Pulling at the seams...
"But Mom! Spike is evil, and soulless, and ... and... evil!"
"But he's been helping you, hasn't he?" Joyce said, leaning against the counter, her hands curled around a mug of hot chocolate, full of little marshmallows--which, of course, only reminded Buffy further of the blood sucking fiend that had made himself a regular guest in her home. "And he's got the chip, so he can't hurt anyone."
"That doesn't make him Not Evil. If that chip came out, he'd just be right back where he was, trying to kill us all."
"I don't know, honey," Joyce said. "The chip just keeps him from hurting people himself. If he really wanted us all dead, he could just hire someone, couldn't he? Or find ways around it..."
How many times have I read this scene? Let me count the ways. You can change the situation, or the character names: maybe it's Tara or Anya, heck, it could even be Buffy trying to justify herself to Giles or Xander--it doesn't matter. You could probably recite the dialogue from memory at this point. Why? Because it's no longer the character speaking. What we're reading is the author inserting their (probably fandom-meta inspired) opinion into the mouth of a sympathetic character to the cause.
This happens a LOT, I've noticed, and I have to restrain myself from doing it as well. It's hard, sometimes, when a plot point that is so very obvious to us as fans is ignored in canon, not to give into the urge to beam our perspective directly into the brains of a character that we can see being sympathetic to it. Unfortunately, while it might make sense to us as wish-fulfilling writers, and often to readers who are so used to this phenomenon that they take it both as written and rule, from a writing standpoint it's a big old mess.
The reasons for that are, if you look at it, pretty obvious. If the characters in canon didn't notice these glaringly obvious to us plot points--there was probably a reason for that.
Take the scene I scribbled above, for instance. Canonically, Joyce was never terribly involved with Buffy's Slaying or the Scoobies. Her interactions with Spike, up until the chip, were limited to an alcohol hazed night of horrors the evening before Buffy ran away from home, and one conversation interruptus over hot chocolate (DO NOT get me started on that little marshmallow thing or I'll be here all day, ranting). It's doubtful that, in the first scene, Joyce even knew Spike was a vampire. She certainly doesn't seem to act like it. Hell, she's barely sure what her own daughter is--and I doubt that, small talk aside, it ever occurred to her that Spike might not be human himself. But that's debatable, since we don't know what Buffy told her mother between the fight on the front porch and her phone call to the hospital. As for the "Lovers Walk" convo--again, we don't know that Joyce is even aware of her danger prior to Buffy pinning Spike to the counter with a spoon at his chest. It's possible, up until that point, that Joyce doesn't perceive Spike as a threat because she doesn't know he IS one.
The next time we see the two of them interact isn't until Season 5.
I can hear you blinking.
Seriously. Buffy never brings him around during S4. There are no scenes of a chipped Spike sitting down over hot chocolate and pouring his heart out to Joyce. Not one. In fact, (though my memory MIGHT be faulty on this), the next time we see Joyce and Spike together is in "Checkpoint" where they bond, briefly, over Passions -- only for a few episodes later for Joyce to express horror over the idea that Spike might be in love with her daughter. WHY? Because, while Joyce and Spike's interactions are mostly benign to this point, she's never really been around him long enough to know exactly what he is and isn't capable of. All she has is Buffy's view to go off of, and we must admit that Buffy herself is entirely biased. Now, after her death we do have that scene where Spike defends his motives for bringing flowers for Joyce in which he claims that Joyce never treated him like a freak (true, canonically), and that she always had a "cuppa" for him (... technically true, if we go by the one time we see explicitly see this happening--however I find it doubtful that Spike would have spent time hanging around Joyce during S4, and if he was there early in S5--I'll assume after "Out Of My Mind" since prior to that he was still in "Hate Slayer, Kill, Kill" mode--it was part of his Buffy-Stalking plan). That still is trumped by the episode "Crush", in which Joyce makes it fairly clear that Buffy needs to make her lack of interest plain to him. This is not a relationship Joyce would support.
