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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.
Re: Snerk