First my heartfelt thanks to The Board for allowing these long posts. Also my thanks to everyone who reads my posts and comments on them!
*WARNING : SPOILERS UP TO AND INCLUDING NORMAL AGAIN
(Also there is a spoiler dealing with what happens after Normal Again.)
Last night while riding home on the subway, I started thinking about an old folk story we used to scare each other with as children: "If you go up the stairs backwards at the stroke of midnight and look in the mirror - you will see the Devil." As a child I took it literally. As an adult, I realized it was a metaphor. It was our subconscious self, the dark side of our nature or our shadow. The part of us we do not want to see, the part that we bury or repress, sometimes to our own detriment.
Remember what Drusilla once asked Spike? "Do you love my insides? The parts you can't see?" Do we love our own? Or would we prefer to reject them? Cast them aside? And what happens when we do? They tend to explode in our face - as repressed emotions often do.
In life we are often attracted to those people who reflect our shadow self and this can become a fatal attraction. We don't understand the attraction. It's visceral and it feels right, but is it? Or is the better relationship one that takes place between two fully integrated people who do not feel defined by whom they are with and can operate as independent units? (Yes - I too made the mistake of reading another Marti Noxon interview and as Dru would say: "Grrr, bad dog" or 'kat as the case may be.)
So how do Anya and Spike fit into all this? Well, let's talk about unrequited love or better yet, love scorned. Because to be honest I think we've moved into the latter. Xander and Buffy have scorned their shadow selves, their ex-lovers, their demon halves. And now the demons are reeling from the impact.
Shadow selves? Anya shadows Xander - she is the female version, sarcastic, blistering comments, often the wrong ones, and concerned about fitting in. She is also into sex, possibly more than he is. (Side note here - sex with the shadow self can be mind-blowing.) They complement one another. But she remains in the secondary role, Xander is in control of the relationship as Buffy notes in Into the Woods:"Look who has Anya following him around like a lovesick puppy. Is she more than a convenience? 'Cause that would kinda be a surprise." Yes, I know Xander proves that he doesn't feel she's just a convenience in that episode. But he does tend to control the relationship. He holds the reigns.
Spike is in the same situation with Buffy. No scene demonstrates this better than the one in As You Were - where she comes to him and asks if he loves her.
BUFFY: (quietly) Tell me you love me.
SPIKE: (surprised) I love you. You know I do. (She takes a couple of steps closer.) BUFFY: Tell me you want me.
SPIKE: (whispers) I always want you. In point of fact-
BUFFY: Shut up. (Buffy moves as if to kiss him, but instead she hooks her hand around his neck and pulls him down onto the coffin-couch.)
Whose in control here? Who is the one making the demands? Buffy knows Spike will do anything for her. And like Anya is Xander's shadow self, Spike is Buffy's - he is the male version, the dark side, likes fighting, the killer, the protector, and worried about fitting in but somewhat accepting of the fact that he can't, preferring to live outside the rules as Buffy does. Buffy is a little afraid of this side of herself. The dark side. But she controls it. She holds the reigns.
It's ironic that Buffy and Xander have gotten involved with two characters that became demons out of rejection. Anya and Spike have both suffered horrible blows in the rejection department and in very gender specific ways. Let's take a moment to look at their origins and then see how these origins compare to Buffy and Xander.
First let's look at how Anya became a Vengeance demon. This is explored in Triangle - the episode in which Willow and Anya accidently unleash a murderous troll who we later learn is Anya's ex-lover Olaf. Here is the scene where Anya reveals how she became a vengeance demon (edited for length and emphasis):
BUFFY: You dated a troll?
WILLOW: And we're what, surprised by this?
ANYA: Well, he wasn't a troll then! You know, he was just a big dumb guy, and ... well, you know, he cheated on me and I made him into a troll, which by the way is... (embarrassed) how I got the ... job as a vengeance demon.
