gargleblasted app
OOC:
Name: Shana
Are you over 16?: Yes
Personal LJ: museofspeed
Email: shananagin@gmail
Timezone: EST
Other contact: AIM: firstbirdboy, telepathy
Characters already in the game: none!
How did you find us?: Buffy's comment on ATP.
IC:
Character name: Spike
Fandom: BtVS/Angel
Timeline: Season 5 of Angel, shortly after the episode Destiny.
Age: Approximately 150
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: As a vampire, he's got enhanced strength and speed. He's immortal and unaging, though a stake through the heart, decapitation, fire, or sunlight can kill him. His senses are better than human, especially his sense of smell. He's really good at fighting in various martial art styles. He's got an extremely good constitution, so it takes a lot of alcohol to get him drunk. He's written poetry, but not very well. He can come up with good plans, but he rarely has the patience to carry them out. He's good at adapting. He can withstand a lot of pain. He's pretty good at using technology. He's good at various criminal abilities such as pick-pocketing, picking locks, and hotwiring cars. Also, unlike most vampires, he can taste normal food.
How would they use their abilities?: He'll probably get into a lot of fights, though since he's good now, they'll be with people who either attacked someone else or attacked him directly. Besides that, well, just for making his life easier. He's not going out of his way to be a superhero, and he's definitely not a supervillain anymore. He just likes having a good time.
Appearance: Spike is 5'10" with blue eyes and bleached blond hair. He has a scar over his left eyebrow and very sharp cheekbones. His body is muscular and lean, and his skin is very pale as he can't really tan without dying. He wears a lot of black and leather. He often wears rings, bracelets, or necklaces as well, usually in silver.
Background/Personality: To sire someone, a vampire first drains the victim's blood, then feeds him some of her own blood. It's not a very difficult process. You kill them, they rise again. Then they become an entirely different being, with, in theory, at least, very few ties to their former self. Sure, they retain all their human memories, but love, affection, all those human feelings? They're gone.
Spike doesn't quite fit the pattern. From the start, he was different. Like many vampires, he killed his mother, but it was because he thought turning her into a vampire was a good way to save her life. He retained his human devotion and love. After staking his mother, he goes on to love Drusilla passionately. Though he's not the only vampire to ever have a monogamous relationship or some sort of love for another vampire, he is much more human about his devotion. He even later falls for the Slayer, and he is capable of loving people such as Dawn and Joyce in a platonic way before he gets his soul. Though he's got plenty of lust, he can love people without it. This deep, inner tendency to devote himself to another comes from when he was human. He tends to revolve around people and emotional ties, treasuring bonds to the point that he'd rather die than betray someone he cares about. He doesn't do anything in halves, so he can't just like someone, he has to love them completely and fully and with every fiber of his being. He may not write poems once he becomes a vampire, but he's still prone to being overdramatic and doing grand gestures to profess his love.
He also really enjoys eating food. Most vampires can't taste things other than blood, but Spike can. He eats cookies, hot chocolate, blossoming onions, and spicy buffalo wings to name a few examples, plus he often adds spices or wheetabix to his blood to make it more interesting or textured. He's very creative with his food. Though canon has never explicitly stated it, I like to think that Drusilla, crazy as she is, messed up a little when she turned him and his taste buds didn't entirely die.
His thoughts about Drusilla will always be tinged with love and regret. She was the first woman he loved, and Spike doesn't stop loving people. She was his everything, and everything he did he did for her. She's why he became the mass-murdering vampire he was for a century. He caused destruction and murder because he knew it would make her happy. But she didn't love him the same way. It was a game for her, and although she enjoyed having someone care for her that much, she didn't hesitate to go back to Angelus the second it's an option. It takes Spike a long time to realize that their love isn't as eternal as he'd hoped, and even longer to really move on. As I mentioned earlier, he doesn't do things in halves. The realization that Drusilla was not as fully devoted to him as he was to her was difficult. He may have known, deep inside him, that she was only his as long as it was entertaining to her, but he loved her so much that he couldn't believe she didn't return his feelings. He can sometimes be blinded by his own devotion and convinced that feelings are there when they aren't really. It's part wistful thinking, part convincing himself, part following his instinct and believing it won't lead him wrong.
Angelus had Drusilla long before Spike had even died, and it's something Spike can never forget. The two of them didn't always fight, in fact, they used to get along really well. Spike idolized Angelus and learned everything the older vampire was willing to teach. In a way, those feelings never went away. Even when they both are on the side of good, Spike can't help but think of Angel and how he would handle things. He'd never admit looking up to him, of course, and he certainly also resents him a lot, but there is hidden respect.
It's very deeply hidden. Before he goes good, he resents Angelus for stealing Drusilla from him, and he resents Angel for betraying their little family, and evil in general. Angelus is an evil bastard who enjoys causing people pain, including Spike, and even if most of their friends see Angelus and Angel as two different people, Spike knows Angel too well and doesn’t let Angel off the hook for what he did when he was soulless. He knows exactly who Angel is and what he's done, and that as a soulless vampire, he was worse than Spike.
He also tends to end up in Angel's shadow no matter what he does. He's only the second worst vampire in recorded history; Angelus is worse. And he's the second vampire with a soul, the one who isn't in any of the prophecies. He may be a champion, but he's still not Angel. He's still the second vampire Buffy fell for and the one no one takes seriously. He resents Angel a lot for that. He wanted his soul, and he worked for it. Angel's was a curse, and something he never would have willingly done. Spike wasn't even that bad (for a vampire) until Angel taught him how to be really evil. As far as Spike's concerned, he deserves the big reward far more than Angel does. He's a better man than Angel is, and no one else can see it.
