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Hi guys! Happy new year!!!

Here's my full reaction to episode 13, hope you enjoy!


https://1ct7.short.gy/RM5jPa

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Christopher simeon

I don't think you can understand it sora. Buffy is using spike to feel. Fucking him is not from love. She is depressed and dopamine and the dangerous aspect of spike makes her feel. She feels something with him yes but she does not love him in that way you want. The fact that she is so unhappy and seems so divided with it is supposed to tell you that this is not normal. Normal buffy does not like spike. She does not do these things. She is depressed. You are also missing something big. When spike thought his chip stopped working first thing he did was try to attack a women. Here he shows lack of caring about a woman's life. This is not real change. Spike does not have a soul. He is a vicious dog who is nice because he can not bite He learned nothing about empathy. Selfish love is not real love. He is a demon. You always hurt the ones you love is not a good thing. When you love someone you never hurt them intentionally.

Scarlet

I disagree with the commenter above as I think it is far more nuanced than that. I think it is important to note that Buffy and Spike are both victims and perpetrators of the unhealthy aspects in their relationship. They are both in bad places leading to stunting of the relationship at the moment and turning it into something unhealthy. This is true of relationships in real life, conflict arises from an interaction of different behaviours, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings between people. From Buffy’s position, she was ripped out of heaven and thus feels disconnected from the world and living. Because of this she does not feel human and therefore does not feel good enough (she guilts herself in Once More with Feeling talking about all the things “I should” be fighting for). I think this is also a belief she has wrestled with for a long time as she experienced crushing doubt around her worth with Glory, when Riley left, and with Angel when he left, she sent him to hell, and he turned into Angelus after sleeping with her. She also noted it in Nightmares in season 1 where she feared her father rejecting her because she was not good enough. With everything that has happened this has been compounded to an extent leading to feelings of depression now. I think she did genuinely connect with Spike which is why she is able to feel something when she is with him and also seeks him out at the end of season 5 and in the earlier episodes of the sixth season. But she was and is so in her own head that she is not aware of why this is. When she kissed Spike at the end of Once More with Feeling she realised that this could bring some degree of emotion from her and so repeated the behaviour at times where things felt too overwhelming so as to lose herself in feeling. This was done without regard for Spike or his feelings because she was desperately scrabbling to get rid of the numbness and avoid uncomfortable emotions. What she also does is work to sabotage any good from the relationship. I think she does this because Spike has become representative of herself. She picked him initially because she felt he too was inhuman (like she felt she was) and thus for her to admit there is anything good in him would be to admit that there is anything good in herself (she says this to him when she says things like “there is nothing good or clean in you” and “you’re dead inside”, she is really talking to herself). This is why I think she fights admitting he can love her, he can change, their relationship can have anything good, he can have anything good to him (obviously he too is flawed because he too is a person, but she cannot accept that because to do so would also to accept that in herself). Furthermore, I think this is compounded by the fact that she was told that Angelus could not love her because he did not have a soul. She has held onto the idea of a soul so tightly as a black and white line in the sand of good and evil that to relinquish it now would mean having to accept some areas of grey in the world, in her work, in her relationships, and in herself and she is not ready for that. This is also a theme the show plays with often and I think at times falls flat on and does not capture sufficiently. On the other hand, we have Spike. Spike has been losing parts of his identity for a long time, but particularly in season four. When Spike turned into a vampire, he completely rejected his past self, I believe because he viewed that as the self that was easily hurt and rejected by others. Thus, so he could not be hurt again he fashioned a new identity, with a new accent and mannerisms who was impulsive, unpredictable, reckless, and violent because he viewed that as someone who could not be hurt again. This was also viewed as acceptable in the culture he was living in (the demon and vampire world) and thus his morals adjusted accordingly (helped by the fact that he no longer had a soul to guide him). However, we cannot avoid hurt and vulnerability and we cannot erase our past selves completely. So, when he is injured in season two, he experiences vulnerability again, leading to anger at being made to feel it again and thus his alliance with Buffy against Angelus. He experiences vulnerability again in season three when Dru leaves him, and this leads to unpredictable and violent behaviour such as lashing out with Willow and wanting to get revenge on Angel. In season four he is chipped and at this point he is forced to abandon parts of this protective identity, he cannot afford to be completely reckless and is unable to be violent how he is used to. Because of this he feels adrift and purposeless but also vulnerable again, the most vulnerable he has been for a hundred years. This leads to his attempts to stake himself (though it is played for laughs in the show). I also think this leads to his alliance with Adam briefly as he feels it is a chance to step back into this identity and gain some degree of power and protection back. When he finds out that he is in love with Buffy in season 5, he is still trying to cling to the dregs of this personality and is actually ashamed that he feels something for her. Thus, you can see him try to fight his interest in her, but he is unable to, leading to some poor decisions (underwear stealing and the robot). These decisions are also compounded by the fact that he has been outside the norms of the human world for so long and he no longer has a soul, so he has difficulty discerning what is appropriate. This is not helped by the fact that he is heavily rejected by the Scoobies and particularly Buffy herself meaning that he has few ways of learning what is appropriate or people to support him while he builds a new identity. He seems to be just working this out a little towards the end of season 5 where he tells her “I know you’ll never love me, I know that I’m a monster” and then Buffy dies. Following Buffy’s death, he tries to keep building this more human identity as this is what he felt Buffy would have wanted and approved of and this seems to work as to a degree he is accepted by the others. However grief is making this difficult, when Buffy returns, he is immediately told this was not correct, he was not accepted (see Xander’s talk to him when he is crying outside the house) and he becomes an outsider again. He sees however that Buffy keeps seeking him out and seems to be connecting with him and telling him things. However, this is painful as he knows this is not necessarily because she actually cares about him (see the lyrics of Rest in Peace), despite what part of him may hope, but he is willing to be what she needs at the moment. When she kisses him, he is given a glimmer of the hope of connection with her. Spike is a character that has been chasing connection his whole life and not receiving it, and so he latches onto it. He pushes and he pushes because he is desperate to be wanted and accepted. However, this is rapidly rejected by Buffy until she needs to escape her feelings again, so she seeks him out again at the end of Tabula Rasa. When he thinks the chip has failed, he goes to bite a woman to test it and also fights Buffy as a last attempt to salvage the protective personality he had crafted for himself and also remind Buffy of it to send the message that he can’t be hurt by her (of course he can but he’s trying to make himself seem like less of a target). When they sleep together, he is hopeful again and allows vulnerability to appear, but Buffy is so disgusted with herself she cannot accept any part of the vulnerability he presents her. This leads to a pattern of aggressive responses and interactions between them. This is a pattern that repeats with Spike showing vulnerability, her rejecting it violently because she feels it represents her own, and then him in turn lashing out at having his vulnerability rejected and therefore himself. It is incredibly frustrating and sad to see because both have such fantastic potential to grow as people and grow the relationship into something helpful together but the cycle they have put themselves in stunts this. Both characters are not behaving in helpful ways but they are behaving in understandable ones.

