Christos Gage's interview on Angel & Faith Issue 20 and why it doesn't fly for this Spike fan
Anyone following along knows I’m very against what the Buffy comics has turned into. A couple of weeks ago I was in a good place. I saw what they were doing with the Buffy character and knew I was done. I did my best to ignore the comics. However there still lingered a curiosity about what they planned for Spike. I still do have curiosity regarding ( Read more... )
He has no such excuse now, but the writers love to bring back characters from the shows because we readers have more connection with them than comic characters. It's much like fanfiction - we use certain characters because the audience already has a connection with them, a sense of how things are supposed to go - so there's less writing needed on the author's part to establish the why of how things go. I think that's why they chose Harmony, and unless you're a serious Spike fan, it's not going to bother you as a reader. They just didn't put that much thought into it.
I came to another conclusion the other day, when I was thinking about all this - each of the good guys in the Buffyverse has one or more major character flaws, as all people do, but since Spike got his soul back, he's not so flawed anymore. He has idiosyncrasies, but no real flaws. He's practically perfect in every way. :) So they're giving him flaws, maybe. Therefore, whatever we see as OOC behavior is really just those character flaws coming to the fore... Just another way to fanwank it.
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It did on Angel too - soulless Harmony is trying to be good, will do whatever Spike wants because she loves him (as much as Harmony is capable of love), and Spike uses that. It's echoes of the S6 Spike/Buffy dynamic, and I have a hard time with Spike making that choice after living through it, but I tell myself he was so overcome by sensation he didn't think it through. (Sigh)
Yeah, that was how I took the scene too. After that Spike didn't even try anything with Harmony. Someone people will really disagree with me and think I'm too uptight about sex, but I don't think it does anyone any good to sleep with someone you have no respect or like for (how is that supposed to build Spike up?). And I don't believe for one moment Spike is "friends" with Harmony. From the way he treats and sees her, he seems to want to stay away from her. So the Harmony sex really comes out of left field.
I still think, from a writer perspective, him hooking up with someone new would have been a great seed for future options (because who else would be a love interest for Spike? They have to make new characters at this point). Just bringing in someone familiar, especially with their history and relationship, would only backfire on them.
I think, imo, that Spike still has a lot of flaws. He idealizes love and romanticism, he lacks certain empathy for others and can be a bit too self involved, and tries too hard to cover his sensitive heart (he works overtime to keep up the costume, to the point he can be over sensitive and rude). He thinks humanity is a weakness and doesn't fully understand the strength of family and belonging (though he knows of its power). He also has his idiosyncrasies, being a jerk to those he views below him or to whom he doesn't care, etc, but I think that those things on top of his flaws makes Spike not so perfect. I found those flaws more fascinating than the flaws he had while soulless, which was more entitlement, immoralness, selfishness, etc (which, while I agree it's still there somewhat, the soul controls those flaws and he has matured past them. He knows better now). So giving him these specific flaws, is giving him the flaws he already overcame (in my opinion) once he got a soul.
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