This leads to lots of bickering. When these two badass vampires who have lived for 150ish and 270ish years respectively are put in a room together, they both act like they are 12. They bicker and fight over everything from women to who's saved the world more often to who would win in a fight between cavemen and astronauts. They are complete idiots around each other and fantastic at pushing each other's buttons. They've just known each other so long that it's easy.
Spike doesn't even know exactly how he feels about Angel. He can switch from bickering to fighting alongside Angel at the drop of a hat, and his emotions often vary between jealousy and loathing, admiration and tentative friendship. Angel's done a lot of things he can't forgive, but Spike's done a lot of bad things to Angel as well, not to mention to the rest of the world. Angel and Spike are also the only vampires with souls, which gives them a certain bond. No one else can really understand what it's like. Around each other, they don't have to apologize for any past wrongs because the other has done just as many, and it was a different time when they were different demons, so they just accept it. They can also fight and hate and be monsters around each other because they both know what it's like, and exactly how much of their true natures they cover up around humans.
One of their many ongoing fights, of course, involves Buffy Summers, another woman they both have loved. Buffy and Spike started out as enemies. Spike wanted to kill her. It wasn't until Angelus came back and tried to steal Drusilla that Spike made his first tentative steps to Buffy's side. Of course, he was doing it because he didn't want to lose Drusilla, but he admitted that he actually was pretty attached to the world and didn't want it to end. The truce only lasted as long as it took for him to leave town, but Buffy wasn't through messing up his unlife yet. Drusilla could sense that Spike was no longer completely hers. The game was over, the Slayer had infected him. She left him. Spike blamed Buffy and returned, but not to kill her. He instead drank a lot, tried to get Willow to do a spell for him, and eventually just left the city without a fight. Though it's unlikely he could have taken Buffy and Angel on alone, he could have at least made an effort, but Drusilla was right. Though Spike didn't have any idea yet, he already was far more interested in Buffy than he should be. Sure, he could call it loathing and consider his obsession something other than it was, but the seeds were planted. He couldn't help but think of her.
Spike is fairly masochistic in who he falls for. His first love was a disguised vengeance demon and a total bitch who cruelly told him he was beneath her when he professed his love. His second love was the woman who killed him. Though he wouldn't be able to tell for a while, his third love is the woman who beats him up a lot. Of course, at first it's not love so much as a general strong emotional reaction. He enjoys fighting her and relishes the challenge. He's already fond of fighting slayers, but this one's challenging him more than the previous two do. Leaving her alive, even for Dru's sake, conflicted with everything he'd done before. He couldn't stop thinking about her.
It only grew worse once the chip forced him to work with her instead of against her. Add in Faith being very suggestive in Buffy's body and one magical and brief engagement, and it wasn't long until Spike was head over heels in love with his nemesis. Loving Buffy was confusing and difficult for Spike. His previous romantic entanglements were Drusilla, who was about as far from an ordinary girl as you could get, and Harmony, who was pretty easy. He didn't know how to love Buffy. He didn't want to love Buffy. Even if he is somewhat masochistic, she does drive him absolutely insane, and he can't decide sometimes whether he wants to kiss or kill her. His emotions are in turmoil. She's his enemy, everything he stands against, and he knows she hates him as well. As much as Spike likes going against the grain, he does have limits, and bedding a Slayer is not really something he'd have considered before Buffy. It's something he made fun of Angel for back in the day. It's completely wrong, but he can't stop, he has to be with her anyway he can. And once he sets his mind to something like that, there's no going back. Spike is very, very stubborn.
But Spike doesn't act on brains, he acts on instinct, and every bit of his being was calling out for Buffy. He just didn't know how to win her. She does nothing but hate him even when they work together at first, and finding out his feelings for her just disgusts her. Spike bounced back and forth between being sure she could feel the connection as well and knowing she'd never love him. He has a certain swaggering overconfidence that's partly covering up his inner insecurities and partly just because he honestly does believe that there is something between them, and the thought that she can't feel it is unfathomable to him. But at other times, he feels the struggle to get to a point where she could accept him is impossible. It won't stop him from trying, though. Spike's a risk taker by nature, and when the rewards are this great, it's worth the leap. And he'd rather she lead him on than turned him down completely. He begs and threatens her to try and get even the slimmest hope, but she turns him down. It isn’t until he proves he'd rather die than betray Dawn that she starts taking him a little more seriously.
Her death completely devastates Spike. When he loves, he loves completely, with all his heart. The only thing that keeps him going is that he promised to protect Dawn. He continues to protect Sunnydale and fight vampires, but every night he thinks only of Buffy and how he could have saved her if he'd acted differently. It is the first time since his mother died that he has lost someone he loves, and his mother had been old and sick anyway. Drusilla is eternally young like him, and though there always was the chance of getting staked, the two of them could have lived forever. Buffy is mortal, and Spike has to come to terms with that. Even though she does come back, any love between Spike and Buffy can only be fleeting. But Spike would much, much rather it be him that dies.
He wouldn't turn her, though it would keep her alive longer. Vampires are different from humans, and though he would cling to any Buffy he could have, especially pre-soul, it wouldn't be Buffy. It would be a perversion of the woman he loves, and he knows it. In fact, he occasionally shows remorse about his own non-living status. He likes being a vampire, but humans can walk in the sun. Also, they have souls and aren't evil. If he were human, all of Buffy's reasons for not wanting to be with him would be gone.
