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May. 7th, 2009 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightAn interview with Juliet Landau about the upcoming Dru comic here.
At the very end of the interview, in response to a suggestion that 'some people may blame Drusilla for spoiling Buffy and Spike's chances for love', Juliet responds, "If you put things in perspective, Spike and Dru were together for 150 years and he and Buffy were together for a year and a half. How many people can say they've had a love affair for 150 years?"
Thoughts on this, and on Spike/Dru behind cut.
Juliet is of course right. However, I don't know about anyone else, but I've always found Spike and Dru's 150 year love affair rather nebulous. This is because we saw so very little of it in the show, except for how it ended. Yes, a few little blanks are filled in over the years - notably in FFL, LMPTM and Destiny - but really, we know very little about their life together in those 150 years.
We know they appear to have stayed with Angelus and Darla at least some of the time early on, including during the trip to Rome in TGiQ and in Romania in 1898, and Spike and Dru are still with Darla when Angel returns to her in China in 1900. After that, beyond knowing they revisited Rome in the '50s (ciao!) and must at some point have been in Paris, because Dru hated it, and in Vienna because they slaughtered an orphanage there, and in Prague where Dru was hurt by a mob, we know precious little about what they got up to. There's no sign of Dru in 1943 (presumably she had better things to do than attend a free virgin blood party) or in NYC in 1977. This doesn't necessarily mean that she was off doing her own thing but can lead you to assume that the two of them weren't completely inseparable.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we really didn't see much of their 150 year relationship on screen. We have to take its existence largely on trust. That, to me, makes it hard to get invested in it. Buffy and Spike, and for that matter, Angel(us) and Darla, we saw play out on screen in front of us in all their technicolour nuanced glory, and that makes them far more immediate and real.
So basically, Juliet can say whatever she likes, and no doubt the comic she's co-writing will stress how much more important she thinks Dru was to Spike than Buffy ever was. It's natural that she would want to stake a claim for the character, who she clearly loved playing. But really, a comic book is not going to fill in those blanks in the way seeing a relationship play out on screen does, and for that reason alone - though there are plenty of other reasons too - Spike and Buffy will continue, in my eyes, to far outweigh Spike/Dru in importance.
Thoughts? I also have a post brewing about how odd it is that comic book writers/fan boys in general - even those who obviously do love the character a great deal - seem to have an irresitible urge to tear Spike down and make him look like an idiot. That's for another day, though.
Also, for the record, I am looking forward to Juliet's story.
At the very end of the interview, in response to a suggestion that 'some people may blame Drusilla for spoiling Buffy and Spike's chances for love', Juliet responds, "If you put things in perspective, Spike and Dru were together for 150 years and he and Buffy were together for a year and a half. How many people can say they've had a love affair for 150 years?"
Thoughts on this, and on Spike/Dru behind cut.
Juliet is of course right. However, I don't know about anyone else, but I've always found Spike and Dru's 150 year love affair rather nebulous. This is because we saw so very little of it in the show, except for how it ended. Yes, a few little blanks are filled in over the years - notably in FFL, LMPTM and Destiny - but really, we know very little about their life together in those 150 years.
We know they appear to have stayed with Angelus and Darla at least some of the time early on, including during the trip to Rome in TGiQ and in Romania in 1898, and Spike and Dru are still with Darla when Angel returns to her in China in 1900. After that, beyond knowing they revisited Rome in the '50s (ciao!) and must at some point have been in Paris, because Dru hated it, and in Vienna because they slaughtered an orphanage there, and in Prague where Dru was hurt by a mob, we know precious little about what they got up to. There's no sign of Dru in 1943 (presumably she had better things to do than attend a free virgin blood party) or in NYC in 1977. This doesn't necessarily mean that she was off doing her own thing but can lead you to assume that the two of them weren't completely inseparable.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we really didn't see much of their 150 year relationship on screen. We have to take its existence largely on trust. That, to me, makes it hard to get invested in it. Buffy and Spike, and for that matter, Angel(us) and Darla, we saw play out on screen in front of us in all their technicolour nuanced glory, and that makes them far more immediate and real.
So basically, Juliet can say whatever she likes, and no doubt the comic she's co-writing will stress how much more important she thinks Dru was to Spike than Buffy ever was. It's natural that she would want to stake a claim for the character, who she clearly loved playing. But really, a comic book is not going to fill in those blanks in the way seeing a relationship play out on screen does, and for that reason alone - though there are plenty of other reasons too - Spike and Buffy will continue, in my eyes, to far outweigh Spike/Dru in importance.
Thoughts? I also have a post brewing about how odd it is that comic book writers/fan boys in general - even those who obviously do love the character a great deal - seem to have an irresitible urge to tear Spike down and make him look like an idiot. That's for another day, though.
Also, for the record, I am looking forward to Juliet's story.