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I do however, wonder why so many think Spike is so sexy and great.

Is it how he looks? Being over 40 and still built is a great feat I'll admit (I belive the actor who plays him is over 40, or at least over 30). But don't forget that he's still OVER 40. I think his ungodly bony face structure may be a giveaway.

Is it the personality? Because if slaughtering people was the socially acceptable thing to do, I would have laid waste to Dallas years ago (hate that city).

"But he changed" you say? after he got his chip, Dru fed him a guy she just killed, and he ate, after which he chains Buffy and Dru up and starts threatening her to love him. First thing he does when he thinks his chip is deactivated in s6 is find a helpless victim. And of course, there was the attempted rape.

After he gets his soul, he only spends a few weeks in the basement, insane over what he's done...not to the people he killed, but the rape thing. Because rape is SO much worse than murder right? When he finally "reforms" completely, he still keeps the jacket of the slayer he killed and beats up her son who ::gasp:: wanted to avenge her.

He's a pathetic, worthless, murderous b*****d who deserves a painful and slow death, not sympathy from fangirls who think he's just misunderstood. Dying to save the world SHOULD have killed him, and it should have hurt bad, even if he was doing the right thing. I for one loved seeing Illyria dust him, at least while it lasted, on Angel.

Speaking of Angel, now there's the guy who deserves fangirls. Yes he was a very evil b*****d as Angeles, but when he gets his sould back at least he understands he needs to repent and start doing the right thing.

Okay....first post made good points. However, I have to contest some of them.
Let's see if I can do this in order and somewhat coherently as my inner fangirl is screaming obsceities.
Is it his looks? Yes. I don't care how old he is. Keanu Reeves is my other favorite actor..he just turned 41 in September and to me he is still gorgeous. Yeah, James has on odd, rather bony facial structure. But in my personal opinion uncommon good looks are the best kind.
About his personality...in the very beginning he was a socially unaccepted, good-natured, well-meaning fool. Call me crazy but I go for those types. And his poetry wasn't that bad! Or maybe it was so bad that it was charming in the effort. So...he was sired by Drusilla, and he became an evil murderous b*****d. *searches her mind for a quote* "Um...hello? VAMPIRE?!" He was supposed to be an evil murderous b*****d. But he was a clever, witty, and so-sexy-you-can't-help-but-fall-for-it murderous b*****d. Plus, up until the point that Dru left him, Spike cared for her through all her violent insanity. Love is love, even if it between evils. And he genuinely loved Buffy...after he got past wanting to kill her, of course. AS to his stint in the basement...perhaps I as a female am biased...but yes, rape is indeed worse than murder. And before that happened he was in Sunnydale High's basement being tortured by his soul on all the things he'd done before that. (Although the railroad spikes were definetly cool. I'm macabre like that.) And you have to admit he was way more clever and funny than Angel. He had some of the best one-liners in either show. Who remembers Five Words? "Out For A Walk. b***h." Angel's thing was to be brooding and serious. That gets old way too quickly. But one could always count on Spike to be entertaining as the resident smart-arsed Brit.
To the next point...If Spike would have 'reformed completely', he would have stopped fighting. Period. He would have gone back to being the simpering poet and had no worth either to the Scoobies as a fighter or to the show as sarcastic comic relief. And I don't care who you are...if you come across a leather jacket that nice for free, you're not giving it up for a damn thing. If you want to get really deep & metaphorical, maybe Spike kept the jacket as a weight on his back to remind him of what he'd done to that slayer? There is also the matter of self-defense. He's a vamp, she's a vamp slayer. What kind of idiot would go , "oh, it's the natural order, I'll just let her kill me 'cos she's the good guy *dust*" Same thing with her son. The crazy fool just came at him, and if you noticed, Spike spared that crazy fool's life. He could very easily have snapped Wood's neck but DIDN'T even though he was trying to kill Spike.
Angel, on the other hand, isn't any better a man just because he's suffered with his soul longer. He did horrible things too; some might argue the acts he committed upon his family, especially his child sister, were far worse than anything Spike did. And that's when he wasn't acting with Darla as well. It got far worse then. In the end, Spike saved Buffy and all the potentials when he could have turned and fled with them, while with Angel's entire series, no matter what it was just another job, just another misfortune. Furthermore, Spike never blamed his evil on being another person, he never gave it another name. Every evil thing Angel did was blamed on 'Angelus', but Spike was Spike no matter what and that acceptance alone proves he truly atoned for his atrocities. Not to mention he got over it more quickly which meant that his coping skills and his ability to function when Buffy and the Potentials needed him was much better than Angel's. Angel's solution to every problem was to leave, to run away. But Spike stuck it out no matter what and came through in the end.
And that is why I love Spike.