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: tw mental illness
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 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 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?
The Official Ranking of Every Buffy Episode
God Tier: Halloween, Lie To Me, Surprise, Innocence, Passion, Becoming Part 1, Becoming Part 2, Band Candy, The Wish, The Zeppo, Doppelgangland, Something Blue, Hush, Superstar, Restless, Fool For Love, The Body, The Gift, Once More With Feeling, Tabula Rasa, Selfless
High Tier: Angel, Nightmares, Prophecy Girl, School Hard, What’s My Line Part 1, What’s My Line Part 2, Phases, I Only Have Eyes For You, Anne, Faith Hope and Trick, Homecoming, Revelations, Lover’s Walk, Helpless, Bad Girls, Consequences, Enemies, Earshot, Choices, Graduation Day Part 1, Graduation Day Part 2, Fear Itself, Pangs, A New Man, This Year’s Girl, Who Are You, Primeval, Buffy vs Dracula, The Real Me, The Replacement, Family, Checkpoint, Blood Ties, Intervention, Tough Love, Life Serial, All the Way, Hell’s Bells, Villains, Two to Go, Grave, Lessons, Same Time Same Place, Help, Conversations With Dead People, Potential, Storyteller, Chosen
Mid Tier: Welcome to the Hellmouth, The Harvest, Witch, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, The Pack, The Puppet Show, Out of Sight Out of Mind, When She Was Bad, Inca Mummy Girl, The Dark Age, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, Go Fish, Beauty and the Beasts, Amends, Gingerbread, The Prom, Wild at Heart, The Initiative, Doomed, The I in Team, Goodbye Iowa, New Moon Rising, The Yoko Factor, Out of My Mind, Triangle, Crush, I Was Made to Love You, Forever, The Weight of the World, Bargaining Part 1, Bargaining Part 2, Smashed, Wrecked, Gone, Doublemeat Palace, Dead Things, Older and Far Away, Normal Again, Him, The Killer in Me, Dirty Girls
Low Tier: Teacher’s Pet, I Robot You Jane, Reptile Boy, Ted, Killed By Death, Dead Man’s Party, The Freshman, Living Conditions, The Harsh Light of Day, Where the Wild Things Are, No Place Like Home, Shadow, Listening to Fear, Into the Woods, Spiral, After Life, Flooded, As You Were, Entropy, Seeing Red, Beneath You, Sleeper, Never Leave Me, Bring on the Night, Showtime, First Date, Lies My Parents Told Me, Empty Places, Touched, End of Days
Shit Tier: Some Assembly Required, Bad Eggs, Beer Bad, Get it Done
I agree with a lot of this and disagree with a lot of it. Personally, I don’t think that Faith’s character really takes off until we get the sliced-up psychotic POV shots when she goes to Angel; any storyline that gives one character/species as much power as Jonathan or the vengeance demons seem to have sets my continuity-protection sensors to beeping; and I don’t really despise any of the episodes in OP’s Shit Tier. I’d love to see you break down a few of the episodes into your specific likes and dislikes, though.
With pleasure! ❤
To provide some variety, I’ve picked one random episode from each tier. Without further ado…
The Zeppo (God tier): Xander Harris isn’t my favourite character. I don’t hate him, but I have at times joined the chorus of condemnation for his less-than-endearing traits, like getting away with some pretty major screw-ups (Becoming Part 2, Once More With Feeling), making sexist comments, or just his general mean-spirited streak. I would also agree that his character hasn’t aged well, drawing more ire with every new generation of fans who are well equipped to recognise a Nice Guy ™ when they see one. However, there is something compelling about the idea of an everyman in a cast of Chosen Ones and super heroes. This episode takes that concept and elevates it into a masterpiece. It’s hilarious. It’s touching. It’s bittersweet. It’s unique. It’s the most likable Xander has ever been. I was roaring with laughter throughout this episode, every punchline landed, every joke tickled me. Just the premise of there being a huge apocalypse and only getting to see snippets of it while our everyman embarks on a side-quest made me giddy. But in the final scene, we see there is a deeper purpose to this episode than its shenanigans (and even if there was not, the shenanigans alone were more than enough to earn this episode a place in my heart). Here, we’re given the impression that Xander might be ready to move past the ugliness of his insecurities. My only complaint is that I wish the character development had stuck.
