Aurelius: the Order of Irreverence
[A/N: ok, I posted this a while back, actually, but it was totally dead that day and when, after 5 hours, no one had commented, I chickened out and yanked it down, haha. Which was stupid, but sometimes I’m silly. And then icemink told me to put it back up and I’m just now getting around to that.
I’d also like to note that since I wrote this, I’ve read peasant_’s essay on the Master which is actually along very similar lines to the points I made here about him, but far more thorough. It’s a good one to check out.]
It’s a pretty universally-accepted concept in fanon that Spike is the renegade of the Aurelius family. It’s sort of secondarily accepted that Angelus was a renegade too, when folks look past his comparison to Spike and remember his conduct with the Master-many times, he’s characterized as the stuffy, traditional one. But I was thinking about the rest of the main Aurelius line (the Master, Darla, Angelus, Dru, Spike), and I was thinking about how they were all irreverent in their own way.
The ironic thing is that in each case, the pattern repeats itself: younger rejecting some doctrine of the elder, and the elder thinking he/she is a fool for doing so. The tension’s more obvious between the males (Angelus to the Master, Spike to Angelus). I think it’s kind of funny that in creating a feminist show, Joss made the female vampires in many ways subs to the males. Not just with Aurelius but in general (Harmony, anyone?). Darla is a strong woman, and I’d argue that Dru is too, in her own way, but they both seem to enjoy submitting to the men in their lives-Darla to the Master and Angelus, and Dru to Angelus and Spike. So most of the generational culture clash is among the men.
But even with the clash between generations, there’s a respect paid to their protégés (when they’re out of earshot). Our first impression of Spike through Angel’s eyes in School Hard is that he’s a ruthless killer that will stop at nothing until he’s accomplished his goals. Similarly, in Bs1 Angel, the Master (who we come to believe in As2 Darla does not have a high opinion of Angelus) says that Angel was “the most vicious creature he ever met” and that even though Darla was his favorite for 400 years, it was *Angel* that “was to have sat at his right hand, come the day.” Interesting. Maybe rebel recognizes rebel after all.
What’s that? the Master is not a rebel? Well….
The Master
In fic, the Master is often the gold standard for the stuffy, traditionalist vampire elite. He appears at first glance rather rigid in terms of tradition, and he likes the pomp and circumstance. Everyone we have to compare him to in terms of defined vampire personalities seems like a free spirit by comparison.
But I was rewatching season 1 recently, and The Wish, and I was thinking about how the Master is actually a rather innovative guy. It’s just that we don’t have a predecessing vampire to compare him to in order to illustrate the point.
It seems pretty ballsy and radical to me that when we meet the Master, he’s plotting to overthrow the contemporary human-centered order of the world. Okay, yes, he’s following prophecy, and going about his anarchy in a very structured fashion, but he is essentially rejecting everything it meant to be a vampire for thousands of years to remake the world as he preferred.
Then in Bs3 The Wish, we see him utilizing the concept of mass production in order to replace the hunt-again overthrowing Business As Usual. I think it seems kind of boring or the opposite of rebellious to us that he is creating a system wherein he removes himself from the blood and guts of his natural existence (especially when you compare him to someone like Spike, who relishes that), but after half a millenia or so, snapping necks and sucking humans dry can get a little yawn-worthy. And for a guy as old as he is, a hundred-year-old concept like mass production is staying on the cutting edge, I’m sure ;)
His anti-establishment intentions are actually really clear in the little speech he makes to the crowd at the grand opening.
Behold the technical wonder, which is about to alter the very fabric of our society. Some have argued that such an advancement goes against our nature. They claim that death is our art. I say to them... Well, I don't say anything to them because I kill them. Undeniably we are the world's superior race. Yet we have always been too parochial, too bound by the mindless routine of the predator. Hunt and kill, hunt and kill. Titillating? Yes. Practical? Hardly. Meanwhile, the humans, with their plebeian minds, have brought us a truly demonic concept: mass production!
This is a guy who is basically calling slavery to tradition foolish.
