Let's Talk About Spuffy!

B

berkeled

Spuffed & Spiked
Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
250
Well Spuffy is my fave ship for many reasons --- one of them all the symbols btween em' (dancing, hands much more cant think of right now !)

I also loved Spikes love for Buffy and all the little things between them and even the stuff that went on screen .

So whatya ya love about this couple?
 
Well, truthfully i'm not much of a shipper at all but if i had to pick one it would be Spuffy. Spike is the character i identify with the most on both shows, if not all tv series to be honest, as we have a lot in common personality and looks wise. Not including the whole mass murdering thing, obviously! 😀

What i liked about Spike and Buffy was the realness of the emotions as opposed to the idealism we saw in the way Buffy and Angel saw one another. Don't get me wrong, Buffy and Angel were really in love, but i tend to think they loved the ideal image of each other, rather than the reality.

Spike and Buffy were well aware of the true natures of each other however and despite that still found a mutual attraction, if not a lifelong love. The relationship may have been a lot more physical and less emotional but that doesn't make it any less real.

If i was to relate this back to me again i would have to compare to the various girls i've been out with over the years. Most of the girlfriends i've had have been very much like myself, opinionated, strong willed and obsessed with rock music. That is the type i generally go for. However on occasion i have ended up with my exact opposite, similar to the way that Spike fell for Buffy, and those relationships proved to be just as exciting and passionate as any that i had with girls that i would expect to fall for. Sometimes the old saying that opposites attract really is the case.

I won't argue that Buffy and Angel were more right for one another in many ways but i would always believe that Buffy and Spike were more real with each other. That can be just as important.
 
The Watcher said:
What i liked about Spike and Buffy was the realness of the emotions as opposed to the idealism we saw in the way Buffy and Angel saw one another. Don't get me wrong, Buffy and Angel were really in love, but i tend to think they loved the ideal image of each other, rather than the reality.
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Hm, I was a second away from agreeing with this when I realized that I actually believe Buffy and Angel did love eachother for the very "human" and "inferfect" sides they both had but, at least it seems like that from time to time. What I never really got was when their love went from the crush kind to the deep, soulmate, forever, no-matter-what kind.. But then again, I'm not a huge fan of season 2 and the Buffy/Angel relationship wasn't ever that interesting to me.

I don't know if I'd call myself a real Spuffy fan but I do prefer Spuffy to Bangel and I do consider that relatioship very interesting. They're very real, incredibly full of emotions and everything. I mean all kinds of emotions, not just the sweet love feeling, not just good emotions... That's what make them interesting, they're so honest and cruel and real... Not at all the happily-ever-after kind... I would never call Buffy and Spike "soulmates" (if I'd ever call any couple that), but they were indeed very important for eachother...
 
This is my kind of thread.

There are a million things that I could say about Spuffy. They have such a great chemistry, and it's been there from the very beginning. When we first saw them in "School Hard", there was a lot of sexual tension.

I think that they just had some great and tender moments. For example, when Buffy kisses Spike in "Intervention" after she realises that Spike did not tell Glory about Dawn. Also, the speech in Touched, and Buffy giving the amulet to Spike in Chosen. There was something developing again at the end of season seven, and had we had an eighth season, we would have seen more of a relationships that was not totally built on their lust for each other, but on developing a loving relationship that they didn't get to form in season six and seven.
 
I quite like them and they are a whole bunch more interesting together than Bangel was. But that doesn't mean I think that there were more love between them, no just another type.

But there's one thing about the entire Spuffy thing that I never seem to be able to forget. He tried to rape her. It doesn't matter that he got out and got himself a soul he still tried to rape her and getting a soul doesn't make that go away. Therefore I really didn't like their relationship in season 7, but then again everything was a little bit off in season 7.
 
This whole rape thing has always been viewed in very human terms, in my opinion. So many people see it in black and white. "She said no!" ... "He attacked her!" ... that kind of thing.

Sorry but this isn't the same thing. He wasn't human, he wasn't able to see things in human terms. Hell, the fact that he stopped himself when he did says more about Spike at that point than the fact he attacked her. He was a demon, of course he used violence to get what he wanted. What should amaze us all is that he felt remorse for it in any way.

