(Quotes are from Psyche Transcripts. Spoilers Through Season 6)
(* note: Four part essay – will try to post all in one thread, assuming voy doesn’t kick me out)
“Sticks and Stones will break my bones! But words will never hurt me!” Goes the old children’s rhyme. Apparently whoever created this rhyme never heard of the old adage the “pen is mightier than the sword?”
Words can crucify us. Any one who has posted an essay, a fanfic or just a post on the internet knows this to be true. I just finished reading a portion of the February archive of the ATP board and one poor poster, named Lupe, who had written a brilliant post on OAFA, was slammed by someone named “monkeypants” who indicated her post was meaningless drivel. Luckily several long-term posters rushed to her defense and she lived to post another day. But let’s face it – we’ve all been slammed. At least on the internet we can hide behind pseudonyms. No one knows what we look like. (Well, they know what I look like because people have posted my picture to the ATP posting board. Teach me to calmly pose for pictures. Note to self, next time see camera? Run! Okay now watch as everyone starts frantically hunting for my picture in the archives, assuming of course it’s not still on the board or Masq hasn’t posted it to some gallery...so much for the secret identity.) Anyway, most of us remain unknown. Our identities hidden behind a fake name. But the fake name doesn’t protect us from pain. Our words are our babies; we are inextricably attached to them. So when someone cruelly slashes them, it feels as if they are slashing at us. We forget that it’s all subjective, we don’t know the slasher, we haven’t met them, in most cases we don’t even know their real name, and if we wish, we can ignore their post, in fact we can ignore all their future posts. Their words can’t hurt us.
Wrong. They do hurt. But that’s not what interests me. Of course being rejected hurts. Is there anyone here who can honestly tell me it doesn’t? And we get rejected all the time. Just walking outside and interacting with the world can result in rejection. It’s how we choose to deal with this rejection that is interesting. The possibilities are endless.
In the Stephen King novel “Carrie”, which was later made into a Brian De Palma movie of the same name, Carrie deals with rejection by attempting to destroy everyone around her. In her defense, she suffers quite a bit of rejection before she explodes. Her mother rejects her, her friends tease her horribly, she has pig’s blood dumped on her head. By the end of the book/movie the audience is actually sort of rooting for her. Carrie’s male counterpart is the Heathcliff in the Emily Bronte class “Wuthering Heights”, Heathcliff has also been horribly rejected. A wild gypsy boy – he has been taken in by a landowner, whose family abuses and rejects Heathcliff. Heathcliff falls for the man’s daughter, only to have her reject his love for a neighboring landowner. Heathcliff is “beneath her”. A wild child. A commoner. Enraged, Heathcliff takes off for the town, makes his fortune and returns with the sole purpose of destroying those who rejected him. Like Cathy and Carrie’s friends, we often make our own monsters.
But wait, is it really Carrie’s friends and her mother’s fault that she chooses to go berserk or Heathcliff’s adopted family and lady love’s fault that he chooses to destroy them?
They could have chosen to handle the rejection in another way – a way that would have ended less tragically.
BTVS explores all the ways we handle rejection. It also explores how rejection changes us, how we grow from it, and how we can if we choose to let it destroy us and everyone around us. The reason I’ve chosen Willow and Spike as my focus is they speak to me personally and it’s so much easier to write about characters that speak to you on a gut level. The other reason, which may be more valid, is they’ve been so closely paralleled this Season, they conveniently fit my two literary examples and this whole journey essay arc I’ve been doing. Of course by posting this, I’m taking a risk – people may be sick of Spike and Willow and not respond…and I’ll have to deal with the rejection.
1. William, Willow : Cecily/Cordy – Peer Pressure
Have you ever written a poem for someone? Did you read it aloud? Did you show it to them? Or did someone else grab it and do it for you? Read it aloud to a room full of your peers? Did they like your poem? Or did they make a really nasty remark like – “gee you read it so well and it’s sooo bad”?
Poetry is a weird thing and very subjective. Lots of people can’t abide it. Makes no sense to them. Some focus more on rhymes than meaning. Most forget that poetry comes from the writer’s soul – it’s a way of expressing emotions that cannot be expressed in any other way. Through words. The sound of words. Metaphors. Poetry is also, at least in my humble opinion, about the poet not the outside world. It’s the poet’s way of expressing what he or she feels.
