Skanky Vamp
Sniffin' the Slayer
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2008
- Messages
- 26,460
2 vampires with a soul - A mistake?
MarieVampSlayer
Bloody hell, Sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers..
Yeah exactly! Maybe they could have been at odd for one episode but in the end the team up of Angel and Spike is more rewarding in their character development than them fighting over jealousy. And like @Cheese Slices said, Spike was quite different in S5 of Ats than he was in S7 of Buffy!
Cheese Slices
A Bidet of Evil
Harmony didn't try plot to off him in her torture lair, so there is that. None of his attitude towards harmony matches the way he behaved in S7 (hell, even his behavior in S6 was better than that), Buffy or not.
MarieVampSlayer
Bloody hell, Sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers..
I was referring to the I am the only one joke they made throughtout S5 of Angel and even in Chosen during Angel's talk with Buffy. The whole want to be special bouhou joke that they made with Angel for me was very unnecessary at this point in Angel's journey!
As for Darla it was a whole different story as she only had a temporary soul that was attached to Connor and she didn't have the time to grow from it enough I think.
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
Spike shows very little interest in anyone besides Buffy throughout S7. I would argue soulless Spike was more sociable. Soulless Spike loved Joyce and Dawn, was nice to Anya and was able to point out when Willow was feeling bad. Souled Spike is Buffy, Buffy, Buffy.
MarieVampSlayer
Bloody hell, Sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers..
Depends on the season of BTVS but in the end I love them both for different reason.
And if you are referring to my children, I only have one so yeah he is my favorite!
Skanky Vamp
I meant your kids
MarieVampSlayer
Bloody hell, Sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers..
badsister
Angel's Avenger
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2018
- Messages
- 416
ah that. i thought you were talking about how they've dealt with having a soul, it came certainly easier for Spike
Skanky Vamp
Sniffin' the Slayer
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2008
- Messages
- 26,460
Them fighting over jealousy and stupid stuff is exactly what I would want of them. Hell, you put soled Angel and Spike together and it could be a 30 minute sitcom. They played well off of one another- even going back to S2- but they were more for laughs than anything else. At least to me.
Cheese Slices
A Bidet of Evil
I think shame has a lot to do with it. He tries to reconnect with Dawn by calling her by her pet name, and that ends up badly. However, when he accidently hurts her while being triggered, he is worried about her. Similarily, he is the one who saves Xander from Caleb and carries him out of vinyard - not to mention his 'commanding' Buffy to get everyone out of dodge when the fight turns badly. He saves Anya from the demon assassin and is worried that he hurt someone while he was triggered in 7x09. He also takes active part in the group dynamics by training the potentials.
Overall I agree that he's not as sociable as in the previous seasons, but it makes sense. Buffy is the only one who truly knows him at that point and - let's be honest- wants him there. The others are either neutral or somewhat hostile, not exactly the best relationship development soil.
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
@Cheese Slices There is a bit of good!Spike on AtS, too, though. There is his gratitude to Fred and his concern for the mad slayer.
Cheese Slices
Agreed ! Just not enough to be worth it, imo ;)
MarieVampSlayer
Fred is the only meaningful relationship for Spike in S5 of Ats!
SES SA
Potential
- Joined
- May 24, 2018
- Messages
- 205
- Age
- 35
Yeah, I feel like the Vampire with a soul thing was so out there that it should have only happened once. I don't think it cheapens Angel's arc, as others have said it hammers home that Angel is not a champion just because of his soul. It's who he is and having him around makes people/creatures like Faith, Spike, Lindsey (slightly) and Darla better than they were without him. But I do think it adds something to his story to be the ONLY vampire in history to have a soul.
Vampire personality has always been debatable. You could ask a bunch of different people and get a bunch of different answers. Spike is the most glaring one because there is essentially no difference between souled Spike and evil Spike. Having said that, Darla was sort of the same with a soul. Until Angel helped her, that is.
Yeah, Spike did reconcile having 100 years experience of murder, torture and rape awfully quickly.
I am with you on love triangles. They have become so lazy and trite in almost all forms of media. The Wesley/Fred/Gunn triangle was not a favourite of mine.
Do I think having two vampires with souls was a good idea? Not really. I think it adds something to Angel's story to be alone in having a soul and I think Spike did not need a soul for his story to be strong or complete.
Vampire personality has always been debatable. You could ask a bunch of different people and get a bunch of different answers. Spike is the most glaring one because there is essentially no difference between souled Spike and evil Spike. Having said that, Darla was sort of the same with a soul. Until Angel helped her, that is.
Yeah, Spike did reconcile having 100 years experience of murder, torture and rape awfully quickly.
