, not ALL they did. Angelus raped Holtz's wife many times for example, Buffy was the lucky one! But, still, I think that it's important to see that at least in a basic level she understands what they are.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Faith and Spike do not kill characters we know.

Well, as you probably guessed, part of what inspired Five in One was that I wanted to make Spike's victims people for an audience inclined not to care (and hence also inclined to complain that the Scoobies and/or Buffy didn't accept them fast enough) because with the exception of Nikki Wood (who died in an exciting fight scene), we never saw them on screen. Re: Buffy as occasional stand in for the victims and the problems that brings, I agree but also would agree with Kikimay that it's tied to the Buffy-as-main-protagonist structure when it happens.

However: does it really happen so often? And also: what if the show(s) contradict themselves or rather, remedy their narrative? For example, I'd say Damage on AtS textually and explicitly makes Dana a stand-in for Spike's victims (and while it's at it also contradicts his all-Slayers-have-a-death-wish theory at least when it comes to Nikki Wood because when Dana is channelling Nikki, she says she wants to get home to her son) while also making her a parallel to both Spike and Angel themselves. The question there whether Angel, Spike and Dana are redeemable after having crossed the lines from innocents to perpetrators (in varying degrees, obviously Dana's score is infinitely less than that of either vampire) isn't definitely answered by the narrative, other than with the general hope of trying to make the best of your blood-on-your-hands-and-superpowers-at-your-disposal status from this point onwards, and it's interesting that Spike verbalizes the skeptic position there.

As for Faith: I'd argue that while Buffy has the no-sayer position in Sanctuary, the stand-in for Faith's victims position in the narrative is actually taken by Wesley, whom the audience has seen tortured by Faith on screen. (Sidenote: of course, at the time of first broadcast there was still much Wesley resentment until that episode, both from Doyle only holdouts and from people whop blamed Faith's original fall on him, but Five By Five/Sanctuary is generally seen as the watershed when people started to embrace Wesley with their hearts en masse; his position as most popular AtS character didn't come until late s3 onwards, though.) In the most explicit torture scene on either show until that point. Wesley is the one who has the emotional arc in this episode from hating Faith for what she did to him to getting the chance at revenge to while not forgiving Faith still preventing her capture/death and allowing her the chance to face her own responsibilities.

Which, given this is an AtS episode where Wesley is a regular character and Buffy is a guest star is an understandable narrative choice. And when Faith returns to BTVS, her scenes with Buffy aren't about Buffy forgiving her (or her forgiving Buffy) but both of them coming to terms with each other in a story where neither is the "good" or the "bad" Slayer. (IMO as always.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

both BtVS and AtS are both inconsistent in that regard, and the narrative encourages a certain amount of distance between the two that doesn't exist with any of the other murderers on the show, including other vampires like Spike or Darla. By AtS, Angel even starts using different names depending on whether he has his soul or not.

I think the first time either show does that is in the BTVS episode Enemies, actually (the Mayor and Faith address him as Angelus once they think he's soulless, right? Whereas previously during s2 Spike and Dru used "Angel" for the soulless version as well), but otherwise, agreed. Mind you: the inconsistency of either show is consistent in one regard: Angel (and the narrative) treat him as the same person with and without a soul in one specific context always, and that's in interactions with Darla, Spike and Dru. Angel never behaves as if someone else had spent those 150 years with Darla, or those twenty with Spike and Dru. The reverse isn't always true (Darla tries to differentiate between the souled and soulless versions but doesn't always manage, which is what the later part of the Darla flashbacks are all about, Dru is loyal to the soulless version and vengeful towards the souled one but generally gives the impression she sees them as aspects of the same man, and Spike after his bout of nostalgia for the soulless version from "School Hard" and their initial reunion in "Innocence" is cured for good talks of the souled and soulless version in the same manner throughout. (See also: "Dru sired me but you made me a monster" in Destiny.)

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I wanted to make Spike's victims people for an audience inclined not to care (and hence also inclined to complain that the Scoobies and/or Buffy didn't accept them fast enough) because with the exception of Nikki Wood (who died in an exciting fight scene), we never saw them on screen.

We see a few other victims of Spike killed on screen, but I think Nikki is the only one who is given a name and a story (although I think I've heard that the Chinese slayer is given a name in some sort of tie-in media, but that's not on the show itself, and is also an exciting fight scene).

However: does it really happen so often? And also: what if the show(s) contradict themselves or rather, remedy their narrative? For example, I'd say Damage on AtS textually and explicitly makes Dana a stand-in for Spike's victims.

I agree with that.

As for Faith: I'd argue that while Buffy has the no-sayer position in Sanctuary, the stand-in for Faith's victims position in the narrative is actually taken by Wesley, whom the audience has seen tortured by Faith on screen.

