More threatening? William The Bloody or Angelus?

Priceless said:
@Stoney and @InsectDirigible are probably right about Spike, but it also makes me wonder about an alternative view. Could this be a case of the Spike simply taking on the name, as you say, to own it, 'redeem' it. But that doesn't mean he actually killed anyone with a railroad spike, it could just mean that watchers miscontrued his name. He was a vampire, he was evil, he called himself Spike, therefore 2+2 equal 5 and it must mean he kills people with railroad spikes. Those watchers couldn't possible know where the name really came from.

I also wonder why a vampire would use a tool to kill, when Spike tells Buffy that the slayer always has to reach for a weapon, while he always has his.
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The watchers did not know about the poet and the nickname. I think if they called him Spike and/or William the Bloody they called him that for his vampire activities without knowing about his human nicknames. I think he did kill people with railway spikes and that it was a bloody way to die.
 
Priceless said:
@Stoney and @InsectDirigible are probably right about Spike, but it also makes me wonder about an alternative view. Could this be a case of the Spike simply taking on the name, as you say, to own it, 'redeem' it. But that doesn't mean he actually killed anyone with a railroad spike, it could just mean that watchers miscontrued his name. He was a vampire, he was evil, he called himself Spike, therefore 2+2 equal 5 and it must mean he kills people with railroad spikes. Those watchers couldn't possible know where the name really came from.

I also wonder why a vampire would use a tool to kill, when Spike tells Buffy that the slayer always has to reach for a weapon, while he always has his.
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As far as taking on the name, that's what I meant by distinguishing the origin of the two monikers - Spike wasn't ever a name of his until he made it up, the implication is just that he based it on the railroad spike comment. In which case he was redeeming the idea and putting it into literal practice, not trying to fix the implication of an insulting nickname that already existed.
As for the second part, that just depends on how much you trust the Watcher's council on keeping records on that sort of thing, I guess. It doesn't explicitly say what book Giles is reading from, but immediately afterwards is when we learn - from that book - that Spike is barely two hundred, and has battled two Slayers in the last century (both of whom he killed.) I think that the general consensus would be that there's no real reason to assume the railroad spike history is the only falsehood among what seems to be a relatively detailed account of Spike's history as a vampire. Personally that's why I think "earned his nickname by torturing his victims with railroad spikes" is too specific to have been thrown in there on a random guess. I'm not sure why they couldn't possibly have known where the name really came from if they were able to gain this other accurate info.

Spike considered fighting a Slayer to be considerably different from other situations where he'd be inclined to find/torture victims that weren't at all a match for him. Personally I don't think there's a reason to assume he would have been opposed to using tools in torture.
Spike's point, I think, with the weapon line is just that by default, he always has his fangs which is an initial advantage. The Slayer has to prepare herself and reach for her weapon initially.
When he's shown fighting Nikki in the same episode, we seem him grabbing a metal pipe as a weapon.
 
Priceless said:
@Stoney and @InsectDirigible are probably right about Spike, but it also makes me wonder about an alternative view. Could this be a case of the Spike simply taking on the name, as you say, to own it, 'redeem' it. But that doesn't mean he actually killed anyone with a railroad spike, it could just mean that watchers miscontrued his name. He was a vampire, he was evil, he called himself Spike, therefore 2+2 equal 5 and it must mean he kills people with railroad spikes. Those watchers couldn't possible know where the name really came from.

I also wonder why a vampire would use a tool to kill, when Spike tells Buffy that the slayer always has to reach for a weapon, while he always has his.
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I don't think Spike used a tool to kill as much as using it to hurt someone. After all finding someone on the ground dead is one thing. Finding a body
stuck to a wall by railroad spikes is far worse .
 
InsectDirigible said:
When he's shown fighting Nikki in the same episode, we seem him grabbing a metal pipe as a weapon.
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But that is because that was the weapon at hand. In all fights we see, most people grab at what they can find to fight with. But to actually plan to kill people with a railroad spike, Spike would have had to bring one with him every time he went out to fight. Now that doesn't sound like Spike to me, he doesn't plan, he doesn't think ahead, he acts and reacts. And why does he not carry the spike in Sunnydale? If he plans to kill regularly with this weapon, why do we never see it? (Maybe we do and I've just missed it? Sorry if this is the case)

The Watchers are a pretty unreliable bunch if you ask me 🙂 They watch slayers, not vampires, therefore their info on vampires is pretty sketchy imo, only seeing the vampire during the fight with the slayer and not really caring about them otherwise.