Now imagine if you will, working hard on a poem about someone you have admired or loved for quite some time. Someone takes that poem away from you. Reads it aloud to a bunch of people. It’s not finished. It’s just a rough draft. They laugh at the words. Mock them. In front of the person it was about. But that person has hidden their reaction well, you can’t tell how they feel. So you wander over to find out. They ask you if this poem was about them. You admit it is that you do have feelings for them. You hand them your heart on a sleeve. And what do they tell you? “You’re beneath me!” Ouch.
Is there anyone on this board who hasn’t had a piece of writing rejected by a loved one? If so, you are very lucky. Is there anyone who hasn’t received numerous rejection slips?
Who hasn’t been mocked by the group?
This is what happened to William the Bloody Awful Poet. (It may have also happened to Joss Whedon who wrote the scene according to James Marsters Saturday interview at Shore Leave – www.bloodyawfulpoet.com). We know how William reacted to it – took off heart fluttering, ripping the poem into shreds. Have to admit, I’d have done the same thing. His options seem pretty limited here. He could have stayed at the party. He could have hit or attacked Cecily, the woman who rejected him, which would have been Heathcliff’s and/or Spike’s reaction. Not a very smart reaction considering this occurred at a party. He could have plotted revenge. He could humiliated her in front of everyone by declaring his love in public as opposed to that isolated corner.
How about the stuffy aristocrats reaction to his work? They also reject him in the flashback sequence from FFL and somewhat cruelly. What should he have done to them? Make a smart quip? Fight them off? These are the actions of Spike and/or Xander. Or just walk away - shrug it off as unimportant?
William leaves both situations. The first he is understandably overcome by, because to be fair Cecily didn’t just reject his poetry, she also rejected him.
Let’s switch briefly to Cecily. We know so little about this character. If we assume that she is indeed Halfrek, then we can equally assume that perhaps Cecily’s rejection of William had a lot more to do with Cecily than it had to do with William. Most rejection does by the way. When someone rejects us, it usually isn’t about us, it’s all about them. Doesn’t make it any easier of course. So why did Cecily reject William? He was below her in class? He wrote horrible poetry? He appeared weak in her opinion? (Shallow, but hey some people equate weakness with poetry writing and a dislike of violence, I equate it with bar fights and seducing maids in alleys. To each their own. There’s an argument that could be made that Cecily was shallow.) Or was it redcat’s neurasthenic male view – that William appeared too effeminate, too womanish? Personally, I like the *cough *daddy issues*cough * that Anya suggests in Older and Far Away.
Or perhaps Cecily rejected William for the same exact reasons Cordelia rejects Xander in Bewitched Bothered And Bewildered. Her friends and family rejected him. And Cecily already felt her father’s rejection – hence the whole vengeance demon trip? She certainly felt the fellow aristocrats. Would Cecily have responded the way she had, if the aristocrats hadn’t made fun of his poetry? What if they had responded favorably to it? What if instead of setting poor William up for ridicule, they had been appreciative of his work? Would she have rejected him then? Would Cordelia have rejected Xander if Harmony and her friends accepted him? Cordelia of course is a bit stronger than Cecily – she decides at the end of BBB to accept Xander regardless of what her friends think. A decision she pays for in later episodes. Cecily like Cordelia fears the rejection of her peers. As Cordy states in Out of Mind Out of Sight, being popular isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: “Hey! You think I'm never lonely because I'm so cute and popular? I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone. It's not like any of them really know me. I don't even know if they like me half the time. People just want to be in a popular zone. Sometimes when I talk, everyone's so busy agreeing with me, they don't hear a word I say.”
But hey, it’s better than being alone. To maintain this, you often put people down. Do whatever the group expects of you. In CARRIE, the group set up for Carrie to have pig’s blood dumped on her. Amy Irving played a girl who was against this but she acted too late. She was too afraid of the group’s response to stop it and the act was done. In Wuthering Heights – Cathy desperately wants to accept and love Heathcliff, but the safer, more acceptable path is to marry the landowner. Both Cathy and Amy Irving’s character don’t want to lose their popularity, they don’t want to be rejected and will literally do anything to avoid it – just as Cordy does. Remember how cruel Cordy and Harmony are to poor Willow in Seasons 1-2? In Welcome to the Hellmouth – Cordy introduces Willow as the class nerd and loser, informing Buffy that hanging with Willow will make her a loser by association. Glancing over Willow’s clothes, she states somewhat haughtily : “Have you seen the softer side of Sears?”
