#jossverse

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Spike 0104

@seananmcguire you’d watch this, right??

Because the Angel we see in BtVS was still recovering from 20 years of starvation. One year of a diet augmented with human blood (no doubt because animal blood wasn't going to heal him in time to be any help to Buffy) and him still avoiding people very heavily. We even get hints in 1x07 and The Dark Age that part of his diet consists of human blood in I.V. bags from hospitals. He presumably quits this when Buffy disapproves of Angel being at the hospital on delivery night (and knowing the schedule) and sticks to pig's blood from the butcher, which we see him drinking throughout season 3 (which probably kept his healing from hell pretty slow--and he was coming back from a feral state). Whistler had already told him to go to the butcher, but it probably wasn't enough to be ready. And in season 3, he was still in a weak state from hell with scenes referring to this as late as Lovers' Walk. He's not even close to 100% in BtVS until he feeds off of Buffy, which restores him from both his dodgy, irregular diet over 98 years (though he's also stealing from hospitals in the '50s, as you can see with his bottled human blood that Judy Kovacs sees), with the last 20 being true starvation-level (Whistler outright says that he "couldn't go three rounds with a fruit fly" and suggesting he's having "a rat once a month") and 100 years in hell. He doesn't remotely start to get out of his shell until after Willow guilt trips him in Reptile Boy and Buffy wants a coffee date. The pressure on him to socialize and Buffy's disfavor towards stealing from the hospital happen to coincide very closely with him getting a lot more comfortable around the Scoobies and Buffy on a regular basis and doing social activities he had previously avoided. It was to a degree that was annoying Buffy a lot (first because he was trying to avoid telling her he was a vampire, fearing she'd stake him before he got to explain the curse, and then because it was too hard to be around her, believing he was doing the right thing by not acting on acknowledged mutual feelings). He had already built a scholarly friendship with Giles in season 1 (Giles was actually quite supportive of their relationship before the curse broke), but we also see him getting chummy with Willow and Cordy. The only one too blinded with jealousy to like Angel was Xander. Jenny also considered him a friend who had saved her life; one of the reasons she wasn't doing her duty to separate them (she had no idea about the curse loophole). One of the novels even contained him helping Giles and Jenny all summer to make up for Buffy's absence in L.A. His contact with humans wasn't just Buffy, but of course, she triggered the curse. We know that Angel was hallucinating at the bottom of the ocean because he hadn't fed for the whole summer. That gives a good idea of his limit on sanity without food. We also saw Spike starting to look pretty bad between The Initiative and Pangs from his inability to hunt and feed. It's canonical fact that poor feeding, with human and especially Slayer blood being the most healing, makes vampires weaker. We also saw that a diet of animal blood works, but isn't always enough and isn't particularly appetizing. Wesley even remarks that the jar of animal blood he brought along with him when he dragged Angel up from the bottom of the ocean wasn't enough to restore Angel's higher brain functions and that's when he started feeding him out of his own arm. This is confirmation that vampires that are too far gone won't get better quickly on animal blood. And we know from City of..., The Shroud of Rahmon and Sleep Tight that Angel reacts really badly around humans when he's got human or Slayer blood in his system. He was ripping demon arms clean off and throwing glasses of blood at walls because a tiny vial of Connor's blood was spiking his pig's blood. Buffy's blood was still in his system 3 months later and causing bad cravings. A deleted scene censored by the WB included him tasting Tina's blood, ripping his hand out of his mouth and scrubbing his hands in the sink. A shot of this deleted scene is even in the trailer. It's why there's the scene with the girls at the start (the bloody forehead) and Doyle warning him about avoiding humans after drinking Buffy. Angelus is only stronger because he's back on a fully human diet. It was stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt that asked Joss Whedon to allow Angelus and Buffy to be on even footing for their fight for Becoming, as 1) male stunt doubles/martial artists always have to hold back against even the most top-notch females, which doesn't allow them to show all that they can do, 2) it makes for a more