Further, Joyce is an art gallery owner. What does she know about the limits of a behavioral modification chip? Do any of them, really, know for certain what Spike is and isn't capable of doing? Yes, it's clear to us that the Scoobies dismiss Spike as a real threat, post-chip--but that's more than likely because he ceases to BE one--at least until the fiasco with Adam, in which he doesn't demonstrably do anything to harm them other than tell some fairly transparent lies. Only after "Out of My Mind" would Buffy have some indication that Spike is capable of causing actual harm--and why she doesn't put him down after the doctor incident is plenty of fuel for Spuffy foreshadowing, I think.
It's even more ridiculous for Tara to be the one side with Spike and start spouting this argument. Tara is kept out of the fighting, away from the Slayage, for the majority of Season 4. Spike is, quite literally, her ONLY vampire. He's the only one she ever interacts with. She doesn't even meet Angel until... well, I guess we can assume that she might meet him at Buffy's funeral, but they're never together on screen. She has nothing with which to compare Spike at all--and she never knew him before the chip. So, again, she has no way of judging what he is and isn't capable of. When the idea of Buffy being with Spike is brought up in Season 5's "Intervention" our normally support-o, empathetic Tara is the one to say that Buffy being with Spike is crazy, and that Buffy clearly doesn't know what she's doing, while Willow tries desperately to find some way to be mentally okay with it.
Anya, I think is the only one I can buy spouting off the "Spike isn't limited by the chip" argument with any kind of real world knowledge.
That's not to say that these characters cannot EVER convincingly argue this point: they can. But here's where the writing part comes in. You've got to convince your readers that these characters have either witness something so convincing that they saw this plot point for themselves, or have them gradually come to realize it over time in such a way that their giving one of these speeches is believable. This is where some fanfic authors skimp: they simply decide that because Joyce was nice to Spike three times, she must like him better than Angel and would therefore be supportive of his cause. Because Tara can be so sympathetic to other people's problems, she would understand that deep down Spike's not such a bad guy. Stick this speech in one of their mouths and we're good to go forward with the Spuffy-lovin', Buffy easily being persuaded by the arguments of those who are clearly wiser than she.
It would never work like that, really.
I see these sorts of author mouthpiece characters crop up in all kinds of stories--even some that are otherwise spectacularly written, which makes them somewhat forgivable. What makes them so easy to spot, however, is the wording: "the chip only keeps him from killing people", "he could find ways around it", "[spike would only want to] kill you in a fair fight" "you and Spike are equally matched, he's strong and can keep up with you in a fight, plus vampires are capable of sustained erections over a extended period of time. Perfect for orgasms!"... these are fandom arguments that often end up in character's mouths nearly verbatim. It happens because we read the same arguments, the same metas over and over, we make them part of our personal canon, and then use them to justify plot points in our stories. We absorb them like sponges, regurgitating the things we've read whenever we have a chance.
It's something I look out for in my stories, something I try to avoid. I'd rather let the characters come to their own revelations in a natural way than try to force an epiphany on them. Right now I'm in a part of my WIP where Buffy and Spike will be discussing her relationship with Angel, and I *know* I'm going to have to tiptoe through the dialogue carefully, avoiding meta-opinions and fandom arguments. Spike might spout off on Angel, but there are things he *can't* know. He can't know, for instance, what Buffy and Angel's relationship was really like. He only observed it in patches, and received the tale of it from a very biased and more than likely dishonest Angelus. He can't know what Angel told her, or whether it was the truth or not. He cannot know what it means to have a soul as a vampire. There are things about Spike (and Angel) that Buffy can't know: details of either vampire's true past, how old Spike actually is, etc.
When I wrote "West of the Moon" I let a few of these things creep in, for the story's sake. For "DUST", however, I'm tearing them apart and squinting at them under a microscope. Sometimes, when I pry apart fandom arguments and assumptions, I find canon truths I wasn't expecting to have to deal with (like that little detail about Buffy not knowing Spike's actual age, or Spike not knowing anything, really, about Joyce. She's barely a blip on his radar post "Lovers Walk"). There's this cloud of knowledge that floats over fanfic that assumes that if we, the fans, are aware of a fact, then most of the characters ought to be as well... and we forget that characters can't know something until they learn it for themselves.
