SPONTANEOUS META COMBUSTION: on Drusilla's role in the Spike/Dru relationship

[marketchippie]

So, last night penny_lane_42 asked me to justify Drusilla's love for Spike, and as you can expect with me talking about these kids, it spiralled out of control almost immediately. Thus, I come bearing meta. To paraphrase a certain favored episode: this is Drusilla, girls! D'you have any idea what she means?

Nah, course not, that's the problem with her. But it's

Comments

[marketchippie]

I really wish we'd seen some of the post-Angelus time Darla spent with Spike and Dru.

So much. All I ever really want out of this show is fanged four times-it's never, ever enough. (And obvs I would watch the documentary. Spike & Dru being absolutely ridiculous, and Darla sitting back and rolling her eyes, like you kids do that. The fanged four fail entirely at existing in odd numbers, but with her it'd be hilarious rather than corrosive: the most long-suffering, resentfully cast mother figure ever.)

[eleusis_walks]

I love everything about this as you already know.

I think the moment at which Dru's relationship to time became so clear to me was in "Darla" when she says to Darla "I could be your mummy" and the implication is that she is actually prophesying an event that takes place over a hundred years later. That is not just your average prophecy, that is serious foresight. No wonder she's so crazed.

[marketchippie]

Exactly. While Spike's existing in-the-moment, she's existing in every moment.

Spectacular goddamn character. (I actually went to Forbidden Planet and read the damn comic book out of referential curiosity, is how much I love this character. It wasn't bad, either-not my canon, but not bad.)

[eleusis_walks]

I have not read it because I haven't much liked the comics, but since Landau co-wrote it herself I figure it might be worth a look. She clearly gets the character, you know?

Dru exists in all spaces, too. She hears 'star music', the harmony of the spheres. Really, her perception isn't unlike what Illyria describes in "Underneath". She's sort of a sultry, wacky, vampiric Dr. Manhattan.

[marketchippie]

HAHAHA I LOVE YOU. just like.

I feel like because of the way the 'verse is structured + the way she is structured, she gets to be metatextually privy on some level to how the story works. Not that she can put it together in order, but she knows what it's made of: fairytales and tropes and literary devices.

(Of course she hears the music of the spheres. Shakespearean references itt; I'm shocked that I didn't remember that line.)

[superkappa]

I never got how people thought she didn't love Spike, because it seemed so implicit to me that she did. She loved him so much that she left him instead of standing around to watch him be drawn away from her via Buffy, which I think probably would have eventually happened anyways. She knew what was coming, she always does, and that's her gift and tragedy all at once.

That said, I love everything this chooses to be. And this?
They have the same core, and she breaks him down and rebuilds him around what's always been there. They balance each other like crazy, but their vocabulary-image, identity, metaphor-comes from the exact same place.

Is why they're my otp of BtVS (Angel/Cordelia is my otp of the whole verse, but whatever). They exist in the same space and communicate in a language only they understand. I love that in Crush, even when he's saying he'll kill Dru for Buffy, he still talks about her so fondly, he still loves her in this weird profound way that I love

[marketchippie]

The best OTP. Oh, my heart. I love "Crush" on so many levels (IT'S 42 MINUTES INSIDE SPIKE'S HEAD. Actually just the identity crisis episode), but one of them is how much them still being in love is in the script-dialogue aside, it talks about them getting "lost in reverie" in the "She never stopped surprising me" dialogue; it mentions him raising his head to her "like he's been anointed"-of course, because she was his first salvation, truly. It's so much about him desperately wanting to be what he was with her, but literally can't be, for reasons physical and narrative. Of course he has to destroy her, but he doesn't and look how much Drusilla is still in him after that-half of s7 is like the stealth OTPtime season because he's just her mirror for half of it, and he only breaks out of his reverie when something else fails to recreate her like he can. Hell, the first in-text place he goes after THE WORST SCENE in "Seeing Red" is into Dru-dialogue-mirror-tonalities, in the crypt, when he's talking about feeling the chip in his head.

[superkappa]

I love how so much of them is built up in construction and building each other around one another. And I love how no matter what he views Drusilla as his first salvation (in juxtaposition to Angel who always sees Darla as his damnation). I really loved that he couldn't destroy her anymore, it's such a great conflict, he can't be what he was with her anymore, but he can't be what he thinks he needs to be for Buffy either. So he's just lost. Crush is easily in my top five episodes of the series. Perfect.

Like the scene with the first always makes me sad because I wish so badly they had done something with the real Drusilla in season 7, since they bothered getting Juliet back and everything. I mean, I love that he can tell it's not really Dru right away but man. So much missed opportunity there. Breaks my heart.

[marketchippie]

YES YES YES, everything; god I love that episode. I keep meaning to write a proper essay about it-right after I first watched it, I wrote 2000 words just on the Spike and Spike/Buffy stuff leading up to Drusilla's appearance, at which point I just kept watching and flailing my face off over the scene in the crypt and then the one in the Bronze. Crypt especially: all the physicality intricacies are there and are perfect, but the thing that most kills me is that his voice does this breathtaking thing when he says to her, "but the pain-love, it's searing, it's blinding." It's unbearably intimate and bare. I can't even. Everything they choose to be, performances and actors. I keep rewatching that and FFL and expecting to react less, and every time it's like HOW DO YOU DO THIS, HOW ARE YOU LIKE THIS, OTP OTP OTP

[ever_neutral]

[rebcake]

Exquisite, darling! I was especially taken with your approach to their dance. Dru seems to move so gracefully, yet gingerly, and I think your theory works beautifully. She's everywhen at once, so it would be very easy to put a foot wrong. But she comes to Spike, and he gives her grounding. He's her very own GPS. With him, she knows where!when she is. So beautiful.

This was really lovely.

[marketchippie]

Thank you. Precisely. ♥

God, I could watch them move around each other for days.