(*MAJOR Spoilers up to Villains - haven't seen Villains or Seeing Red? Don't read! Quotes from Psyche Transcripts.)
"When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it
doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an easy way to live." (Angel to Buffy in ANGEL, Btvs Season 1)
"I'm serious. Responsible people are ... always so concerned with ... being good all the time, that when they finally get a taste of being bad ... they can't get enough. It's like all (gestures) kablooey." (Anya to Buffy in SMASHED, Btvs Season 6)
"You need me to toe the line because you're afraid you'll go over it, aren't you, B? You can't handle watching me living my own way, having a blast, because it tempts you! You know it could be you!" (Faith to Buffy in CONSEQUENCES, Btvs Season 3)
Gee - you ever just want to be bad? You know knock in doors, smash computers, kill that pit-bull, be the Big Bad or just a little bad? Come on - admit it, isn't there just a teeny weeny part of you that wants it?
We all have it in us - the desire to be bad. The desire to kick some nasty good-guy butt, but we reign it in. Have this pesky little thing called a conscience that tells us, no, no, no - mustn't do that. Or maybe we're just terrified of getting caught and being punished? Or maybe it's some deep religious code that tells us - you do that, and you ain't seeing heaven, man! You going to hell! Raise your hand if you had that type of religious up-bringing. If so, my deepest sympathies. The desire to be "bad" is what Jung may have called the id or pleasure principal or animus. The shadow self. The primal urge, the animal within. Every culture and creed has a different name for it. It's the part of us that seems permanently stuck in adolescence, arrested. What reigns it in depends on where you are in your intellectual and emotional development. If you're in your teens - then it's probably your parents, teachers, school, religion and whatever construct of reality these forces have placed around you. If you are way past your teens, then it is the values and beliefs that you adopted through countless experiences. Somewhere along the line, you probably discovered that there is more to be gained from being good, which admittedly is the tougher path.
This is the lesson the characters of Btvs are beginning to learn. But in order to learn it, some of them have to be bad, it's just their nature. They have to go the route of my old friend Alex in A Clockwork Orange - they have to be evil in order to figure out what it means to be good. Sometimes you just have to take a few wrong turns in life, get dead-ended, before you find the correct path. I know, I know - there are a few of you out there who honestly believe that you can't change paths - once you get on the wrong one - you're stuck. Luckily, I've discovered this isn't true. I hope in time you may find it out as well. If not, my heartfelt sympathies and you may want to leap off this bus.
Life isn't easy. It's much harder to be good than evil. There are more rules, more boundaries, and more responsibilities. But as Anya discovered, being bad can be empty. It's a discovery that Alex in A Clockwork Orange's 21st Chapter made as well. After being the Big Bad, smashing and destroying everything in his path, Alex discovered much to his chagrin that there was more to be gained through creation than destruction. That playing a windup toy for the devil was actually an empty way of living. Can Spike discover the same thing? Pinocchio did in the classic story, he found out that playing the bad boy left him hollow, a toy, not real, but being good, striving to do good work - that made him real and worthy of love. It took Pinocchio a while to discover this, he had to go to pleasure island first, almost become a donkey, get swallowed by a whale and drown saving his father, Geppetto, but in the end he obtained his reward, which was his father's love.
Love. Is that all it takes to redeem the villain? Not according to last night's Angel, Benediction (Season 3 Ats). For those of who that don't watch Angel, Holtz is a man who traveled centuries to revenge the deaths of his family on Angelus. Holtz has recently returned from a hell dimension with Angel's son Connor, whom he kidnapped. In Benediction, we and Angel are led to believe that Holtz was reformed by his love for Angel's son and has pushed aside his hatred because of it. For a moment we are convinced, then he tells Justine to make it look like Angelus killed him, so that Connor/Stephen will inherit his legacy. So clearly it takes a bit more than love to cure Holtz. What about Anya? Anya became a vengeance demon as a result of cursing Olaf who had scorned her by sleeping with another girl. For years she wielded the power of the Wish and was probably, although they don't know it, the SG's most formidable foe. Her Wishverse was far worse than anything the Scooby Gang ever faced. If Giles hadn't smashed her amulet, Xander, Willow, Cordelia, Buffy, Angel, and OZ would have died horribly. Anya managed to alter an entire universe with just one wish. Unfortunately for Anya, smashing her amulet not only succeeded in undoing her wish, it also rendered her human. So now, she's had to experience all those pesky emotions humans have. Anya believes if she were a demon again, if she had those powers, then everything would be okay. Spike believes the same thing about his chip. As they discuss in the Bronze two seasons ago, in Where the Wild Things Are:
ANYA VOICEOVER: Boy, I miss those powers.
