bloodyhellgranger

[bloodyhellgranger]

Buffy and Spike + text posts

[bloodyhellgranger]

So, how’d you kill her? Funny you should ask. “School Hard” | “Fool for Love”

[bloodyhellgranger]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.16 | “Hell’s Bells” 6.18 | “Entropy”

[bloodyhellgranger]

Spike lips! Lips of Spike!

[bloodyhellgranger]

“Would you have loved me?”

buffy the vampire slayer, becoming ii // angel, a hole in the world // buffy the vampire slayer, fool for love // angel, a hole in the world

[bloodyhellgranger]

E v e r y night I save you.

(remake of this post x)

[bloodyhellgranger]

You risked everything to be a better man. And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I believe in you, Spike.

[bloodyhellgranger]

All I ask is that you try to see me.

[bloodyhellgranger]

Spike and Buffy always being on each others' weak sides :)

(Partially inspired by this post but also the fact that even in pangs he's on her left and that made me insane)

[bloodyhellgranger]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 2.22 | “Becoming: Part 2”

[bloodyhellgranger]

buffy realises she loves spike

you hide yourself but i see you clear one man who said he would die to save his world

[bloodyhellgranger]

— Come in, Spike. [A beat, as he tries not to show how moved he is by those three words. He steps gingerly in.]

[bloodyhellgranger]

Buffy & Spike + “on your left…”

[bloodyhellgranger]

spuffy truly is just… unbelievable. i think the reason this ship gets me is that it goes so far beyond what a ship usually does, it’s what it encompasses, what it represents, what it’s ABOUT. the struggle between good and evil. the nature of love. being alive. humanity.

on one hand you’ve got buffy the vampire slayer, the chosen one in her generation, she alone who will stand against the vampires. on the other hand you’ve got spike, william the bloody, one of the most evil vampires of his time, named after his favourite torture method, the slayer of slayers. and then the show goes what if… he fell in love with her?

but that wasn’t supposed to happen. spike was supposed to be killed off, buffy’s great love was supposed to be angel. according to the show’s soul lore it shouldn’t even be possible. yet it does happen… turning everything upside down in the process. the show is forced to redefine what it previously established, redefine the way it understood vampires, the way it created them.

it’s forced to raise the question of how much, in a vampire, there is left of the human they used to be, and to what extent the kind of person they were before affects their personality as a vampire (william being first and foremost someone who loves), and really by asking what makes a vampire it’s asking what makes us human. obviously the answer is love.

and so you end up with this beautiful, tragic struggle between a girl whose entire purpose in life is based on the belief that a soulless vampire is an evil being who can’t feel anything real and who’s not capable of love (‘you’re dead inside’), and a soulless vampire who loves her with the utmost devotion despite his twisted ways and longs to be loved in return (‘and he will be loved’) even when he knows it’s impossible.

no matter how she feels she cannot let herself love him, because he doesn’t have a soul. he’s the undead and she comes back to life, but she feels dead inside (this isn’t real/but i just want to feel) while he feels a little more alive (i died so many years ago/you can make me feel). in order for them to meet she has to lower herself down to his level (beneath her), which she does for a time, or he has to raise himself up to her level (to be a kind of man), which he does eventually. they both have to face the monster inside of them, which they see reflected in the other person. she goes to heaven and back, losing a piece of herself, not fitting in anymore, and falls into the darkness with him (i touch the fire and it freezes me/i look into it and it’s black); he goes to hell and back, finding the missing piece that would make him fit, and rises into the light with her (they put the spark in me and now all it does is burn).

spuffy is about how treating someone with dignity and respect, believing in their ability to do good, to be good, to be better than they were, will make even the most evil, unredeemable monster want to change (‘i know that i’m a monster, but you treat me like a man’). will make something want to become someone, will make a man do what he musn’t, will make a vampire get his soul back despite the agony of it. it’s a love so great it makes a character fight and change his own nature, a show rewrite its own lore. idk… i think that’s pretty neat.

[bloodyhellgranger]

I don’t think I need to remind you, but– Yeah, yeah. “Anything happens to ‘em, I’ll stake you good and proper.” Sing me a new one sometime, eh? That bit’s gone stale.

[bloodyhellgranger]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.09 | “Smashed”

[bloodyhellgranger]

this little excerpt from a fic i was reading really got me thinking about a big reason behind my dislike of buffy only saying "i love you" right as spike is sacrificing himself:

"She’d said it to Angel: Spike was in her heart. She knew she was in his. She couldn’t say the words to him, it seemed, but she was pretty sure he’d be able to read between the lines, as he always did." "With This Ring" by Rebcake

i think this is exactly what buffy (and the writers) was thinking in s7, but although the sentiment is nice: it is totally not fair. the crux of spike and buffy's entire romantic relationship in s6 is that spike does know buffy, he can sense that she has feelings for him -- but it's his assertion (and the resulting, relentless pursuit) of this correctly made assumption that drives buffy further away; and leads to the lowest point in their relationship.

buffy believing and expecting spike to "read between the lines" is in total betrayal of all the progress he's made from ''seeing red" to then. he's learned to respect complete consent -- on every level. whether it's with simple touch, sexually, or emotionally.

spike spent his entire relationship with buffy reading and acting on what he knew/believed buffy's emotions were, but that died with his soul -- and the fact that s7 consistently pussyfooted around what buffy feels (both by buffy and the narrative) is counter productive.

spike cannot assume or understand what buffy wants/feels without her explicitly stating it. and for buffy to have the expectation (whether this was a conscious decision by the writers or not) is a complete misunderstanding and lack of care for the spike and buffy dynamic -- and spike's growth overall.