Cathy, Amy Irving’s character, and Cordelia are cruelly punished. Cathy dies, Amy’s character witnesses the deaths of all her friends and by Season 3, Cordelia is shopping at Sears. Actually she has a job at a clothing store and is frantically saving to buy one dress. A dress Xander kindly buys for her. The Queen of the Insult has suddenly found herself on the other side. Just as Harmony who was so cruel to Cordelia, Willow, Xander and all the others in high school, ends up a vampire and Spike’s mistreated vamp whore. Cordelia even asks in Room With A View, when she will stop being punished for her cruel behavior.
Angel: “Punished. (Cordy nods) For what?”
Cordy: “I don’t know. For what I was? For everything I said in High School just because I could get away with it? - And then it all ended, and I had to pay.”
(RM with A View, Ats Season 1)
Cecily and the aristocrats who so cruelly reject William may have also been punished. Who knows what happened after William took off from that party? Did Cecily have a little heart to heart with dear old Dad? Did Daddy say something that caused Cecily to enact vengeance and decide to become a vengeance demon? Or did William return with Drusilla and Angelus and drive railroad spikes through the party goers heads? I somehow doubt it, considering we have Cecily appearing to play the vengeance demon in Season 6, but we may never know. It is, however, safe to assume that William was not the only one who suffered from rejection in that room. Any more than Willow was the only one. Harmony, the aristocrats, Cordelia, and Cecily all felt the pain of rejection, all feared it, if they didn’t why bother treating Willow and William the way they did? We tend to reject others to protect ourselves. It’s the code of the pack, the mob mentality. If I follow the group, they won’t notice me, I won’t get hurt.
After being rejected by the aristocrats and Cecily, it’s not really all that surprising that William allows Dru to attack and suck him dry. She does it with such a tempting plea.
“You walk in worlds the others can’t understand…” she tells him, “you want something glistening, something effulgent…” And looking into her eyes, feeling her breast beneath his hands, he eagerly says yes. In her eyes he glimpses what he’s always craved acceptance. Don’t we all? She has picked him up from the ground and in one brief interlude not only told him his ideas and poetry are worthwhile, but that she wants him. He’s worthwhile. What a pick-me up. Too bad she’s a vampire and insane. Through Drusilla, William finally finds acceptance, becomes part of a “group” of vampires and has someone love him.
Willow discovers acceptance through magic. Magic enables Willow to become a valuable asset to the Scoobies. She is no longer relegated to research and the library. She becomes the big gun. Also through magic, she meets Tara. Would she have met Tara otherwise? Willow realizes that magic makes her important. Better than the others. They can’t hurt her. In the Bronze, during Smashed, when the boys make fun of her and Amy – she just turns on the old black magic. Magic, Willow discovers changes the rules in her favor. She has a weapon. Just as William now has a weapon. You don’t like me? I kill you. They no longer have to live by society’s rules – they no longer have to put up with rejection. The group can no longer hurt them. Wrong. The rules haven’t really changed. They are still being rejected. All that has changed is how they are reacting to the rejection. Instead of fleeing – they are attacking.
2. Willow/William and Xander – Flipping the tables, Rejecting the Rejecter.
You ever have a crush on your best friend? But your best friend has a crush on your other friend – who happens to be prettier and stronger and well, super girl? And after super-girl rejects this guy you had a crush on – you think, hey, maybe he’ll want me? But wait a minute – you don’t want to come in second because that would be baaad!
Willow in Season 1 loved Xander. She has always loved Xander. But Xander is interested in the girl he can’t have, which in this case is Buffy. For Xander its love at first sight in Wellcome to The Hellmouth – he falls off his skateboard for Buffy, but looks up into the kind face of Willow. When Willow finally gets up the nerve to tell Xander how she feels, he has become possessed by a hyena and let’s her know somewhat cruelly how he feels. The scene is reminiscent of Cecily’s rejection of William.
Xander: And, well, we've been friends for such a long time that I feel like I need to tell you something. I've, um... I've decided to drop geometry. So I won't be
needing your math help anymore. Which means I won't have to look at your pasty face again. (THE PACK, Season 1, Btvs)
To Xander’s credit – he was possessed. But the rejection still burns poor Willow. And it’s not like he hasn’t rejected her before now? Remember Witch – where Xander tells Willow that she’s just like one of the guys? Or later in When She Was Bad – he almost kisses Willow, but Buffy shows up, flirts with him, and he forgets all about her.
