So I was reading Drusilla’s character page on TV Tropes and found an interesting description of her character;
“Karma Houdini: She killed Kendra, slaughtered hundreds of innocents, turned Darla back into a vampire at the behest of Wolfram & Hart before going on a massive rampage through L.A.; despite all of this, by the end of both Buffy and Angel, she’s still alive and at large. Taken to ludicrous extremes in the Angel & Faith comics, where after thwarting her plans and killing the Lorophage demon she was using to “help” people, Angel lets her escape… which leads to Drusilla attacking Faith’s Slayer squad and killing one of them.”
To put it kindly, I strongly disagree that Drusilla is a ‘karma Houdini’, or character who avoids comeuppance for her misdeeds.
First and foremost, I find it perplexing how death is the only thing the writer considers karma. Being killed, apparently, is the only way a character can pay for their sins, which makes for a twisted sense of justice in my humble opinion. According to this writer, being tortured to the point of being bedridden isn’t comeuppance. Nor is being tortured again by your own childe. Or being thrown off a building and into the path of a speeding Ford. Or being set on fire. Or being tasered, tied up, and nearly sacrificed as part of your ex-lover’s demented declaration of love to another woman. Or being driven even more insane by the brief possession of a soul. Or being made lucid only to be slowly driven insane a second time, fully aware of what’s happening to you, and that’s there nothing you can do to save yourself. None of this constitutes suffering for your actions, apparently. None of it.
Moreover, the idea that dying is the only way Dru can be sufficiently punished makes no sense in the context of her character. In fact, it borders on a non-sequitur. The whole theme of Drusilla’s character is “eternal torment”, being forced to live with the trauma of losing your family, your mind, your innocence. To put it in Angelus’ words;
“Killing is so merciful in the end, isn’t it? The pain is ended.”
– Dear Boy, Angel.
This is when he decides to sire Dru. Because for her, being forced to live is the worst punishment of all. Tragically, Drusilla would probably not regard death as comeuppance…But as clemency.
Ultimately, the idea that Drusilla never suffers any karma is nothing short of ridiculous. And this is without touching the issue of how much responsibility (if any) Dru can take for her actions, a whole other can of worms. Do people deserve retribution for misdeeds they can’t understand the consequences of?
Tag: drusilla
If you ever want to be even more afraid of what Angelus did to Dru, remember how Angel was with only visions. He was barely even lucid, overwhelmed utterly. Dru had visions without vampiric strength, and she held onto her mind and her sanity. That’s how strong she is (stronger than Angel). It’s horrific to think how far Angelus must have gone. The moment he realised she was too strong to easily break was the moment he decided to turn her.
In regards to this post.
xoxox
This was my ‘favourite little Buffy thing’ (I was the one who submitted it), but really when I say ‘favourite thing’, I mean ‘that Buffy thing that rips my heart out through my chest whenever I think about it.’
I mean;
- Doyle: Struggling to deal with his half-demon roots, Doyle’s relationship with his wife falls apart, and they get divorced even though it’s obvious they loved one another very much. Doyle turns to drinking and gambling (both of which he is implied to have an addiction to). This is perhaps to drown out the guilt of letting his demon kin get massacred after refusing to help them. Dies young saving a group of half-demons as penance.
- Cordelia: Family is sent to prison for tax evasion, leaving her unable to go to university, and all alone without a family. Her dreams of becoming an actress fail spectacularly. All the men she has ever loved (Xander, Doyle, Angel) has either cheated on her, died, or in some way never worked out with her. Is struck not once but twice by a horrible demonic pregnancy, is left in a coma, and at one point is forced to feel all the collective misery of the entire world.
- Drusilla: Is stalked, tortured, raped (or at least very strongly implied to have been raped), brainwashed, driven insane, and ultimately enslaved by a pair of vicious vampires who forced her to watch the brutal deaths of her family. She was driven insane with the guilt of her visions, and believes herself to be evil long before she actually was. Her relationship with Spike- the only person who was halfway decent to her- falls apart at least partially due to a vision of him falling in love with The Slayer he swore to kill for her. She tries to bring her ‘family’ back together out of love and loneliness, but all she gets for her efforts is set on fire, then tazered, tied up, and offered as a sacrifice by Spike. The one person who genuinely cared for her. She then wanders the world alone, unable to properly look after herself due to the debilitating insanity she suffers. And let’s not even get into the trauma tango she dances all by herself in the comics…
- Cassie: Has a alcoholic, allegedly violent father who divorced her mother on bad terms. Is a outcast at school where she has no friends, nor ambition for the future. Knows exactly when she’s going to die (young), and that there is not a single thing she can do about it. Even a Slayer couldn’t save her.
