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These are modified versions of the Drabbles I posted for this week's ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sunday100 challenge - themed around masks & costumes.
---------------------------------------------------
Title: Her hat has a cow.
Character: Buffy
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: S6
Her hat has a cow.
Be….cause I wanted to be a part of the DoubleMeat experience?
Smiles. Nods. Punches in another order.
You don't belong here. You're something ... you're better than this.
Classes cut and dropped. Seventy-five credits short of the degree she’ll never earn.
I'm sorry Buffy. This conversation is reserved for people who actually have a future.
That's not your world. You belong in the shadows... with me.
This is adulthood? This is exciting?
She provides. Little silent deaths. Dawn’s dinner-sack. Willow-hugs. Joyce’s wedding album for Anya and Xander. Perfunctory patrols.
She pays her bills.
Doesn’t read her battered book of poetry. Doesn’t wear her cross. Doesn't look at Mr. Gordo. Doesn't call England. Burns the course catalog.
I'm sorry Buffy. This conversation is reserved for people who actually have a future.
She has a future. The Chicken-Cow-Hat? It's not a costume. It’s her life.
---------------------------------------------------
Title: Hellbound
Characters: Liam
Rating: PG
Spoilers: AtS 1.15 "The Prodigal"
Charcoals and parchments, buried at the bottom of a trunk. Battered copies of “Robinson Crusoe” and “Moll Flanders” hidden beneath the floorboards.
Not for proper men, father says.
Enough fashion to pass among his set. A jar of product. In the mirror, a charming half-smile and a rakish smirk.
Ties and strings to keep it all in place. Breath of whiskey, devil-may-care attitude, and enough stolen silver to pass one last evening. He’ll never be a proper man.
He halts, discarding the once-cherished rosary in a vase. There’s only one place he’ll ever be going, and it’ll do him no good when he gets there.
---------------------------------------------------
Comments inspired by AtS 5.04 "Hellbound
I've gotten the sense, that Angel has believed himself damned to Hell long before season five.
He's been prone to frustration and despair - whether because of his father's rebuke, horror at the weight of his past crimes, inability to control his bloodlust in the Donut shop, his inability to save Connor, and the loophole in his curse that denies him true intimacy and love.
My pet hope, is that we're leading to a storyline examing the "Liam" in him, and how the real source of both his good as Angel and his acts as Angelus is rooted in traits of his own humanity - ultimately leading to our hero coming to a better integration and understanding of himself. And dare I hope...Shanshu? (Whatever that may actually be.)
I'd gotten the sense through flashbacks and insights in "Spin the Bottle" that Liam wasn't just some simple proto-fratboy. Rather that frustrated ambitions, hopelessness about his own life, and general despair led him to the life of debauchery and drunkeness he'd engaged in before Darla killed him. And that those metaphorical "inner demons", coupled with the lack of soul and demonic drives, ultimately are what fueled Angelus' rampages.
So, I suspect that his current despair and hopelessness may well be stemming from the same places, emotionally, as what led him into the gutters in the past. I like that idea, because the show has periodically gone with the alcoholism metaphor - and the scene where Angel pours himself a drink of blood brought that back to me.
So Angel is despairing and thinks he's damned. Again. Of course, he may very well be wrong. He can change for the better. What he needs, is to find the motivation within to drag himself out of the gutter again, and to resolve what it is about him in that he would keep bringing himself into those gutters in the first place.
To me, "Amends" is still the touchstone episode as to who Angel is. Darla turned him into a demon. The curse unleashed Angelus again. But Liam's the one who chose to descend into drink. Angel retreated from the world, despite knowing he could and should be actively doing good. Angel fired his staff and engaged in vigilantism. It's human weakness. The same human weakness, that shows a more passive, despairing and hopeless Angel in S5. An Angel that seems devoid of joy, passion, and mercy, who seems to be "going through the motions" rather than being pro-active in his position. Unlike Spike, Angel doesn't need a reason or incentive to do good. He doesn't need someone to tell him why he should do good. What he seems to need, is a reason to get out of bed.
Fate has not been particularly kind to Angel. It's often unkind to many of us. Nevertheless, he needs to find the strength to break through his centuries-long patterns of despair. To be able to not only perservere, but remain impassioned in the face of failures. I don't know how that's going to happen, but I suspect it requires him to deal with who Liam was as much, if not more, than Angelus.
sunday100 challenge - themed around masks & costumes.---------------------------------------------------
Title: Her hat has a cow.
Character: Buffy
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: S6
Her hat has a cow.
Be….cause I wanted to be a part of the DoubleMeat experience?
Smiles. Nods. Punches in another order.
You don't belong here. You're something ... you're better than this.
Classes cut and dropped. Seventy-five credits short of the degree she’ll never earn.
I'm sorry Buffy. This conversation is reserved for people who actually have a future.
That's not your world. You belong in the shadows... with me.
This is adulthood? This is exciting?
She provides. Little silent deaths. Dawn’s dinner-sack. Willow-hugs. Joyce’s wedding album for Anya and Xander. Perfunctory patrols.
She pays her bills.
Doesn’t read her battered book of poetry. Doesn’t wear her cross. Doesn't look at Mr. Gordo. Doesn't call England. Burns the course catalog.
I'm sorry Buffy. This conversation is reserved for people who actually have a future.
She has a future. The Chicken-Cow-Hat? It's not a costume. It’s her life.
---------------------------------------------------
Title: Hellbound
Characters: Liam
Rating: PG
Spoilers: AtS 1.15 "The Prodigal"
Charcoals and parchments, buried at the bottom of a trunk. Battered copies of “Robinson Crusoe” and “Moll Flanders” hidden beneath the floorboards.