(Quick aside - Anya shares something with Willow here. Like Anya did, Willow turns to magic to deal with pain. It was why Anya was called 1000 years ago and why D'Hoffryn offers it to her again at the end of Hell's Bells. It's also why D'Hoffryn offers it to Willow in Something Blue. The pain of rejection can feel like a scream. But Anya is not Willow's shadow self. No Willow is pretty dark on her own - Willow's shadow self has become Tara, who has become her light. Spike and Anya both share similar traits with Willow, they even understand her, on a level the others can't, but they aren't echoes of her.)
Anya ran from her rejection by inflicting pain. She did not deal with it in a mature matter. Instead she grabbed hold of it and threw it at Olaf. And went on to do this for 1000s of years. Torturing all sorts of men for Olaf's sin: rejecting or scorning their significant others. It is ironic that this comes back to haunt her in Hell's Bell's. This is the scene between Anya and the Demon who showed Xander the nightmare image of his future with Anya.
DEMON: (deep demony voice) You did this. You brought this on. I've waited a long time for this, Anyanka.
ANYA: (tearful) Who are you?
DEMON: Remember Chicago? South Side, 1914? (Anya looks blank. The demon gets annoyed. ) Stewart Burns. Philanderer! You'd think you'd remember. I remember you. But then again, you ruined my life.
ANYA: You were a ... I punished you.
DEMON: That's right. Some hussy I'd been taking around summons you, next thing I know, I look like this and I'm being tortured in another dimension.
Nice ironic twist: The vengeance demon becomes the victim of her own vengeance and suffers the fate that she ran from in the first place - rejection. But how does this reflect back on Xander? Where does he fit into the equation? Well poor Xander has suffered rejection and inflicted it. In Prophecy Girl - Buffy rejects Xander in favor of Angel - the perfect older guy. He asks her to the dance and she turns him down flat. Then later - when he is dating Cordy - he breaks Cordy's heart when she sees him cheating on her with Willow. This action is ironically what draws Anyanka to Cordy. There's another person who has faced this type of rejection, besides Cordy, Buffy. Twice. First with Parker in HLOD when she saw him immediately pick up another girl and then with Riley in Into The Woods when she saw him with the vamp trulls. But Buffy dealt with it differently than Anya - she did not inflict pain on Riley, she was angry with him, but she did not try to hurt him. In fact Riley might have stayed if she had.
How about Spike? In some ways, Spike has a great deal in common with Xander. He's also has been rejected by a woman he loved. In a manner that is almost similar to what happened to Xander in Prophecy Girl - except that Buffy was far kinder - she did not tell Xander he was beneath her. But unlike Xander, who with the aid of the rival he hated, saved Buffy's life from a vampire, Spike runs into the arms of a vampire and becomes one himself. Spike, like Anya, became a demon in direct response to rejection. Here's the scene from Fool For Love, (again edited for length and emphasis)
CECILY: I'm going to ask you a very personal question and I demand an honest answer. Do you understand? Your poetry, it's... they're... not written about me, are they?
SPIKE: Every syllable.
CECILY: Oh, God!
SPIKE: Oh, I know... it's sudden and... please, if they're no good, they're only words but... the feeling behind them... I love you, Cecily.
CECILY: Please stop!
SPIKE: I know I'm a bad poet but I'm a good man and all I ask is that... that you try to see me-
CECILY: I do see you. That's the problem. You're nothing to me, William. You're beneath me. (She stands and walks off, leaving Spike devastated and alone.)
(Later Spike is sitting on a bale of hay and finishing the job of destroying his poetry. He looks up at the sound of a woman's voice to find DRUSILLA standing serenely in the dark alley with him.)
DRUSILLA: And I wonder... what possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger to tears?
SPIKE: Nothing. I wish to be alone.
DRUSILLA: Oh, I see you. A man surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength, his vision, his glory. (She points to his heart and head in succession.) Your wealth lies here... and here. In the spirit and... imagination. You walk in worlds the others can't begin to imagine. (Spike is riveted by her insight into his character.)
SPIKE: Oh, yes! I mean, no. I mean... mother's expecting me.