Their relationship had been violent from day one, first as enemies, then as allies, then as friends, then as lovers. Throughout it all the one thing that was constant was the violence. Their entire love life had centred around them beating the crap out of each other, having sex and then Buffy denying she ever wanted it to happen again. How on earth could you expect a vampire to see that time as being any different? Buffy had said no every time and then jumped Spike's bones anyway and this time he was supposed to realise that she really meant it? Based upon what exactly?

The fact that this is viewed as rape constantly amazes me. Spike acted in exactly the same way he had done every single time before and Buffy told him she wasn't interested, just like all the times before. How could Spike have known that this time she really wasn't interested and how was what he did to her any more rough or violent than what they had done to each other in Smashed?

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying Buffy was to blame either, but given their relationship up till that night i think it is only fair to give Spike a little benefit of the doubt as well rather than to call him a rapist.
 
Ok I admit that what I'm saying doesn't make that much sense and I admit that if it had been Angel doing the rape thing while being Angelus I wouldn't have cared. But the thing with Spike is that the difference between him as bad and good is so thin. Moreover look at Angelus, he never loved Buffy he just hated Angel for doing so. Whereas Spike as a vamipre without a soul did love her. Don't really know what I think, but Spike is a helluva lot more complicated than Angel(us) and that was what made Spuffy more interesting.
 
Yeah, absolutely agreed. Spike is a much more complex character than Angel, especially in terms of the fine line that determined who he was as a demon and who he was with his soul restored.

The complexity and duality of his nature is exactly why you can't simplify this to rape though. Whilst it is fair to say he was a lot more complicated in his personality than your average vamp, the fact is he had no real conscience to guide him. He acted on instinct and passion, just the same as any other vampire. that is what he was doing that night. Not making a choice to ignore his sense of right and wrong and attack a girl who he was suposed to care about, merely doing what came naturally to him as a vampire, and again i might add, what he had done every other time prior to that night.

What he did was wrong and that can't be disputed, but to hold a demon to the same standards as a man is not fair, especially not when that demon has become used to sharing a violent relationship with the girl in question. I cannot truly hold Spike 100% responsible for the events that night and i don't see how anyone that understands the true nature of who he was then can really see what happened as being intentional rape.
 
No I agree. You cannot really blame souled Spike for unsould Spike's actions. What I think is more important and can't really accept is Buffy's response. I think that the fact that just a few months earlier this man or demon or demon that looked like a man tried to rape her and now he's all nice and hangs out with her. I can't really understand how quickly buffy could forget about what happened and bring him back into her life. It's the logical thing to do, because they are two different persons, but I don't think I would ever be able to forgive and forget as quickly as she did. But then again it took her like 2 seconds to forget and forgive what Angel had done to her.
 
Precisely, she was able to accept the fact that Angel was not in control of himself when he commited the acts we saw him do as Angelus and therefore was able to hold Spike to the same standards. Not blaming him entirely for what he did whilst a demon controlled his actions.

Having said that i don't think it was as easy for Buffy as you make out. Up until she learned he had a soul she certainly wasn't willing to let him anywhere near her physically again. She only allowed him to help in Beneath Me because she thought he might be useful, given the whole "from beneath you it devours" stuff that was going on. The fact that she kept his return a secret from Xander and Dawn is proof enough that her feelings for Spike were confused.

Don't forget that she would have had a lot of time to think about what happened that night. Whilst she was no doubt very shaken for a while afterwards she had months to consider the facts and maybe even come to the same opinion i hold. That Spike cannot really be held responsible given what he was and how they had been with one another. That isn't to say she would have been able to forgive him or go back to being with him as a soulless vampire but maybe she was able to understand a little why he did what he did.

What i'm saying is that it isn't like she forgave him overnight and even after he returned it took time for her not to flinch at his touch. It wasn't a simple thing for Buffy to do but understanding what Spike was at the time, a demon, would have been helpful in making her come to terms with what he did.
 