(Cut to Anya and Spike sitting on a couch at the Bronze, holding beers and looking morose. Spike has his arm along the top of the couch,almost touching her.)
SPIKE: Yeah, tell me about it.
ANYA: A year and a half ago, I could have eviscerated him with my thoughts. Now I can barely hurt his feelings. (Sighs) Things used to be so much simpler.
SPIKE: (wistfully) You know ... you take the killing for granted. (Anya nods nostalgically.) And then it's gone, and you're like, "I wish I'd appreciated it more." Stopped and smelled the corpses, you know?
ANYA: Yeah. Now everything's complicated. (Where the Wild Things Are, Btvs Season 4)
Now, that Anya has her powers back she can be the big bad. She can eviscerate people with her thoughts. After all - as she tells D'Hoffryn way back in Season 3, Dopplegangerland,: "For a thousand years I wielded the powers of The Wish. I brought ruin to the heads of unfaithful men. I brought forth destruction and chaos for the pleasure of the lower beings. I was feared and worshipped across the mortal globe." Watch out Xander, she thinks, here I come. But there's a catch - she can't scorn Xander herself, someone else has to. So she wanders about Sunnydale attempting to trick one of Xander's friends into doing it. And fails miserably. Spike has a similar problem. Now, due to a fluke, Spike can actually hurt Buffy, bite her, suck her dry. She's scorned him too. Made him feel like dirt. Told him it was never real for her. She's really sorry of course, but hey it was just a fling, time to move on. So what's keeping him back? Why can't he just kill her already? The chip isn't holding him back. Her cellular structure changed enough to make it null and void. (See Smashed - Dead Things). Life used to be so much easier. In Entropy, during a scene that is incredibly similar to the one two seasons before in Where The Wild Things are, Anya and Spike meet up at the Magic Box, and like the previously mentioned scene, all they can think about is how to get past the pain. Both yearn for the good old days, the days when life was simpler, when they could just be "bad" without remorse.
ANYA...thing about it is, none of this was my idea. I didn't ask to be
human-
SPIKE Right! An' I didn't ask for this bloody chip in my head-
ANYA To tell the truth, all I wanted was to use him and lose him. I hadn't had a good tumble in a thousand years-
SPIKE Me too. The using part. I just wanted to know what I was missing, move on. (Anya grows more pained and melancholy. Spike follows suit.)
ANYA Then he was all bumpy in the right places and nice to me...
SPIKE She was so raw. Never felt anything like it...
ANYA Next thing I know, I'm changing to please him. I care if he cares.
SPIKE Right.
So instead of eviscerating their lovers, they merely engage in some mind-numbing sex. They don't intend for anyone to see it. It just happens. It wasn't meant to hurt Buffy and Xander - it was meant to numb the pain. What's interesting is that here are two demons acting extraordinarily human. At this point they are both demons. Spike still has his chip, but he's still a vampire and now, he can kill the slayer if he wants to. Anya has regained her powers and is once again an immortal vengeance demon. Yet here they are talking about love and trying to figure out why they feel it so deeply and why it doesn't appear to be returned. It was so much easier being bad. Why can't they go back?
They both try to in Seeing Red, in different ways and with different results. Anya tries to go back to being a vengeance demon. Spike inadvertently attacks Buffy in her bathroom - I don't believe he went there intending to do it. Nor do I believe that he intended on hurting her. I think he got caught up in the attempt to recreate a past moment between them and went too far, forgetting she was there. Anya also gets caught up in the moment - she intends to wreck vengeance - to assist a girl at a bar, instead she acts like a human, commiserating with the girl, sharing her own problems. When you contrast Anya and Spike's intents and their resulting actions - you'll see how much these two have changed.
ANYA I know how you feel. Maybe I can help.
BLOND How could Carl do that to me? That…
BLOND (cont'd) I wish Carl's flesh were being gnawed off by a thousand angry --
ANYA He keeps saying it's not me, but how can I believe him? He knew he didn't want to get married. Deep down he knew, but he lied to me every day for months.
BLOND I wish --
ANYA He lied and lied and then lied a little more, 'cause hey - who's gonna notice with all the other lies flying around like monkeys. And now he thinks he can just sweep the carnage under the rug by saying -
What's going on here? We have a vengeance demon ignoring a wish? Lucky Carl. Anya is at the bar in business mode. She is planning on being the vengeance demon again. Has started the conversation to enact vengeance. Instead she just commiserates with the girl, ignoring her wishes. Apparently it's not as easy going back to being "bad" as Anya thought.