What’s interesting about Xander and Willow is we watch the whole rejection dance from multiple sides. After rehearsing his spiel with Willow numerous times, Xander gets rejected by Buffy, he reacts really badly, insults her and accuses her of preferring vampires instead. Doesn’t hear her reasons.
Xander: (takes a breath) Buffy, I want you to go to the dance with me. You and me, on a date. (edited slightly for length) Well, you're not laughing. So that's a good start. Buffy, I
like you. A lot. And I know we're friends, and we've had experiences... We've fought some blood-sucking fiends, and that's all been a good time. But I want more. I wanna dance with you.
Buffy: Xander, you're one of my best friends. You and Willow...
Xander: Well, Willow's not looking to date you. Or if she is, she's playing it pretty close to the chest. (laughs nervously)
No, Xander, Willow is looking to date you. Buffy knows this and part of the reason she hasn’t allowed herself to be interested in Xander may be because of it. But Xander is oblivious. The thing about rejection is we think we’re the only one being rejected. I remember a very wise person once asking me – “haven’t you ever rejected anyone?” Yep. Guilty. Life is nothing but karmic. Buffy tries to let Xander down gently. Tries to convey that their friendship is more important to her. In fact in the scene she doesn’t really reject him, not as person, she just rejects him as a romantic love interest and considering how well those have gone – maybe Xander got the better deal. She also lists positive reasons for not starting a romantic relationship with him – until he pushes her.
Buffy: I don't want to spoil the friendship that we have.
Xander: Well, I don't want to spoil it either. But that's not the point, is it? You either feel a thing or you don't.
Buffy: (looks down a moment, then back up) I don't. Xander, I'm, I'm sorry. I-I just don't think of you that way.
Xander: Well, try. I'll wait. (smiles weakly)
Buffy: Xander...
Xander: Nah. Forget it. (gets up) I'm not him. I mean, I guess a guy's gotta be undead to make time with you.
Buffy: That's really harsh.
Xander: Look, I'm sorry. I don't handle rejection well. Funny! Considering all the practice I've had, huh?
Xander doesn’t handle rejection well. Probably his greatest flaw. Xander’s means of handling rejection is to inflict pain. You reject me? Fine. I reject you. This is Xander’s M.O. In the above scene – he launches the worst insult he can find at Buffy. Xander handles rejection with snide remarks or by inflicting pain. Like most of us, Xander tends to forget the times in which he rejected someone’s love. From Xander’s p.o.v he’s the only one who’s ever been rejected.
Xander: Apart from 'no', does it really matter? She's still jonesin' for Angel, and could care less about me.
Willow: At least now you know.
Xander: Yeah, you're right. The deal's done. The polls are in, and it's time for my concession speech. (has an idea and brightens) Hey, I know what we'll do! We can go! Be my date! We'll, we'll have a great time! We'll dance, we'll go wild... Whadaya say?
Willow: No.
Xander: Good! What?
Willow: There's no way.
Xander: (exhales) Willow, come on!
Willow: You think I wanna go to the dance with you and watch you wish you were at the dance with her? You think that's my idea of hijinks? You should know better.
Xander: (exhales) I didn't think.
No, he didn’t, he assumed. Good old reliable Willow. Who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Who doesn’t feel pain. How many people have we treated like this in our lifetimes? It’s easy to reject people, without thinking. To make assumptions. I think Xander is actually taken aback by her reaction. So we get the double whammy again. It is first shown in Welcome to The Hellmouth, with Xander looking longingly after Buffy and Willow looking longingly after Xander. Then again in Witch with Xander calling Willow one of the guys and Buffy calling Xander one of the girls. In The Pack with Xander telling Willow he wants nothing to do with her and Buffy knocking Xander out with a desk. And finally, When She Was Bad, Xander comes onto Willow almost kissing her, Buffy shows up, he drops Willow, Buffy comes onto Xander, then backs off clearly interested in Angel. Willow retreats inside herself. Xander blasts Buffy. In each case – Willow’s reaction to the rejection is far more mature and less reactive than Xander’s. Willow doesn’t attempt to destroy or hurt Xander in response. While Xander does attempt to hurt the person who rejected him.
In Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Season 2, after Cordy rejects him, Xander’s response is to perform a love spell. So when he rejects Cordy, she’ll feel it as intensely as he feels her rejection of him. He learns in the process of conducting the spell, that Cordy only rejected him out of fear of being rejected herself. His spell also backfires on him – because by doing the spell, he ends up painfully rejecting every woman in town causing them to want to kill him. The women he hurts the most are actually Willow, who already had feelings for him, and Buffy, who gets turned into a rat and almost killed. Does Willow pay Xander back? No. Instead Willow continues to develop her relationship with OZ. She takes Buffy’s advice from a few episodes earlier and realizes that it is better to go after the guy who shows an interest in her than to wait for Xander.