You could argue that if they never had the visions, a lot (perhaps not all, but a lot) of the pain and heartbreak would never of happened to them…
- Would Cassie of fallen into the lonely and fatalistic state she wallowed in if she wasn’t plagued with knowledge of the future, and knowledge of her death?
- Would Doyle’s crippling guilt for not helping his kin of been so unbearable if he hadn’t seen the vision of them being massacred?
- Would Darla and Angelus of picked out Drusilla as a ragdoll to toss around if they didn’t know she had The Sight? Alternatively, would Drusilla and Spike of fallen apart if she hadn’t foreseen his infatuation with Buffy?
Being a seer must be the suckiest gift ever. It’s like being blessed with a death sentence, or excitedly opening a present to find someone’s sent you a box of venomous snakes.
@theroyalpalmtreeofoz said: I’d debate the black humour around drusilla at all actually? black humour acknowledges the awfulness of the situation i think most of the humour around drusilla happens because the writers forgot how awful her situation was. Most of its people laughing at her as well which black humour or not is still awful
In regards to this post.
Excellent point.
I recall reading somewhere (I can’t quite remember the source) that if a man awaiting execution walks up to the gallows and tells a joke at his own expense, that’s gallows humour. However, If the executioner or the crowd there to watch him hang make a joke at his expense, that’s not gallows humour, that’s just sadism.
The former is self-deprecating humour from someone trying to glean some comfort from their situation through levity. The latter is people deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.
I remember thinking that analogy summed up perfectly why dark humour doesn’t usually hit the right notes for me. The former can work for me, the latter simply can’t.
In the case of Drusilla’s arc, it was rarely Dru finding some respite in joking about her misfortune. It was almost always other characters making fun of her misfortune (for example, Angel’s ‘fickle’ jab in Lover’s Walk or pretty much any time Spike mentions his sire after the events of Crush).
As for the writers more or less forgetting Drusilla’s backstory…Honestly that wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve long since accepted that the writers didn’t particularly care for Drusilla, and in their defence, as a minor character maybe that’s to be expected in the grand scheme of things. It makes me sad because personally I adore Drusilla’s character and think she had a lot of unfulfilled potential, but at least there’s always fanfiction.
I just realized why Drusilla flips out when she sees the roses in “Surprise.”
ANGEL SENDS RED ROSES TO BUFFY IN “BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, AND BEWILDERED” AND SCATTERS RED ROSE PETALS IN JENNY’S HOUSE IN “PASSIONS.” Red roses are part of his stalking pattern. And whose stalking and siring constituted, by his own account, the worst thing he’d ever done before he got his soul back?
DRUSILLA.
No wonder she has a panic attack.
I wish Angel would have acted as sorry as he said he was.
I am not a huge fan of Angel, but I’m also not running a group determined to murder him with rusty spoons. HOWEVER. If there’s any one reason why I will not join his fanclub it’s because of how he treats Drusilla. He told Buffy that he regretted everything he did to her, but he never actually acted like it. He was almost nicer to her when he was ANGELUS than he was when he was souled.
Angel always treated Drusilla like he found her to be annoying. He was irritated by her and the way she acted. Like he wasn’t the one who stalked her, murdered everyone she was close to, raped her, drove her to insanity, and then turned her into a vampire to make sure that her suffering would be eternal. If he was so regretful of his actions, why would he treat her as though she was just an aggravation to him? If he really felt bad everything he’d done, shouldn’t he act like it? Everyone thinks of him as a hero, but I’m not so sure.
Drusilla deserved so much more than what she was given from life. She wanted to be pure. And Angelus took that away from her. He took everything away from her. He condemned her to a life that was so hellish that she may never even realize that she’s in hell if someone kills her off.
