Question: Spike's Role in the Comics?

[fenderlove]

Quick word: I won't be responding with my own opinions to any comments left in this post, so feel free to answer honestly without fear that I shall pounce upon you. I may have further questions to ask.

How would you describe Spike's role in the comics in Season Nine? And to go further, what is his literal role in the comics? What has he literally been doing? What has been clearly asked of him by any other character or characters? The key words for all this are definitely- literal specifics. I'm looking for less interpretation "if you turn it sideways and squint and read between the lines" type of examples and more for just what has been presented.

Like I said above, I won't be responding with my own opinions. I'm just curious to find out if I've missed something in translation.

Comments

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Wait, she said she'd miss him if he were dead instead of if he went away or left SF? That actually sounds sorta rude... or just another example of Buffy having no tact whatsoever. I mean, Spike's already dead. He is an undead Englishman. He is an ex-poet. He has ceased to be. He is no longer pining for the fjords... Well, maybe he does pine for the fjords.

[rahirah]

Context: Buffy says she wishes that destroying the Seed had taken away all magic, so that vampires would disappear and she'd no longer be the Slayer. Spike says that if that happened, he'd be dead and she wouldn't be as much fun. Buffy replies that fun is over-rated, but she supposes she'd miss him if he were dead.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

So it just starts out as Buffy having no tact. Didn't destroying the Seed actually take away all the magic already? Did she mean all the things already effected by magic after all the regular magic got sucked out?

[rahirah]

The seed only eliminated magic that has to be channeled from elsewhere, apparently, by closing Earth off from other dimensions. So witches and wizards have lost their powers, and no new slayers can be called. Newly turned vampires are mindless beasts, because the demon that animates them can no longer get to Earth and fully inhabit their bodies, but must remote control them from their home hell dimension. But existing Slayers and vampires keep their powers.

i.e. it's arbitrary, makes no real sense at all, and it's set up so the writers can do whatever they want.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

You know, I read a fic one time that said that the reason that Spike had so much of his humanity left was because his body was inhabited by a wee baby demon instead of one of the scary fully matured ones. Then again, Spike had survival skills, cunning, and agility, and if that's what you get from having a baby demon, then the bumbling newly-risen vamps we saw on the show got screwed by having full grown ones. I really liked that fic though. I have no idea where I was going with this, but what you said reminded me of it.

I just keep thinking that the writers have never and will never understand what in God's name the vampires of this universe are. One minute they have humanity, the next minute they're raving animals. The show has tumbled back and forth about what they are and what they mean. If Buffy's Lie to Me description of "The demon sets up shop in your old house, and it walks like you and it has your memories, but it's not you" is true, then why are vampires troubled by their human lives? Why do they care? Why can their feelings be hurt by things that happened when they were human? Why do they have feelings at all? It makes the case of Angel's soul all the more baffling and confusing. It's Liam's soul added to a demon that somehow doesn't act anything like the demon acted before when really human souls seem to make very little difference to human behavior. That's all compounded by Spike who remains relatively unfazed by having a soul at the point that he gets one. Either Spike and (God help me) Harmony are just more evolved vampire beings, or something amiss. And now the vampires are remote controlled zombies even though if all the walls are closed down so the demons can't get through, how can they be remotely controlling anything? This is the kind of thing that Lewis Black said will make your brain explode if you think too hard about it.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

why are vampires troubled by their human lives? Why do they care? Why can their feelings be hurt by things that happened when they were human? Why do they have feelings at all?

The interpretation that works best for me:

The 'demon' controlling a vampire is little more than pure id. It has hungers and desires, it can fear and hate, and it's cruel and sadistic. But by itself it has no memories, so it's difficult to call it sapient. Instead, like a parasite it uses its host human's memories as its own. That's why vampires often take on the personalities of the human they once were: the demon doesn't know any different, and so it can only see the world through the filter of the human's memories and experiences. They shape its personality; but the demon's own primal urges in turn shape and distort the personality in a different direction.

(A soul quite possibly works the same way: it's the vital spark that animates a human, but by itself it has no intelligence or memory, only a set of urges and desires. Unlike a demon, though, the soul's urges are mostly benevolent and empathetic and humane.)

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Someone once used the metaphor of taffy to explain vampires/souls on BtVS/Ats. He/she said that the human form was like the wrapper on a piece of taffy (the soul). When a human dies, the taffy gets ripped out of its wrapper, but little bits of taffy remain stuck on it as taffy tends to do. Some wrappers have more taffy left on them than others for various reasons or just pure happenstance, so when a demonic "taffy" gets shoved into the old wrapper, it will have to merge with the old taffy... sometimes more seamlessly than others. ... The taffy metaphor worked a little for me because it put the demons and the souls on the same playing field, making what the Master said in "Welcome to the Hellmouth" about vampires having souls make more sense... Great, now I want taffy.

I'd actually like to explore what you wrote about, the vampiric demon being the id and the soul being the superego. What if souls were creatures from another dimension too, just benevolent whereas the demons are barbaric? Every teeny human is born and *poof* benevolent soul creature! Then, if the person is turned into a vampire, then the demon comes from its hellish dimension and takes over and the soul creature goes back to whatever cloud-y heavenly place it came from. Explains heaven (or at least explains the place Buffy remembers visiting after S5), explains hell, explains why souls and demons are slipperier than greased weasels...

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

the vampiric demon being the id and the soul being the superego

I don't think it can be quite that simple, because of course ordinary humans have ids as well. It would get needlessly metaphysically complex if we had to assume that a human's id, ego and superego were all separate supernatural creatures co-inhabiting our brains... :)

(Although having said that, I vaguely recall that some belief systems, like the ancient Egyptian one, did claim that people have several different souls which perform discrete functions, and which go their separate ways upon death...)

But sure, as a first-stage approximation I think it's possible to compare a vampire's "demon" and a human's "soul" and say they're similar in function, but opposite in motivation/effects. And that expains why the Master would refer to vampire "souls" - he meant their demons.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

It would get needlessly metaphysically complex

I think it's already gotten to that point with the story. Magic comes from the earth, no magic comes from other dimensions... It's all so MacGuffin-y.

[rahirah]

Well, I did say it made no sense at all. *g*