Meta! Rambling! Angel!

[lettered]

Over the last few months, I've been rewatching BtVS and AtS, and during S3 of BtVS some things began to make sense to me that hadn't before. This stuff has kinda been brewing for a long time, and it all just burped on the page, so it might not really be an essay or great meta or whatever. I'm going for three things, here

Comments

[lettered]

dlgood also has good meta on the Liam/Angel/Angelus stuff, here. I know there was another essay about it, as I mentioned, that really clarified things for me (esp. the "aspect of the demon" detail) but yeah, still can't remember where it is.

love isn't true love if it doesn't put the welfare of the beloved above all else? So much crap, in my opinion. I don't think many relationships would qualify as true love if that were the case. Yes, I think love is always to some extent selfish.

It just depends on your definition, and again boils down to the question: what's love, what makes love love, what is the essence of love? In the end, I don't think those questions can ever be answered. I once had a really long debate with dlgood about whether Angelus loved Buffy--I thought no, he argued yes. But in the end, it seemed like just a question of semantics: what he feels for Buffy is selfish--how selfish does it have to be before we stop calling it love and start calling it hate? It's cliche, but the line between love and hate is thin, and in this

[spuffyduds]

Terrific. I especially like the bits about Xander, and the snow--that had never occurred to me.

Reading the Buffy and Darla bits made me think about Spike. (Well, linoleum makes me think about Spike. But this time I actually have a point.) Spike's always portrated, by Joss and fic writers, as "love's bitch"--a reed bending to whoever has his heart this season. But I'd never thought about how much Angel is the same way. Although the loss/restoring of a soul goes some way toward the becoming evil and becoming good, you make the point that in large part, he's evil for Darla and good for Buffy. So he's as reactive as Spike to his romantic interests. When you also look at Xander as a main character, and at Giles whose entire job/calling/existence is meant to be All About the Slayer--you have an entire group in which the men are, for the most part, reactive, and the women more proactive. I'd never really sorted that out before. Cool. Go you!

[spuffyduds]

Portrated? Sigh. Portrayed.

[dlgood]

I agree with you in a general sense, but I quibble with some of the semantics...

So he's as reactive as Spike to his romantic interests.

I think that Angel, like Spike, changes in ways that reflect the women that he loves. So he is reactive, just as Spike is reactive. However, he is not so malleable to the extent that Spike is. That is to say he is not as much reactive as Spike is. (Spike goes to 11!)

With Angel, I think much the reason he loves Buffy is already a reflection of how he's changed - rather than falling in love with Buffy being a promt for him to change himself.

[lettered]

I especially like the bits about Xander, and the snow--that had never occurred to me.

Yay! Because those were my two big epiphanies in my rewatching, and the things I wanted to explain my thoughts about. I felt like I had to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) to get there though, so in the end there was a whole lot of talk talk talk!

Spike's always portrated, by Joss and fic writers, as "love's bitch"--a reed bending to whoever has his heart this season. But I'd never thought about how much Angel is the same way.

Interesting insight. I kinda agree with what dlgood says below on this: Angel doesn't change for these women. I did want to make the point that Darla has more influence than she initially seems to, as does Buffy (both of which turning points are exemplified in "Becoming"). But Darla doesn't inform everything Angel is--he exceeds her on his own, uh, "merit". And when Angel leaves Buffy, that is when he really blossoms, really becomes the self-sacrificing hero we know

[43100]

OMG - I swear I saw a link to a thingiemabobber on the soul and what it means in the Jossverse etc. not too long ago but now I can't find it, or I'd link you to it! :/

[lettered]

I know! I wish I could find it! There are actually a lot of metatations and essays on it, but there was one in particular that separated getting vamped into two events: getting the demon aspect and losing the soul. It was a really good way to explain what I thought.

[ba4ever]

Just stopped by to say, I read it all. No it wasn't boring, it was all very true.

And now I'm bowing down to you. Thank you for that.

[lettered]

Thanks! I had a couple points that I wanted to make, but it seemed to take forever to get there, so I was kinda worried. Glad it worked for you.

[lynnenne]

Hmmmm. I agree with some of this; not so much other parts. I agree on the "moment of perfect happiness" theory--it wasn't just that he loved Buffy, but that he thought, for the first time in 200 years, that he could be a man. At that point in his life, Buffy was his "Shanshu," so to speak. If they met up again now, I don't think that would hold true anymore

[ex_dovil323]

I could be in heaven, two big Angel brains discussing things and I get ringside seats - yay!

What Liam wanted more than anything was to piss his father off, and he did it spectacularly well.

Here's the dialogue from that scene:

http://vrya.net/bdb/clip.php?clip=4556

The bit where Darla talks about approval makes me think that this is what he most desired from his father, not some kind of victory, and I think that's what added to the emotional punch of Angelus killing him. Besides the bit where he, you know, became a blood sucking fiend and murdered his father. Opps.

I also think your interpretations might not necessarily be either or but instead maybe a mix of both?

[dlgood]

There's also "Spin the Bottle" where the teenaged Liam isn't, I think, nearly so remarkable. In terms of the relationship with his dad, you see him pointing out both being disapproved by his father (and hurt by it) while also aware of his father's own hypocrises.

Liam, the human, seemed like a very frustrated person to me. The way he relates with Faith... while I think the drinking and carousing was probably fun for him, I don't think it ever made him happy. He could have worked better to make himself more fulfilled (we do eventually see that on other shows) but he was perhaps too melancholy of dispostion to do that on his own without feeling a tug from someone else first.

[ex_dovil323]

Yeah, I wonder if Liam wasn't a bit like Xander in a way - he had potential but there was this lazy inertia and a lack of self confidence or fear of failure - except of course Xander had his immediate gratification from things like comic books, Liam had his from booze and wenches. But I think probably both of them occassionally stuck their heads up and wanted more and that's where the frustration came from - from their upbringings, their lack of support, from their own shortcomings. Eventually of course Xander got his A into gear after the replacements episode and slowly starting climbing to the top in construction and Angel - well we know what Angel does. :D