"But he's been helping you, hasn't he?" Joyce said, leaning against the counter, her hands curled around a mug of hot chocolate, full of little marshmallows--which, of course, only reminded Buffy further of the blood sucking fiend that had made himself a regular guest in her home. "And he's got the chip, so he can't hurt anyone."
"That doesn't make him Not Evil. If that chip came out, he'd just be right back where he was, trying to kill us all."
"I don't know, honey," Joyce said. "The chip just keeps him from hurting people himself. If he really wanted us all dead, he could just hire someone, couldn't he? Or find ways around it..."
How many times have I read this scene? Let me count the ways. You can change the situation, or the character names: maybe it's Tara or Anya, heck, it could even be Buffy trying to justify herself to Giles or Xander--it doesn't matter. You could probably recite the dialogue from memory at this point. Why? Because it's no longer the character speaking. What we're reading is the author inserting their (probably fandom-meta inspired) opinion into the mouth of a sympathetic character to the cause.
This happens a LOT, I've noticed, and I have to restrain myself from doing it as well. It's hard, sometimes, when a plot point that is so very obvious to us as fans is ignored in canon, not to give into the urge to beam our perspective directly into the brains of a character that we can see being sympathetic to it. Unfortunately, while it might make sense to us as wish-fulfilling writers, and often to readers who are so used to this phenomenon that they take it both as written and rule, from a writing standpoint it's a big old mess.
The reasons for that are, if you look at it, pretty obvious. If the characters in canon didn't notice these glaringly obvious to us plot points--there was probably a reason for that.
Take the scene I scribbled above, for instance. Canonically, Joyce was never terribly involved with Buffy's Slaying or the Scoobies. Her interactions with Spike, up until the chip, were limited to an alcohol hazed night of horrors the evening before Buffy ran away from home, and one conversation interruptus over hot chocolate (DO NOT get me started on that little marshmallow thing or I'll be here all day, ranting). It's doubtful that, in the first scene, Joyce even knew Spike was a vampire. She certainly doesn't seem to act like it. Hell, she's barely sure what her own daughter is--and I doubt that, small talk aside, it ever occurred to her that Spike might not be human himself. But that's debatable, since we don't know what Buffy told her mother between the fight on the front porch and her phone call to the hospital. As for the "Lovers Walk" convo--again, we don't know that Joyce is even aware of her danger prior to Buffy pinning Spike to the counter with a spoon at his chest. It's possible, up until that point, that Joyce doesn't perceive Spike as a threat because she doesn't know he IS one.
The next time we see the two of them interact isn't until Season 5.
I can hear you blinking.
Seriously. Buffy never brings him around during S4. There are no scenes of a chipped Spike sitting down over hot chocolate and pouring his heart out to Joyce. Not one. In fact, (though my memory MIGHT be faulty on this), the next time we see Joyce and Spike together is in "Checkpoint" where they bond, briefly, over Passions -- only for a few episodes later for Joyce to express horror over the idea that Spike might be in love with her daughter. WHY? Because, while Joyce and Spike's interactions are mostly benign to this point, she's never really been around him long enough to know exactly what he is and isn't capable of. All she has is Buffy's view to go off of, and we must admit that Buffy herself is entirely biased. Now, after her death we do have that scene where Spike defends his motives for bringing flowers for Joyce in which he claims that Joyce never treated him like a freak (true, canonically), and that she always had a "cuppa" for him (... technically true, if we go by the one time we see explicitly see this happening--however I find it doubtful that Spike would have spent time hanging around Joyce during S4, and if he was there early in S5--I'll assume after "Out Of My Mind" since prior to that he was still in "Hate Slayer, Kill, Kill" mode--it was part of his Buffy-Stalking plan). That still is trumped by the episode "Crush", in which Joyce makes it fairly clear that Buffy needs to make her lack of interest plain to him. This is not a relationship Joyce would support.
