(no subject)

[shapinglight]

An 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.

Comments

[quinara]

My one Spike/Dru fic pretty much sums up how I think the relationship was - basically there's not a lot of Dru in it, and that's not just because she's hard to write. I think she very much lives in her own world, and as far as that world interacted with Spike's over the years that was fine. She loved him and I think to some extent she needed him, but not every day and not in a way that made either of them evolve. For me I see their relationship as a happy one, but not a special one - it may have lasted 150 years, but it could equally have been 5, 10 or 50 and we wouldn't have seen a difference in who they were after it. (I think a lot of vampire relationships are like that. Certainly Angelus and Darla to some extent, though I think Angel and Human!Darla had would have been really interesting.)

Spike and Buffy on the other hand constantly push against each other, with the potential for disaster (like in S6), but also with the potential to be something amazing. In a year and a half they might not have changed each other (because you can't really 'change' people), but they brought out so much in each other that had been hidden before.

/rabid shipper ;)

I do love Dru though.

(PS. Did you see Mad Men? It was so good!)

[shapinglight]

(PS. Did you see Mad Men? It was so good!)

Yes, I did. It was wonderful, wasn't it? I've been meaning to make a post about that too, but I got distracted.

I agree with you about Dru. It's impossible to say for sure, of course, because we saw so little of it, but the Spike/Dru relationship does come across as rather static in many ways. This is partly due to her insanity and partly, as you say, down to their lack of evolution. It's not for nothing that David Fury wanted them to be the vampire couple that Angel disposed of in Heartthrob. Their relationship is similarly static and rather OTT and childish to that of James and Elizabeth.

I think Angelus and Darla was rather different, personally, but that's probably a post for another day and may well simply be because that we saw so much more of it. Part of its interest does in fact stem from the fact that both parties denied they were in love with the other.

And apologies for multiple comment editing.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how anyone can blame Drusilla for spoiling Spike and Buffy's chances - she barely featured in the episodes where Spike was going after Buffy, and in "Crush" he clearly makes his choice.

[shapinglight]

I agree. It's an odd way of putting it. Quite possibly, though, the person who wrote-up the interview had never seen the show.

I also agree that Spike made his choice pretty clear, and if Crush doesn't make it clear enough, his rejection of FE Dru in season 7 certainly does.

However, I suppose you can't expect Juliet to see it that way.

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

I am a Dru/Spike shipper... Even though I read and enjoy everything else as well (as long as it is well written). I don't see how she destroyed Spike and Buffy's relationship though? She saw it in her visions early on that he was going to her either way. She wanted to stop it. But she couldn't. At least thats the way I think, when I RP her. :-) I even RPed Dru with a soul once! In a relationship with Riley! That was crack, I tell you...

[shapinglight]

I don't see how she destroyed Spike and Buffy's relationship though?

She clearly didn't. I think the interviewer has just couched the remark in a very stupid way, and what Juliet says in answer might not even be in response to that particular form of words.

They do make a lovely couple, but as I said, I find their relationship hard to grasp, partly because Dru is so bonkers and because in retrospect, Spike seems so immature.

I almost feel I can imagine Dru and Riley, but that's because he's so huge and I imagine him being all protective of her. Then I remember that he doesn't actually like women like that, if Buffy and the Sambot are anything to do by.

[hello-spikey.livejournal.com]

Ah, the poor, neglected secondary characters! Everyone who isn't on-screen is static, unchanging for all the time we don't see them.

Which is false, and bad writing, in my not-so-humble opinion. I like to think that there would have been growth, and subtle changes, over the course of the relationship. Personally, I think the relationship had to have been rather unhealthy, in ways. Co-dependent at best and mutually harmful at worst. Drusilla was off her rocker, and Spike was her caregiver for much of their time together.

I was downright irritated that Dru didn't become the Big Bad for season 2 after arising from the church rubble. She was a fun character who deserved more screen time - but I think the writers weren't up to her. Or they were intimidated by her. Still, I think she makes the perfect series villain - super-powerful but so capricious she could undo her own plans for no reason at all! "Oh, shiny thing!"

I digress. Obviously, Spike got way more screen time than Dru, and we know he has an over-the-top romanticism - probably brought about by reading too much Victorian romance. (Conveniently likely for his character, so I assume it's true. The boy was all over the epic poetry and arthurian re-tellings and that.)

And his character has so many contradictions - like how he can be so impatient and yet so patient. He must have had gobs of patience to put up with Dru in her fits - and my favorite scenes of them in Season 2 are when he shows tender patience. But because Dru was always unstable, always needing care and nursing - he was more in love with the idea of her, I think, than her. She was his fair princess, forever unobtainable (through her own madness). But from her point of view, he must have been a much-needed stability.

Spru! Spru forever!!!!! I think it's a relationship that deserves exploration. I think it informed Spike's love of Buffy, and his relationship with Buffy is in part about him growing beyond that sort of objectifying love into a real relationship.

[shapinglight]

Everyone who isn't on-screen is static, unchanging for all the time we don't see them.