I am with you on love triangles. They have become so lazy and trite in almost all forms of media. The Wesley/Fred/Gunn triangle was not a favourite of mine.
Do I think having two vampires with souls was a good idea? Not really. I think it adds something to Angel's story to be alone in having a soul and I think Spike did not need a soul for his story to be strong or complete.
MarieVampSlayer
Yes we agree, almost hahaha and I agree on the Fred/Wesley/Gunn who was even worse IMO!
J
joseph
Guest
YES IT WAS D
yes it was dumb but here a real twist why could it not be a female vampire say Drusilla, or Darla. why did they have to kill her in season 1.
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
thrasherpix
Scooby
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2016
- Messages
- 5,314
- Age
- 43
Spike with a soul would've been interesting to me had it been done differently (and I'd have liked it better if he got his soul as a nasty trick, that he'd gone to get his free will back, which to him meant getting his chip out, but the demon twisted it and instead gave him his soul, and then he went back to Buffy not to kill her, but to make amends, and the ONLY reason he's staying is because he knows the First is here, and he sees fighting the first as at least a step in the right direction to his redemption), like him returning the leather coat to Robin with a sincere apology (in which case I'd be much more on Buffy's side than I was when she ordered him to drop his vendetta). Had it gone that way then I'd be a lot more positive about it.
Unfortunately, it all just feels like Spuffy fan service to me that hijacked the season rather than a serious story.
Unfortunately, it all just feels like Spuffy fan service to me that hijacked the season rather than a serious story.
Ethan Reigns
Scooby
What's all this nonsense about only two vampires with souls?
The gypsies had a complicated ritual that they performed flawlessly that did exactly what was expected. When Angelus was turned into Angel, the gypsy told him what to expect - that all the memories would flood back into his mind in a period lasting for minutes and that this would be torture. They must have done this spell before. They had it written down, even though it was in a different language. They knew about the "moment of happiness" problem with the spell which is why they had Jenny shadowing Angel in the first place. I suspect they had used this spell often enough before Angel that they knew exactly what to expect from it and the amount of time each stage would take and had seen the moment of happiness revert another vampire to his original self. By contrast, we saw from Willow's spells just how tricky spells can be but this one went off without a hitch.
Similarly, the African demon who returned Spike's soul seemed to know what he was doing and had probably done the same thing before.
The other ensouled vampires would probably have been dusted (or dusted themselves) so there may not be another one left but certainly there were more before the present time.
The gypsies had a complicated ritual that they performed flawlessly that did exactly what was expected. When Angelus was turned into Angel, the gypsy told him what to expect - that all the memories would flood back into his mind in a period lasting for minutes and that this would be torture. They must have done this spell before. They had it written down, even though it was in a different language. They knew about the "moment of happiness" problem with the spell which is why they had Jenny shadowing Angel in the first place. I suspect they had used this spell often enough before Angel that they knew exactly what to expect from it and the amount of time each stage would take and had seen the moment of happiness revert another vampire to his original self. By contrast, we saw from Willow's spells just how tricky spells can be but this one went off without a hitch.
Similarly, the African demon who returned Spike's soul seemed to know what he was doing and had probably done the same thing before.
The other ensouled vampires would probably have been dusted (or dusted themselves) so there may not be another one left but certainly there were more before the present time.
MarieVampSlayer
You are right but I meant 2 on the show not in the whole verse!
Yes, it was a mistake. Partly because it was trite, it was like they had run out of ideas and decided to tell the same story again. Yes, different people, different reactions… but the fundamentals remained the same and it just seems like they had run out of excuses for Buffy to sleep with someone without a soul and instead of continuing to explore that they had to justify her attachment to Spike by shoving a soul down his throat. *yawn*
Add to this that
I'm not going to say laughable, but it reminds me of Vampire Diaries and their enchanted "can walk in the sun" jewellry. You get a ring, you get a ring.. and yoouuuu get a ring!
When they introduced the whole soul thing in season 1 it seemed marginally fresh. By season 6-7 it was like vampires are so romanticized as monsters that there are no drawbacks anymore. Being a vampire is nothing but sexy and glamorous and fun. No wonder Bella couldn't wait to be vamped up in Twilight, there are no real consequences to being a "monster" anymore. I'm almost surprised Buffy doesn't have fangs yet considering this adoration for young-forever-good-monsters thing.
Further more, it flips the script and makes Buffy the monster. She's been killing vampires for years, when it seems like she should have been reforming them. Clearly, the Initiative of all things were onto something. This isn't about a cursed vampire, this is about vampires willingly being "good" and choosing good. Sure you could argue that Spike's a very special vampire who was turned good by Buffy's lady bits, but Harmony is perfectly capable of being decent as well. So, we've gone from a series about a girl who slays monsters, to a series about how monsters are people too. Guess that works for some, but to me it seems like the changed the whole premise of the verse for the sake of one character/couple, which is *meh* to me.