(Drusilla opens the collar of his shirt.)
DRUSILLA: I see what you want. Something glowing and glistening. Something... effulgent. (Spike is beside himself. Finally someone who understands him.)
There's another difference between Xander and Spike which should be noted. Cecily doesn't see Spike. She can't see past her own aristocratic nose. Cecily is a lot like Cordelia in this scene, she cares about what everyone else thinks. And her comments to Spike are reminiscent of Cordy's comments to Xander at different points in Seasons 1-3. Buffy did see Xander -saw him as a friend, one of the girls. The rejection was not of Xander himself. So maybe we should give poor William/Spike a break? All he wanted was to be seen. To be appreciated. Which actually echoes Buffy. Buffy throughout the first three seasons of the show is struggling with the need to be seen. In the Homecoming episode, Season 3 - she's worried she won't even have a picture in the yearbook. And her duties as slayer? They appear to go unappreciated, that is until the Prom where she actually gets an award. Because the truth is - she is seen. Xander also has this fear - in Fear Itself - he is afraid no one sees him, that he isn't important. But they make it clear this isn't so. One wonders what would have happened to poor William if someone else had found him in that alley? Someone other than a vampire? William reflects Buffy's dark fears. His reaction is the negative emotional response to those fears, just as Anya's reaction is the negative response to Xander's fears. When Xander was rejected by Cordelia in Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered - Xander tried to punish her, tried to torture her, only to regret it and save her in the end. With the creation of Anya/Spike, the writers have been able to explore two different responses to the same situation. The correct, mature response - through Xander and Buffy and the incorrect, immature response - through Anya/Spike.
Anya and Spike are somewhat adrift in the Buffyverse. They are fools for love. They rely on love as the only thing worth living for - as their raison d'etre. As a result they have given the objects of their affections way too much power. They have in a sense allowed themselves to be defined by their significant others, causing them to be mere shadows, kept in the dark on the outskirts. In JM Barrie's Peter Pan - Peter is constantly chasing his shadow. The shadow doesn't want to stay with Peter. It wants to explore the world on its own. Have its own identity. Of course in Peter Pan - the shadow has to stay with him, its necessary. But in BvTs - I think maybe these two characters need to evolve past it - they need to become more than just shadows. As Buffy puts it to Sam in AYW they need to stop defining themselves by who they are with. Buffy certainly doesn't want to be defined by whom she is with. Nor does Xander. Do Anya and Spike? I don't think so.
But they've allowed themselves to be. Anya and Spike only feel real if they are seen. Like Spike, Anya sees love as being seen. If she is seen, she's not alone. She's safe and warm. As she says in Hell's Bells: "..and I had seen what love could do to people, and it was ... hurt and sadness. Alone was better. And then, suddenly there was you, and ... you knew me. You saw me, and it was this ... thing. You make me feel safe and warm. So, I get it now. I finally get love, Xander. I really do."
Does she? What about Spike? He also wants to be seen. Wants to be noticed. Wants to be a real boy. He's lost his identity in Buffy - to the point that he blames her for his acts of good will. In Normal Again - he says that the whole fantasy bit makes sense, she put the chip in his head, she made him soft, she made him fall in love with her, she turned him into her sex slave. This echoes what he says in CRUSH:
SPIKE: Look, I, I'm at the end of my bleeding tether. You know? I don't even know why I even bother, you know. (points at Dru) This is your fault. You're the one to blame for all this.
DRUSILLA: Am I?
SPIKE: (shouting) Bloody right you are! If you hadn't left me for that chaos demon, I never would have come back here! Never would have had this sodding chip in my skull! And you - (to Buffy) wouldn't be able to touch me, because this, (pointing to Buffy, then to himself) with you, is wrong. I know it. I'm not a complete idiot. You think I like having you in here? Destroying everything that was me, until all that's left is you, in a dead shell. (scoffs) You say you hate it, but you won't leave.
