Identification and the elephant in the room: A Spike/Xander manifesto
I was recently asked to revise an older meta post I made on this topic and decided I would post it here as well.
I was having a discussion with someone about why some ships were heavily written and read and others such as Sparmony were practically non-existent which begged an exploration about why Spander became the fourth most popular ship in the Buffyverse.
Spander happens to be my favorite ship, although I’ve read lots of Spuffy and Spangel. In fact, I’ve read about 10 different Spike pairings so aside from being Spike-centric they’ve been all over the map. It seems pretty clear why Spuffy, Bangel and Spangel are popular. They involve the three most popular characters from both shows in canonical or semi-canonical ships.
I didn’t start reading Buffyverse fic until just before S7 started. Within that first year I focused on Spander and I’ve read several times in LJ discussions that Spander fic began multiplying as Spuffy writers moved on to that ship. I realize a lot of people soured on Spuffy in S6 if not S7 and moved on but it seemed to me the most logical person for Spike to move on to was exactly who they paired him with in canon -- Anya. Given that ME suggested the possibility and then dropped it, I was surprised that more people didn't take that abandoned plot thread on (the characters had loads in common, after all). Instead writers crossed from het to slash to pair him with Anya's ex who clearly despised him.
I remember reading something in the past few months I found really fascinating. This person didn't like to read about a chipped Spike. She said (paraphrased) that she didn't want to identify with someone powerless and victimized. That wasn't how she saw herself and she didn't want to be reading about it. Having always looked at Spike's chip much the way the ME writers did, as a device that opens up possibilities, I'd been puzzled by some people's hostility towards it. To me it didn't really change Spike’s personality but instead provided character conflict. But reading this comment went a long way to making me understand another point of view. It also gave me a hypothesis about why Spanya (and Sparmony) didn't get written but Spander did.
Few wanted to write Sparmony because, besides the fact that it puts Spike in a light no one wants to acknowledge, it was far too close to reality for most people. Most women can relate to being Harmony in some relationship or other, (if not many of them), but in addition Harmony is, frankly, an idiot whom no one wants to identify with. So on the one hand you've got Harmony being kicked like a puppy and on the other she's so annoying you can't help wanting her to be kicked. What's a writer to do with that? There are some comedic stories that could be written but the possibilities seem limited to me. Plus I don't imagine anyone can see a happy ending for those two.
The other problem with Sparmony is that the canonical ship makes clear Spike is not any woman's fool, just fool to a few. I'd be willing to bet that human William had women who were interested in him. He just thought that they were beneath him. It's Spike's hypocrisy that's so blatantly revealed with Sparmony. And it's not in S4 that she makes him look so bad, it's in AtS S5. He never feels any empathy or compassion for her, except, maybe, at the end of "Harm's Way." Even there I'd say it's more a matter of getting past an awkward moment, a throwaway gesture. People go on at length about how Buffy never apologized to Spike for her behavior (and I think they're right about that). But at least Buffy acknowledged the wrongness of her behavior. Spike never even thinks he has anything to apologize for.
I'm guessing part of what the Spike/Harmony interaction intended to show is that Spike's essential selfishness is still there and that his move towards more selfless behavior is still a work in progress. For example, in "Lineage" we see him help Gunn but leave Eve trapped in an elevator because he can't be bothered to report the situation. A longstanding critique of his character is that he may be incredibly giving with those he cares about but those he doesn't can go hang. What's intriguing is that in S5 we see Angel and Spike coming to a middle ground there. Angel is incresingly unconcerned and Spike is increasingly concerned with those outside their group. Little by little over the season they start meeting in the middle. However this isn't an essay about Spangel, so let's move on!
Looking at Spanya, Anya's not stupid but she can be annoying. She's also very vulnerable. I can't help thinking of "Harsh Light of Day" where Buffy, Anya and Harmony are all walking wounded from their relationships. What's interesting is that that's really the last time we see Buffy suffering rejection in a relationship. She has the upper hand with both Spike and Riley. But neither Anya nor Harmony was ever in control of their relationships and after continued go-rounds they're both still walking that walk. We have much more sympathy for Anya than Harmony because she's much more admirable but she's still a victim. She never gets over Xander. The point at which Spanya would most logically start is when Xander has just put her through the wringer. She's in doubt that he ever loved her. Xander treated her a lot better than Spike treated Harmony (not that that's saying anything, really) but in many ways she was just as much a convenience for him as Harmony was for Spike.