Wasn't there already one?
Add to this that
I'm not going to say laughable, but it reminds me of Vampire Diaries and their enchanted "can walk in the sun" jewellry. You get a ring, you get a ring.. and yoouuuu get a ring!
When they introduced the whole soul thing in season 1 it seemed marginally fresh. By season 6-7 it was like vampires are so romanticized as monsters that there are no drawbacks anymore. Being a vampire is nothing but sexy and glamorous and fun. No wonder Bella couldn't wait to be vamped up in Twilight, there are no real consequences to being a "monster" anymore. I'm almost surprised Buffy doesn't have fangs yet considering this adoration for young-forever-good-monsters thing.
Further more, it flips the script and makes Buffy the monster. She's been killing vampires for years, when it seems like she should have been reforming them. Clearly, the Initiative of all things were onto something. This isn't about a cursed vampire, this is about vampires willingly being "good" and choosing good. Sure you could argue that Spike's a very special vampire who was turned good by Buffy's lady bits, but Harmony is perfectly capable of being decent as well. So, we've gone from a series about a girl who slays monsters, to a series about how monsters are people too. Guess that works for some, but to me it seems like the changed the whole premise of the verse for the sake of one character/couple, which is *meh* to me.
Wasn't there already one?
Skanky Vamp
It being trite is a reason why it could have worked
thetopher
Member of the Church Of Faith
I think having Spike with a soul does a good job of highlighting why an ensouled Angel is the way he is and why he is special, there are episodes in AtS S5 that illustrate this very well ('Damage' is great for this). And having two souled vampires can explore the differing ways of what it means to have a soul, to have a demon and a conscience both weighing you down..
And I agree that just like Kendra and Faith were there to highlight why Buffy is special...But the difference is that those were deliberate comparisons and written that way, its why Kendra and Faith were introduced in the first place.
But when the Buffy writers gave Spike a soul he wasn't supposed to live past the end of S7 so any mirroring of highlighting of differences before AtS is mostly unintentional and is mostly kinda shallow (its even mocked in 'Destiny') In S7 its about the Spuffy romance not about Spike coming to terms with his humanity.
Spike might undergo a moral change as when he gets a soul (his shift goes from 'demon' to 'Buffy') but he undergoes no significant personality shift whatsoever, so its hard to give any weight to the magnitude of what he went through. I mean, he's driven insane by The First, is forced to kill for it, battles through an apocalypse and experiences an important revelation regarding the most significant person in his mortal life- his mother (something that has shaped his personality from its very inception). So what personality changes might this sort of thing cause? Not much apparently.
He just...gets over it and moves on. I think that's the only real substantive issue I have with his story; I can deal with his truncated moral journey (I don't like it but that's separate) because having a soul doesn't necessarily mean 'nice'- nor has it ever- but his lack of growth in other areas (at least until going over to Angel) is incredibly boring, especially given the amount of screen time he takes up in Buffy's final season.
Maybe if the writers had known ahead of time where they were taking his character the whole arc would've been more coherent. As it is his redemption over on Angel is absolutely the only thing that saves his 'souled' arc.
And I agree that just like Kendra and Faith were there to highlight why Buffy is special...But the difference is that those were deliberate comparisons and written that way, its why Kendra and Faith were introduced in the first place.
But when the Buffy writers gave Spike a soul he wasn't supposed to live past the end of S7 so any mirroring of highlighting of differences before AtS is mostly unintentional and is mostly kinda shallow (its even mocked in 'Destiny') In S7 its about the Spuffy romance not about Spike coming to terms with his humanity.
Spike might undergo a moral change as when he gets a soul (his shift goes from 'demon' to 'Buffy') but he undergoes no significant personality shift whatsoever, so its hard to give any weight to the magnitude of what he went through. I mean, he's driven insane by The First, is forced to kill for it, battles through an apocalypse and experiences an important revelation regarding the most significant person in his mortal life- his mother (something that has shaped his personality from its very inception). So what personality changes might this sort of thing cause? Not much apparently.
He just...gets over it and moves on. I think that's the only real substantive issue I have with his story; I can deal with his truncated moral journey (I don't like it but that's separate) because having a soul doesn't necessarily mean 'nice'- nor has it ever- but his lack of growth in other areas (at least until going over to Angel) is incredibly boring, especially given the amount of screen time he takes up in Buffy's final season.
Maybe if the writers had known ahead of time where they were taking his character the whole arc would've been more coherent. As it is his redemption over on Angel is absolutely the only thing that saves his 'souled' arc.