Spike. He continues to fascinate me. If I hadn't been spoiled, I would have been surprised by that bathroom scene. But if I really think about it, why? Remember what Angel told Buffy about being a soulless creature: "When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an easy way to live." It's Spike's nature. He's a soulless vampire. He has never claimed to be anything different than what he is, right? As Dru would say, "your're a bad dog." Spike is. He has killed at least two slayers in the past and I'm sure he's raped a few people in his time, although we have never seen it. His life with Dru was certainly violent and heavy on the S & M, after all Dru had a thing for torture. Spike wasn't into it as much - but who's to say he didn't do it? And if it's the only thing he knows about sex - wouldn't it stand to reason that S & M, rape and violent sex all get a bit muddled in that demon brain? So why doesn't he rape Buffy? Why doesn't he keep attacking her after she throws him off? Why doesn't he kill her? Actually while I'm at it - why doesn't he make her like him, a vampire? Then he'd have her, right? She'd be willing to join him in the darkness? She's been weakened. Her back cracked twice. He knows she's injured. The door is shut. There are no stakes anywhere around. He said it himself, in Fool for Love (Season 5, btvs)-"Lesson the first: a Slayer must always reach for her weapon. I've already got mine."
So why didn't he do it? The act in the bathroom as disturbing as it was -appeared to be more Spike's attempt to force his love on an unwilling party than actual rape. Sure it was violent, it was painful, and I for one, will probably not be able to watch it again any time soon. (Twice was quite enough thank you. Even read the shooting script.) But what continues to needle me about this controversial scene is that Spike, our resident vampire, did not attempt to kill or vamp Buffy after she succeeded in throwing him off. Instead he leaves utterly humiliated, ashamed, furious with himself and tormented. He is so upset that he leaves his beloved coat behind - a trophy from the second slayer he killed. The slayer he describes to Buffy in Fool For Love as reminding him of her. "She had a touch of your style. She was cunning, resourceful... oh, did I mention? Hot." Odd that he leaves it behind. Doesn't even try to go back for it. It's not the attack that seemed out of character, it was his reaction to the attack that did. To him and to me.
SPIKE What have I done? (then) Why didn't I do it? What has she done to me?
(edited for length and emphasis) Why do I feel this way?
CLEM(shrugs)Love's a funny thing.
SPIKE Is that what this is?
CLEM Well, I don't know. Drinking, breaking stuff -- how's your appetite? You been eating?
SPIKE I can feel it. Squirming inside my head.
CLEM Love?
SPIKE The chip. Little Jiminy Cricket, gnawing bits and chunks. (Spike puts his fingers to his heads probing harshly as if he's going to gouge the chip out with his bare hands. Clem eyes him with concern.) Everything used to be so clear. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire kills Slayer, sucks her dry, picks his teeth with her bones.
CLEM (queasy) Metaphorically?
SPIKE That's how it's always been. I've tasted the life of two Slayers. But with Buffy... (hating himself) This isn't the way it's supposed to be. It's the chip. Steel and wires and silicon. It won't let me be a monster. And I can't be a man. I'm nothing. (Spike's self-loathing hits an all time low. Clem gives him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.)
CLEM Hey. Come on now, Mr. Negative. You never know what's just around the
corner. Things change. (Spike considers that, his wheels turning.)
SPIKE They do. (a beat) If you make them. (Clem grins, slapping him on the back happily.)
In Villains, we learn exactly how Spike wants to change. He goes to Africa and enters a cave where a demon confronts him. The demon tells him that he used to be a great dark warrior and now he's a pathetic fool. Castrated by a woman. Spike agrees, stating he wants to be returned to the man he was, his former state. He wants to show Buffy that he's not beneath her, that she isn't better than him. I don't have the quote from Villains, but here's the one from the Shooting Script of Seeing Red which is similar to it: "She thinks she knows me. She thinks she knows who I am. What I'm capable of. She has no idea. I wasn't always this way. It won't be easy, but I can be like I was. Before they castrated me. Before...(a beat) Then she'll see who I really am." Spike, like Anya, desperately would like to be Bad again. It was easier. As the demon states in Villains, he was a dark warrior, a force to be reckoned with, the killer of two slayers, now he's just a pathetic shell of a monster. Castrated. He wants to do the same thing Pinocchio wanted to do in the classic story, smash jiminy cricket, kill the artificial conscience. If I can't be a man, let me be the monster I once was. This, this is torment.