Not for proper men, father says.
Enough fashion to pass among his set. A jar of product. In the mirror, a charming half-smile and a rakish smirk.
Ties and strings to keep it all in place. Breath of whiskey, devil-may-care attitude, and enough stolen silver to pass one last evening. He’ll never be a proper man.
He halts, discarding the once-cherished rosary in a vase. There’s only one place he’ll ever be going, and it’ll do him no good when he gets there.
---------------------------------------------------
Comments inspired by AtS 5.04 "Hellbound
I've gotten the sense, that Angel has believed himself damned to Hell long before season five.
He's been prone to frustration and despair - whether because of his father's rebuke, horror at the weight of his past crimes, inability to control his bloodlust in the Donut shop, his inability to save Connor, and the loophole in his curse that denies him true intimacy and love.
My pet hope, is that we're leading to a storyline examing the "Liam" in him, and how the real source of both his good as Angel and his acts as Angelus is rooted in traits of his own humanity - ultimately leading to our hero coming to a better integration and understanding of himself. And dare I hope...Shanshu? (Whatever that may actually be.)
I'd gotten the sense through flashbacks and insights in "Spin the Bottle" that Liam wasn't just some simple proto-fratboy. Rather that frustrated ambitions, hopelessness about his own life, and general despair led him to the life of debauchery and drunkeness he'd engaged in before Darla killed him. And that those metaphorical "inner demons", coupled with the lack of soul and demonic drives, ultimately are what fueled Angelus' rampages.
So, I suspect that his current despair and hopelessness may well be stemming from the same places, emotionally, as what led him into the gutters in the past. I like that idea, because the show has periodically gone with the alcoholism metaphor - and the scene where Angel pours himself a drink of blood brought that back to me.
So Angel is despairing and thinks he's damned. Again. Of course, he may very well be wrong. He can change for the better. What he needs, is to find the motivation within to drag himself out of the gutter again, and to resolve what it is about him in that he would keep bringing himself into those gutters in the first place.
To me, "Amends" is still the touchstone episode as to who Angel is. Darla turned him into a demon. The curse unleashed Angelus again. But Liam's the one who chose to descend into drink. Angel retreated from the world, despite knowing he could and should be actively doing good. Angel fired his staff and engaged in vigilantism. It's human weakness. The same human weakness, that shows a more passive, despairing and hopeless Angel in S5. An Angel that seems devoid of joy, passion, and mercy, who seems to be "going through the motions" rather than being pro-active in his position. Unlike Spike, Angel doesn't need a reason or incentive to do good. He doesn't need someone to tell him why he should do good. What he seems to need, is a reason to get out of bed.
Fate has not been particularly kind to Angel. It's often unkind to many of us. Nevertheless, he needs to find the strength to break through his centuries-long patterns of despair. To be able to not only perservere, but remain impassioned in the face of failures. I don't know how that's going to happen, but I suspect it requires him to deal with who Liam was as much, if not more, than Angelus.
What else can we do
Some see the idea of salvation as a crutch. Angel's Shanshu is just lame (though for some reason, if Spike got it, that would be cool) to these people. I am not one of these people. "Judgment" dealt with this rather well. Season 2 dealt with this rather well. You can't work for salvation. Motives matter. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
People are asses. Some do make us pay for everything always. Angel had changed, but Holtz didn't care. His need for vengeance overrode his sense of justice. There are a lot of people like that. Then there are ones that believe in change and might even help us change. Not everyone makes us pay for everything always. We can be damned and saved simultaneously. I'd like to see the show reflect this.
Even if everyone around us accepts our change, there is only one person's whose opinion matters, our own. That is one thing I've always liked about Angel. He has an opinion about himself and that opinion isn't swayed by others. In "Angel" Buffy could tell Angel he wasn't a monster, but it took her giving him the opportunity for him to feed and him not taking it for him to start to believe. In "Amends" she pulls an Esther of sorts. Telling Angel he isn't a monster doesn't work. "What about me" gets to him. If Angel is a monster, than Buffy loves a monster. He HAS to be something more than that. Angel doesn't believe he is stronger than the demon, UNTIL he faces the pure form of it on Pylea and does come back. What makes Angel quite the man in my eyes is that he can accept this evidence and realize he has changed.
His belief about the universe has just gotten worse and worse. Angelus' comments about the human condition in "Orpheus" were chilling. That is what Angel believes inside. He puts on a brave face for the world, for his friends, but it is to Spike that he was honest. He doesn't need to hide things from Spike. When he was resouled, he sucked, the world didn't. Now it is the reverse. It's just the flip side of the coin, a coin that was cast when he was Liam.
I don't think he believes he deserves to be damned. That is just how the world works. As Pavayne told Spike, the soul he has damns him. It makes Angel part of the human condition and the human condition sucks. No matter what he does, it will continue to suck. So what does he do?
What will the show do? That will depend on what the writers, especially Joss believes. If there is no ultimate purpose and we have to make our own, how will that be shown? Will each character make their own purpose as they explore how they fit into Wolfram and Hart and more importantly into the world? Will they all have one overriding purpose and just find individual ways to serve that?
My hope is that they do revisit "What else can we do" but it isn't cause for despair. It is cause for hope. Theoretically, we can do a lot. Realistically, we are guided by something (for Angel, it's his soul). The humanity that causes us to suffer also provides a means to deal with that suffering. We can't stop caring. Angel tried that. Instead we can do as the Spirit Guide told Buffy and turn that pain into great strength. In this lies our salvation.
Are we damned forever? I hope not. As long as I have hope, I won't be because the only one that can ultimately damn me is myself.
Great Essay
We can certainly hope "our hero" finds this sort of enlightenment.