From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V4 #20 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, February 16 2002 Volume 04 : Number 020 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: b/state of [Dawn Friedman ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 20:50:22 -0500 From: Dawn Friedman Subject: RE: b/state of At 02:28 AM 2/15/2002 -0500, Karin wrote: >Perhaps in that sense he does threaten harm, =if= she feels vulnerable >to being drawn over to the side of darkness. But if we move it out of >the abstract and the realm of mere wishfulness, can Spike really imagine >he could get her there? I don't think so. What I meant was that he'd like to *believe* that each of them is naturally (at least since Buffy's return) a darkness-dweller, and he's trying to persuade both Buffy and himself that this is the case. If it were true, after all, he and Buffy could be together and not especially conflicted about it. This is my explanation for Spike's apparent clumsiness or impatience recently, as when he points out that they aren't fighting, or insists that Buffy is 'an animal' when he's already seen that she doesn't consider it a compliment. He's not willing to settle for a few moments of carefully unacknowledged lack of conflict. He wants to make a case: you belong with me. > What would that mean, in practical terms? >Wouldn't he have to make her into a vampire to accomplish it? And so >far, he's shown no indication of wanting to do =that=. I think he loves >her too much to do that. As long as he believes that the vampire is *not* the person who died, he can't do it. >So it would seem that much as he might like to >draw her into his realm, loving her has drawn him closer to hers, >instead. Which is a nice irony given her avowed disinclination to do >any such thing, and her refusal to even realize it's happening. Agreed. But she has always been closer to darkness than she's been able to acknowledge, and while he isn't bringing her closer to the dark itself, I think he may finally bring her to acceptance of it. If nothing awful happens first. Buffy has come close to acknowledging the dark more than once. But she needs reassurance from other people, and the people involved have always had their own issues about light and dark. She came close in "Bad Girls" under Faith's tutelage, but Faith went off in a direction she didn't want to follow (and when she did, she didn't like the result.) She and Riley might have explored it together, but neither of them really understood the other, and Riley's idea of darkness was even more rigidly self-destructive than hers. She's drawn to Spike, but if he keeps insisting that both of them are creatures of the night, she'll keep recoiling. dsf ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V4 #20 ****************************