awesome ladies don't have to be human. that's...somethingism

[pocochina]

Obviously Dru talk can veer into some unhappy territory. I’ve attempted to keep the conversation as very very vague as possible but I’d much prefer to be upfront.

Comments

[ever_neutral]

ARGH WHY ARE YOU SO GOOD THOUGH?!!!

This is brilliant Dru analysis and you should feel good. Everything you say about victimhood and her not being able/needing to be redeemed is truuuuuth. ♥

Everything I put in the ground withers and dies.

Gah. Favourite Dru line. Most tragic of all the characters.

[pocochina]

thank you!

"Ugh but she's a victim" a criticism that I've heard about female characters and it fucking bugs. I mean, obviously when someone says that about a real person I know why I hit the roof. But I think Dru is a really important step in answering that with SO WHAT? because that doesn't make her not a worthwhile character. And she was an indispensable part of the Angelus arc, to make sure we all absolutely had to face what he was.

[angearia]

This is brilliant. ALL THE META YOU. YOU WRITE ALL THE META NAO.

With Angel, she is still her wild self, untethered to the world, but she puts on a show for him. She can cover the worst of her madness, though she doesn’t need to with Spike. Angel wants to admire his handiwork, not to be bothered with its tiresome consequences. Miss Edith no longer speaks out of turn, or at all. She’s Daddy’s good girl in her Sunday best. Perhaps more interestingly, when Spike has captured souled Angel, Dru reads him just as well. His regret for what he did to her - which is genuine even as he still fetishizes and admires her - oozes off of him, and she can’t tolerate the absence of his delight, and she sees that he wants to be punished if he cannot be forgiven. So she dangles his sins down in front of his eyes and drips holy water across his dead heart. In their twisted vampire way, she is still being what he wants her to be.

Oh god, shaking and crying. This. THIS.

She isn’t up for the making of anyone, but she doesn’t need, really, to make

[pocochina]

I wish I could remember where, because this is brilliant (I can't remember because it was ages ago but it's stuck with me) that the "burning baby fish" Drusilla sees around Spike in FFL are those first sparks of the fire from the amulet.

But is he least likely really?

Only superficially. bloody ponce. <3William<3

and thank you! <3

[auroramama]

At the time, I thought of Delirium's tiny brilliant fish in Sandman. But that is brilliant.

[auroramama]

This is splendid! And so beautiful. This prose is as full of jewels as a pomegranate is of garnet arils. Your vision of Dru as a creature outside of time, extending in space, aware of events all along the timeline but not her own location, is inspiring.

Because she has none of those limitations on self, she can understand and destroy others like no other character can. Yes. She sees Kendra taken from her family by her Watcher, the need to perform, to do, as Potential and as Slayer, and the ferociously repressed desire to be a child again, to just *be* within someone's love. Angelus created/adapted a girl with interesting powers into a being who can do what he can't

[pocochina]

Thanks! I love Dru. She's timeless to me, as well, she still has the fascination for me now that she did two years ago when I wrote this.

People used to write stories where Angelus was a tyrant to the vampire Drusilla, and I used to argue with them. Angelus talks big, and he's proud of having destroyed the woman, but he doesn't give Drusilla orders and force her to obey. He's quite careful not to bang heads with her straight-on and see who's stronger. When she protects Xander in BBaB, he complains that she's not being fun. And then he sulkily walks away.

Yeah, it's definitely a creepy, possessive favorite-toy kind of vibe, but I don't see him as having been pointedly and overtly aggressive in the fandom-gets-it kind of way.