Day 17: Lilah/Angel Day

[jennyo]

So here's yet another ship day, yet again kind of late.

Lilah/Angel: enemies with sexual chemistry? Tragic antagonists? I...simply do not know.

Sadly, with the demise of apocalypse-nowish.com, Control is gone and there is no Lilah/Angel site; however, the section for Notorious is here and it is a fairly diverse kind of ship with a few great

Comments

[fox1013]

Okay, so I went through the Lilah/Angel fics at Notorious.

And we've got a few fics which are fluff, which is bizarre on its own, because, you know, Angel? Lilah? Fluff? But the vast majority seem to feature Angel punishing Lilah, sexually or not, for being a bad bad person. Which... stepping back? Is usually what Lilah wants, so okay. But an awful lot of thse "punishments" seem to fall into noncon and rape, often by Angel rather than Angelus.

Now, they hate each other. And most Lilah ships, hate-filled or not, are dark. Which makes sense, given, you know, Lilah. But most of them also have the more romantic sentiment. Angel/Lilah almost completely lacks that.

But we have "Carpe Noctem". We know that, no matter what Angel feels, Lilah felt something for Angel, even if it's just "I would not mind boning that vampire." And we know that SR said she definitely played Lilah as attracted to Angel.

So... why is there not much of a basis for an actual relationship, the way we see in everything from Lilah/Wes to Lilah/Cordy to, hell, Lilah/Dawn? Is it something about the nature of their interactions, or the characters themselves? Or is there any way that a mutual relationship- or even mutual enjoyable fucking- could actually validly be achieved?

Dude, I just don't see it. I don't. I've looked at the fics to see a place for a mutually consensual ship, or at least mutually benefitial fucking. I've looked at the episodes. And I'm just... lacking. It's a relatively popular Lilah ship. I get that. But WHY?

[poisonapple73]

I suppose it's popular, because yes, the tension is there. And sexual tension, or any tension, between characters, can create a bevy of shippers. I find their relationship interesting, but like you, I really can't see...anything serious happening between them. They might have sex once, but I think they'd both feel degraded. It's pretty clear that Lilah is afraid of Angel, she gets jittery the minute he's around. Despite her fondness for violence during sex, I don't really think she likes to fear her partner. Power games are fine, but powerlessness is not.

Angel views Lilah as a worthy adversary I think, hence the threatening, but he tends to self flagellat, and take that out on the person he feels is a party to that badness.