exciting fight when the heroine has more odds stacked against her. Joss was previously adamant that Buffy be clearly stronger than males and that's the out-of-universe reason that Angel was hobbled so much, even though the same episodes of Becoming wrote an acknowledged in-universe reason why Angel wasn't up to full strength, pre-Angelus. A fully-healed Angel by his own statement is "a little bit" weaker than Buffy. Angel only truly shows that during and after Graduation Day, pt. 2. The difference isn't massive, though. Angel and Buffy can both bend iron, for example (Angel bending iron pipe with one hand and Buffy bends Cain's gun). Due to a far more talented stunt team on AtS and DB being far more athletic (and willing) than SMG, half the things Angel was doing on his own show are the things that there's really not much evidence Buffy could do (ignoring the vampire-specific durability feats of which 99% would severely injure or kill a Slayer outright like being burned, skewered and shot--she and Faith can survive a fall out of a small building, but no evidence of walking away from a skyscraper fall). A good example of that is Angel is rather fond of jumping a story or more upwards, such as to the second level of the Bronze in 1x07 (one of his more impressive BtVS showings, pre-drinking Buffy or even Angelus) and especially when he jumps through a skylight and grabs the helicopter in Sanctuary. The Master and Luke are two vampires who clearly have a strength advantage over Buffy and she has to outwit them with smarts. Angel is very close to her, no doubt with his size and age making up for the Slayer demon essence giving her a strength advantage over all but the largest and oldest of vampires. However, Angel in starvation recovery mode had NO CHANCE against the Master, despite Angelus having blatantly disregarded his authority as a fledgling centuries before (the Master seemed to have come to respect Angelus' vicious reputation centuries later, but there was blatant jealousy over Darla's affections). Angelus was ballsy enough to do that, but Angel in BtVS season 1 knew he was in very bad shape and was laying low, trying not to attract any attention. Angel does remark that he's afraid of going down into the sewers and facing the Master. He mentions that the other vampires really don't like him. He seems to mostly be doing research things where he's giving Buffy information at this stage. We know that Angel is fond of doing his own detective work (we start to see this behavior when he's following Faith around, starting with her first crime scene). He also got slashed on the arm by Claw from "not paying attention". That sort of foe would be easy for a fully-healed Angel; one he certainly wouldn't have left unslain later. In The Wish, the episode centers on the idea that the Master rose during the Harvest and Angel was the only one (maybe with Giles?) trying to stop him, but got caught. Angel at this point had only had a year to fix himself after decades of starvation. He was very weak. And then he was tortured and probably starved in a cage by Willow. Interestingly, there's no sign of Luke or Darla; and we do know Darla had an emotional blind spot regarding Angel's unforeseen willingness to kill his sire that left her wide open to even a very nerfed Angel. The Wish actually proves that Angel really wasn't strong enough at that point to take on the Master. Another thing that changes massively for Angel is that he previously seemed to lend a lot of credence to prophecies and warnings about Slayers, no doubt because of being part of the Order of Aurelius and specifically being taught everything by Darla. We saw Darla run away when she learned she was up against a Slayer (ditto her running away from Holtz in both Arles and Marseilles, leaving Angelus to deal with him, and fleeing Angel in Reunion by jumping off the building) and only came at her later with guns because she was desperate to prove Angel loved her, even if she had rejected the soul a century earlier. Darla's major modi operandi were 1) the desire to be loved/cared about, 2) to survive and protect herself at all costs. Buffy thwarting her prophesied death in the Pergamum Codex is the biggest instance where it was proven to Angel that things might not be truly set in stone. The Master, and thus Darla, was obsessed with prophecy and tradition. He came from an elite, traditionalist sect of vampires who were serious about hierarchy and the sire/childe relationship (Darla is pretty disgusted with how little the 1992 mullet vampire knows). Angel is notoriously prophecy's b!tch all through his series and he eventually loses a fair amount of his faith in the Higher Powers being remotely benevolent (only three instances where the PtBs' actions are provably not Jasmine).