Although I would never claim that it woudln't have been rape, it is definitely true that souled Spike can't really be blamed for what soulless Spike did. But, it was still soulless Spike that Buffy had a relationship with (no matter what kind it was), it was soulless Spike that Buffy more or less fell for and actually trusted. Thier relationship was extremely important and, to me, more interesting than the Buffy/souled Spike one. But if you're gonna say that souled Spike had nothing to do with soulless Spike trying to rape Buffy (which I think is pretty fair to say), wouldn't you have to say that souled Spike had little to do with anything soulless Spike did? And wouldn't that make the whole Buffy/Spike relationship even weirder. Because then it wasn't really the Spike, which is good when it comes to the rape but might be bad when it comes to other things, that matter for Buffy. I mean, obviously Buffy cared a lot about Spike, in one way or another, in the beginning of season 7. But did she care about him because he was the Spike she knew (soulless Spike) or because he wasn't..?

It's just difficult since when it comes to Angel it's obviously as if Angel and Angelus are two different people/characters/vampires/whatever. But when it comes to Spike it's something different, and why, and how does that work and so on..?
 
See, that isn't how i view the difference between the individual as a human, the same individual as a vampire and then, in the case of Angel and Spike at least, as an ensouled vampire.

It isn't that they are different beings or people, it's that they have different motivations. When you become a vampire you lose your soul and it is replaced by that of a demon, not a sentient demonic entity in the way that Merl or Clem are, for example, but a demonic essence or nature that supercedes your human nature and takes over your character.

In many ways becoming a vampire is more akin to brain washing than anything else. Your knowledge and awareness remains the same, it's your sense of what is right that is removed, leaving you free to commit the acts that any human would do if he was without remorse or guilt. In fact there are many examples in real life of human doing just as evil acts as vampires do, even with their supposed souls.

So we aren't talking two seperate beings here when discussing Angelus and Angel, or Spike and ensouled Spike. We are talking the same being with different forces controlling their natures, controlling what they view as right and wrong. Ultimately the difference in nature of Spike, pre-soul and with soul, is always going to be harder to define than the clear cut difference exhibited by Angel when he was free to act without his humanity, but at the same time you can't deny that Spike was soulless at the time of the supposed rape and therefore cannot be expected to understand that what he was doing was wrong. The fact he did feel remorse without a soul says so much more about the strength of the man inside him.
 
Yea okay, I'm with you, you described it in a much better way, definitely.
But still, does that only affect the violence? Or how much of "Spike" is affected by the fact that he does not have a soul. To Angel, that makes him totally different, in almost every way. Obviously it does not do that to Spike, but how much is changed? He obviously has strong feelings for Buffy both when he is soulless and when he is souled. But are theose feelings the same feelings when he has a soul and when he doesn't? Does he care the same way? I'm just saying, he obviously changes, Angel does a lot, but Spike doesn't change enough to not be the same person, I mean with the same thoughts/opinions/feelings/whatever, or does he?
 
I think this topic is very hard to compare when using Buffy as an example, mainly due to the fact that the two relationships happened in different ways. Angel fell for Buffy after he had a soul and Spike fell for her without one. Angel therefore loved her with human emotions whereas Spike's feelings for her were a lot more primal, more passionate in nature. It is so hard to compare because of that.

Another way too look at it though is how Angel still cared about Darla even after getting his soul back. Their relationship as vampires was obviously not a loving, caring one but the passion was always there. Once he had a soul he carried that affection through and continued to care for her, now with his humanity in tact. This shows that the feelings remain, they just are dealt with by the individual in different ways. Without a soul the vampire can love in a primal, basic way, but with his soul restored the nature of that love becomes truer and the vampire can honestly feel.

Even with that in mind there are still very obvious differences between Angel and Spike but at their most basic levels they are very similar in how they dealt with their love lives with and without a soul.
 
I've never really defined my feelings about the bathroom conflict during "Seeing Red". I agree with all the points made by The Watcher and Jolly Ape. Druing that time, Spike was an unsouled demon who was merely only working with the slayer because he had the chip that was holding him back. I believe that if he didn't have the chip, he probably might not have fallen in love with Buffy and been devoted to her.