Losing her is nearly more than he can handle, but when she comes back, things start to work in his favor. Buffy's friends pulled her out of heaven, and Spike is the only one in whom she feels she can confide. Eventually, she gives in to temptation and they start an incredibly unhealthy affair. She's using Spike, taking advantage of his love to lose herself, and he'll take anything she'll give. The only time she treats him with anything like respect is when she calls off the relationship, acknowledging that his feelings matter and it isn't fair of her to use him like that, even if he isn't complaining. Spike tells Riley earlier that he's not sure whether Riley has it worse than he does, being so close but not truly having Buffy, or Spike has it worse, not having her at all. By Season 6, Spike has experienced both. He and Buffy are sleeping together, but she doesn't love him and claims she never will. She never pretends she's doing anything else, but Spike still believes that it's inevitable that she'll fall for him. For a vampire, Spike can sometimes be very naive. He believes in happy endings. Too bad for him, he's in a Joss Whedon show where they don't exist.
But he's had a taste of her now, and calling it off isn't that easy. Spike is, at this point, a soulless monster, and loving Buffy enough isn't enough to redeem him. Though Buffy and many others have told him, he doesn't believe it himself until he nearly rapes Buffy. Until she kicked him across the room, he didn't even realize he was doing anything wrong, and that he almost went that far horrifies him enough to take the initiative to actually change. The chip acted like a leash that kept him from killing fully. He quests to get a soul so he can actually be worthy of Buffy.
Spike is certain, during the rape scene, that Buffy will realize she loves him when he's inside her. He sees her jealousy and takes it for something more than it is, and doesn't listen to her protests. In earlier scenes, when she said no and he kept going, she easily succumbed, and he does believe it will be like that again. He has himself convinced that she loves him despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Despite how observant he can be about other people's romantic situations, he's entirely blind to his own.
His experience on souled vampires up to that point is entirely Angel. He knows that apparently they hurt enough to take "a badass vampire" and turn him into "a big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth," as he says in the Angel episode In the Dark. He knows Angelus and Angel act nothing alike. And he knows that Buffy can't love him because he's an evil, soulless thing. Getting a soul is not something to be undertaken lightly, not if it hurts that much, and not if it'll change his personality. I don't doubt that he'd considered the possibility before he finally does it. He's very competitive with Angel, and he certainly would have thought he could have handled the soul if Angel could handle it. The possibility of becoming someone else would have made him not do it until he felt it was the only thing he could do. The only thing that would make him the sort of man Buffy deserved.
Of course, it turns out to be a lot more painful and confusing than Spike had expected. He underestimated the pain and guilt and self-loathing a soul could cause. It didn't help that the First Evil chose that time to start tormenting Spike as well, and Spike had no way or knowing that this was not just his newfound soul. It takes him a long time to come to figure out how to be his normal badass self and also have a soul, but eventually he adjusts and turns out to be not too different with his soul than without it. Besides, of course, where he rests on the moral compass.
Spike's soul is a big turning point in his life. Before he got it, he was an evil creature trying to be good. Afterwards, the path was clearer, but everything hurt so much it made him insane. He learned to deal with it a lot faster than Angel did, and that's mostly because of Buffy's support. Buffy sees Spike change and helps him through it. She starts to lean on him as much as he leans on her. They are incredibly close by the end, and she even tells him she loves him, though he doesn't believe her. His lack of belief in Buffy's words are partly a deep seated self-loathing that makes it hard for him to accept that anyone else could so much like him, and partly him thinking that she's just wrong about her feelings and being confused by him being all noble and self-sacrificing, plus the deep connection they shared over the past few days. There's also an element of worry that Buffy's only saying it to give him one, final good memory, and he doesn't want to be lied to in his final moments.
Spike didn't think much about good and evil before he met Buffy. He knew in a vague way that he was evil, but he didn't think much about his victims. He knew he hurt people, of course, but he didn't go deeper into it than that. It was all fun. He enjoyed the thrill of killing and fighting and eating people and didn't think about their families or the future lives he cut short. After he got his chip, he drank only pig's blood for a very long time. When he had the opportunity to drink human's blood thanks to Drusilla's help, he hesitated before he did it. Even without a soul, he had an idea of right and wrong. He does give in to the wrong side, but he struggles with the decision. He hasn't redeemed himself yet, but he has the capability.
Pre-soul, Buffy is Spike's moral compass. Though he has an idea of right verse wrong, he's more worried about what's fun and what Buffy would approve or disapprove of. That's a big part of why he hesitates, knowing that if he starts killing again, the already miniscule chance he has with her would be gone. In the end, it's not enough to keep him from drinking from a human.
Though Drusilla and Buffy are the only two women Spike has ever loved, he has on occasion slept with other women. And Angel, once, but they were drunk and don't discuss it. After Drusilla dumps Spike, he takes up with Harmony, who is stupid and annoying and very easy. Spike doesn't really have one night stands, though. Even though he never loves Harmony, he does date her, though he doesn't care about her at all and even attempts to stake her at one point. He sleeps with Anya once too, when she was trying to get over Xander and he was trying to forget Buffy. It's pretty disastrous. His only other romantic relationship is with Maria, a human with spider legs that popped out when she was scared, angry, or aroused, that he dated in Hell. She took it a lot more seriously than he did. For him it was more that she helped him escape Maria's boss Non and lead Non's demon lady underlings after Non fell. He didn't really have any qualms about using sex to turn the girl to his side, even if he didn't love her.
Spike is very monogamous. Though he has on occasion slept with people he wasn't dating, there are always circumstances and usually alcohol or torture. He feels most comfortable within the bounds of some sort of relationship, though it does not have to be conventional. He likes cherishing someone above all others and doing everything for her. He would never cheat on someone he was dating because he has been there, and it hurts a lot.
Spike also cultivates important non-romantic relationships with Dawn, to whom he is a sort of older brother/father figure. She thinks he's cool and hangs out with him because it bothers Buffy at first, and Spike protects her because he knows it would break Buffy's heart if anything ever happened to Dawn. He has a lot of affection for her too, calling her nicknames such as "Nibblet" or "Little Bit." She liked him before everyone else did, and he became her protector. Their relationship was sometimes tumultuous as both of them have more loyalty to Buffy than to each other, and when Spike screws up badly, Dawn tends to feel betrayed, but mostly she likes and trusts him.