Onto the leader of the Troika, Warren, who unlike Spike, has a soul. He is gifted with a moral compass - which he resolutely ignores. Yet, ironically enough, Warren has done more damage to Buffy and the Gang than Spike ever did, without the chip. In the past year - Warren has :1) turned Buffy invisible.(Gone) 2) stole from a bank.(Flooded) 3) hired a demon to destroy Buffy. (Flooded) 4)got Buffy fired (Life Serial) 5) changed her perception of reality four times.(Life Serial, Dead Things and Normal Again) 6) framed Buffy for murder. (Dead Things) 7) filmed her ex-lover and a friend having sex. (Entropy) 8) attempted rape on Katrina and killed her. (Dead Things) (A rape scene that I found far more disturbing in retrospect than the bathroom scene, for two reasons: no remorse on the part of the attacker and the woman was being manipulated like a rag doll. Spike surprisingly enough actually showed remorse, he despised himself for feeling it - but the fact that he, a soulless evil thing did and Warren a human did not, is very disturbing.) 9) shot and almost killed Buffy and actually killed Tara. (Seeing Red) I think Warren actually beat Glory, a hell god, in the evil deed tally this year. Angelus in Season 2 may have been the only villain that came close to equaling Warren's track record against our gang. And Warren like Angelus wants to be recognized for it. In Villains - he goes to a demon bar to brag about killing the slayer. In his arrogance, he believes he's a force to be reckoned with, that they will join up with him. Instead they merely laugh at him. This must confuse Warren, the perpetual outsider. He couldn't fit in at high school, the genius who got kicked around by all the jocks. He created a robot girlfriend to love him because he couldn't find a date. Warren finds life unbearably hard. He's the geek and he's bright and people should revere him. They should bow down before him. In Warren's mind it is grossly unfair that this hasn't happened.
It's interesting that of all the demonic forces that Buffy's faced, Warren has been the worst. Of course Warren discovered how much easier it was to be "bad" than good. Instead of earning money at Doublemeat Palace, he can rob a bank. Like Faith says in Bad Girls - "take, want, have." This has become Warren's creed. You don't need to worry about winning your ex-girlfriend's love - when you have a cereberal dampener to make her love you. Something that never occurred to poor Spike who tried it the old fashioned way. As he tells Anya in Entropy: "I was always going above and
beyond. I saved the Scoobies how many times? And I can't stand the lot of you." Now, if he had a cereberal dampener - but then that wasn't what he wanted either. Spike wanted love not sex like Warren did. Spike says as much in Gone, when he tells invisible Buffy that if he can't have all of her, there's no point. Warren wouldn't have cared. Warren enjoyed taking advantage Katrina. Just as he would have enjoyed killing Buffy. As Willow aptly states in Villains - killing Buffy was your big "O". I love the scene in the demon bar where Warren tells the demons that all it took to kill the slayer was a gun. Again the easy way. No hand to hand combat. No danger. Wonder why Spike never thought of that? He could have even hired someone to do it. With a gun, you can kill a superhero, you can kill all those idiots who excluded you and tormented you in high school. Would Warren have become the psychopath he was, if people hadn't tormented him? If he had been accepted? We'll never know. But it is interesting that in both Entropy and Villains - Warren goes to bars seeking just that acceptance. In Entropy he goes after the kids who tormented him years ago. They no longer remember him, of course. But he does. And in Villains, he brags to demons, possibly thinking that being evil - they'll appreciate it in him. Warren has yet to learn something the demons already know - being bad tends to be empty. Friends, family, acceptance aren't the rewards. It's an endless contest of one-upmanship and destruction. That's all.
Willow also needs to learn this lesson. If Warren is the human version of Spike, than Willow is the human version of Anya. Poor Willow, she started out as the geeky nerd in high school. No one paid any attention to her until Buffy came along. Cordelia tormented her with comments such as "did you just find the softer side of Sears." Boys only saw her as the brain. Like Warren - Willow wasn't really appreciated. And like Warren, Willow was always having to live down the term "nerd". In the episode Doomed (Season 4, Btvs) Willow is reeling from being called a nerd and finding a dead body. From the following scene - it's clear that the nerd comment bothers her more:
Cut to the gang at Giles: "It just made me feel like I was right back in high school."
Xander: "Dumb jock! If it wasn't for you he still would be."