Compare Xander’s reactions in Prophecy Girl to William/Spike’s in the flashback sequence from Fool for Love.
CECILY: I'm going to ask you a very personal question and I demand an honest answer. Do you understand? (He nods.)Your poetry, it's... they're... not written about me, are they?
SPIKE: They're about how I feel.
CECILY: Yes, but are they about me?
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.)
William doesn’t insult Cecily for her feelings. Instead he reacts as Willow does, retreats to that safe place. Goes off to lick his wounds.
Both Willow and William internalize the rejection. They accept it as their fault. And they attempt to move past it. Willow moves on to OZ. William moves on to Dru. Cecily and Xander are more or less dropped. (Except for that brief interlude in Season 3, where Xander decides he wants Willow – but Willow eventually chooses OZ over Xander. And poor Cordelia gets left in the dark. Nice karmic twist. Xander rejects Cordy by kissing Willow (Lover’s Walk), whom he previously rejected by kissing Cordy, (Surprise) and gets dumped by both.) Instead of wasting time on those who rejected them, Willow and William move on to people who appear to accept them for who and what they are.
3. Willow/Spike, OZ and Dru – Changing Someone to fit Your Needs
Have you ever thought you could change someone? Oh they were perfect, great body, etc, but there’s this one tiny little flaw? I know I’ll change them. I’ll make them into the person I want. They just need to blossom. To grow. This too is a type of rejection. In attempting to change the person, you are rejecting who they are. You are making yourself out to be better than they are. You are playing the role of Henry Higgins to Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, where the good professor attempts to change a poor flower girl into a lady. Cathy and her family do it to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – attempting to civilize the wild gypsy boy and Carrie’s teacher and pseudo friends attempt to change her by setting up a fake romance. All three literary works depict how we reject someone by being arrogant enough to think WE can change them.
OZ never attempts to change Willow. He is in effect the perfect boyfriend. He tells Willow how cool she is, pursuing her in What’s My Line through Phases. When she asks whether he wants to make out in Surprise, he suggests they wait. He realizes she still has a thing for Xander and believes it would be kind of empty if she got involved with him just to make Xander jealous. OZ accepts Willow for who and what she is. And when he discovers he’s a werewolf he backs away for a limited amount of time. He allows Willow to put him in a cage, aware that he could hurt her. The only reason OZ leaves Willow is because he’s a werewolf and can no longer control his ability to hurt her. It’s not a rejection of Willow herself. Of course, Willow has troubles seeing this and inflicts her pain on others in Something Blue (Season 4 Btvs). But the pain she inflicts is less out of rejection than it is from loss. She’s not quite like Stephen King’s Carrie. She doesn’t really intend to take her rage out on her friends. Nor have her friends or OZ attempted to change Willow. OZ never appears tempted to turn Willow into a werewolf. It is a trait he hates in himself. In fact he even warns her in Fear Itself, to be careful of the dark magic she wields. But he does not tell her to stop.
Drusilla plays a similar role with William, appears to accept William in all the ways that Cecily did not. Except, unlike OZ, Drusilla changes William to become like her. She turns him into a vampire. Was Dru’s very act of turning William a type of rejection? OZ finds out he’s a werewolf, has a brief affair with another werewolf, but is never once tempted to turn Willow into one. Nor for that matter is Spike tempted to turn Buffy into a vampire. Yet Drusilla didn’t think twice about vamping William. Perhaps she believed she was helping him? Giving him a gift? Or making him better somehow? Or was it the ultimate acceptance? Wanting him to live forever? Spike certainly believes that – he tells Buffy as much in Fool For Love – “Getting killed made me feel alive for the very first time. I was through living by society's rules.” Yet, who and what William truly was at his core is gone. What is left is the personality, the outside attributes frozen in time. So did Dru really accept him? Or did she just accept one part of him and reject the rest?
Cecily and Drusilla both reject William but in different ways. Cecily rejects William in the same way that Cordelia initially rejects Xander – he is beneath her, embarrassing, the group will never accept him. Drusilla realizes William will only be accepted by her little family if she changes him. She’s right of course, he’s human, they’re vampires. But in the flashbacks of Fool For Love, we sense William only gains Dru’s love by becoming a killer of slayers. How ironic considering it’s his disdain for violence and preference for poetry that causes him to be rejected by the aristocrats and by extension Cecily.