The Angel Buffy relationship could have been the only time in history that a watcher got this close/friendly to a vampire, prior to this, watchers were as removed from vampires as we all are from the people/things we hate and fear
 
Priceless said:
But that is because that was the weapon at hand.
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Yeah, I meant that in regards to your other statement: "I also wonder why a vampire would use a tool to kill, when Spike tells Buffy that the slayer always has to reach for a weapon, while he always has his."
I was mentioning there's a difference between using a tool to kill, and having an 'extra' weapon in a fight with the Slayer; They're different situations. I think we agree here. 😛

I don't think he necessarily made exhaustive plans concerning the railroad spike/carried it all the time. I think it was just a calling card of sorts as he liked to associate it with his namesake. He is indeed impulsive, but he's not so impulsive that he couldn't have preferential whims; Bringing a railroad spike doesn't really require planning - he didn't have to fight with it to kill with it, either. He's been shown to have sadistic preferences in that not all of his kills were short and immediate - as Stoney mentioned, it's brought up in S7's Never Leave Me (and in Spike: Asylum in a slightly more explicit fashion as I said.)

Only reason I could personally speculate as to why we didn't see him with one is that:
A. He just doesn't really do it much/at all anymore, or
B. The show just didn't want to get into it, or maybe thought it'd be tacky later on. It's true that they could have alluded to it without being overly morbid, but that they didn't doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't happen, either.
The Watcher's resources came up with a lot of good info on the Master, Darla, Angelus, Drusilla and Spike - The Scourge of Europe/The Fanged Four. I don't remember hearing any unreliable info from the Watcher's diaries concerning the group otherwise. I agree that the observations would have been pretty removed, but I personally don't think they would have mentioned that railroad spike bit as fact unless it was known; They weren't really known for stating speculations as fact.
 
I agree with you that he might have moved on. After all when he started using it I think it was easy to get hold of but as time went on it got harder to find & we know unlike other vampires Spike liked to keep up with things so maybe he moved on to things like tazers ?
 
Priceless said:
But that is because that was the weapon at hand. In all fights we see, most people grab at what they can find to fight with. But to actually plan to kill people with a railroad spike, Spike would have had to bring one with him every time he went out to fight. Now that doesn't sound like Spike to me, he doesn't plan, he doesn't think ahead, he acts and reacts. And why does he not carry the spike in Sunnydale? If he plans to kill regularly with this weapon, why do we never see it? (Maybe we do and I've just missed it? Sorry if this is the case)
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I always pictured that he deliberately used a railway spike to hunt and get vengeance on those at the party that he wanted to 'educate' as to how a railway spike was not preferable. Even a small handful of murders that were horrific in using railway spikes could have been enough. Perhaps even a dramatically set up scene for some of the other party goers to come across, it could have been quite the headline with a group of the upper middle(?) class being brutalised like this, perhaps even together. I doubt very much that Spike kept using the railway spike for long, if at all, on many other victims. He would have got bored of the idea and have felt that he had made his point, that he wasn't one to cry about these things anymore, he was a new man to be feared etc etc. Taking on the moniker of Spike kept the point alive anyway.
 
Sounds like something Spike would do . But I think he would have said something about using it from time to time & maybe killing a person or two just to keep the fear alive I think.
 
ChaseRules said:
Sounds like something Spike would do . But I think he would have said something about using it from time to time & maybe killing a person or two just to keep the fear alive I think.
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I agree. Apart from one entry in a watchers journal, there doesn't seem to be any reference to Spike killing people with a railroad spike. I think it was the watchers over active imagination, and not realising what an awful poet William was 🙂
 
How much do you want to bet Spike was playing a joke on the Watchers by bring up the whole Railroad Spike from time to time 🙄
 
ChaseRules said:
I agree with you that he might have moved on. After all when he started using it I think it was easy to get hold of but as time went on it got harder to find & we know unlike other vampires Spike liked to keep up with things so maybe he moved on to things like tazers ?
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He kept a shot gun in the crypt, so I think it is very likely he kept other weapons of choice handy over the years. He had a big trunk full of weapons available to him. When he was starting out it's completely believable that a railway spike was one of them.
 
I agree with you on that . I would think that just showing you victim a railroad spike would scary just by itself & coped with a vamp face
would have them begging real fast .
 
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