"You faced the monster inside of you, and you fought back."
That quote always brings me to tears. Because it's so true. It's an acknowledgement that Soulless Spike was more than just the demon that possessed him when he died. William remained. Suppressed and controlled by the vampire soul inside of him, but still there. And when that trace of who he had been as a human fell in love with Buffy, it grew stronger and stronger and stronger. And being surrounded by good people increased it even more. Especially the love he grew to have for Dawn as well, because I absolutely believe that he loved her too, and the fact that it was a paternal love rather than a romantic love was, I think, helpful on an even deeper level. Spike was surrounded by love, and that bit of William that remained was bolstered so much by that love that it grew stronger than his vampire soul. He faced the monster inside of him, and he fought back. And he fucking won.
Hence why it canât be demonic possession.
Demonic possession doesnât work like that.
Sure, there was a demon.
But the demon was HIM. Spike was always an evolution and corruption of William. If it was an actual possession, then none of William would be there to find because it wouldnât be William the entity that became âSpikeâ.
âSpikeâ would just be some random demon that identity-thefted âWilliamâ when it took his body.
The demon couldnât have replicated âWilliamâ.
So the answer is that âWilliamâ was always in Spike.
So itâs not a possession. Itâs a corruption.
Thatâs why âSpikeâ doesnât just disappear when he gets a soul. Because he was never just a random demon.
He was âWilliamâ as a demon.
And âWilliamâ just fought the demon side of him.
And I really would argue that every single vampire in the Buffyverse is this way besides Angel. Angel is an outlier.
Angel is only a possession simply because Angel says so because he cannot reconcile with his dark side. He is ashamed of it. Reviles it. So he split-identifies from it.
Willow does the exact same thing with âDark Willowâ.
But no one says that Dark Willow is a different entity because we are aware that the dark magic corrupts her.
Basically⌠itâs just a psychological thing. Itâs not real.
This is proven in the Angel episode âEternityâ where Angel turns evil over a fucking Placebo effect. The soul isnât even involved at all. Itâs the mind. Always the mind.
And how different Angel was. It was a completely different person. And then Spike came and broke all their narrative, lol.
The arguments that souled/unsouled vampires are different people drive me crazy because they betray intellectual incuriosity about the source material. You're engaging on a surface level and that's fine for you, but insisting that the surface level is the correct read is boring and media illiterate.
For one thing, it suggests that the line we hear in Lie to Me (That's not how it works. You die. And a demon sets up shop in your old house. It walks and talks and remembers your life but it's not you.) is the final authority, when the entire season that follows it is about reconciling with how wrong this is. It's something Buffy says to Ford; something she says that she was taught by her watcher(s), who were instructed by the Council, who is demonstrated in every. single. interaction. they have with any of our characters to be inherently self-serving, underhanded, ruthless, and incredibly black-and-white in how they not only view demons, but their own slayers. The Slayer is not a person, but a weapon, and their intent is to use that weapon the way THEY see fit. Weapons that can question the doctrine are dangerous.
Furthermore, this might have been the general conceit of the show at its inception, but the show outgrew its inception pretty damn quick. For instance, Angel wasn't supposed to survive past S2. He went on to his own show that is fundamentally about his struggle for redemption, which makes no sense at all without first acknowledging that he is responsible for his actions, whether they are souled or not. For if he's not, why even fight? Why not just say "that's not me" and walk away?
And then, in the end, we get to Spike. Spike is a rejection of this philosophy and not only does this make for a better story, it makes for a more nuanced world. It's boring if all vampires are evil and all nonvampires are good. What makes Buffy standout is its eventual, even reluctant willingness to go places that are not black and white. To put the idea of responsibility and accountability on the table and see how different characters interact with it. To question what makes a monster and have the answer be more interesting than "a set of fangs."
I have done a lot of thinking and discussion about vampires and souls since I made this post, and came to the conclusion that a vampire soul does not have a mind of its own; it's simply a set of violent instincts that are instilled in a human, and suppresses their ability to have empathy and sympathy for others. But William's ability to love and care for others was so profound that even the violent and cruel instincts that came with the vampire soul weren't able to take those things away from him.
In other words, please don't tell me I have intellectual incuriosity.
That statement was never aimed at the OP, fwiw, rather people who take the S1 line on souls to be gospel truth without questioning the motives of the people who expose it and refuse to engage with the rest of the canonical evidence we're given to the contrary.
Obviously if you engage with the idea at all, regardless of conclusion, you are not intellectually incurious.
I appreciate that, but it did rather sound like you were directing the comment at me, and I find it frustrating that to this day people are reblogging the version of this post which ends with the post you made that seems to imply that. I wish people would stop doing that. It's hurtful. I'm a very curious person, and I think a great deal about everything that catches my interest. It's very rare for me to simply accept the surface level of a topic.
I don't really blame you, I'm just exhausted and your words unintentionally pressed a sore spot. I loved my father, and he loved me and did his best, but when I was a kid he would sneer at me anytime I seemed to not be curious about something he found interesting, and he would call me uncurious about the world. Which just wasn't ever true.
I apologize for getting so personal, and that this response is a year later(this post has just been reblogged and liked a lot the last couple days), but I wanted to explain my reaction. I hope you can understand.
