*nods* Yeah... I didn't quite lose sympathy with Buffy because I was really empathizing with the depression bit -- I grokked the being mean and horrible because of self-hatred. But oh, that relationship was so painful because of Buffy tearing herself apart and not caring how she did it and Spike trying desperately to help in the only way he could figure out how. This is why I love Hard Candy so much ^_^.

But yeah, that's probably a very non-PC POV or something... it's hard to say without sounding permissive or assigning blame or all those pitfalls.