His other important non-romantic relationship is with Fred Burkle. Fred is the first person that is kind to him from the start. They meet when he rematerializes a ghost in Angel's office, and she is the only one who doesn't question whether or not he should be brought back. She works hard to help him, and it's something he appreciates a lot.
Spike has been obsessed with Slayers since he first heard about them. They represent the ultimate challenge for a vampire. Spike has killed two. The first one was mostly luck. If things had gone slightly differently, she would have killed him, and she did leave him with a scar. When he fought the second he was better at fighting, but he still went in not knowing if he'd win. Fighting is always a thrill for Spike, and no one's more fun than a Slayer. Plus, the blood tastes better than normal blood. Buffy was meant to be his third Slayer, but it really didn't work out the way he'd planned.
He tells Buffy at one point that every Slayer has a death wish. It might be true, but really, it's Spike who acts like he doesn't care whether he lives or dies. He consistently throws himself at more powerful opponents and keeps getting up for more punishment when staying down could spare him pain. When Glory tortures him for information about Dawn, not only does he not tell her, he openly mocks her. It doesn't matter how outmatched he is, Spike tackles every battle with sarcastic quips and unbridled enthusiasm. He isn't really afraid of anything physical, as he'll heal from almost any wound. He doesn't care if he wins or loses the fight, it's the thrill of battle he craves. When he gets older, he gets more careful and better at purposefully not dying, but he still wouldn't hesitate to give his life to save the right people, and he still follows Angel into an impossible to win strike against Wolfram and Hart. His own well-being means very little to him.
As a human, William was an outsider. Spike is an outsider too, but mostly by choice. He doesn't follow rules or orders unless they're set by someone he actually respects, and even then, he only does it if he feels like it. He's a vampire, and that means he doesn't need to worry about what anyone thinks of him. He curses and drinks, fights and loves, and always looks to have a good time. In his first episode, he takes over the main Sunnydale vampire nest and tells the other vampires that under him, "we're gonna have a little less ritual, and a little more fun around here." He enjoys what he does, and even with a soul, he broods a lot less than Angel does.
He's always sarcastic and witty. He doesn't hesitate to speak his mind or insult people. He often refers to people by nicknames either to show affection or mock. He's very good at reading people and seeing what's going on, even when they can't tell themselves. This power completely vanishes when relating to himself, of course. He can makes plans, but he rarely has the patience to follow through with them. He acts on instinct rather than logic. In Touched, he says, "I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain, so I make a lot of mistakes." Spike does what feels right, and if he's wrong, he gets up and tries again.
Spike is a study in contradictions. He's a fighter and a lover, he swears and uses eloquent metaphors, he's sometimes pragmatic and often romantic, and he always burns with passion. He's loud and brash and doesn't do anything part-way. He believes in true love and happy endings, even if in his darker days, he doesn't think they'll happen. No matter how hard he tries to hide it, the poet inside him never completely died.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yes! The plug-in is called Flaming Ferret, and you can make money through missions, getting some sort of job, or stealing.
1st person sample: http://community.livejournal.com/datapads/43825.html
http://community.livejournal.com/taxonomites/389979.html
http://community.livejournal.com/babylonjournals/893.html
http://killed2slayers.livejournal.com/19838.html
3rd person sample:
Spike wasn't looking for a fight. He just wanted to relax in a bar with a cold beer and no trouble, for once. It had been a long night. He'd saved plenty of innocent victims, and it was almost dawn. He wanted a bloody break. So he checked his sword at the door and went to get a drink.
Before he'd finished even half his beer, a large, scaly hand grabbed him by the back of his neck and threw him through the window.
Spike rolled as he landed and stood up to face the demon that had attacked him. "This better not take long. I was looking forward to that beer."
"Your death will be swift," the demon growled. "Swifter than the one you tried to give me."
Spike blinked. "I think you've got the wrong vampire, mate. Never seen you before in my life."
"Do you think you can fool me? You may have destroyed my eyes when we fought fifty years ago, but I'd recognize the foul stench of your soul anywhere."
Spike blinked. "I didn't have a soul fifty-oh, you've got to be kidding me."
The demon bared its teeth and stepped fully out of the bar. "I don't 'kid' about my revenge, Angel."
"Yeah, bugger that." Spike frowned up at the demon. "Angel's not the only vampire with a soul, you know. And for the record, we smell nothing alike."
"Impossible," the demon said. It tried to hit Spike, but he ducked and ran to grab his sword.
"Completely possible, and I've got enough messes of my own without having to deal with his, you know." He turned around and readied on his sword as the demon advanced. "Look, it's been a long day. How about I tell you where to find Angel and you take this up with him, hmm?"
The demon paused and considered it. Clearly, it wasn't the most brilliant demon around. It didn't look like it was going to make its mind up soon, so Spike shrugged and sliced its head off before it could decide.
"Yeah, I was lying about all that," he told the corpse. "I mean, really, I wasn't about to let you try and kill Angel. Can't say I like him, but no one's killing him on my watch." The bouncers were giving him ugly looks, so with a last, longing look at his beer, Spike walked away. There were other bars around, or he could find Angel and taunt him about his inability to properly kill his enemies. Either way.
Questions?: The sunlight thing. I don't know if Spike would burn under the light of whatever stars are around, but I'm fairly sure it's only Earth's sun that gives him problems. I know different dimension suns do not burn vampires. So I guess my question is, how will that work? And also if pig's blood is easily gettable, I guess.