Willow: "I mean, I know the - Percy thing isn't really important, it's the - dead guy on the bed."
Xander: "Yeah, that's bad, too."
Willow: "Ooh, and something else. He, the dead guy, was-was propped up, like whatever killed him wanted to drain the blood out of him. So I'm thinking the whatever took a bunch of the guy's blood with it. And I haven't been a nerd for a very long time! Hello dating a guitarist, - or I - was."
Two years later, in Smashed and Wrecked, we see that Willow has still not gotten past this. In Wrecked - she tells Buffy, that before the magic she was just some girl, no one important. And in Smashed - Amy coaxes her out of the house, asking if she'd rather just stay home alone like she always did in high school. Willow like Warren has sought otherworldly means to handle the rejection she received in high school. Warren did it through science. Willow through the dark arts. Both are sadistic. Warren tortures Katrina with a cereberal dampener. Willow tortures Warren with magic. Of the two - Willow is more powerful and cruel. Willow's torture in Villains makes Warren look like a pathetic boy, hardly worth worrying about. Yet is he? Isn't Willow's desire to be "bad" fueled by something better than Warren's? After all - Willow only turned bad after Warren killed Tara, right?
Prior to Tara's death, Willow has practiced magic. She only just recently gave it up, for Tara. We were lead to believe it was a drug addiction. Xander even uses the term "fell off the wagon" in Villains. But was it? When did Willow truly start to bend towards the dark side? She has acquired quite a bit of power now - but that power and confidence was built up over time. She slowly built it up, doing dark magic. First with that spell in Becoming - which made her feel like a valued member of the team, then the spell in Choices where she exclaims with pride to Angel and Buffy : "yes, I'm bad!" and finally that spell in Something Blue, where D'Hoffryn almost makes her a vengeance demon.
Spike, Anya, Willow and Warren all want to be bad. They all want to go on a wild rampage. They all want to hurt someone. Why? What caused them to start down that path? What makes them want to do it now? Vengeance? Or was it something simpler, something closer to home? Rejection? Rejection by loved ones, by peers, by society? Every single one of these characters has suffered massive amounts of rejection. Spike and Anya were both rejected by significant others. People they loved. A Thousand years ago Anya was scorned by Olaf. A hundred and thirty years ago, Spike was rejected by Cecily, who told him he was beneath her. Both turned to the demon world for recourse. And both reaped massive amounts of destruction on the parties that rejected them. Now hundreds of years later, they have been rejected again. Anya was stood up by Xander at the altar. Spike was told by Buffy that he was beneath her and she could never trust him enough to love him. Both want to be demons again. They want to go down the same path they did before. It was easier. Warren and Willow were rejected by the "popular" group. Excluded. Called the Captains of the Nerd squad. Both joined small groups of outsiders. Warren created the Troika. Willow became part of the Scooby Gang. They sought recourse through knowledge of science and the black arts. Willow initially used her knowledge for the forces of good, while Warren used his to become a super-villain. Now Warren has taken the light of Willow's life and Willow has turned to magic to remedy it, like she has for the past five years. Of the four characters, Willow has never been "bad", not really. She may have made a few mistakes here and there, but she has never deliberately used magic to hurt people. Yet, like Warren, Willow has never gotten past those old high school wounds and the desire to be bad, howls inside her. The desire to wreck vengeance on a world that refuses to be the way it is in her head. She does not understand why Tara can't be brought back. Why the natural order of the universe must be followed. Why her life must be so tough. When she has the power to change it. Anymore than she can understand why Buffy will kill demons but not a human psychopath. The rules have become too hard and Willow has become tired of being "reliable". All that resentment she's been keeping bottled up since Season 1 is finally boiling to the surface. Tara had managed to keep it in check - now, without Tara, Willow doesn't care. What's the point - she thinks - of being good, when there's no one around to applaud me, no one to make me feel comfortable and safe. She doesn't recognize Buffy and Xander - possibly even resents them a little for not helping her kill Warren. Her resentment of Buffy may go deeper than that - after all Buffy represents all the things Willow couldn't be: the cheerleader, the superhero, the popular girl, the girl Xander wanted. Buffy never excelled at school - Willow had to help her. Deep down inside there's a part of Willow that must wonder why Buffy got everything - the caring mother, super-powers, boyfriends, and a second chance at life. Willow is finally ready to explode and as Rack states so succinctly in Villains, she will tear Sunnydale apart.