ARISTOCRAT #2(to Spike) Ah, William! Favor us with your opinion. What do you make of this rash of disappearances sweeping through our town? Animals or thieves?
SPIKE(haughty) I prefer not to think of such dark, ugly business at all. That's what the police are for. (looks at Cecily) I prefer placing my energies into creating things of beauty. (FOOL For LOVE)
One wonders what would have happened if William had been more into fists and fangs and a little less into poetry. Would Cecily have preferred him? Would Dru? By changing William into Spike, Dru twists him into a violent emotionally arrested version of the poetry loving William. A poet without a conscience. And yet, unlike Dru, Spike has no desire to change those he loves. He doesn’t attempt to change Drusilla. He accepts her as she is, completely insane. He does betray her – but mostly just to get her away from Angelus. Becoming a vampire has changed the way that William handles rejection just as Willow’s increased involvement with magic changes the way she handles rejection.
But Spike never tries to change his lover into someone else. It’s the one thing that I always found odd about the Spike/Buffy relationship. Why didn’t Spike turn the slayer? Why didn’t he try? He certainly had ample opportunity. Yes, you could argue that he tried in Out of My Mind, but I think he just wanted to kill her back then. And of course the chip prevented him from hurting her until Season 6. But why didn’t he in Season 6? It would have solved most of his problems. Because, unlike Drusilla, Spike did not want to change Buffy. He loved Buffy for what she was. His solution to her rejection of him was not to turn her into a vampire. He did not reject what she is. (Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying Spike handles rejection well – just that he does not handle it in this manner.)
Willow on the other hand does attempt to change Tara by erasing her memory. She reacts to Tara’s rejection of her use of magic by attempting to change Tara’s pov with force. This is in a way quite similar to her initial reaction to OZ’s infidelity with Veruca. In Wild at Heart, she considers doing a spell that would destroy OZ and Veruca. But she changes her mind at the last minute. The spell is reminiscent of Xander’s spell in BBB.
Willow is a little like Dru here – if I can’t have you, I’ll change you, I’ll make you who I want you to be.
It doesn’t help her of course. You can’t change someone. You can’t make them into someone else. Even Spike eventually disappoints Drusilla. After 120 years, he turns out to be not quite evil enough for her. The lover that William was, that she wanted, is still intact, but not quite as twisted as she wished. (One trembles to think what Drusilla considers twisted.) So Spike leaves Dru and eventually moves on. Tara similarly leaves Willow, for a time. And when Tara does – she becomes stronger, more self-assured. Willow had weakened her. Without Willow, Tara regains her sense of self, she no longer stutters, she is confident. Confident enough to choose to go back to Willow when enough time has passed and she is sure Willow is no longer using magic. Spike never goes back to Dru. When she reappears, he is briefly tempted. But he chooses the harder path instead. He chooses the girl who rejects him. This is a huge change from what he did before. Before, as William, he chose the vampire who accepted him over the girl who told him that he was “beneath her”. Now 100 and some years later, he chooses the girl who says he is “beneath her” over the vampire who changed him and appeared to accept him. Quite astonishing, when you think about it. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a sociopath at this stage, but he has changed his modus operandi. He is no longer running away from rejection. If anything he is doing the reverse, he is running towards it, going backwards to what he once was. Willow does the same thing eventually in Season 6, after losing Tara, she begins to go back to what she once was, the geeky girl who plays with chemistry and looks things up in books instead of the powerful witch.
4. Willow/Spike – Tara and Buffy – Controlling our Violent Reactions
There’s a song by Bonnie Raitt that goes : “I can’t make you love me if you don’t, can’t force you to feel what you won’t..” Apparently someone forgot to teach it to Spike. Spike believes that he can force someone into loving him. After Dru breaks up with him, he goes back to torture her, attempts to make her love him again, but it’s too late. She enjoys the torture, but their relationship is over. Spike attempts the same thing with Buffy. As he tells Riley in Into The Woods, when Riley asks if he thinks he has a chance with her, “No, but a fella’s got to try though, fella’s got do what he has to do.”