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yes!
Name: Shana
Are you over 16?: Yes
Personal LJ: museofspeed
Email: shananagin@gmail
Timezone: EST
Other contact: AIM: firstbirdboy, telepathy
Characters already in the game: none!
How did you find us?: Buffy's comment on ATP.
IC:
Character name: Spike
Fandom: BtVS/Angel
Timeline: Season 5 of Angel, shortly after the episode Destiny.
Age: Approximately 150
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: As a vampire, he's got enhanced strength and speed. He's immortal and unaging, though a stake through the heart, decapitation, fire, or sunlight can kill him. His senses are better than human, especially his sense of smell. He's really good at fighting in various martial art styles. He's got an extremely good constitution, so it takes a lot of alcohol to get him drunk. He's written poetry, but not very well. He can come up with good plans, but he rarely has the patience to carry them out. He's good at adapting. He can withstand a lot of pain. He's pretty good at using technology. He's good at various criminal abilities such as pick-pocketing, picking locks, and hotwiring cars. Also, unlike most vampires, he can taste normal food.
How would they use their abilities?: He'll probably get into a lot of fights, though since he's good now, they'll be with people who either attacked someone else or attacked him directly. Besides that, well, just for making his life easier. He's not going out of his way to be a superhero, and he's definitely not a supervillain anymore. He just likes having a good time.
Appearance: Spike is 5'10" with blue eyes and bleached blond hair. He has a scar over his left eyebrow and very sharp cheekbones. His body is muscular and lean, and his skin is very pale as he can't really tan without dying. He wears a lot of black and leather. He often wears rings, bracelets, or necklaces as well, usually in silver.
Background/Personality: To sire someone, a vampire first drains the victim's blood, then feeds him some of her own blood. It's not a very difficult process. You kill them, they rise again. Then they become an entirely different being, with, in theory, at least, very few ties to their former self. Sure, they retain all their human memories, but love, affection, all those human feelings? They're gone.
Spike doesn't quite fit the pattern. From the start, he was different. Like many vampires, he killed his mother, but it was because he thought turning her into a vampire was a good way to save her life. He retained his human devotion and love. After staking his mother, he goes on to love Drusilla passionately. Though he's not the only vampire to ever have a monogamous relationship or some sort of love for another vampire, he is much more human about his devotion. He even later falls for the Slayer, and he is capable of loving people such as Dawn and Joyce in a platonic way before he gets his soul. Though he's got plenty of lust, he can love people without it. This deep, inner tendency to devote himself to another comes from when he was human. He tends to revolve around people and emotional ties, treasuring bonds to the point that he'd rather die than betray someone he cares about. He doesn't do anything in halves, so he can't just like someone, he has to love them completely and fully and with every fiber of his being. He may not write poems once he becomes a vampire, but he's still prone to being overdramatic and doing grand gestures to profess his love.
He also really enjoys eating food. Most vampires can't taste things other than blood, but Spike can. He eats cookies, hot chocolate, blossoming onions, and spicy buffalo wings to name a few examples, plus he often adds spices or wheetabix to his blood to make it more interesting or textured. He's very creative with his food. Though canon has never explicitly stated it, I like to think that Drusilla, crazy as she is, messed up a little when she turned him and his taste buds didn't entirely die.
His thoughts about Drusilla will always be tinged with love and regret. She was the first woman he loved, and Spike doesn't stop loving people. She was his everything, and everything he did he did for her. She's why he became the mass-murdering vampire he was for a century. He caused destruction and murder because he knew it would make her happy. But she didn't love him the same way. It was a game for her, and although she enjoyed having someone care for her that much, she didn't hesitate to go back to Angelus the second it's an option. It takes Spike a long time to realize that their love isn't as eternal as he'd hoped, and even longer to really move on. As I mentioned earlier, he doesn't do things in halves. The realization that Drusilla was not as fully devoted to him as he was to her was difficult. He may have known, deep inside him, that she was only his as long as it was entertaining to her, but he loved her so much that he couldn't believe she didn't return his feelings. He can sometimes be blinded by his own devotion and convinced that feelings are there when they aren't really. It's part wistful thinking, part convincing himself, part following his instinct and believing it won't lead him wrong.
Angelus had Drusilla long before Spike had even died, and it's something Spike can never forget. The two of them didn't always fight, in fact, they used to get along really well. Spike idolized Angelus and learned everything the older vampire was willing to teach. In a way, those feelings never went away. Even when they both are on the side of good, Spike can't help but think of Angel and how he would handle things. He'd never admit looking up to him, of course, and he certainly also resents him a lot, but there is hidden respect.
It's very deeply hidden. Before he goes good, he resents Angelus for stealing Drusilla from him, and he resents Angel for betraying their little family, and evil in general. Angelus is an evil bastard who enjoys causing people pain, including Spike, and even if most of their friends see Angelus and Angel as two different people, Spike knows Angel too well and doesn’t let Angel off the hook for what he did when he was soulless. He knows exactly who Angel is and what he's done, and that as a soulless vampire, he was worse than Spike.
He also tends to end up in Angel's shadow no matter what he does. He's only the second worst vampire in recorded history; Angelus is worse. And he's the second vampire with a soul, the one who isn't in any of the prophecies. He may be a champion, but he's still not Angel. He's still the second vampire Buffy fell for and the one no one takes seriously. He resents Angel a lot for that. He wanted his soul, and he worked for it. Angel's was a curse, and something he never would have willingly done. Spike wasn't even that bad (for a vampire) until Angel taught him how to be really evil. As far as Spike's concerned, he deserves the big reward far more than Angel does. He's a better man than Angel is, and no one else can see it.