While I only mentioned Wesley in passing, I do think he plays a more important role as representing Faith's victims in Faith's redemption arc overall (both in the context of "Sanctuary" and in Faith's arc in AtS S4, where Buffy isn't even around). But Buffy's arguments as the no-sayer are not based on what Faith did to Wesley (does she even know?). They based on all the other things Faith did, and particularly focused on what Faith did to her.

But while both Dana and Wesley are better ways of representing Faith and Spike's victims than using Buffy, that still doesn't cross the line into letting Faith and Spike kill sympthetic characters whom the viewers know or whom the protagonists have personal affection for. And so I find myself wondering, could they have done something like that and still be given redemption storylines? Maybe the answer to that is "yes", since Andrew kills Jonathan and still gets a redemption story (kind of an odd one, and Andrew is kind of an odd character, but still).

I think the first time either show does that is in the BTVS episode Enemies, actually (the Mayor and Faith address him as Angelus once they think he's soulless, right? Whereas previously during s2 Spike and Dru used "Angel" for the soulless version as well)

You're right, I checked the transcript, and they are doing it in Enemies. I just didn't notice while watching because it is more subtle (and the Scoobies aren't doing it at this point, just Faith and the Mayor and Angel himself).

Angel never behaves as if someone else had spent those 150 years with Darla, or those twenty with Spike and Dru.

Good point. And the most extreme example of Angel-and-Angelus-are-too-different-people is in AtS S4 when none of the other Fanged Four are around. (That S4 storyline is just plain weird--you have an entire show built on a guilt-ridden protagonist seeking redemption and suddenly he's saying that he doesn't need to feel guilty for the things he did without a soul? Very strange.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

But while both Dana and Wesley are better ways of representing Faith and Spike's victims than using Buffy, that still doesn't cross the line into letting Faith and Spike kill sympthetic characters whom the viewers know or whom the protagonists have personal affection for. And so I find myself wondering, could they have done something like that and still be given redemption storylines? Maybe the answer to that is "yes", since Andrew kills Jonathan and still gets a redemption story (kind of an odd one, and Andrew is kind of an odd character, but still).

I don't know. I can think of some shows (and a book series) which actually go there. There's a character in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones who gets basically introduced by throwing a nice kid (and pov character) out of the window, gets a redemption storyline and ended up as a fan favourite. Breaking Bad, which I marathoned the last few months, had the main protagonist do that kind of thing repeatedly, but, um, as the title of the show indicates, his is not a redemption storyline. Supposedly The Sopranos did it (i.e. Tony Soprano kills people the audience has grown to love over several seasons), but I only watched the first two seasons in which that doesn't happen, so I wouldn't know. And again, Tony Soprano doesn't have a redemption storyline. Xena: Warrior Princess has an Angel-esque protagonist, only female, in that most of her evil deeds happened pre-show, the show itself is a spin-off, and that she's atoning is the very premise, but we do get to know some of her victims on screen and pretty well, plus there's the infamous rift arc where she does something very cruel to the show's other much beloved main character. And speaking of spin-offs: Jack Harkness is an interesting case in that when he kills a child the audience knows on screen it's as the culmination of a storyline where the opposite choice would doom part of the planetary population. (Plus, to put it cynically and in a way proving your point, in terms of "action by a Torchwood character the audience does not forgive and ever after defines that character by that action, no matter what else that character does" an online majority would go for Gwen cheating on Rhys in season one and confessing, hoping for absolution, while giving him retcon. Never mind that the whole point of that scene is that she's not forgiven, or that she draws consequences from that experience, an important one of which is to refuse to retcon Rhys in season 2 (and the whole way she handles her relationship with him from that point onwards), and certainly never mind the deeds by various other TW characters include torture, endangerment of planetary population by Cyber girlfriend, and in Owen's case the infamous pheromone spray of dubious consent from the pilot: this is the single unforgivable action by a Torchwood character, if online comments are anything to go by.

The question is: would Joss & Co. (never forget the other writers and their imput) have let Spike and Faith do it, on these two shows, and still be redeemed? I'm 2/3 inclined to say no, with the caveat that torture of a character the viewers know and like is already very dark (and for some viewers unforgivable), and they were willing to let Faith go there. (Angel too, but he's soulless when he does it to Giles, while Faith is not.)

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

torture of a character the viewers know and like is already very dark (and for some viewers unforgivable), and they were willing to let Faith go there.