Life Serial (high tier): “Life is the Big Bad” – as Marti Noxon remarked of season six – was never better expressed than in this criminally underrated episode. Grimly amusing and painfully relatable, here we see Buffy attempt to reacclimatise to everyday life, only she just can’t seem to do anything right. Unbeknownst to her, she is being magically targeted by The Trio, who are tormenting her in profoundly lame and mundane ways. But they are still tormenting her. Haha, Buffy goes to college to try and learn things but the day just speeds by in a second and she has no idea what she’s doing! Haha, Buffy’s retail shift just never seems to end! Ever! Haha, Buffy is drinking to distract from her fear and uncertainty about the future! I first saw this episode when I was fifteen, and honestly I didn’t really ‘get it’ then. Call it blissful ignorance. But oh boy, I understand this episode now. This is the perfect encapsulation of season six’s mission statement, and it really deserves more appreciation.
When She Was Bad (mid tier): This episode was a game changer. Here we see the first hints of the series shedding its ‘Monster of the Week’ format in favour of long-running continuity with high emotional stakes. Here we see for the first time that what happens in the show can have lasting consequences for the characters. Buffy defeated The Master in last season’s finale, but the trauma of drowning has changed her forever, leaving her with PTSD that will make up part of who she is for the rest of the series. And so one of the most subtly tragic aspects of the Buffyverse is born. As I explained in this post- contrary to popular misconception – mid-tier isn’t reserved for average episodes, but good episodes. This was a good episode. It is commonly accepted wisdom that the show didn’t mature past the wacky, episodic nature of season one until ‘Innocence’, but for me the real turning point was Buffy tearfully smashing the bones of The Master, never to be quite the same person again.
Seeing Red (low tier): I have no problem with TV shows tackling serious or taboo issues. If something exists, then it has a place in fiction. If handled well, then storylines dealing with sexual abuse can spread awareness of the issue and give a voice to the survivors of that trauma. I don’t even think the attempted rape was out of character for Spike (an amoral demon), as so many have insisted it was. But my God, I don’t think the writers could have handled this storyline more thoughtlessly if they tried. Using your female lead’s traumatic near-rape experience to spur on the attempted rapist’s character development, making the victim an accessory for his redemption arc? Bad move. Bad, bad, bad move. This is the first time that I felt Buffy was really betrayed by the writers, the first time she was used as a disposable plot device for Spike. This trend continued into the seventh season, and felt like a cruel betrayal of the show’s core values. Killing off Tara in the same episode she finally became a series regular was also a slap in the face to LGBT fans, who at the time had very few lesbian role models in media. The more I think about it, the less sure I am as to why I saved it from shit tier. Certainly it did more harm than ‘Some Assembly Required’ or ‘Beer Bad’, which were laughably atrocious but not an insult to everything the show claimed to stand for like this was. Speaking of…
Beer Bad (shit tier): this is the shortest episode in the series if memory serves me correctly, but it somehow feels like the longest. Rumour has it that the writers were paid by an alcohol awareness charity to write this episode, and I don’t know if that’s true, but it definitely feels like that. Perhaps the only enjoyable part of the episode was Willow chewing out Parker Abrams. Ironically one of the few episodes of Buffy to be nominated for an Emmy (for outstanding hairstyling, I believe). I was lucky enough that my introduction to the series was the epic character study ‘Fool For Love’, but had it been ‘Beer Bad’? I doubt I would have ever watched another episode.
Cheloneuniverse 