Okay here goes.

testy mctest

Whoa! Is there nothing that scientist can't do these days?

Buffy didn't instantly trust Angel, nor was she able to be 100% comfortable with him all the way through S3. Enemies, for example. That's part of why bringing him back worked. They showed the aftermath, and the discomfort. They showed the whole adjustment.

Angel wasn't Angelus, but no one just accepted it and moved on. They dealt, sometimes painfully, with it. Had they SHOWN rather than TOLD us what was going on with Spike, it could have played better.

Thanks for the link, P.M. - a good read. I agree - the aftermath wasn't dealt with nearly well enough for Spike. I fanwanked much that we didn't see. And, I agree that the metaphor is dicey -- it doesn't actually work for me (soul/no-soul) in any real world metaphor way. I have been able to ignore that fact and use my take on it to allow me to understand and evaluate things to my own satisfaction in the 'verse's terms (not perfectly, but enough so that it doesn't kill the joy for me because of something making the kind of sense that's not. And, off-topic, I adore Oz).

edited to fix the quote

Had they SHOWN rather than TOLD us what was going on with Spike, it could have played better.

Exactly. With Angel/us, we were shown that they were different. With Spike, NSM. We had to be repeatedly told "he has a soul now, it's different" because the soul didn't seem to have changed him in any way. It was merely a means to the end of making it okay for Buffy to have feelings for him. (And the rape merely a means to getting him a soul.) And IMO, both events are far too huge to have been used in such a shallow manner.

I think that part of the issue is that the Darla->Angelus->Drusilla->Spike line of vamps have much stronger human components in their makeup. If they work at it, only a semblance of a darker human echo is left.

Darla and Angelus purged much of the humanity, as evidenced by the Judge not being able to burn Angelus.

Dru (perhaps because she was driven insane first?) did not or had not overcome her humanity, and subsequently Vamp!William was much like William with backbone.

Indeed, the making of spike is traced back to events soon after vamping. We got some of that in Fool For Love when Angelus confronts Spike for his change. In Lies My Parents Told Me, we find out more. Vamp!William was so very very human and immediately vamped his mother.

However, in a twist on fate, Vamp!Mother immediately had a strong vamp component and managed to inflict maximum pain almost immediately, sending Vamp!William into the rage and anger and bitterness and betrayal that forged Spike. Spike rejected his past in a very human way, and reinvented himself by hardening his heart and becoming what he pictured as a badass.

Eventually this stayed part of his persona, because detached from humanity, seeing them as meals that walk, he could keep the anger up.

However, putting in the chip changed things. He could no longer immediately feed the vamp part of his souled by continuous bloodlust. He started having longer and longer periods where he had to be more human. A vague memory of being nice and being considerate and being concerned started to emerge. Spike started to be more Vamp!William and yet, the burden of his personality forged over a hundred years of rejection made the journey slow.

Even when he thought the chip had stopped working, he tried to retreat into the easier world of bloodlust. But it was too late, had it actually been malfing, Spike could have reverted, he could have stayed behind the safe curtain, and Buffy would have killed him.

But lo and behold, it dod not work, and Spike sought out the one person who he had the most intense feelings for, the one person who could take the rage he had over not being able to take the easy path: Buffy.

But things were changing in that relationship, too. Buffy had denied her attraction to Spike, even as it grew with his becoming more human. But there was one problem, as long as that chip remained a block in their path, Buffy's unconscious could never be sure she wasn't taking advantage of a disarmed opponent.

When it was evident that the chip didn't work (at least on her), buffy and Spike spent all of the rage over their situations fighting each other, and when that was mostly spent, lust took over.

That was, however, but a step in Spike's journey. He had let real love in and that lets in the possibility of feelings of loss, betrayal, and jealousy. ..and hope. But Buffy's darkness threw him off. She would set boundary lines, then not enforce them, constantly saying no, then acquiescing.

Then she finally had to move on out of her own darkness, and set another boundary. One that he kept testing, but found solid. Then he drank. besotted with alcohol, his judgment and reflexes impaired, he tottered over to Buffy's for one more try at the old cross-the-line. Not being in a state to take the hint, he forced his drunken "affections" on Buffy. Only after she forcibly threw him off, did his besotted brain realize how close he came to actually raping Buffy.

The realization that he had done this to the woman of his affections appalled Reforming!Spike, and he left in a panic, to stew and to make penance. Maybe it was his look of horror that convinced Buffy not to stake him right there with the handle from the toilet plunger, maybe something inside her said, "he finally got the message." Perhaps she thought she deserved it for setting boundaries and not enforcing them.

Whatever the reason, Buffy let him live, which let Spike brood on the whole situation. In deep denial, he set his mind to anger and took off. Probably to LA, to a jetliner cargo bay to Africa, then to see a demon he had heard about in legend. Even facing the demon, he was in denial. But giving Buffy "what she deserves" is a two edge sword and he was given a soul.

But it only made things worse because he did not become human, he became Ensouled!Spike. Spike, being a direct growth from Vamp!William could not "revert" to being William, as Angel basically became Vamp!Liam because he had not purged his humanity, but had wallowed in it.

So it wasn't an innocent, like Liam/Angel, having to recall the horrors of his vampire deeds, it was worse, as he had no excuse...and it drove him crazy for a while, dealing with the enormity without a convenient excuse. He had done those things, now he was living with it. And it did not help that the First Evil took advantage at that point, and kept him off balance.

As long as the original root of what had prompted Vamp!William to turn into Spike was festering, the First had a means of control.

It took the Wrath Of Kahn moment in the basement and the subsequent fight with Wood in LMPTM for Spike to start the final portion of his atonement/redemption. It took a gaudy amulet and a beam of sunlight to finish it off, consuming him in the process.

Of course, this is all off the top of my head, so I don't know if it makes all that much in logical sense.

Sigh.

Had a long post, board ate it.

Right. So. Basically, what Cindy said is what I was getting at, and I'm sorry if that felt like downplaying the real pain that you're going through at the moment, Kassto. Your wording made me bristle, because it did feel like it downplayed non-consentual sexual or physical violence if it was infrequent.

Um...

ETA Never mind

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lost track of what thread I was in. Much apologies. I deserve to be flogged. And not by a profesional.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lost track of what thread I was in. Much apologies. I deserve to be flogged. And not by a profesional.

It can be done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lost track of what thread I was in. Much apologies. I deserve to be flogged. And not by a profesional.

We'll need a permission slip from thessaly, first. Next to the International Sisterhood of Wives Who Flog and Punish, the Teamsters are a bunch of pussies. Wanna know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried? Has anyone asked his wife?