I think what Angel did to Drusilla is unforgivable. There’s no making excuses for it.
I was rewatching “Becoming” and now I want to read a million pages of meta about Cordy vs Dru wrt their visions and how a) Spike and Angelus regard Dru’s visions b) Angel regards Cordys vs Angelus regards Dru’s c) Angelus’ past with Dru impacts Angel’s future with Cordy (and Doyle when he’s the one w/visions). But also I want to know what Dru would be like if she somehow got her soul back. I was told you’re the person to talk to about these things. Hope your holiday was good!
What an awesome question, I can’t say I’ve ever thought about the parallels between Cordy and Dru before. :3 You’ve clearly thought long and hard about this yourself, and I’d love to hear your interpretation, seeing as yours is as good as mine. And it was wonderful, thank you for asking! ❤
First and foremost, I think it’s important that we establish their visions as a power that takes away their power. Sounds contradictory, right? But really, while clairvoyance in the Buffyverse is a rare and useful talent, it also has a nasty habit of taking away the seer in question’s strength. Doyle’s visions led to him discovering his demonic heritage, which led to his marriage falling apart, which led to his drinking and gambling addiction, for example. Drusilla’s made her a target of the sadistic Angelus. Cassie’s premonition of her death resulted in her feeling helpless and hopeless for the rest of her life. Cordy hadn’t inherited her powers for even a day before she was kidnapped and almost auctioned off as a fortune-telling slave, and that’s tame in comparison to the various miseries her visions caused for her later on.
So, we’ve made it clear that visions are a power that renders its wielder powerless. This is why when Cordelia gets a vision she experiences crippling migraines, whereas when Drusilla gets a vision she suffers stomach cramps instead. Cordelia gets headaches during her visions because her strength lies in her head. Her mind. Her sharp wit, her willpower, her determined mentality that has always allowed her to survive. Therefore, the visions inflict pain upon her head because that is the strength the visions are attacking. On the other hand, Dru doesn’t get headaches but describes her stomach as getting “all tied up” (Becoming Part 1) and clutches at her belly in obvious agony when she has a premonition in Passion. This is a reflection of how a vampire’s strength lies in their hunger for the hunt, their relentless thirst for human flesh that makes them so dangerous. It doesn’t explain why Dru had stomach pains before being sired, but that’s the best explanation I can think of. This is the most important difference between the two characters in regards to their powers.
As for the difference between how Angel regards Cordy’s abilities and how he regards Dru’s, I think the difference is that he saw Drusilla as a physic, and Cordelia as a person who just so happened to be physic. In other words, Drusilla was sired as a trophy. As an object. Used to entertain Angelus with her insanity and to provide him with useful insights of the future. On the other hand, Cordelia Chase was seen by him as a person in her own right. Not just a crystal ball on legs. This is probably because he met Cordelia with a soul, and as such with a degree of empathy.
And how does Angel’s past with Dru effect his future with Cordy? Well, I’m not sure if it does. Perhaps by helping Cordelia through her struggles with her visions, he sees this as a way of repenting for how he in turn exploited Drusilla for her visions?
In regards to how Drusilla would deal with a soul, my guess is very, very badly. The rest of the Fanged Four went insane with the guilt of it, and they were more or less psychologically stable beforehand. Imagine how that burden would effect someone who was already insane. I’m not sure if you think of the comics as canon or not, but in the Spike miniseries Dru does get a soul, and it drives her completely over the edge.
Summary: Cordelia and Drusilla’s powers are very different, and the way Angel perceives them is very different. While Cordelia gets migraines with her visions to reflect how her strength lies in her mind, Drusilla gets pains in her stomach because her strength lies in her hunger as a vampire.
Thanks so much for the question! ❤
xox
I think Drusilla hates herself. She was so good, a tool of the powers and a pure young woman and then to become what she is, evil and vampiric, finding pleasure in torture and killing of the worst kind, I think deep down under all of that insanity she hates herself. And I think that’s why she prefers Angelus to Spike. Spike loves her, loves who she is, the thing she has become, is utterly devoted to her, Angelus could care less about her, just uses her. So she goes to Angelus because she hates who she is and can’t stand the fact that Spike loves what she has become.