Notice who he blames for his feelings? Drusilla and Buffy. It's Buffy's fault she's in his heart. Her fault she won't leave. He would very much like to stop feeling the way he does - because he feels it makes him weak and vulnerable and it's painful. Anya on the other hand had embraced her feelings for Xander - she liked feeling this way - as long as they were returned. When they weren't it made her crazy. The shadow self - reacts to pain with violence, reacts on an emotional visceral level. In BvTs the demons are emotional creatures that often react without thought; they are impulsive, instinctual, like animals. Carl Jung called this the animus - the unconscious/the subconscious part of us. It's the part that as Drusilla puts it so well "loves well but not always very wisely". Remember where they came from - our love's fools ? They started as metaphors for vengeance and lust. They've evolved to love's fools. Or shadow selves of our central characters. They still view love as the source of their own redemption. Not that either consciously wants to be redeemed. What they want is for their love to be returned. They want to be with their other self. Unlike Peter Pan's shadow - they want to be sewn on. But do they really? Spike appears to actually be fighting the impulse. He states in Smashed that he's not the one confused, not the one who doesn't know what he is. He does want to be his own separate identity. Being tangled up with Buffy has twisted him in knots- to the extent that he's no longer sure where she ends and he begins. Here's the scene in Smashed:
SPIKE: She thinks I'm housebroken. She forgot who she's dealing with.
WOMAN: Anything you want, please-
SPIKE: Just 'cause she's confused about where she fits in, I'm supposed to be too? 'Cause I'm not. (pacing back and forth) I know what I am. I'm dangerous. I'm evil.
WOMAN: (scared) I-I'm sure you're not evil.
SPIKE: Yes, I am. I am a killer. (moves closer to her) That's what I do. I kill. And, yeah, maybe it's been a long time, but ... it's not like you forget how. (He gets up very close to the woman, who is panting fearfully.)
SPIKE: You just ... do it. (nervously) And now I can, again, all right? So here goes. (He morphs into vamp face. The woman screams. ) This might hurt a little. (He bends over to bite her, then flings himself back, yelling in pain, crashes into a Dumpster. The woman runs off. ) What the hell is going on?
Poor guy. Confused as hell. He's supposed to be evil, right? He's supposed to be a killer? He used to be one. So why is he finding this so difficult? It would make things so much easy if he could just go back to that - instead of constantly wrestling with his feelings for Buffy. She kisses him then tells him he's a thing. He knows he's a thing, but she's been treating him more and more like the man he once was and a part of him wants that, badly. Anya's also confused. Anya knows she's human. She's a shopkeeper. She is getting married. But now Xander has pulled the rug out from under her and she can't figure out why. She had begun to identify too closely with his life. Now she's wondering if her demon existence wasn't the better one. It was easier. You didn't have all these messy thoughts. You could inflict pain. What is it Spike says in Dead Things? "You always hurt the one you love?"
Yet, Spike and Anya have proven time and again that they would drop everything for Xander and Buffy. Note the number of times they've jumped in to save them? Anya saves Xander in Triangle, Something Blue, and countless other episodes. In the Gift, she literally pushes him out of the way and is injured. Spike has done the same for Buffy - in Spiral he grabs a sword and almost loses his fingers to stop it from slicing into her. Also in the Gift - Spike is completely devastated, of the people standing on the ground, he appears to be the one who is the most upset by Buffy's loss. Do Xander and Buffy return the favor? Surprisingly yes. Xander saves Anya in Triangle and from Xander's pov he saves her from himself in HB. Buffy saves Spike in Tabula Rasa and it has been argued from her pov, that she saves him from herself at the end of AYW. Interesting -both believe they are doing the best thing for Spike and Anya by breaking it off.
Xander's Line in Hell's Bells: "It wasn't you. (sighs) It wasn't you I was hating. (pauses) I had these thoughts, and ... fears before this. Maybe we just went too fast."
And here's Buffy's in AYW (edited for length and emphasis): " I do want you. (Spike looking surprised) Being with you ... makes things ... simpler. For a little while. I'm using you. I can't love you. I'm just ... being weak, and selfish......and it's killing me. I have to be strong about this. I'm sorry ... William."