Relationship-wise, Xander is the alpha male of the show. It was never Xander who got dumped in his relationships. He kept Willow at bay forever and then showed his interest at the worst time. He cheated on Cordelia, whom he had a marked disdain for in the first place, and he dumped Anya who had chased after him. More than anyone on BtVS, Xander's indifference has given him the upper hand in his relationships. The only person he's had no luck with is Buffy and maybe Faith. Faith's more indifferent than Xander could ever be yet you could still argue Xander got what he wanted from Faith anyway. Had they been together I rather think Xander would have dumped her and stuck with his friends when she hit her downward spiral. And according to Xander in S5 he's gotten over Buffy. His speech to Buffy urging her not to dump Riley, trying to set her up with his work buddy, etc. seem to support his claim.
What's interesting about Spike is that he's the only man that can be seen as a victim in his relationship. Giles suffers loss in his relationships but he doesn't suffer unrequited love. Angel suffers angst but he's frustrated, not a victim, and he’s the one who decides to leave. Oz is both a betrayer and betrayed but he's loved and desired. Riley gets some love and desire and he ends up betraying Buffy. Spike eventually gets the desire in S6 but he pays for it. He also gets loads of sympathy from viewers (though I realize this definitely wasn’t universal). But there wasn't much sympathy for Harmony and not a tidal wave of support for Anya either even though she was the wronged party in every way. It seems to me women don't want to make that connection with a female character where they feel rejected by a desirable man and insecure in their ability to attract one. Anya couldn't get Xander to love her enough to stay. And Spike is more desirable to many people than Xander. How much more likely is it she'll be on the losing end again? (And in fact this is what happens. In S7 we see Spike rejecting her twice.) Moreover, except for Xander, no one has expressed a desire for Anya. She can't get a date for the prom, we never see her dating anyone else, and even when Giles thinks she is his fiancee he is ambivalent about staying with her. She even gets dissed by the demon who opens the portal for her and Giles!
So that may be an explanation for why Spanya didn’t take off. So what does Spander offer? One possibility is that Xander continues his pattern of being in the driver's seat, in which case Spike can continue to be an object of sympathy but not over-identification. And the whole Spuffy dynamic can play out again, only this time with an ending we'll never see contradicted on the screen. It seems like this would be an attractive scenario for people who liked the canonical representations for Spike and Xander we saw in the series. Aside from the slash factor, Spike fits neatly into the pattern of people Xander has become involved with and Xander’s power of indifference presents the challenge Spike seems to relish in his attractions.
A second possibility is that Spike's in the driver's seat, and Xander gets what's coming to him. Someone has finally got him to lose his indifference, something no woman seems to have been able to do. In other words it satisfies the desire to see canonical tensions resolved. Spike gets to be the object of affection and desire he wants to be and the reader thinks he deserves. Xander finally loses himself completely to love in a way we’ve never seen.
The third possibility is that Spike and Xander are in a constant power play between Spike's power of desire and Xander's vacillation about whether he even wants to be involved. One thing I also find interesting about the earlier cited comment about chipped Spike is that I so often see Spander stories written with a blind eye towards their histories. Spike is written by some as a huge loser in love who is pining for someone's devotion. Aside from assuming Dru wasn't devoted to him, it completely ignores Harmony. And there was certainly evidence that Spike was attractive to women and could have been dating them had he wanted (his date for Xander's wedding, the waitress in "A New Man", Sheila's attraction to him in "School Hard", his various victims in "Sleeper", the acknowledgment by both Fred and Angel that Spike can be charming and physically appealing). In other stories, Xander is pictured as the geek loser who can't believe someone as desirable as Spike would want him. Yet Xander was desired by quite a lot of very attractive and desirable women. Even when things didn't or couldn't work out it wasn't because the women weren't attracted to him (see Impata, Dawn, and Nancy in S7). So Spike and Xander both had choices in being involved with people, they just didn't want to be involved with the people who chose them. So rather than being unappreciated or even underappreciated, both are more likely to be screwing up or rejecting their possible relationships. This puts them in the same league as Angel and Buffy. By comparison, Harmony and Anya really are losers in love.
As with all UC ships, Spander has certain key points in canon where fic gets written. Basement fics are still, it seems to me, the most dominant setting. As to why, I always assumed it was largely due to convenience (proximity) and Spike's new vulnerability/ Xander's alienation from the other Scoobies (opportunity). The other factor is that there is less canonical contradiction. Anya is new to the scene and Xander is not leaping in with both feet, and Spuffy has not yet begun. In a larger character arc sense, Xander and Spike are both having to plan for a new sort of future where they're pretty much on their own. Spander gives them company on the journey.
