So the message is pretty clear - there is no Angelus-style bad side to this guy. There used to be - and it's implied pretty strongly in ("Destiny") that this was largely due to Angelus's influence - but not anymore. His worst character flaws are all laddish immaturities - boastfulness, restlessness, childish sniping, and a Bill Clinton-esque obsession with sex.
What's missing here, is the same incisive analysis you turn towards Angel's character. Spike isn't nearly so simple as that.
It's true that there's not an "Angelus-style" bad side, but William/Spike certainly had a dark side of his own that. Blaming Angelus' influence seems like cheap excuse making. Spike, created his persona and her he ran with it for over a century, for long years Angelus was gone, when he was under no influence greater than his own will, and that's very much on him.
As to his flaws. Those "immaturities" add up systematically to indicate a pretty deep-seated Narcissitic Personality. (Almost textbook). Romanticizing Spike as a swell hero who'd have been just fine if only other people would have been nicer to him, IMHO, is turning a blind eye to half-the character.
And the symbol for that is Harmony. Harmony, who is to Spike, what Spike was to Buffy. For all of Spike's complaints to Angel that it was Angelus who made him a monster, and to Buffy that he could have been a better man if she'd helped him out -- he offered almost nothing to Harmony when she was in a comparable situation. Because, ultimately, Spike's interest is still seated in his own ego. Helping others, more because that's how a hero behaves, or because a specific individual or case is important to him, but not out of general principle.
Spike's motives are questioned - selfish? evil? petty? - and in every one of them, our initial negative impression is shown to be an illusion, a trick.
But there's that other motive -- ego. Spike has, for the bulk of his life, adopted one pose after another to fill his emotional need and "Noble Hero" may well be yet another.
and in the end, his last day was spent basking in the adulation he's always craved, warm in the tenuous self-assurance that he could see himself as important, heroic, and loveable. The uncritical view is that he finally got the respect he deserved.
But this is AtS, and the lightest/simplest view may not be the only one. Perhaps a truer sign of growth would be a Spike that gets heckled for his still lousy poetry, and accepts it secure in himself anyway.
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What's missing here, is the same incisive analysis you turn towards Angel's character. Spike isn't nearly so simple as that.
It's true that there's not an "Angelus-style" bad side, but William/Spike certainly had a dark side of his own that. Blaming Angelus' influence seems like cheap excuse making. Spike, created his persona and her he ran with it for over a century, for long years Angelus was gone, when he was under no influence greater than his own will, and that's very much on him.
As to his flaws. Those "immaturities" add up systematically to indicate a pretty deep-seated Narcissitic Personality. (Almost textbook). Romanticizing Spike as a swell hero who'd have been just fine if only other people would have been nicer to him, IMHO, is turning a blind eye to half-the character.
And the symbol for that is Harmony. Harmony, who is to Spike, what Spike was to Buffy. For all of Spike's complaints to Angel that it was Angelus who made him a monster, and to Buffy that he could have been a better man if she'd helped him out -- he offered almost nothing to Harmony when she was in a comparable situation. Because, ultimately, Spike's interest is still seated in his own ego. Helping others, more because that's how a hero behaves, or because a specific individual or case is important to him, but not out of general principle.
Spike's motives are questioned - selfish? evil? petty? - and in every one of them, our initial negative impression is shown to be an illusion, a trick.
But there's that other motive -- ego. Spike has, for the bulk of his life, adopted one pose after another to fill his emotional need and "Noble Hero" may well be yet another.
and in the end, his last day was spent basking in the adulation he's always craved, warm in the tenuous self-assurance that he could see himself as important, heroic, and loveable. The uncritical view is that he finally got the respect he deserved.
But this is AtS, and the lightest/simplest view may not be the only one. Perhaps a truer sign of growth would be a Spike that gets heckled for his still lousy poetry, and accepts it secure in himself anyway.