Marty

Rewatching this episode after many times i just realised something I didn’t before.. when buffy is telling Tara at the end about spike, she is convinced she came back wrong, when Tara tells her there’s nothing wrong with her she doesnt accept it because she says “I don’t understand why I feel this way”, and when Tara asks her if she loves him or if she’s using him she doesn’t answer but she just says “what is right about using him?” And begs Tara to tell her she is wrong. Now, she’s going with using him, because she wants to believe she is, because she knows that it would be wrong and she wants to believe she is wrong, because that would be better then accepting to be in love with him. And before that she tells the gang “you always hurt the one you love” which is what spike told her before. So, if I had any doubts buffy loved spike before, it’s clear to me now that she does. And to answer your question Sora, I think you hit the nail in the head comparing spike to ted bundy, buffy says it herself in s5 that the chip doesn’t change hiM and just holds him back and he’s just like a serial killer in prison. True, the chip doesn’t change him, and if I do believe that spike had change a little even tho buffy can’t see that, he’s still a vampire after all, and he’s not capable of understanding human things like the guilt of killing someone, and wanting to do the right thing by turning oneself in, he just can’t comprehend it because of the lack of soul. That’s why buffy is so conflicted, she can’t accept to be in love with a murderer, even if not currently, but with the same mentality of a ted bundy.

Marty

I still think spike went through some changes tho, not enough to completely control his demon but enought to go and get his soul willingly in the first place, there are ints of that already back in season 5, like when drusilla comes back and kills that girl to help him feed, there’s a long pause where he hesitates and seems conflicted, he still gives in eventually (and why wouldn’t he, there’s blood and he’s a vampire, besides the girl is already dead) but the fact that he hesitates means that he knew it was wrong and and it’s already a character development, season 4 spike have bit her right away, he wouldn’t have given any though, but now somehow buffy has become his moral compass. For buffy tho, he’s still the same soulless vampire, and knowing his past and everything he’s done, I would question my morals too if I developed feelings for a serial killer, so I don’t blame her for feeling this way.