In some ways, I think Faith was the character on BtVS and AtS whose darkness was dealt with honestly and whose evil actions had the best follow-up (with the caveats of a) she still doesn't kill anyone the Scoobies or Angel's gang or the viewers actually know, and b) the lack of any follow-up specific to her assault of Xander). Though that is a somewhat subjective statement and someone could probably make an argument for another character. It probably helps that Faith wasn't in the credits of either show, so they could send her off to prison for a few seasons.

I was actually really bothered by how quick online fandom was to forgive Jack for killing his grandson. Mostly because I felt like a lot of it was coming from a place of "I like Jack, therefore I will come up with a justification to forgive him". But I was very impressed that Torchwood went there, and of course I thought it was completely in character for Jack, under the circumstances.

this is the single unforgivable action by a Torchwood character, if online comments are anything to go by.

But! But! Gwen is self-righteous! She thinks she's better than everyone else! That's why it's unforgivable. ;)

I was re-watching "Greeks Bearing Gifts", and I actually forgot that at the end, Gwen tells Tosh that she (Gwen) has no right to judge Tosh, because of her own bad behavior (her affair with Owen).

So much for the fanon that Gwen thinks she's better than everyone else.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

And the most extreme example of Angel-and-Angelus-are-too-different-people is in AtS S4 when none of the other Fanged Four are around. (That S4 storyline is just plain weird--you have an entire show built on a guilt-ridden protagonist seeking redemption and suddenly he's saying that he doesn't need to feel guilty for the things he did without a soul? Very strange.)

Which is why I, the big season 4 fan, don't like Orpheus or the line in the subsequent episode where Angel says that. Mind you, the explanation is pretty obvious and I think Tim Minear admitted as much on the message boards back then: they didn't have the time for an "Angel processes and apologizes for everything Angelus did" episode because final part of s4, the Jasmine reveal needed to happen(remember, too, Charisma Carpenter was real life pregnant, and they were limited in the time they could still use her). Note that only two eps later when Angel is still under the Jasmine influence, we're back to the first person singular for what he sid when soulless again (in the scene where he talks about "everything I did" and she does her I forgive because I love you thing, which, given that Jasmine is the main antagonist, definitely doesn't count as a stand-in for Angel's victims).

Of course, on both a Watsonian and Doylist level the Angelus interlude in s4 is just a flashy red herring, as the Beast is, before Jasmine can move on stage, and the main emotional arc is between Angel and Connor anyway, which is not about Angel's deeds when soulless (let's not forget, Connor owes his existence to a time when Angel was souled, alright, and had his vengeful s2 interlude).

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I actually think this works especially well because there is a form-mirroring-function thing going on. The thing about Spike and Faith is that they are extremely focused on Buffy, in a monomaniacal way: Spike wants to be good for Buffy, Faith wants to be in Buffy's good graces. Faith does like Joyce, and digs Angel a lot, but in s3 especially her relationships to them are more closely associated with her feelings for Buffy. And so, when Spike kills hundreds of people over centuries, they don't really matter to him -- because he is fixated on Dru (and the rest of the Fanged Four), and slayers, and then Buffy. So Seeing Red, or something like it, had to happen in order for *Spike* to get the memo that he's done things that are wrong, even if he might intellectually understand it. That Spike could hurt someone that he cares about mirrors the horror that we in the audience feel when Spike hurts someone WE care about as audience members, i.e. Buffy. And that's why Spike of course has to pay more explicitly, because Buffy is the only person that he, up to that point in time (well, nearly the only person) he actually cared about/could notice his unthinking cruelty/presumption to. (I do actually think the AR works better than, say, Spike trying to bite her; while that would code more closely to how Spike treats his usual victims, his problem, w.r.t. Buffy, is that he genuinely thinks that he doesn't *hurt her*, that she is exempt from his trail of destruction, and so it makes sense to me that he hurts her in a way that is consistent with him believing himself to be a good man -- i.e. him trying to convince her to love him again as a 'man'.)

So the point here is that from Spike's POV, the first really bad thing he did was hurting Buffy, in a way -- i.e. it's the first that he really felt. And so even when he regains his soul and feels guilt for all those years, suddenly, his focus is still to redeem himself through Buffy. It goes in reverse as well -- Buffy redeems herself through Spike, in a way -- but it's much less of a big deal that Buffy does so, because much of what happened with Spike is an isolated incident rather than an unlife-long pattern. It's also part of why the person to stand in for Spike's victims is Nikki Wood, not some random girl -- because she is the one that Spike sought out, cared about, where his focus was.