What are they saying here? Anya and Spike just hear rejection. They hear their hopes and dreams being crushed. Anya and Spike are reacting emotionally. But Xander and Buffy are saying - we care about you too much to hurt you. Xander believes he will hurt Anya by marrying her. He believes he will become his father and deride her like his father does with his mother. Remember in his nightmare - he hit Anya with a frying pan. He is saving her from himself, but he's not able to make it a clean break. He still loves her. He still needs her. Anya unfortunately has no way of knowing that. From Anya's point of view he cast her off - because she was an ex-demon. Buffy doesn't really know what she feels for Spike, except that she can't possibly love him, she can't let him be part of her life, and using him- is only hurting him, giving him hope where there is none, doing to him what she once accused Xander of doing to Anya in Into the Woods. She was using his love for her own selfish ends. She finally realized what it was doing to him and that was killing her. Spike has no way of understanding this. It's not a concept he can begin to understand. Spike believes she rejects him because he is a demon not a man. He said as much long ago in the Gift: "I know I'm a monster. I know you can never love me. But you treat me like a man." At the end of AYW - she treats him like a man again, something she had stopped doing. But Spike does not understand that. He is reacting emotionally. The shadow self - the animus can only react emotionally. They can't see the other layer.
So what will these two do? How will they react to being rejected? We may have the answer in Where the Wild Things Are. In this episode, Xander has rejected Anya and she flees to the Bronze where she runs into Spike:
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.
SPIKE: It's a terrible thing, love is. I been there myself. (Pause) It ended badly.
ANYA: Of course it did. It always does. Seen a thousand relationships. First there's the love, and sex, and then there's nothing left but the vengeance. That's how it works.
SPIKE: You and I ... should just go do the vengeance. Both of us! You eviscerate Xander, and I'll stake Dru. Like a project.
ANYA: I don't know. I just can't. (Sighs)You can go do Dru though.
SPIKE: (nods) Yeah. I will. (Sits still for a moment) Maybe later.
They didn't do it then. But the stakes weren't that high. Spike had moved past Drusilla, even if he didn't know it yet and Anya was not completely committed to Xander. But they did contemplate it. They both knew what the other was feeling and they both knew what that type of power felt like. (This may be the reason that they see right through Willow.) As for what they might do now - now that the stakes are higher and they've been crushed- how's this for a little foreshadowing. Again from Where the Wild Things Are: Anya to get back at Xander has decided to take Spike to the frat party and runs smack into Xander.
XANDER: Anya, this is crazy. (Anya crosses her arms, glares at him) We had a little fight. It just means that we have to work our way through some stuff. It doesn't mean that we rebound with the evil undead. (Spike looks offended) And what have we been doing with him anyway?
SPIKE: (grinning) Oh, who's the puffed-up manly man? All splotchy and possessive. ANYA: It's not very convincing, is it?
SPIKE: Yeah. I see now what you said about him earlier. (Looks Xander up and down) No follow-through. (edited for length and emphasis) You two keep scraping. I'll find the liquor. (Walks away)
XANDER: Anya. What are you doing with him?
ANYA: (angry) We didn't have sex, if that's what you mean.
These two characters don't know how to react to rejection. They let their emotions guide them. They are emotional beings, impulsive, shadowy, the subconscious. They tend to do things instinctively and often say whatever is on their minds without thinking about the consequences. Buffy and Xander are usually the opposite. They think, they consider the alternative, they do not always leap into the fray and they do not let their emotions always guide them. But in their dealings with Anya and Spike, they have been careless - they have in a sense set up a sort of Fatal Attraction. They let the animus, the shadow self in, they appeared to embrace them and now they've cast them aside. If the spoilers are true - the result is bound to be more than they bargained for.
Thanks for reading this. Sorry it's so long. Probably my longest to date. Looking forward to your comments as always.
; -) Shadowkat