No matter how many times Buffy rejects Spike, he keeps coming back for more. As she states in Smashed – “You love me, because you enjoy getting beaten down.” Apparently so. He is given a choice in Crush between his current girlfriend, Harmony, who will do anything for him, Drusilla who wants him back, and Buffy who wants nothing to do with him. He ironically chooses Buffy. The whole episode is laced with irony. Spike cruelly rejects Harmony, who appears to be getting off on being beaten down herself, then Buffy cruelly rejects Spike. Reminds me a little of the Xander cruelly rejects Willow, Buffy cruelly rejects Xander triangle. Harmony, Spike, Xander and Willow all make the same mistake – they think they can force someone to love them.
Tara loves Willow. But Willow is so “rejection sensitive” that she can’t see it. As she tells Buffy in Wrecked – would Tara love me without the magic? Tara didn’t know ordinary Willow. Buffy attempts to convince Willow there is nothing wrong with her, that Tara does love her with or without the magic. But Willow can’t see it. Tara does not reject Willow herself – she rejects what Willow is doing. It’s very different from Buffy’s rejection of Spike. Or is it? Buffy rejects Spike because he is an unrepentant killer who enjoys hurting things. Tara rejects Willow and moves out because Willow is getting off on magic regardless of whom it hurts. Willow attempts to force her will upon Tara, to change her point of view. Just as Spike attempts to force his will upon Buffy, to change her point of view. Both attempts are despicable and horrifying. Both back-fire.
Buffy and Tara also have rejection issues. We all do. Tara was abominably rejected by her family, she struggled to come to terms with this rejection in Season 5, Family. Finally succeeding by making the choice to reject her family and join the Scooby Gang. She also struggles with the fear that Willow will reject her for OZ in New Moon Rising. And we see her fear of rejection rise again in Tough Love, where she informs Willow that she is afraid Willow will move past her. That she will no longer be enough. So Willow’s attempts to keep Tara with magic are incredibly painful – because from Tara’s perspective they are a rejection of who and what Tara is. Willow is trying to change Tara to fit her desires. Then after Tara leaves, Willow de-rats Amy and Tara realizes Willow has created a new friend, a replacement.
Buffy also struggles with serious rejection issues. Her father, Hank Summers, left her. Way back in Season 1, Nightmares, Buffy dreams that her father left because of her, because of what she is. His leaving is not abandonment so much as a rejection of who and what she is. In her mind, she’s a disappointment to him. It does not matter that her mother insists otherwise. Actions speak louder than words. Later in Season 2, Innocence, we have Angel, Buffy’s replacement father figure/lover reject her performance in bed. He literally dismisses her as not being worth a second go. This is followed by an endless string of boys breaking up with her. We have Scott Hope who rejects Buffy because she isn’t fun to be with, too dark and moody. Parker who rejects her for no apparent reason Buffy can understand, except that maybe he truly is just a poop head. Riley who rejects Buffy because he believes perhaps correctly she does not love him enough. By I WAS MADE TO LOVE YOU – Buffy is wondering if she can love, if anyone can love her. If she is too self-involved and violent to deserve anyone’s love besides Spike the monster she tolerates. The monster, she believes loves her because she beats him up.
Buffy rejects Spike in a similar manner to the way she perceives that she has been rejected. And for many of the same reasons. Many posters have stated that the beating of Spike at the end of Dead Things is a projection of how Buffy feels about herself. Part of Buffy believes she is a soulless killer that does not deserve to be loved. Primal. Hard. That Riley left her because of this.(See IWMTLY, Intervention) That Hank left because of this. (See the flashbacks in Becoming Part I and the dream sequence in Nightmares). Spike, from Buffy’s perspective, is safe. He can’t hurt her, because she will always reject him first. Unfortunately, she discovers to her dismay that he can hurt her, just as Spike discovered Harmony could hurt him.
When Spike brings a date to Xander’s wedding, Buffy is pained. When Spike takes her advice and tries to move on with Anya, Buffy is hurt. Apparently Spike’s actions matter more to Buffy than she expected. When Harmony kicks Spike out, Spike wanders aimlessly, starving, until he is forced to seek shelter with his enemies. When Harmony eventually leaves Spike, sick and tired of playing second fiddle to his obsession with the slayer, Spike is so lonely he goes out and has Warren build the Buffbot. The nice thing about Btvs is everyone pays for their sins.