“Buffy was so whiny in season 6! Like, okay, we get it, your life sucks, but the rest of the Scoobies had it hard too and she pushed all her friends away! No wonder she got thrown out of her house, she was being such a pissy, cold, distant bitch! She should have pulled it together, watching her moan so much for so long was so annoying! Things weren’t that bad and her wangst dragged on and on and on!”
Okay, but wasn’t it strongly suggested that the reason Buffy was so “whiny” was because she had clinical depression, and quite possibly was experiencing suicidal thoughts or even tendencies?
“Dawn is so whiny and ungrateful! Like, oh my God, so annoying. All she ever did was complain and piss and moan! Other characters suffered way more than her but all she did was cry all the time and mope about her sister dying, when she came back anyway! Christ, I wish Buffy just left her on that tower!”
Well, couldn’t a lot of Dawn’s alleged “moaning” be attributed to the fact that she displayed many of (if not all) the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
“I can’t believe Drusilla cheated on Spike, the slutty, selfish cow! What a whore! Spike loved her more than anyone else in the world and she just couldn’t keep her legs closed for ten seconds once Angelus came back. Pathetic. Spike deserves so much better than that bitch.”
Sexist terminology aside, surely at least part of the reason Drusilla was so receptive towards her sire’s advances was because she was implied to suffer from Stockholme Syndrome after decades of his abuses?
HI hi! :D I have a Buffyverse question! So. Do you think the writers’ treatment of Drusilla as a character (underused, not very respectful in my opinion) may be partially a reason for why we don’t really see Angel feeling much/any remorse over what he did to her?
Hi! ❤ That’s a pretty plausible Doylist explanation. :3 I personally prefer reasoning on a Watsonian level, but the fact that Dru was a minor character- a minor antagonist, no less – probably factored into it. Why waste time reflecting on characters who aren’t relevant to the main plot, after all? Drusilla is only in twenty four episodes of the Buffyverse- less than 10% of the series- so Angel reminiscing on her in every episode would only serve to stifle and distract from the active plot. I think we’re just meant to assume he agonizes over it conveniently off-screen.
It’s not that we’re not shown him being haunted by the horrors he caused Drusilla that bothers me; Angel rarely expresses guilt loudly and proudly. He doesn’t seem the sort to scream about his regret at the top of his lungs. He’s the type who would let it fester quietly under his skin like a broken rib; nobody can see how much pain he’s in, but it hurts him to breathe. Hence the sulking in a sewer for decades; it was easier for him to just retreat into himself than be vocal and proactive about his remorse. So him not talking often about Drusilla makes sense to me. That’s not why I sometimes don’t buy that he’s sincerely sorry about it.
The reason I question Angel’s guilt is because he set Drusilla on fire and then bragged about it to Kate. The reason I question Angel’s guilt is because he joked about Drusilla “being fickle” to Spike, ignoring or dare I say even reveling in the fact that it’s his fault that she’s so emotionally unstable. Because he seemed horrified at the idea of giving up on Faith, but apparently saw Drusilla as irredeemable. Inconsistencies and double standards like that is why I question Angel’s guilt.
Alas, it’s not just Drusilla; Angel is the kind of character who’ll preach about unconditional forgiveness one moment and order the cold-blooded murder of Lindsey (who wanted to change his ways) the next. He’s the sort of character who’ll claim being riddled with self-loathing for his crimes one moment and boast about eating his own parents the next (Sense and Sensitivity). Lindsey had to die for turning a blind eye to the corrupt nature of his employers for two years. Angel deserves infinite chances in spite of murdering, raping, and torturing an entire continent of people for two hundred years. Lindsey did it to escape poverty. Angel did it because he could. The moment Lindsey truly realized how depraved Wolfram and Hart was he fled of his own free will, turning down a promotion and risking his life in the process. When Angel got a soul and realized how horrible his own actions were he tried to carry on as normal for two years. It’s more or less irrefutable that Angel has much more blood- quite literally in many cases- on his hands than Lindsey. Doylist explanation? Different writers had different interpretations of Angel as a character, thus leading to the contradiction in his philosophies. Watsonian explanation? Angel is not quite as heroic as we’re led to believe. And as previously established, I’m a sucker for Watsonian theories.
xoxox
Cheloneuniverse 