The final thing I think is interesting about the Master is his language. Most of his language seems formalized, when you compare it to the quips of Angelus and Spike, but he clearly has a handle on wit and sarcasm, has the market cornered on flippancy, and the way he taunts Buffy is pretty reminiscent of our boys, actually. For a guy who claims to reject everything human and live apart from the ‘human pestilence,’ he seems comfortable enough throwing in the odd pop culture reference for emphasis, when he *chooses*. I’m thinking in Prophecy Girl of his reaction to the earthquake (“Whaddaya think? 5.1?”) or his parting remark to dead Buffy (“By the way, I like your dress.”) He knows more about human culture than he lets on.
I think he’s more of a forerunner of Angelus and Spike than he’s usually credited for.
Darla
Darla likes opulence. She likes the human world, and high society, and a room with a view. It’s clear that she has no respect for human emotion, as opposed to say…Spike, but she likes the trappings, and she sees no reason to hold herself apart from human society.
In doing so, she’s directly (and consciously) rejecting the Master’s doctrine, even if she does feel the need to hide it from him. And she goes one step further: she creates a companion for herself that will love those worldly things too.
As far as I can tell, Darla is the only Aurelian vampire who essentially rejects her sire in favor of her childe. Sure, she paid her due to the Master from time to time, but she doesn’t really return to him until Angelus is gone, cursed with a soul.
She’s also the only one, by my reckoning, who purposefully chooses to turn a human that has the clear potential to dominate her.
It usually goes the other way. The Master, I’m sure, was confident that Darla would remain under his control (he seems very surprised when she rejects him for Angelus). Angelus certainly only turns those who are weaker, and often takes measures to make them *more* dependent on him. And Dru, although she turned William as a companion, seems in Destiny and LMPTM to regard him as a plaything more than a playmate (“It’s called Willy” [emphasis mine]). When he tries to get all toppy with her, she sort of laughs at him.
But Darla knew what she wanted in a long-time companion, and she took it, regardless of convention (official or unofficial). In turning Liam, she was a rebel three times over.
Angelus
When thinking about the one concept that might encapsulate all the ways Angelus rebelled against the Order, one word came to mind: excess. Angelus took the vices of the Aurelian vampires and the vices of his human life and lived them to the extreme…which I guess is unsurprising considering that his human years were spent drinking and whoring and generally living the party life.
If the Master and Darla were arrogant, he made them look humble by comparison. As Lindsey said, Angel in all incarnations had big brass balls, and he whipped them out at pretty much every opportunity. (*snickers*)
He took their aestheticism (Darla’s love of society life, the Master’s love of ritual) to the extreme. Killing and torture became art, and the breaking of a human being, a masterpiece. He took Darla’s enjoyment of society’s trappings and learned not just how to blend in, but how to use that ability to completely mind-fuck his victims.
We saw the pattern of excess literally from the moment he came out of the ground. He wanted to take the village. He took the apparent notoriety of the order’s name among demons and elevated it to terrifying legend in the human world. He flaunted his work, refusing to keep it “underground.”
And he spread the Aurelius seed, so to speak, more than any of them as well. Darla is only ever shown turning Angelus, Dru only turns William. Spike never turns anyone (to our knowledge). The Master obviously turned a variety of individuals over the years, but I think he did it for a purpose…to build an army, to strengthen the family, to have minions. Angelus’ choices seem to be for the hell of it, and to no purpose at all. Penn, Dru…arguably Spike (in spirit-Angelus told Dru to make a playmate, knowing full well he’d be the one to train it). Lawson, though there was a reason he was turned. Maybe James and Elizabeth? I have a sense that there were others, before the soul, that sort of scattered to the wind. They seemed to be revealing one a season there for a while. He was a real Johnny Appleseed.
Dru
At first glance, Dru doesn’t exactly scream ‘rebel.’ She tries very hard to be a good girl for Daddy *g* But I would argue that the ‘human touch’ that the Judge senses in Spike and Dru is rooted in her desire for family and her rather obstinate refusal to let go of a certain human style of affection.