Buffy has also been bad this season, but in a smaller less ground shaking way. She slept with the villain. Not only slept with him, used him, beat him up, and threw his feelings for her back in his face repeatedly. Not a good idea. Now the villain, bad boy Spike, wants to be the bad boy he once was. He wants to make her pay. The weird thing is, what's holding him back? A chip? Please, it doesn't work on her any more. Nope, he's holding himself back. He just can't understand why. Maybe he'll figure it out in Africa. OR maybe he'll revert to the big bad he once was with a twist. Maybe he will come back the Lucifer of Lucifers. Maybe this season isn't so much about growing up as it is about reverting back to form?? Or maybe there's a third option for Spike…that is similar to Anya's in The Wish? The option that was Pinocchio's and Alex's in A Clockwork Orange? (I don't know…all I have is hunches.)
Buffy also has neglected her friends. She didn't confide in them about Spike. And she didn't notice that Willow's dependence on magic had gotten way out of hand. She thinks she took care of that. It was just an addiction. So why did they leave those dark magic books at the Magic Box?? Why didn't Giles at least take them? I'm not sure Buffy ever understood what drove Willow - how can she? Buffy's never been called Captain of the nerd squad. Buffy used to be Cordelia, she understood Cordelia. She knows what it's like to be alone in a crowd or to be rejected because you are weird. But she doesn't understand the fear of being a "geek".
And she has neglected her duty to the community she serves. In Gone - she tortures a social worker, costing the woman her job. In OMWF - she tells the gang she doesn't really care and in fact does very little until her sister disappears. And in As You Were, she shrugs off the demon eggs to sleep with the villain. She hasn't taken the Troika seriously since they tried to turn her invisible. Barely even tries to run after them in Gone.
Buffy has always walked the line between good and bad. It hums inside her. That primal beast that can destroy her friends, her world. They don't know it exists. Spike does. The demons do. But Xander and Willow don't. They've never seen it. Buffy saw it in Faith and she sees it in Spike - it's why she's so attracted to him. Take, Want, Have - being bad - are constant temptations to someone who has super-strength. Someone who could hold up a bank or kill a boy like Warren without thinking twice. But as Buffy states in Villains - being the slayer doesn't give her a license to kill. Touching the bad side - taints you. She has to follow the rules. You can't change the natural order of the universe. Doing so - results in chaos. Willow doesn't understand that. Nor did Warren. They don't appreciate these things. They believe I can just be bad - no serious consequences. I have control over my world. Anya and Spike, on the other hand, do understand these rules. They appreciate them. As demons it was their job to cause chaos. They may have reveled in it - but they also understood it. They knew it changed them. They knew it had consequences. True, being demons they felt nothing. No pain. No remorse. It was fun being bad. What is it Angel says in episode 7, Angel: "When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an easy way to live." Except for one thing, it's empty. It does not get them what they want. It doesn't get you love. The rewards were short-lived. Anya at the end of Hell's Bells - thought why am I bothering with being human, I can't seem to get love either way, might as well go back to what I know, be a force to be reckoned with again, something powerful, instead of something domesticated. Spike in Villains thinks - why did I bother with that bitch, let her castrate me, I want to go back to what I was, a remorseless powerful dark warrior, instead of a castrated shell of a monster. Willow in the beginning of Villains thinks - why did I give up magic? I can't bring back Tara. I've lost her. Buffy won't kill Warren - even though he's worse than any of the demons she's slain. I know - I'll take it up again, I'll do what Buffy couldn't. Even if it means being bad. What's the point - Tara's gone.
Part of growing up is learning that destroying things, taking short cuts, being bad doesn't solve anything. It doesn't keep us warm at night. It doesn't bring back loved ones who died. The vengeance - merely leaves us hollow, lost, like Holtz in Benediction when he forces his adopted daughter Justine to kill him in order to set up Angel for the crime. Or like Willow at the end of Villains, who has grown bored of torturing Warren and merely jumps to the next thing. Killing Warren didn't bring back Tara. It didn't make her feel better. All it did was make her a little more hollow inside. Buffy is beginning to learn this. That working a double shift at the Doublemeat and taking care of Dawn and forgiving Spike long enough to trust Dawn to his care, while far more difficult, is the more rewarding path in the long run. Hitting Spike, shagging Spike and abusing Spike while amusing for a little while eventually lead to more violence and shame. Being bad - as fun as it sounds isn't all its cracked up to be. And some of us, have to learn it the hard way.
Thanks for reading. Feedback appreciated as always!
:- ) shadowkat