I think that one of the big attractions writing wise is that either Spike or Xander could be seen to be on top in the relationship (or even topping from the bottom if you will). In fact I think Spike is so popular because he is not only a desired character he's one whom many people want to be (presumably not literally!) or feel they are. In a larger sense we could ask why female characters tend to be so underwritten by women in fandom, and I think that a lot of it comes down to the fact that people don't want to identify with those women for some personal reason. Some female characters get written a lot because they're part of a given pairing, yet it's usually the male who is the focus. I think that's probably why male characters who are somwehere in the middle of the masculine-feminine gender scale are often the most written -- because they can serve double duty.
In terms of connections, I can see part of it in Spike and Xander's restless personalities -- they're always looking for new stimulation. I think that was Xander's main attraction to Anya, is that she kept surprising him. And Spike said as much about Dru in "Crush." Chances are both of these easily bored characters will keep one another on their toes.
I also think that Xander never really respected the women he was with -- this was really obvious with Cordelia – and like Spike had greater respect for the women who turned him away. Both wanted to be with women who validated their view of themselves, only Xander had less self-esteem than Spike, maybe because he never got any from his parents. Xander (and Spike) both start out canonically having no respect for one another but Spike once committed is relentless. And this may go a long way in assuaging some of Xander's deepest fears.
The interesting thing about that is it seems to me writers do pick up on Xander's fearfulness. You see a good deal of it expressed in fic but I have rarely seen it be centered on his fear of being alone. I've felt that Xander's underlying fear of being alone is what keeps him in relationships, and it's the one thing that explains to me why he went so overboard in his anger at seeing Anya and Spike together. I mean, yes, that it would be Spike of all people would just make matters worse. But mostly, I think, it was to have seen Anya moving on so quickly while he himself was still very alone. What's more Anya herself states outright in the confrontational scene in "Entropy" that he is a fearful person but she never says about what! Later in "Selfless" we see she herself is, despite her assertiveness and moments of strength, essentially a dependent personality. Which makes it all the more likely to me she would understand Xander's fear if the root of it is fear of being alone.
In terms of tension, I think Xander and Spike both tend to be very insightful, and it's one of the things that gives their jabs such a stiletto edge. In the early days Xander was often the only one willing to call Buffy out on her decision making. He had his reasons but to me it was interesting not so much for his motivation in saying so but because it showed Xander was aware of a lot more than he sometimes let on. And Spike is commonly acknowledged as a truth teller. I could see their fights getting really dirty. In canon they were both so dismissive of one another that they could never really plunge the dagger home effectively. They had so little tolerance for one another because they didn't respect the other guy. Once in a relationship though where they were taking the other person seriously, the amount of ammunition they'd accumulate would be frightening and their fights would likely be some of the nastiest around. This leads into what I think may be a key issue in who (and when) Xander gets involved with people.
My feeling is that Xander preferred strong, outspoken women because he was afraid of his own behavior in a relationship. We certainly see clear evidence of this in "Hells Bells." Thus my belief that he never was interested in Willow until she and Oz were dating is because he cared about Willow too much, and knew she cared about him too much and would be quite vulnerable were they to get involved. Ironically, Willow ends up becoming more powerful than anyone in time, but I think his very attraction was because she was now safely out of reach.
Buffy would have been able to handle him, but she wasn't interested. Faith could too, but aside from a one-off, ditto. Cordelia could as well it turned out. Once he hurt her she turned her back on him and didn't return. Despite seeming strong at first, over time Anya was revealed to be no stronger than his mother, at least to his mind. She doesn't rush back into his arms, but I think she would have taken him back if he had really worked at it. By S7 though I got the sense that Xander was over her. He still cared, and I suspect that residual guilt accounted for some of that, but I do think he was done.
It became a show joke that Xander was a demon magnet, but I would say the reason was his sense of the power in those people, and their ability to take him on. For example, despite being a slayer, when Kendra comes over all shy in her interactions with Xander he loses interest right away. But Spike is a match for him, not only because of his supernatural strength and his own form of knowledge and experience, but also because Spike will not back down. He was quite willing to sacrifice for those he loved, but he didn't generally shrink from telling them what they didn't want to hear either. Spike can make Xander feel safe from himself and Spike's devotion runs so deep, it's a pretty safe bet he could feel as sure of Spike as he does of Willow. Not a small feat and certainly not something accomplished overnight, but a potentially fascinating journey for them both.