Well, yeah, in retrospect, by the middle of "Him" Xander has come to some sort of rapprochement with Spike. But man, at the beginning, he seems pretty much the same ol' angry young man. I like to think that his defense of Anya allowed him to see another perspective, but there's no evidence of it during the moving in speech.
XANDER: Are you keeping up, or do you need some kind of English-to-ConstantPainInMyAss translation? I invite you in. Nimrod.
BUFFY The school basement is making him crazy. We can't just leave him there.
XANDER Why not? Crazy-Basement-Guy is better than Stalking-Buffy-Guy.
BUFFY OK, it's just—things are different now—he has a soul.
XANDER I'm sure that'll be a real comfort when he soulfully attacks you again.
For Xander, the soul equals no big whoop, apparently. Why should it? Nobody knows what it is/does. It didn't mean Angel could be entirely trusted, by Xander at any rate. He's still harping about the attempted rape. Why shouldn't he? Everybody but Buffy, including Spike, thinks it was egregious, and his own guilt would make Spike seem guiltier, I'd think. Xander is still concerned with protecting Buffy's virtue, whether she needs it or not. He's emphatically just stated that he prefers a broken, powerless Spike to the old, virile model.
From this, we go directly to Xander never again calling Spike names (I think), never mentioning the attempted rape, working with him with equanimity, and thereafter allowing Buffy to run her own personal life (except when under a spell). None of these things happened when Spike lived with him in Season 4. He's older and hopefully wiser, sure, but it still seems like an awfully abrupt change of heart, to me at least. Heh. I'll stop now. The world does not hang in the balance on this issue. Probably.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2008 09:50 pm (UTC)XANDER: Are you keeping up, or do you need some kind of English-to-ConstantPainInMyAss translation? I invite you in. Nimrod.
BUFFY
The school basement is making him crazy. We can't just leave him there.
XANDER
Why not? Crazy-Basement-Guy is better than Stalking-Buffy-Guy.
BUFFY
OK, it's just—things are different now—he has a soul.
XANDER
I'm sure that'll be a real comfort when he soulfully attacks you again.
For Xander, the soul equals no big whoop, apparently. Why should it? Nobody knows what it is/does. It didn't mean Angel could be entirely trusted, by Xander at any rate. He's still harping about the attempted rape. Why shouldn't he? Everybody but Buffy, including Spike, thinks it was egregious, and his own guilt would make Spike seem guiltier, I'd think. Xander is still concerned with protecting Buffy's virtue, whether she needs it or not. He's emphatically just stated that he prefers a broken, powerless Spike to the old, virile model.
From this, we go directly to Xander never again calling Spike names (I think), never mentioning the attempted rape, working with him with equanimity, and thereafter allowing Buffy to run her own personal life (except when under a spell). None of these things happened when Spike lived with him in Season 4. He's older and hopefully wiser, sure, but it still seems like an awfully abrupt change of heart, to me at least. Heh. I'll stop now. The world does not hang in the balance on this issue. Probably.