Further, Joyce is an art gallery owner. What does she know about the limits of a behavioral modification chip? Do any of them, really, know for certain what Spike is and isn't capable of doing? Yes, it's clear to us that the Scoobies dismiss Spike as a real threat, post-chip--but that's more than likely because he ceases to BE one--at least until the fiasco with Adam, in which he doesn't demonstrably do anything to harm them other than tell some fairly transparent lies. Only after "Out of My Mind" would Buffy have some indication that Spike is capable of causing actual harm--and why she doesn't put him down after the doctor incident is plenty of fuel for Spuffy foreshadowing, I think.
It's even more ridiculous for Tara to be the one side with Spike and start spouting this argument. Tara is kept out of the fighting, away from the Slayage, for the majority of Season 4. Spike is, quite literally, her ONLY vampire. He's the only one she ever interacts with. She doesn't even meet Angel until... well, I guess we can assume that she might meet him at Buffy's funeral, but they're never together on screen. She has nothing with which to compare Spike at all--and she never knew him before the chip. So, again, she has no way of judging what he is and isn't capable of. When the idea of Buffy being with Spike is brought up in Season 5's "Intervention" our normally support-o, empathetic Tara is the one to say that Buffy being with Spike is crazy, and that Buffy clearly doesn't know what she's doing, while Willow tries desperately to find some way to be mentally okay with it.
Anya, I think is the only one I can buy spouting off the "Spike isn't limited by the chip" argument with any kind of real world knowledge.
That's not to say that these characters cannot EVER convincingly argue this point: they can. But here's where the writing part comes in. You've got to convince your readers that these characters have either witness something so convincing that they saw this plot point for themselves, or have them gradually come to realize it over time in such a way that their giving one of these speeches is believable. This is where some fanfic authors skimp: they simply decide that because Joyce was nice to Spike three times, she must like him better than Angel and would therefore be supportive of his cause. Because Tara can be so sympathetic to other people's problems, she would understand that deep down Spike's not such a bad guy. Stick this speech in one of their mouths and we're good to go forward with the Spuffy-lovin', Buffy easily being persuaded by the arguments of those who are clearly wiser than she.
It would never work like that, really.
I see these sorts of author mouthpiece characters crop up in all kinds of stories--even some that are otherwise spectacularly written, which makes them somewhat forgivable. What makes them so easy to spot, however, is the wording: "the chip only keeps him from killing people", "he could find ways around it", "[spike would only want to] kill you in a fair fight" "you and Spike are equally matched, he's strong and can keep up with you in a fight, plus vampires are capable of sustained erections over a extended period of time. Perfect for orgasms!"... these are fandom arguments that often end up in character's mouths nearly verbatim. It happens because we read the same arguments, the same metas over and over, we make them part of our personal canon, and then use them to justify plot points in our stories. We absorb them like sponges, regurgitating the things we've read whenever we have a chance.
It's something I look out for in my stories, something I try to avoid. I'd rather let the characters come to their own revelations in a natural way than try to force an epiphany on them. Right now I'm in a part of my WIP where Buffy and Spike will be discussing her relationship with Angel, and I *know* I'm going to have to tiptoe through the dialogue carefully, avoiding meta-opinions and fandom arguments. Spike might spout off on Angel, but there are things he *can't* know. He can't know, for instance, what Buffy and Angel's relationship was really like. He only observed it in patches, and received the tale of it from a very biased and more than likely dishonest Angelus. He can't know what Angel told her, or whether it was the truth or not. He cannot know what it means to have a soul as a vampire. There are things about Spike (and Angel) that Buffy can't know: details of either vampire's true past, how old Spike actually is, etc.
When I wrote "West of the Moon" I let a few of these things creep in, for the story's sake. For "DUST", however, I'm tearing them apart and squinting at them under a microscope. Sometimes, when I pry apart fandom arguments and assumptions, I find canon truths I wasn't expecting to have to deal with (like that little detail about Buffy not knowing Spike's actual age, or Spike not knowing anything, really, about Joyce. She's barely a blip on his radar post "Lovers Walk"). There's this cloud of knowledge that floats over fanfic that assumes that if we, the fans, are aware of a fact, then most of the characters ought to be as well... and we forget that characters can't know something until they learn it for themselves.