You're severely misunderstanding Liam. The idea that Angel isn't Liam doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, though I've seen Spike fans suggest it before. Angelus isn't also quite as void of his human traits and weaknesses as people love to claim. There's a whole scene where Darla preys on the fact that Angelus still wants his father's approval that he'll never now get. The usual Spike fan response of the Judge actually isn't saying what they want it to mean. Drusilla is the least capable of love of all, as she's habitually fickle, though needs constant protection. Drusilla believes that acts of contrition/more Hail Marys/torture will finally get her approval from God, her mother and "Daddy" Angelus, which is why Spike knows that torturing Drusilla will bring her back to him. Spike's understanding of love isn't love at all, but obsession, lust, selfishness and wanting respect and constant approval (especially from women and mothers). Angelus' hatred for humanity and his rejection of it, along with his association with love (and the own love he felt denied to him) being the murder of his own family ("Is this the work of love?"--though this is notably looking at his sister Kathy, who is the person we very much saw as the person Liam loved most) is why Angelus registered as having gotten humanity of his system by flushing out with as many brutal murders as he could. Darla created much of what Angelus became and Angelus was entirely in response to that teaching, preying on Liam's problems with never being good enough for his father and disgust with humanity. Darla, however, has some major weaknesses with never having been loved or cared about in her human or vampire lives and being afraid of death as both a mortal and immortal, causing her to always surround herself with the biggest, baddest Alpha around for protection, but also wanting their love even if they're incapable of giving what she's never experienced. Both of her redemptions come when Angel shows her feelings of being cared about, loved and worthy that she'd never experienced before--and she was finally able to love something more than herself and her own survival (the greatest act of true love is sacrifice in the Jossverse). Angelus' obsessive hatred of Angel is even more than his hatred of Buffy, because both cause him to have to suffer in a cage while experiencing love, humanity and other human feelings and wants (see his response to being infected by love when possessed by Grace Newman). You're forgetting about Liam's father issues (Liam, Angelus and Angel all have huge Alpha paternalistic streaks and struggle to not be the boss in control--this is explicitly explored with Liam never feeling like he was good enough for his father), issues with Catholicism (he specifically refers to his father's hypocrisy) and Catholic guilt (Angel is obsessed with his damnation, being unwanted by God and wanting cosmic forgiveness rather than a shortcut that only looks like it), a lot of evidence that he was unfulfilled (some very distinct wishes for what he wanted in his life that both Angelus and Angel share--starting with Liam saying, "I always wanted to see the world, but..." and all the shared artistic, travel, multilingual aptitude, eidetic memory, fine arts, art/book collecting, etc... traits between Angelus/Angel that have to be Liam's stifled interests) in a life he didn't want (his father being a silk/linen merchant in Galway) and a place he didn't want to be, he had low opinions of humanity's intelligence and humanity's inhumanity to each other (which is why he looked for "interesting" women in all the wrong places, which put him in Darla's embrace--until Angel got that out of his system and saw Buffy as the goodly heroic template because of her wanting to help humanity and seeing the humanity in her--seeing her life falling down around her and still wanting to help--he wanted for himself), talks about Buffy restoring his faith in humanity and this turning into his obsession with helping humanity, etc... Holland Manners actually exploits Angel's former issues with humanity's inhumanity to each other, as does Jasmine. And of course, Angel is deeply insecure about what he is, and through Buffy, this desire for humanity as the ultimate reward via cosmic forgiveness is what he wants most in the world, though he will always sacrifice himself (seeing his own life and happiness as far less worthy, no matter how many lives he is capable of saving, than even a 400-year-old ex-vampire syphilitic prostitute) for the sake of others. And of course, his curse specifically denies him something he very much associates with the best of what humanity means: love. Liam, Angelus and Angel also all share a weakness for liking interesting, intelligent, powerful women. Angel makes comments concerning "dumb as a post" and "simpering morons" that make it very clear he's got some issues with particularly dumb people, who are both Angelus' victims he's mocking towards and the sorts of noblewomen who were considered the proper women of Liam's time period. This points to a very real trait concerning his liking of intelligence and high culture. Liam actually mocks his father for eating with his hands and calling him a pig while discussing stealing the silver he never uses. He mocks his father for only having one servant (Anna), despite his middle class pretensions of stating "servants" in the plural. Darla was all too happy about sharing the finery she never had in life and this was the reason why Angelus insulted the Master living in the sewer, while commenting that Darla always likes the view, staying in the best hotels, etc... And you can certainly see this in how the former syphilitic prostitute is a veritable fashion show of finery. Angel likewise has a taste for large, extravagant living spaces (the Hyperion is even compared to a castle by both Bethany and Fred with hundreds of rooms he has to himself) and cultured interests. However, in times of self-flagellation, he takes it to the extreme (the homeless stink guy in the alley feeding on rats he struggles to catch). Angel's bloodlust being more of a problem for him is also an allegory for addiction, which is also shown through Liam's drinking. If you were right, the father/son story would have no meaning if it weren't Angel dealing with a reverse of his own relationship with his father when he has his own out-of-control son that he desperately wants to save, but is self-destructive. Both Liam and Connor literally had to die and be reborn, while dealing with an onslaught of horrible past memories, to be saved. The parallel isn't random coincidence, but intentional. Angel isn't a hero because heroism was forced on him. Getting Liam's human soul forced back into his body that parasitic demon Angelus stole from him and perverted using his own human feelings, memories and weaknesses into something horribly monstrous didn't make him a hero at all. What it did was emotionally shatter him into a no-self-esteem, self-hating social cripple whose attempts to rejoin either the demon or human worlds ended in complete failure until a certain little human learned about what he was and still loved him. It was only what he chose to do with it (an act of human free will, despite constant cosmic and prophetic interference in his life out of his control) that turned him from being a neutral force to one who is a champion of humanity and keeps trying, no matter how many times he falls down and suffers. Liam is most certainly Angel.

It also mentions Ulric and Irena. Are those two from the Jossverse, too?