BtVS S8.38 "Last Gleaming" Part 3

[aycheb]

There’s a James Tiptee story (there’s always a James Tiptree story) called The Man Who Walked Home. It starts in a post-apocalyptic world with a preternaturally barren crater and slowly, as centuries pass and a new civilisation grows up around it, the mystery of the annual disturbances at its centre becomes clearer. Added together like the pages of

Comments

[aycheb]

I’m overselling but I seem to be the only vendor and am nothing if not counter-suggestible. That aside I do think responding to his weakness is the dominant component of her complex of feelings for Angel and has been pretty much since he came back in S3.

To break it down (what does she see in him) I think it started with lust at first sight. Angel for good or for ill is quite simply her type. Her physical attraction to him has remained a constant, in Surprise she was practically spraying the room with her anticipation of consumation and she still dreams him as all handsomy in After These Messages. He’ll always raise an involuntary smile from her for that alone but it doesn’t last.

Beyond the purely physical attraction of tall dark and handsome I agree Angel also appealed to her as a romantic fantasy figure. The Mr Rochester to her Jane Eyre, the older father figure type with the hint of Byronic mystery (talking strictly the first half of the book). But her relationship to father figures has changed significantly over the years. She used to look up to her biological father but by S5 he’s just another Spanish secretary living cliché. Her relationship with Giles has had many ups and downs but they’re on a much more equal footing now. They can even have adult conversations about how Giles may need to kill her, she’s come a long way from being 16 and not wanting to die. So Buffy/father figure has changed but Angel hasn’t. He still believes in hiding things from her.

By the final chapters of Jane Eyre, Jane's relationship with Rochester has changed from him being her dark father rescuer to her rescuing him from the valley of his despair. And she loves him for it, this is the “reader I married him” section. This has also been an aspect of Angel’s attraction from the beginning, from when she puts down her crossbow in Angel the episode. In many ways it’s always come more naturally to her. She damsels it up in Halloween but is so much happier beating Spike up when Ethan’s spell breaks. She has the face touching scene and hides out in his dark place in WML part 1 but in part 2 she’s all “no-one messes with my boyfriend” and he’s the damsel. Still it’s when he comes back from hell that he really needs her and that’s the only part of their relationship that actually works. They can’t have sex, Angel sucks as a confidant, when she tries going all girly on him he breaks up with her on Prom night but he has so, so much to offer as a hurt/comfort project. That was season 3 this is season 8 but the same holds true. When they have sex it breaks the world open, he doesn’t know her, she doesn’t trust him, when he tries the old dark romantic schtick in the Twilight verse she things it's anything from cheesy to downright creepy. The one thing that always brings her back to him is his need to be saved. He needs her to be happy, like Miss Kitty says he needed her to get back in the fight, he needs to make amends and she gives him a way to start doing so before Twilight overpowers him once more.