On the other hand, because he did love Buffy, and openly professed it, that's where I'm torn. If he loved Buffy, he at least had enough human emotion to do that, so shouldn't he realize that forcing himself on her is wrong?

I will agree that their relationship had some great points. There are signature epps that really show their attachment to each other. We didn't get to see enough of a potential relationship that could've happened after season seven. By the end of this season, Buffy and Spike were beginning to have a more 'normal' relationship, being friends, respecting each other, and having great times together without a sexual background. Had Spike lived and the show gone on, I think we would've seen more of the Spuffy relationship, one that was turning into love.
 
Feigenbaum said:
I've never really defined my feelings about the bathroom conflict during "Seeing Red". I agree with all the points made by The Watcher and Jolly Ape. Druing that time, Spike was an unsouled demon who was merely only working with the slayer because he had the chip that was holding him back. I believe that if he didn't have the chip, he probably might not have fallen in love with Buffy and been devoted to her.

On the other hand, because he did love Buffy, and openly professed it, that's where I'm torn. If he loved Buffy, he at least had enough human emotion to do that, so shouldn't he realize that forcing himself on her is wrong?
Click to expand...

I think the only difference the chip made was that it gave Spike the incentive to spend so much time with Buffy and realise that she was the kind of person that he was attracted to. Had he never had the chip then obviously they could never have gotten to know each other as closely as they did.

I also think that there is a profound difference in him being able to feel for Buffy and him being able to comprehend the basic nature of right and wrong as a demon.

It has been made clear that all vampire are capable of wanting to be with others, in some cases even going as far as being in love, but that doesn't mean they feel in the same way humans do. He didn't have human emotion, he had demonic passion, that is the difference.

As that is the case then you can't link his "feelings" for Buffy to him having any other type of human emotional characteristics. Just being able to feel a form of love doesn't mean that he would be able to determine how far to go in pushing himself on to her. That would really require him having a true conscience, something he did not have. We all know he went too far but he had no moral compass to make that determination at the time.
 
Spike was a demon. He can not be held accountalble. Besides, nobody is boo-hooing over all the times that Angelus tried to kill Buffy during season two. It's the same thing, trying to do physical harm to a human being. They are unsouled demons, and are only acting in their nature.

I think that the focus should be on the fact that Spike stopped. Yes, Buffy did push him off, and that's when he realized exactly what he was doing. If he really, truly wanted to do this, he could've, because Buffy was already hurt. Be he stopped. And then kept going over the event in his mind (as seen in the next episode). That was one of the main reasons that drove him to get his soul. Because he had hurt her, and she doesn't deserve that.

Spike was screwed up because of the chip, but he was a demon at the time.
 
Exactly! His true demon nature would have been pushing him to continue and just take what he wanted, regardless of the fact Buffy was saying no. The very fact he didn't continue, despite Buffy clearly being weakened and less capable than normal in defending herself, tells me all i need to know about the events of that night.
 
I think that Spike in his worst moments never even came close to the evil inflicted by Angelus on Buffy and her friends. And also Angelus would never had tried to get a soul like Spike did, and that's the reason Angel and Buffy could never be together, because he isn't good enough. Spike on the other hand loved Buffy both as a demon and with his soul, I think that is what made their love the best!
Angel and Buffy had a sweat love, but Buffy and Spike had more passion (with Angel, Buffy was actually considering a future without sex, boring!) . And I don't think Spike would have left her like Angel did.
 
I get what you're saying The Watcher.

After thinking more about the chip that Spike had, and how that is really not changing the fact that he is still a demon, things are starting to get clearer. After reading yours and SpikedBuffy's posts, I guess that Spike can't really be held accountable for what happened in the bathroom. I suppose that the many time Buffy had brushed Spike's advances of previously and then returned to take advantage of them might have been screwing him up too.

I guess that I'll just stick with the good thoughts of the Spuffy relationship. While I haven't chosen one 'ship' to get entagled with, there are certain aspects of their relationship that feel 'real'
 
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