This leads to lots of bickering. When these two badass vampires who have lived for 150ish and 270ish years respectively are put in a room together, they both act like they are 12. They bicker and fight over everything from women to who's saved the world more often to who would win in a fight between cavemen and astronauts. They are complete idiots around each other and fantastic at pushing each other's buttons. They've just known each other so long that it's easy.
Spike doesn't even know exactly how he feels about Angel. He can switch from bickering to fighting alongside Angel at the drop of a hat, and his emotions often vary between jealousy and loathing, admiration and tentative friendship. Angel's done a lot of things he can't forgive, but Spike's done a lot of bad things to Angel as well, not to mention to the rest of the world. Angel and Spike are also the only vampires with souls, which gives them a certain bond. No one else can really understand what it's like. Around each other, they don't have to apologize for any past wrongs because the other has done just as many, and it was a different time when they were different demons, so they just accept it. They can also fight and hate and be monsters around each other because they both know what it's like, and exactly how much of their true natures they cover up around humans.
One of their many ongoing fights, of course, involves Buffy Summers, another woman they both have loved. Buffy and Spike started out as enemies. Spike wanted to kill her. It wasn't until Angelus came back and tried to steal Drusilla that Spike made his first tentative steps to Buffy's side. Of course, he was doing it because he didn't want to lose Drusilla, but he admitted that he actually was pretty attached to the world and didn't want it to end. The truce only lasted as long as it took for him to leave town, but Buffy wasn't through messing up his unlife yet. Drusilla could sense that Spike was no longer completely hers. The game was over, the Slayer had infected him. She left him. Spike blamed Buffy and returned, but not to kill her. He instead drank a lot, tried to get Willow to do a spell for him, and eventually just left the city without a fight. Though it's unlikely he could have taken Buffy and Angel on alone, he could have at least made an effort, but Drusilla was right. Though Spike didn't have any idea yet, he already was far more interested in Buffy than he should be. Sure, he could call it loathing and consider his obsession something other than it was, but the seeds were planted. He couldn't help but think of her.
Spike is fairly masochistic in who he falls for. His first love was a disguised vengeance demon and a total bitch who cruelly told him he was beneath her when he professed his love. His second love was the woman who killed him. Though he wouldn't be able to tell for a while, his third love is the woman who beats him up a lot. Of course, at first it's not love so much as a general strong emotional reaction. He enjoys fighting her and relishes the challenge. He's already fond of fighting slayers, but this one's challenging him more than the previous two do. Leaving her alive, even for Dru's sake, conflicted with everything he'd done before. He couldn't stop thinking about her.
It only grew worse once the chip forced him to work with her instead of against her. Add in Faith being very suggestive in Buffy's body and one magical and brief engagement, and it wasn't long until Spike was head over heels in love with his nemesis. Loving Buffy was confusing and difficult for Spike. His previous romantic entanglements were Drusilla, who was about as far from an ordinary girl as you could get, and Harmony, who was pretty easy. He didn't know how to love Buffy. He didn't want to love Buffy. Even if he is somewhat masochistic, she does drive him absolutely insane, and he can't decide sometimes whether he wants to kiss or kill her. His emotions are in turmoil. She's his enemy, everything he stands against, and he knows she hates him as well. As much as Spike likes going against the grain, he does have limits, and bedding a Slayer is not really something he'd have considered before Buffy. It's something he made fun of Angel for back in the day. It's completely wrong, but he can't stop, he has to be with her anyway he can. And once he sets his mind to something like that, there's no going back. Spike is very, very stubborn.
But Spike doesn't act on brains, he acts on instinct, and every bit of his being was calling out for Buffy. He just didn't know how to win her. She does nothing but hate him even when they work together at first, and finding out his feelings for her just disgusts her. Spike bounced back and forth between being sure she could feel the connection as well and knowing she'd never love him. He has a certain swaggering overconfidence that's partly covering up his inner insecurities and partly just because he honestly does believe that there is something between them, and the thought that she can't feel it is unfathomable to him. But at other times, he feels the struggle to get to a point where she could accept him is impossible. It won't stop him from trying, though. Spike's a risk taker by nature, and when the rewards are this great, it's worth the leap. And he'd rather she lead him on than turned him down completely. He begs and threatens her to try and get even the slimmest hope, but she turns him down. It isn’t until he proves he'd rather die than betray Dawn that she starts taking him a little more seriously.
Her death completely devastates Spike. When he loves, he loves completely, with all his heart. The only thing that keeps him going is that he promised to protect Dawn. He continues to protect Sunnydale and fight vampires, but every night he thinks only of Buffy and how he could have saved her if he'd acted differently. It is the first time since his mother died that he has lost someone he loves, and his mother had been old and sick anyway. Drusilla is eternally young like him, and though there always was the chance of getting staked, the two of them could have lived forever. Buffy is mortal, and Spike has to come to terms with that. Even though she does come back, any love between Spike and Buffy can only be fleeting. But Spike would much, much rather it be him that dies.
He wouldn't turn her, though it would keep her alive longer. Vampires are different from humans, and though he would cling to any Buffy he could have, especially pre-soul, it wouldn't be Buffy. It would be a perversion of the woman he loves, and he knows it. In fact, he occasionally shows remorse about his own non-living status. He likes being a vampire, but humans can walk in the sun. Also, they have souls and aren't evil. If he were human, all of Buffy's reasons for not wanting to be with him would be gone.
