Let's talk about something new for a change, okay? (Dunno what's up with the missing comments, BTW.)

Lemme see...what else is going on in my life? I dislike RPS as everyone knows, but sometimes you just have to laugh anyhow.

I'd thought of discussing demonic immortality or boomeranging souls, but those are demon-related topics and thus off-limits.

We might be at war by Monday. If not, certainly in a couple of weeks and somehow I feel compelled to make the most of these last few days.

It's a pity I haven't had a chance to watch any of the Spike BtVS episodes I've taped this week...but no, I remember, I'm not talking about that right now, am I?

Hmmm...

Escapade! I'll be there in just days! That's pretty exciting.

What with one thing and another, I didn't have much of a chance to check out the panel offerings for this year or anything, but I'm sure there will be topics I want to hear about.

And, of course, there are the gatherings, outside of formal panels, where you just yak with people. That's mostly what Escapade is about, after all.

I'm pretty eager for this year's con. Last year I was suffering the slings and arrows of recent Unemployment Depression. The year before, IIRC, was the year I was suffering the slings and arrows of Extreme Job Dissatisfaction combined with Frequent Panic Attack Syndrome with heaping helpings of Social Anxiety Disorder Freakouts.

I think I skipped the year before that, making this the first con I'll have attended where I'll be healthy both financially and emotionally (more or less) in four years.

And I get to ride on a train! From the airport to beauteous (one presumes) Oxnard! I love trains.

Of course, the down side is that Escapade is nothing if not a fandom con and I haven't been active in fandom for several years now. I was in a fandom-free zone for quite a long time.

Bowing to pressure from An Unnamed Reader, I had to stop letting Kind Friends pass on random fandom idiocies to me as well.

Apparently it isn't nice to do nothing but rant and rave. At least, that's what An Unnamed Reader told me, in no uncertain terms. I was directed to cease ranting until I had something nice to say.

As you might imagine, such a directive, directed to me, achieved nothing other than completely constipating my brain. Until my recent bout of (ahem) SpikeInfatuation, I was fairly hard up for blogging topics for several months.

As you can tell by today's entry, it's a pretty sorry state of affairs.

This afternoon I have a doctor's appointment.

This morning, I ate a cookie.

Yesterday, I broke a nail.

Okay, enough of that.

Anyhow, it occurs to me that I haven't actually been blogging about Spike so much as a sort of stream-of-consciousness musing over demonology in general. So, blogging about Spike very nearly constitutes a new topic!

I continue to be worried by the fact that these vampires on this show are so "human." It's the soul thing that bothers me.

I mean, Spike gets chipped and he can't hurt humans any more and that depresses him but after a while, he appears to feel sort of badly about vampires who still kill people, although that could be just a side-effect of the whole I Luurve Buffy subplot and his frank enjoyment of his ability to fight demons, even if no one else.

I don't think he really cares much about other vamps for the most part. Certainly not enough to care about being "one of them" when he sets out to do some slaying with Buffy and the gang. (Aside from Drusilla, of course.)

I think it would have been more interesting if he hadn't bothered to side with B&tG at the point when he realized that the chip didn't prevent him from defending himself against other demons since he didn't need B&tG to help him find fights to get into, but instead had just gone off on his own and learned how to deal with his situation.

Of course, from a fannish point of view I'm glad he became a regular on the show instead and plotwise they were already doing that whole luuurve thing, weren't they, which still might annoy me when I actually watch it happening.

Anyhow. I don't get the impression most vamps are big on loyalty and solidarity with one's peers but then it occurs to me that the Spike-Drusilla-Angel trilogy was an anomaly that way.

The Judge felt nothing but contempt for the vamps he could sense were full of human emotions and he dissed Drusilla and Spike big-time that way, but he approved of Angelus's entirely non-human focus. So why did Angelus bother with Drusilla and Spike?

Well, we know about Drusilla, but why didn't Angelus do in Spike when Spike was annoying him? Drusilla would have been annoyed, but she'd have forgiven Angelus pretty much anything.

Also, I can't remember how "old" Spike is, but vague memory tells me he's about a hundred (born in the 1880's, right? Making him about 115 when he hit the show?) and if Angelus became Angel a hundred years ago, when did they have time to do all of that bonding and becoming of a "family" that Drusilla refers to as though it was just a couple of decades ago? (Does that 1880's date refer to the date he was vamped or when he was born? Can't remember.) And where were Drusilla and Spike when Angelus was pissing off the gypsies and getting himself cursed? I can't imagine they could have been anywhere around and not getting into trouble right alongside Angelus.

Makes no sense. Not that television ever does if you look at it too closely. Sigh.

For someone who was originally brought on the show as a sort of unstoppable evil, they certainly didn't take long to start reinventing Spike.

Angel was worried when he first heard that Spike was in town, although now we know he was mostly worried about whether or not Drusilla and Spike were together at the moment, and he said something about Spike never stopping until he'd finished what he started. Even the first time around, we didn't see much of that in Spike. (Although I've suspected that they always intended to have Spike fall in luuurve with Buffy, based on his reaction to her the first time he saw her and what is it about blonde, teenage girls that makes guys go so gaa-gaa, anyhow?)

(Although now I remember that that can't be true because Spike wasn't intended to be a recurring character. Oh, well.)

(I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, Buffy was cute but Cordelia was always ten times prettier. Can't have been the I'm a cheap slut wardrobe they put Buffy in because Cordelia and 80% of the schoolgirls on the show dressed the same way. Can't have been personality because, let's face it, Buffy's nothing special there. Aside from the slayer abilities, she's a carbon copy of a million other teenagers.)

(Perhaps more will be revealed as I watch future seasons. Maybe she'll develop a more distinct personality or exhibit some talent for understanding or compassion or cooking or something that makes her stand out from the crowd.)

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Spike and that 'unstoppable' rumor. It's a pity they haven't, yet, revisited that part of his character in the eps I've seen (which, granted, are few in the post-Drusilla era).

I would have expected him to be a stronger character than he was developed into.

After all, when Giles was first talking about Drusilla, he referred to her as Spike's "sometime paramour" which implies that they'd fought and split before so why did this one break-up send him over the edge so badly?

Was he somehow afraid that she was right, that he was becoming, in vampire terms, "weaker"? Was he supposed to already be feeling the pangs of humanity, or luuurve, this long before he got the chip?

Inconsistent characterization drives me nuts but I have to remind myself, repeatedly, that there are a lot of episodes I haven't seen yet and that Spike features largely in the show in later seasons.

Sigh. It's a long time until the S4 DVDs are going to be released.