Shanshu NOT you. Angel's rebuttal.
Penned: 12/01/03

The original argument is italicized

Oh, look, it's dueling dueling threads. Turn about is fair play. Give it to Golden Boy.

Spike chose to get a soul. This shows a remarkable ability of self-sacrifice on his part and shows his moral evolution. The next logical step in his self-development would be becoming human.

Oh, please. It's obvious Spike got a soul not out of some sense of moral righteousness. He got it to get Buffy to return his feelings. And what spurred this so-called self-sacrifice? Attempted rape. How noble.

Spike is responsible for, on at least two occasions, helping to save the world. In one of these cases, he willingly gave his life in the service of good, which is arguably the highest level of selflessness one can achieve. It also heavily recalls Buffy's sacrifice in the Gift and the parallel is meant to show that he has reached her level of service.

As I recall, he also left Buffy to get killed by Angelus, thereby not really saving the world that time. Yes, he did save the world in "Chosen," but he also tried to end it in "Surprise." That comes out as a tie. And reaching Buffy's level of self-sacrifice? What are you on, you moron? He killed people for 120 or so years and would have kept on doing so if it weren't for the chip in his head!

Even in his most evil days, Spike was able to show some degree of positive moral traits. He still loved his mother and wanted her to be well. He was extremely kind and loyal to Drusilla, loving her dearly in spite of her mental problems. He was good to Joyce when she was ill and showed respect for her after her death. He proved Tara was not a demon. He was protective of Dawn and kept her safe even though there was no possibility of a reward from Buffy due to her death. And when Buffy returned, he was the only one who apologized for her death and treated her gently and at her own pace. These were all good things that the chip, if it was present at the time, did not require him to do.

Oh, well, this is charming. William had an Oedipal complex and you want to give him bonus point for that. He was "kind and loyal to Drusilla," who is a psychotic maniac, and he showed the depth of his love for through incidents like, oh, say, that orphanage in Vienna in 1963? Joyce seved two purposes. One was she acted as someone who would actually put up with his whining over his lunatic girlfried. The other was she was a way to impress Buffy. He proved Tara wasn't a demon by socking her in the nose. Last time I looked, that was battery, not heroism. The thing with Dawn disappeared as soon as he got the Slayer to drop her drawers, so it was obviously only a way to impress her, just like Joyce. I don't really know why he kept taking care of her when Buffy was dead. Maybe he was just nuts. And, yeah, he was nice to Buffy when she first came back... because he wanted to sleep with her. Duh.

Spike was responsible indirectly for the helicopter taking away Riley.

Huh. Well, hard to take that away from him. But he should have done it sooner! And it was only because he wanted to sleep with Buffy!

As a human being, Spike apparently never harmed anyone, was a responsible person, and suffered acutely from the taunting and cruelty of other people. There is no reason to doubt that he was, in fact, "a good man." His siring occured because of a broken heart, and if he had been treated with a bit more kindness, he wouldn't have found his way into Dru's deadly embrace. In other words, becoming a vampire was not his fault.

As a human being, Spike was a wimp. He turned his eyes away from trouble because he didn't like unpleasant things. He had delusions of grandeur. He was a momma's boy. And as for stumbling upon Dru, well, hey, just how much more innocent is what he probably thought was going to happen, namely buying a prostitute for the night... and a nutty one at that.

At various times, Spike has saved the lives of all the Scoobies and has now added Gunn to the list.

Right. At various times Spike has also threatened the lives of all the Scoobies and most of Angel Investigations.

Interestingly, when Westley was in emotional torment over shooting his robodad, Spike did do his best to comfort him in spite of not knowing him all that well.

Boo hoo. I killed my mother and she hit on me. He wasn't comforting him. He was trying to get all the attention back on himself. Spike's always thinking about Spike.

The unexpectedness of having Spike receive shanshu would be in keeping with Whedon's penchant of surprise twists.

It's not a surprise twist if you see it coming. It would now be an expected twist.

If Spike were human again, he could go help Buffy bake some metaphorical cookies.

Right. If he's not too busy shagging Harmony.

It would be interesting to see what Spike would do with his returned humanity. Would he still try to remain the punk bad boy, or would he let that go happily and become the gentle man he used to be?

Nope. It would be more interesting to see if, after having had the shanshu passed on to someone else, Spike still fights the good fight. If that's the case, well then, maybe he can earn his own shanshu in a few centuries.

It's so noisy in my head.

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