Part of the reason Harmony stays with Spike as long as she does, is somewhere in her warped brain, she believes she can make Spike love her as he loved Drusilla. He never will of course. He uses Harmony in much the same way that he is later used by Buffy. Harmony is, as Marsters puts it in the “Introducing Spike” commentary on Season 4 DVD, Spike’s revenge. Harmony is beyond rebound for him. He is taking his pain and anger at Drusilla out on Harmony. He can’t take it out on Dru. Harmony’s self esteem is so low that she is willing to take any crumb he’ll throw at her. Anything to be with Spike, who barely tolerates her. Two years later, we see the relationship flip-flopped. Now Buffy is playing Spike’s role and Spike is playing Harmony’s. Spike is Buffy’s sex slave. Spike will do anything to have Buffy. He like Harmony believes that sooner or later Buffy will love him. That their incredible sex will lead to great love. Both relationships blow up. Harmony attempts to kill Spike and Spike attempts to force himself on Buffy. Leading someone on with the promise of something more, only to cruelly reject them – can have violent consequences.
Violent consequences. What spurs us to react violently? Carrie in the Stephen King novel explodes after her hopes and dreams are crushed. Her fellow students gave her false hope – they let her believe that they accepted her that she could be homecoming Queen and have a boyfriend. Then they rip it all away by dumping pig’s blood on her and knocking out the boyfriend. The hope is gone. And the fragile control Carrie had over her anger, fear, and pain erupts destroying everything in her path. Not unlike Willow, who finally gets everything she wants, dumps the magic, feels accepted, whole – only to have it all ripped from her by a bullet. Tara – the one person who Willow believes accepted her unconditionally is ripped from her. Hope is gone along with the fragile control.
Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s novel believes he has a chance with Cathy. That she loves him. He’ll go away, make his fortune and have her love. Their chemistry is so electric, how can she not love him? When she rejects him and marries a neighboring landowner, he loses hope and lives only for revenge. Sort of like Anya in Hells Bells, when Xander rejects her at the altar. She loses hope and becomes a vengeance demon.
Periodically in Season 6, Buffy provides Spike with kernels of hope. In As You Were – she asks if he loves her. In Smashed, she makes violent love to him. In OMWF, she kisses him passionately. In Hell’s Bells, she admits breaking up with him hurt. And in Seeing Red he discovers she has feelings for him, that his sleeping with Anya hurt her. Then she yanks it all away again. Tells him it isn’t love. It can never be love. She can never trust him enough for it to be love. Spike loses control. Tries to force her to feel what she felt in Smashed. He violently tries to recreate their sexual relationship. To make her love him. But all he does is prove her point. Prove why she shouldn’t. She knocks him away. And he discovers to his horror that he’s just pushed her further away and in the process, hurt her in a way he claimed he never could. “I don’t hurt you,” he told her in Entropy, just a few days before. He discovered he was wrong. He has hurt her. Horribly. Conflicted, he races off to change himself.
The racing off to Africa, reminds me of William who flees the party and ends up in Drusilla’s arms. Spike violently rejected by Buffy and tormented by his actions, does somewhat the same thing with similar results. He flips to evil by Cecily’s rejection and flips to good by Buffy’s. William’s handling of Cecily’s rejection is considered by some fans to be “wimpy” or the actions of a “wuss”, while his handling of Buffy’s rejection is considered to be “horrifying and violent” but certainly not wimpy. One results in evil Spike and one results in ensouled Spike.
What would have happened it Spike had been able to control his reaction to Buffy’s rejection? Could he have? Was that even possible? What about Willow? If she had handled Tara differently in the beginning of the year, hadn’t fiddled with Tara’s memory, had scaled back on the magic use earlier, would she have lost Tara? Or was that inevitable?
Handling rejection is difficult whether it’s rejection of our works of art, writing, or love. In Btvs, the writers show us a spectrum of ways of handling rejection, from Cordelia and Cecily’s desire to hide within the group to Xander’s infliction of insults to Spike and Willow’s attempts to either flee the rejection or violently force it aside. Perhaps the best approach is the one Buffy eventually adopts shrugging it off and moving on. It still hurts of course. But in Grave, Buffy realizes that hiding from the world is not the answer. Taking the risk, venturing out, and dealing with the pain and joy is a far better solution. After all, if we allowed our fear of rejection to deter us – there would be no art, no television, no movies, no books. If we permanently left the ATP board every time someone slammed us, there wouldn’t be an ATP board or any discussion. If Joss Whedon let our negative reactions to his show or the lack of an Emmy affect his writing – there would be no Btvs. Part of growing up, is handling rejection.
Thanks for reading my ramblings. Hope it adds to the discussion. Feedback appreciated as always.
shadowkat