She is the first one of the Fanged Four, as far as I can remember, to refer to Aurelius in family terms. Darla, for sure, rejects such terminology, and she is irritated by Dru’s labeling of her as “grandmother.” (Interestingly, the Master *did* accept this metaphor. Several times in Bs1 he refers to the order several times as “family” and “children.” Apparently the metaphor skipped a few generations.)
But Dru clings to the family concept-Angelus is Daddy, and she’s quite keen on Darla being Granny in the bad old days and her own little girl in As2…although later that season, we also see her lean on Darla for comfort like a mother.
It’s very telling that Darla, of all people, obliges her with some soft affection during that season, whenever she starts acting like a child. Dru’s hunger for love and family shapes the Fanged Four, I think. Angelus may have turned her as an experiment in grotesque suffering, but 20 years later, we see him treating her with paternalistic affection as they walk down the street together in London. There’s the pop psych notion of teaching people how to treat you, and I think there was a bit of that going on here…Dru’s behavior was childlike, and it demanded a certain type of response. I think it’s true that Angelus is prone to family-building anyway, and prone to paternalism, but Dru is the first one of his offspring that we see that type of soft behavior with. They do say that having a little girl changes a man ;)
I wonder, too, what might have happened if William really had been turned by Angelus, rather than by Dru…as we were originally led to believe. Maybe all of the humanity would have been beaten out of him, like Penn. Maybe not. But I do feel confident that Dru’s influence encouraged him to hold on to the softer, more romantic aspects of his human personality, even as Angelus shaped him into a killer.
Spike
And finally, our little Spike. He broke the mold, didn’t he? Spike is such a contradiction that he breaks convention every which way. I’m not going to talk about him, really, because we all know how he’s a rebel and I got nothin new. This meta was mostly about how Spike wasn’t the only one…that he inherited a tradition of rebellion.
I can’t really think of any ways he rebelled against *Dru*, just as I can’t think of any specific ways that Angelus really rebelled against *Darla*. It was all about railing over the patriarch. And Spike did so with both his chaotic baseness and his human-like tenderness. There were two ways he could go to break away from Angelus, and he chose both.
Ironically, he made the most important decisions of his life in *obedience* to Angelus, but that’s another story for another day ;)
I’d also like to note that since I wrote this, I’ve read peasant_’s essay on the Master which is actually along very similar lines to the points I made here about him, but far more thorough. It’s a good one to check out.]
It’s a pretty universally-accepted concept in fanon that Spike is the renegade of the Aurelius family. It’s sort of secondarily accepted that Angelus was a renegade too, when folks look past his comparison to Spike and remember his conduct with the Master-many times, he’s characterized as the stuffy, traditional one. But I was thinking about the rest of the main Aurelius line (the Master, Darla, Angelus, Dru, Spike), and I was thinking about how they were all irreverent in their own way.
The ironic thing is that in each case, the pattern repeats itself: younger rejecting some doctrine of the elder, and the elder thinking he/she is a fool for doing so. The tension’s more obvious between the males (Angelus to the Master, Spike to Angelus). I think it’s kind of funny that in creating a feminist show, Joss made the female vampires in many ways subs to the males. Not just with Aurelius but in general (Harmony, anyone?). Darla is a strong woman, and I’d argue that Dru is too, in her own way, but they both seem to enjoy submitting to the men in their lives-Darla to the Master and Angelus, and Dru to Angelus and Spike. So most of the generational culture clash is among the men.
But even with the clash between generations, there’s a respect paid to their protégés (when they’re out of earshot). Our first impression of Spike through Angel’s eyes in School Hard is that he’s a ruthless killer that will stop at nothing until he’s accomplished his goals. Similarly, in Bs1 Angel, the Master (who we come to believe in As2 Darla does not have a high opinion of Angelus) says that Angel was “the most vicious creature he ever met” and that even though Darla was his favorite for 400 years, it was *Angel* that “was to have sat at his right hand, come the day.” Interesting. Maybe rebel recognizes rebel after all.
What’s that? the Master is not a rebel? Well….
