i love you i love you i love you i love you;

[longerthanwedo]

day three - favorite male character
Spike (BtVS)

Spike. Oh, Spike. I have a tag on my tumblr that's reserved specifically for him - #my love for him cannot be properly expressed. But I will try to express it; for you, and for my beautiful wonderful favorite vampire favorite character SPIKE. I lose coherency when I talk about him, so proceed with caution. Also, a few of you I know are watching Buffy for the first time? Might not want to read too far down.

Where to start? Well, at the beginning. Spike is a fabulous villain. He's got everything a villain should have and traditionally does: catchy dialogue, a calm, cool air about him, and a thirst for blood. And a leather coat. But he also has a flipside, a soft spot for love and for simple human pleasures. A reverse to the "kill you all" attitude that makes him reachable as a character, likable. He progresses far past the typical character development stage for your average season-long big bad. He progresses, he changes, and he just keeps changing, but keeps the same basic characteristics throughout his various transformations. Such a fluid character progression.

 

I just love every ~incarnation of this character. Big bad to chipped to pathetically in love and tragically shot down. Unrequited love to partial fulfillment of his fantasies, that lovely edge that his relations with Buffy give him. His fucking fabulous reaction to her death in season 5. His taking care of Dawn. His almost unnoticed permanent involvement in the Scooby gang. The way he's the only one to keep Buffy grounded when she comes back (even though the sex really isn't grounding for either of them, but whatever, it's angsty so yay). The way you can just feel his mind and his heart twisting and bending and changing sides in the blink of an eye, the span of an episode.  How finally it just builds and builds and builds, every single thing in his life, culminating with Buffy as everything always does, and the way he snaps at the end of season six, the way all that tension just springs free (and then if we're going with a spring metaphor he springs up and lands all the way in Africa or whatever). The fact that he went to get a soul by choice and that he didn't back down from the challenges set as he might have in earlier seasons (end of four, I'm looking at you) because he knew this was right. The way he loses his mind but doesn't lose sight of the thing that drove him to make this most significant transformation. The insanity (let's just appreciate insane!Spike for a minute, insane!Spike is the best) that actually allows him to see more than most of the characters could at that point. The way he recovers. His conflict and trials in the last season, struggle with good and evil, right and wrong, that newly acquired morality so much stronger than his soulless mind yet so much more dangerous. The way triumph and death for him are one and the same. And then, if you can believe it, he goes even further. He appears in W&H and he's set up against the very person he strived to distance himself from, dropped into a new world, and he just transitions wonderfully through his arrival and Hellbound to becoming corporeal again. Then he has lots of sex with Angel which is awesome of course. And by the time Not Fade Away rolls around he's at the same place he was during Chosen, but this time he's ready and he steels himself for the end in a way I don't think he quite had at the end of BtVS. It's a go-down-fighting end that really just brings him full-circle. Acting for what he believes in, first and foremost. From helping Buffy to uphold his own ideals no matter their difference to fighting alongside Angel despite everything that had already happened to him, everything he'd already been through.

 

Um, so after that entire summary of Spike's life, let's just take a moment to appreciate James Masters. James Marsters is flawless. His delivery, his facial expressions, his accent and body language. I could write a paragraph longer than that one (really wanted to write longerthanwedo there, wow) about how his mannerisms compliment the character, but I won't. I could write a paragraph longer than those two combined about his abs. SERIOUSLY. You should see him naked, I mean really. The Buffybot has wisdom and you all should listen. I should probably stop before I short circuit my brain, but really. Spike is actually the best.