Nikki14

BTVS was soooooo crazy because joss whedon was like "I'm going to write an incel revenge fantasy where I turn the leather wearing bad boy I was jealous of in high school into a loser cuck! I'm going to literally paralyze him from the waist down so his dick doesn't work and then make him watch his girlfriend make out with a guy taller than him and call that guy daddy in front of him! I'm going to write a million scenes of him getting beat up by girls and even show him having to be rescued by a girl in a princess carry and another scene where he gets tortured by a girl and have mad scientists metaphorically castrate him on a lab table and I'll write a weirdly homoerotic scene in which the boyfriend of the woman he's in love with breaks into his home and shoves him against a wall and impales him with a plastic phallic object" and james marsters was like "sounds hot I can't wait to play this character I'm going to make him look slutty and turned on the entire time" and five million teen girls gays and theys in the viewing audience had the weirdest possible sexual awakening

i do think a lot of people arguing over preferring angel or spike as characters really just boils down to spike being a lover cursed to be a monster, angel being a monster cursed to be a lover, and different people are just more compelled by one or the other

and this might be incredibly obvious or whatever but one of if not the most important acting choices jm made as spike without really knowing if his character would have a future or whatever is one million percent the first time spike sees buffy in school hard at the bronze. it both intentionally and unintentionally sets up their entire dynamic for the entire series and it blows my mind. jm said he always played up the attraction and it really works but it's this look at buffy, this look that feels like it lasts both a really long time and not a long time at all, human face with wide interested eyes--but they aren't seductive, predator-like eyes, it's a lot like how he will eventually look at her on the show. but only we the audience get to see it. a lot of the love/attraction that we see spike express is out of view of buffy and in view of the audience instead! in the bronze, the only version of spike that buffy sees is the one he allows her to see and wants her to see, the predator, the mystery, the slayer-killer. the contrast of the two scenes sets up their relationship and who he is and his personal growth journey--- the dichotomy between man and monster and is one enabling the other in him? is the man in him helping the monster or deflating the monster, and is he under control?

Never forget that Spike never needed a soul to be completely and irredeemably devoted at Buffy’s feet.

Never forget that Spike never needed a soul to be completely and irredeemably devoted at Buffy’s feet.