The Master
In fic, the Master is often the gold standard for the stuffy, traditionalist vampire elite. He appears at first glance rather rigid in terms of tradition, and he likes the pomp and circumstance. Everyone we have to compare him to in terms of defined vampire personalities seems like a free spirit by comparison.
But I was rewatching season 1 recently, and The Wish, and I was thinking about how the Master is actually a rather innovative guy. It’s just that we don’t have a predecessing vampire to compare him to in order to illustrate the point.
It seems pretty ballsy and radical to me that when we meet the Master, he’s plotting to overthrow the contemporary human-centered order of the world. Okay, yes, he’s following prophecy, and going about his anarchy in a very structured fashion, but he is essentially rejecting everything it meant to be a vampire for thousands of years to remake the world as he preferred.
Then in Bs3 The Wish, we see him utilizing the concept of mass production in order to replace the hunt-again overthrowing Business As Usual. I think it seems kind of boring or the opposite of rebellious to us that he is creating a system wherein he removes himself from the blood and guts of his natural existence (especially when you compare him to someone like Spike, who relishes that), but after half a millenia or so, snapping necks and sucking humans dry can get a little yawn-worthy. And for a guy as old as he is, a hundred-year-old concept like mass production is staying on the cutting edge, I’m sure ;)
His anti-establishment intentions are actually really clear in the little speech he makes to the crowd at the grand opening.
Behold the technical wonder, which is about to alter the very fabric of our society. Some have argued that such an advancement goes against our nature. They claim that death is our art. I say to them... Well, I don't say anything to them because I kill them. Undeniably we are the world's superior race. Yet we have always been too parochial, too bound by the mindless routine of the predator. Hunt and kill, hunt and kill. Titillating? Yes. Practical? Hardly. Meanwhile, the humans, with their plebeian minds, have brought us a truly demonic concept: mass production!
This is a guy who is basically calling slavery to tradition foolish.
The final thing I think is interesting about the Master is his language. Most of his language seems formalized, when you compare it to the quips of Angelus and Spike, but he clearly has a handle on wit and sarcasm, has the market cornered on flippancy, and the way he taunts Buffy is pretty reminiscent of our boys, actually. For a guy who claims to reject everything human and live apart from the ‘human pestilence,’ he seems comfortable enough throwing in the odd pop culture reference for emphasis, when he *chooses*. I’m thinking in Prophecy Girl of his reaction to the earthquake (“Whaddaya think? 5.1?”) or his parting remark to dead Buffy (“By the way, I like your dress.”) He knows more about human culture than he lets on.
I think he’s more of a forerunner of Angelus and Spike than he’s usually credited for.
Darla
Darla likes opulence. She likes the human world, and high society, and a room with a view. It’s clear that she has no respect for human emotion, as opposed to say…Spike, but she likes the trappings, and she sees no reason to hold herself apart from human society.
In doing so, she’s directly (and consciously) rejecting the Master’s doctrine, even if she does feel the need to hide it from him. And she goes one step further: she creates a companion for herself that will love those worldly things too.
As far as I can tell, Darla is the only Aurelian vampire who essentially rejects her sire in favor of her childe. Sure, she paid her due to the Master from time to time, but she doesn’t really return to him until Angelus is gone, cursed with a soul.
She’s also the only one, by my reckoning, who purposefully chooses to turn a human that has the clear potential to dominate her.
It usually goes the other way. The Master, I’m sure, was confident that Darla would remain under his control (he seems very surprised when she rejects him for Angelus). Angelus certainly only turns those who are weaker, and often takes measures to make them *more* dependent on him. And Dru, although she turned William as a companion, seems in Destiny and LMPTM to regard him as a plaything more than a playmate (“It’s called Willy” [emphasis mine]). When he tries to get all toppy with her, she sort of laughs at him.
But Darla knew what she wanted in a long-time companion, and she took it, regardless of convention (official or unofficial). In turning Liam, she was a rebel three times over.
Angelus
When thinking about the one concept that might encapsulate all the ways Angelus rebelled against the Order, one word came to mind: excess. Angelus took the vices of the Aurelian vampires and the vices of his human life and lived them to the extreme…which I guess is unsurprising considering that his human years were spent drinking and whoring and generally living the party life.