Losing her is nearly more than he can handle, but when she comes back, things start to work in his favor. Buffy's friends pulled her out of heaven, and Spike is the only one in whom she feels she can confide. Eventually, she gives in to temptation and they start an incredibly unhealthy affair. She's using Spike, taking advantage of his love to lose herself, and he'll take anything she'll give. The only time she treats him with anything like respect is when she calls off the relationship, acknowledging that his feelings matter and it isn't fair of her to use him like that, even if he isn't complaining. Spike tells Riley earlier that he's not sure whether Riley has it worse than he does, being so close but not truly having Buffy, or Spike has it worse, not having her at all. By Season 6, Spike has experienced both. He and Buffy are sleeping together, but she doesn't love him and claims she never will. She never pretends she's doing anything else, but Spike still believes that it's inevitable that she'll fall for him. For a vampire, Spike can sometimes be very naive. He believes in happy endings. Too bad for him, he's in a Joss Whedon show where they don't exist.
But he's had a taste of her now, and calling it off isn't that easy. Spike is, at this point, a soulless monster, and loving Buffy enough isn't enough to redeem him. Though Buffy and many others have told him, he doesn't believe it himself until he nearly rapes Buffy. Until she kicked him across the room, he didn't even realize he was doing anything wrong, and that he almost went that far horrifies him enough to take the initiative to actually change. The chip acted like a leash that kept him from killing fully. He quests to get a soul so he can actually be worthy of Buffy.
Spike is certain, during the rape scene, that Buffy will realize she loves him when he's inside her. He sees her jealousy and takes it for something more than it is, and doesn't listen to her protests. In earlier scenes, when she said no and he kept going, she easily succumbed, and he does believe it will be like that again. He has himself convinced that she loves him despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Despite how observant he can be about other people's romantic situations, he's entirely blind to his own.
His experience on souled vampires up to that point is entirely Angel. He knows that apparently they hurt enough to take "a badass vampire" and turn him into "a big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth," as he says in the Angel episode In the Dark. He knows Angelus and Angel act nothing alike. And he knows that Buffy can't love him because he's an evil, soulless thing. Getting a soul is not something to be undertaken lightly, not if it hurts that much, and not if it'll change his personality. I don't doubt that he'd considered the possibility before he finally does it. He's very competitive with Angel, and he certainly would have thought he could have handled the soul if Angel could handle it. The possibility of becoming someone else would have made him not do it until he felt it was the only thing he could do. The only thing that would make him the sort of man Buffy deserved.
Of course, it turns out to be a lot more painful and confusing than Spike had expected. He underestimated the pain and guilt and self-loathing a soul could cause. It didn't help that the First Evil chose that time to start tormenting Spike as well, and Spike had no way or knowing that this was not just his newfound soul. It takes him a long time to come to figure out how to be his normal badass self and also have a soul, but eventually he adjusts and turns out to be not too different with his soul than without it. Besides, of course, where he rests on the moral compass.
Spike's soul is a big turning point in his life. Before he got it, he was an evil creature trying to be good. Afterwards, the path was clearer, but everything hurt so much it made him insane. He learned to deal with it a lot faster than Angel did, and that's mostly because of Buffy's support. Buffy sees Spike change and helps him through it. She starts to lean on him as much as he leans on her. They are incredibly close by the end, and she even tells him she loves him, though he doesn't believe her. His lack of belief in Buffy's words are partly a deep seated self-loathing that makes it hard for him to accept that anyone else could so much like him, and partly him thinking that she's just wrong about her feelings and being confused by him being all noble and self-sacrificing, plus the deep connection they shared over the past few days. There's also an element of worry that Buffy's only saying it to give him one, final good memory, and he doesn't want to be lied to in his final moments.
Spike didn't think much about good and evil before he met Buffy. He knew in a vague way that he was evil, but he didn't think much about his victims. He knew he hurt people, of course, but he didn't go deeper into it than that. It was all fun. He enjoyed the thrill of killing and fighting and eating people and didn't think about their families or the future lives he cut short. After he got his chip, he drank only pig's blood for a very long time. When he had the opportunity to drink human's blood thanks to Drusilla's help, he hesitated before he did it. Even without a soul, he had an idea of right and wrong. He does give in to the wrong side, but he struggles with the decision. He hasn't redeemed himself yet, but he has the capability.
Pre-soul, Buffy is Spike's moral compass. Though he has an idea of right verse wrong, he's more worried about what's fun and what Buffy would approve or disapprove of. That's a big part of why he hesitates, knowing that if he starts killing again, the already miniscule chance he has with her would be gone. In the end, it's not enough to keep him from drinking from a human.
Though Drusilla and Buffy are the only two women Spike has ever loved, he has on occasion slept with other women. And Angel, once, but they were drunk and don't discuss it. After Drusilla dumps Spike, he takes up with Harmony, who is stupid and annoying and very easy. Spike doesn't really have one night stands, though. Even though he never loves Harmony, he does date her, though he doesn't care about her at all and even attempts to stake her at one point. He sleeps with Anya once too, when she was trying to get over Xander and he was trying to forget Buffy. It's pretty disastrous. His only other romantic relationship is with Maria, a human with spider legs that popped out when she was scared, angry, or aroused, that he dated in Hell. She took it a lot more seriously than he did. For him it was more that she helped him escape Maria's boss Non and lead Non's demon lady underlings after Non fell. He didn't really have any qualms about using sex to turn the girl to his side, even if he didn't love her.
Spike is very monogamous. Though he has on occasion slept with people he wasn't dating, there are always circumstances and usually alcohol or torture. He feels most comfortable within the bounds of some sort of relationship, though it does not have to be conventional. He likes cherishing someone above all others and doing everything for her. He would never cheat on someone he was dating because he has been there, and it hurts a lot.
Spike also cultivates important non-romantic relationships with Dawn, to whom he is a sort of older brother/father figure. She thinks he's cool and hangs out with him because it bothers Buffy at first, and Spike protects her because he knows it would break Buffy's heart if anything ever happened to Dawn. He has a lot of affection for her too, calling her nicknames such as "Nibblet" or "Little Bit." She liked him before everyone else did, and he became her protector. Their relationship was sometimes tumultuous as both of them have more loyalty to Buffy than to each other, and when Spike screws up badly, Dawn tends to feel betrayed, but mostly she likes and trusts him.