And I mean, Faith comes as close to killing Xander as Buffy does to killing Faith, but it's so much more dramatic because Buffy and Faith actually care about each other, whereas Faith really doesn't care about Xander. (That, and, of course, that Faith and Spike are 'bad' when they do their bad deeds, whereas Buffy is supposed to be the hero.) Faith is very heavily focused on Buffy, Angel and Wesley (and Giles, depending on whether you take comics canon or not); it is through stealing Buffy's life that she understands that goodness is a possible way out, and so it's Buffy who really DOES stand in for Faith's victims, in Sanctuary. That Buffy represents the turning point for both Spike and Faith is why they need to atone to her, psychologically, and why we as audience need to see their atonement to Buffy. Blah blah blah -- I think I'm losing sensemaking.

(Conversely, there's something interesting about the way this goes opposite with, e.g., Willow -- she hurts Tara really badly, but afterward she does things that are much worse, i.e. killing Warren. But Warren is not where the audience sympathies lie, Tara is, so that there is a sense that she failed to atone for the emotional live wire for the audience. Though that is another point.)

It's also like the idea that Willow and Xander's cheating in s3 is treated as being more unforgivable than Faith's murdering a professor (or whatever) -- there is a sense in which the audience responds to what we see happen. And that makes sense, too, because this is a partly metaphorical show, and so it's expected that off-screen murders are always a little abstracted, and not treated the same as RL murders; the question of how we should treat different actions in the 'verse is always deeply complicated.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh right, finally:

I actually do think that while this choice makes for problems in fandom/interpretation, I don't think it's a bad choice in the TV show which is really, more centrally, about Buffy than about anyone else. (Well, and Angel, on his show.) The show does have a plurality of POVs, and I do think that the redemption stories for Spike and Faith (and Willow's accepting-the-dark story, which is not quite a redemption story but is very important) are internally consistent for those characters. But on some level, I think that Spike's story and Faith's story are more about Buffy (and Angel) than themselves, you know? They represent a part of Buffy, and Buffy coming to terms with them is part of the tale; the show is ultimately not an ensemble piece. This does mean, though, that with Buffy and especially with Angel, there is less focus on what they, and people associated to them, have done to others, than maybe there should be. The problem of a protagonist-centred narrative, I guess.

ETA: I do like that Willow, while not killing sympathetic characters, did kill Characters Of Name -- Warren and Rack were more significant characters than the deputy mayor, and the show didn't shy away from the gore in her torture scene of Warren. I do wonder how different season seven would be had she actually killed Jonathan and Andrew, or for that matter anyone in the Scooby Gang; obviously had she destroyed the world there would have been no season seven.... I know that the writers did give Willow somewhat of an out with the magic, but I do think that Joss having Giles indicate that the magic is neither hobby nor addiction, and Willow's consistently taking full responsibility in season seven, are pretty positive. I know a lot of people don't buy Willow as having accepted responsibility for Villains - Grave, but I really disagree.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

You have lots of thoughts.

I think you are right that a lot of it is about what the characters being redeemed are focused on. And there is the whole metaphorical aspect. And of course the whole protaganist structure makes it difficult, too. Plus, you have to tell an exciting story. Making Robin Wood the son of some random woman is a lot less exciting that making him the son of a slayer.

(I do actually think the AR works better than, say, Spike trying to bite her; while that would code more closely to how Spike treats his usual victims, his problem, w.r.t. Buffy, is that he genuinely thinks that he doesn't *hurt her*, that she is exempt from his trail of destruction, and so it makes sense to me that he hurts her in a way that is consistent with him believing himself to be a good man -- i.e. him trying to convince her to love him again as a 'man'.)

Yeah, I think making it an attempted rape was the perfect choice for Spike, within story, but on the other hand it raised all sorts of real life issues that the writers were obviously not prepared to deal with. And it wouldn't have made any sense for Spike getting a shiny new soul to redeem him for over a century of rampage, but not trying to rape Buffy. So it was definitey a tricky story to write.

(That, and, of course, that Faith and Spike are 'bad' when they do their bad deeds, whereas Buffy is supposed to be the hero.)

But is Faith "bad" when she attacks Xander? At what point did Faith cross the line from being "good" to being "bad"? She's on her way down to being "bad", but if she hadn't gone any farther down than attacking Xander, than would she still have been one of the "bad guys"?

Faith is very heavily focused on Buffy, Angel and Wesley (and Giles, depending on whether you take comics canon or not)

Don't read the comics, but I always thought it was interesting that Faith never does anything to directly hurt Giles (and she even defends him to Gwen Post, back in "Revelations"). I think he is the only person in the gang whom she never hurts or seriously threatens.

I know a lot of people don't buy Willow as having accepted responsibility for Villains - Grave, but I really disagree.

Usually the argument I hear is something along the lines of, "She should have been punished more." That just a summer vacation wasn't enough of a punishment for everything she did. Which begs the question--is punishment really necessary fora redemption story? What kind of punishment? Who decides what punishment is sufficient?