If the Master and Darla were arrogant, he made them look humble by comparison. As Lindsey said, Angel in all incarnations had big brass balls, and he whipped them out at pretty much every opportunity. (*snickers*)
He took their aestheticism (Darla’s love of society life, the Master’s love of ritual) to the extreme. Killing and torture became art, and the breaking of a human being, a masterpiece. He took Darla’s enjoyment of society’s trappings and learned not just how to blend in, but how to use that ability to completely mind-fuck his victims.
We saw the pattern of excess literally from the moment he came out of the ground. He wanted to take the village. He took the apparent notoriety of the order’s name among demons and elevated it to terrifying legend in the human world. He flaunted his work, refusing to keep it “underground.”
And he spread the Aurelius seed, so to speak, more than any of them as well. Darla is only ever shown turning Angelus, Dru only turns William. Spike never turns anyone (to our knowledge). The Master obviously turned a variety of individuals over the years, but I think he did it for a purpose…to build an army, to strengthen the family, to have minions. Angelus’ choices seem to be for the hell of it, and to no purpose at all. Penn, Dru…arguably Spike (in spirit-Angelus told Dru to make a playmate, knowing full well he’d be the one to train it). Lawson, though there was a reason he was turned. Maybe James and Elizabeth? I have a sense that there were others, before the soul, that sort of scattered to the wind. They seemed to be revealing one a season there for a while. He was a real Johnny Appleseed.
Dru
At first glance, Dru doesn’t exactly scream ‘rebel.’ She tries very hard to be a good girl for Daddy *g* But I would argue that the ‘human touch’ that the Judge senses in Spike and Dru is rooted in her desire for family and her rather obstinate refusal to let go of a certain human style of affection.
She is the first one of the Fanged Four, as far as I can remember, to refer to Aurelius in family terms. Darla, for sure, rejects such terminology, and she is irritated by Dru’s labeling of her as “grandmother.” (Interestingly, the Master *did* accept this metaphor. Several times in Bs1 he refers to the order several times as “family” and “children.” Apparently the metaphor skipped a few generations.)
But Dru clings to the family concept-Angelus is Daddy, and she’s quite keen on Darla being Granny in the bad old days and her own little girl in As2…although later that season, we also see her lean on Darla for comfort like a mother.
It’s very telling that Darla, of all people, obliges her with some soft affection during that season, whenever she starts acting like a child. Dru’s hunger for love and family shapes the Fanged Four, I think. Angelus may have turned her as an experiment in grotesque suffering, but 20 years later, we see him treating her with paternalistic affection as they walk down the street together in London. There’s the pop psych notion of teaching people how to treat you, and I think there was a bit of that going on here…Dru’s behavior was childlike, and it demanded a certain type of response. I think it’s true that Angelus is prone to family-building anyway, and prone to paternalism, but Dru is the first one of his offspring that we see that type of soft behavior with. They do say that having a little girl changes a man ;)
I wonder, too, what might have happened if William really had been turned by Angelus, rather than by Dru…as we were originally led to believe. Maybe all of the humanity would have been beaten out of him, like Penn. Maybe not. But I do feel confident that Dru’s influence encouraged him to hold on to the softer, more romantic aspects of his human personality, even as Angelus shaped him into a killer.
Spike
And finally, our little Spike. He broke the mold, didn’t he? Spike is such a contradiction that he breaks convention every which way. I’m not going to talk about him, really, because we all know how he’s a rebel and I got nothin new. This meta was mostly about how Spike wasn’t the only one…that he inherited a tradition of rebellion.
I can’t really think of any ways he rebelled against *Dru*, just as I can’t think of any specific ways that Angelus really rebelled against *Darla*. It was all about railing over the patriarch. And Spike did so with both his chaotic baseness and his human-like tenderness. There were two ways he could go to break away from Angelus, and he chose both.
Ironically, he made the most important decisions of his life in *obedience* to Angelus, but that’s another story for another day ;)