His other important non-romantic relationship is with Fred Burkle. Fred is the first person that is kind to him from the start. They meet when he rematerializes a ghost in Angel's office, and she is the only one who doesn't question whether or not he should be brought back. She works hard to help him, and it's something he appreciates a lot.
Spike has been obsessed with Slayers since he first heard about them. They represent the ultimate challenge for a vampire. Spike has killed two. The first one was mostly luck. If things had gone slightly differently, she would have killed him, and she did leave him with a scar. When he fought the second he was better at fighting, but he still went in not knowing if he'd win. Fighting is always a thrill for Spike, and no one's more fun than a Slayer. Plus, the blood tastes better than normal blood. Buffy was meant to be his third Slayer, but it really didn't work out the way he'd planned.
He tells Buffy at one point that every Slayer has a death wish. It might be true, but really, it's Spike who acts like he doesn't care whether he lives or dies. He consistently throws himself at more powerful opponents and keeps getting up for more punishment when staying down could spare him pain. When Glory tortures him for information about Dawn, not only does he not tell her, he openly mocks her. It doesn't matter how outmatched he is, Spike tackles every battle with sarcastic quips and unbridled enthusiasm. He isn't really afraid of anything physical, as he'll heal from almost any wound. He doesn't care if he wins or loses the fight, it's the thrill of battle he craves. When he gets older, he gets more careful and better at purposefully not dying, but he still wouldn't hesitate to give his life to save the right people, and he still follows Angel into an impossible to win strike against Wolfram and Hart. His own well-being means very little to him.
As a human, William was an outsider. Spike is an outsider too, but mostly by choice. He doesn't follow rules or orders unless they're set by someone he actually respects, and even then, he only does it if he feels like it. He's a vampire, and that means he doesn't need to worry about what anyone thinks of him. He curses and drinks, fights and loves, and always looks to have a good time. In his first episode, he takes over the main Sunnydale vampire nest and tells the other vampires that under him, "we're gonna have a little less ritual, and a little more fun around here." He enjoys what he does, and even with a soul, he broods a lot less than Angel does.
He's always sarcastic and witty. He doesn't hesitate to speak his mind or insult people. He often refers to people by nicknames either to show affection or mock. He's very good at reading people and seeing what's going on, even when they can't tell themselves. This power completely vanishes when relating to himself, of course. He can makes plans, but he rarely has the patience to follow through with them. He acts on instinct rather than logic. In Touched, he says, "I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain, so I make a lot of mistakes." Spike does what feels right, and if he's wrong, he gets up and tries again.
Spike is a study in contradictions. He's a fighter and a lover, he swears and uses eloquent metaphors, he's sometimes pragmatic and often romantic, and he always burns with passion. He's loud and brash and doesn't do anything part-way. He believes in true love and happy endings, even if in his darker days, he doesn't think they'll happen. No matter how hard he tries to hide it, the poet inside him never completely died.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yes! The plug-in is called Flaming Ferret, and you can make money through missions, getting some sort of job, or stealing.
1st person sample: http://community.livejournal.com/datapads/43825.html
http://community.livejournal.com/taxonomites/389979.html
http://community.livejournal.com/babylonjournals/893.html
http://killed2slayers.livejournal.com/19838.html
3rd person sample:
Spike wasn't looking for a fight. He just wanted to relax in a bar with a cold beer and no trouble, for once. It had been a long night. He'd saved plenty of innocent victims, and it was almost dawn. He wanted a bloody break. So he checked his sword at the door and went to get a drink.
Before he'd finished even half his beer, a large, scaly hand grabbed him by the back of his neck and threw him through the window.
Spike rolled as he landed and stood up to face the demon that had attacked him. "This better not take long. I was looking forward to that beer."
"Your death will be swift," the demon growled. "Swifter than the one you tried to give me."
Spike blinked. "I think you've got the wrong vampire, mate. Never seen you before in my life."
"Do you think you can fool me? You may have destroyed my eyes when we fought fifty years ago, but I'd recognize the foul stench of your soul anywhere."
Spike blinked. "I didn't have a soul fifty-oh, you've got to be kidding me."
The demon bared its teeth and stepped fully out of the bar. "I don't 'kid' about my revenge, Angel."
"Yeah, bugger that." Spike frowned up at the demon. "Angel's not the only vampire with a soul, you know. And for the record, we smell nothing alike."
"Impossible," the demon said. It tried to hit Spike, but he ducked and ran to grab his sword.
"Completely possible, and I've got enough messes of my own without having to deal with his, you know." He turned around and readied on his sword as the demon advanced. "Look, it's been a long day. How about I tell you where to find Angel and you take this up with him, hmm?"
The demon paused and considered it. Clearly, it wasn't the most brilliant demon around. It didn't look like it was going to make its mind up soon, so Spike shrugged and sliced its head off before it could decide.
"Yeah, I was lying about all that," he told the corpse. "I mean, really, I wasn't about to let you try and kill Angel. Can't say I like him, but no one's killing him on my watch." The bouncers were giving him ugly looks, so with a last, longing look at his beer, Spike walked away. There were other bars around, or he could find Angel and taunt him about his inability to properly kill his enemies. Either way.
Questions?: The sunlight thing. I don't know if Spike would burn under the light of whatever stars are around, but I'm fairly sure it's only Earth's sun that gives him problems. I know different dimension suns do not burn vampires. So I guess my question is, how will that work? And also if pig's blood is easily gettable, I guess.
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yes!