Unfortunately, that does tend to happen, though of course fanfic can fill in the blanks (usually in a more satisfying way than the comics, I suspect).However, I think the problem is exacerbated with Dru because she's mad and it's very hard to get a grip on the character. Have to say, you do it very well. Pretty much the best I've ever read.

I'm sure the Spike/Dru relationship was as you describe it. A bit Sid and Nancy, except that Dru didn't end up dead. I think she was meant to be more important in the latter half of season 2 than she actually was - Angelus's consort - but Joss opted to keep Spike alive and went for the threesome conflict instead.

I think it's a relationship that deserves exploration. I think it informed Spike's love of Buffy, and his relationship with Buffy is in part about him growing beyond that sort of objectifying love into a real relationship.

I agree (at least, in theory), and intellectually I know Spike/Dru has to be given equal weight with Spuffy, but I don't think its longevity gives it more weight, as Juliet does.

Anyway, I hope you'll write more Spike/Dru one day. I do love what you've written so far.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I was downright irritated that Dru didn't become the Big Bad for season 2 after arising from the church rubble. She was a fun character who deserved more screen time - but I think the writers weren't up to her. Or they were intimidated by her. Still, I think she makes the perfect series villain -

Oh wow. You know, I'm suddenly struck by the thought that Dru's possible Season 2 story was played out on AtS using Holtz. In Season 2, it was highlighted that Dru did bear resentment for what Angelus did to her family. And it was emphasized that she had been a nun. Go over to AtS and we actually have the plot of Angelus stalking someone (just as he stalked Dru) who was ostensibly "good" and then destroying his family, destroying innocence (Holtz children), and turning the stalkee into the obsessee vengefully out to destroy Angel and strip him of everything. The victim became the villain... and more than kinda 'won'.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Dru ruined the chances of Spike/Buffy? Huh? If Dru hadn't made William a vampire, Spike never would have existed to meet Buffy.

And, I admit, fanfic Spuffy though I am, I have affection for Spike/Dru. I don't however think of it as some backwards evil fairy tale. We know that Dru also had an ongoing thing for "Daddy". This wasn't any sort of darkside true love -- I don't quibble about the 100 year love affair though (not sure where the last fifty comes from), because it was. It did start in 1880 and it did go on until the late 1990s. I don't think it was perfectly continuous as clearly there were breaks. But I do think of it as a profoundly significant relationship for Spike. Not an eternal one, mind you. But deep and significant. But, then again, I'm one of those that doesn't believe there's only "one true love" in someone's life. There's no limit to love and one can have more than one "true love" in a lifetime, much less lifetimes.

[shapinglight]

Dru ruined the chances of Spike/Buffy? Huh?

I think it's a very badly put phrase by the interviewer - unless it's a spoiler for the comic, which I hadn't thought of until now. Hmm.

But deep and significant.

Oh yes, I agree, but I don't think it more significant than Spuffy because of its longevity, as Juliet appears to be saying here.

And agree. People aren't restricted to 'one true love' in a lifetime, no matter what some of the nuttier representatives of a certain 'shipper group (who, oddly, all love Spike/Dru) would have you believe.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Juliet made comments in the commentary on Destiny that were very much focused on this epic romance with Spike. I didn't think much of it then and I still don't.

I'm going to be weird and say that I think Spike/Dru was mostly an illusion, and that's why Spike was able to shuck it off so easily. (Spike the dedicated lover for 100 years becomes so obsessed with Buffy that Dru dumps him, and then is hopelessly in love with Buffy just one year later. Never made sense to me). Of course, I don't like Spike and Dru -- largely because she was so willing to switch over to Angelus and (as you know) I'm increasingly unhappy with relationships where Spike's love is not returned. But also because I think Spike's destiny was to find effulgence -- and while the Dark Princess phase was essential to the journey, it was also necessary that it be left behind. As for the huge amount of time: vampires don't change -- and our sense of the way time matters is precisely because we do change. So I don't think the 100 years registers for them the way we'd imagine.

Fortunately for me, the IDW-verse is an alternate universe. Interesting to visit, but not where I live.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

p.s. Why does she keep saying 150 years? She didn't meet Spike until 1880. See? Her mind really is all on Angelus. (Joke).

[shapinglight]

Juliet made comments in the commentary on Destiny that were very much focused on this epic romance with Spike. I didn't think much of it then and I still don't.

Well, I think that's the way she sees it. Didn't Fury say he didn't agree with her? I'm pretty sure that's how she'll present it in the comic, though how that will feed in to the longer story, who knows? I'm fairly certain that Dru won't stick around. Brian is not going to saddle Spike with a permanent partner of any sort from the beginning of the his Spike series. He'll want to ring the changes and fling OCs at him in the hope that one will stick a little better than Spider.

I don't think Spike/Dru was an illusion. I think it has more substance than that. However, as I said to hello_spikey above, I think it led Spike into a long period of emotional stagnation, which is possibly just what happens in vampire love relationships (like James and Elizabeth), but which would not have been apparent to Spike at the time and still wouldn't be to Dru. His relationship with Buffy brought him to life again - in a horrible, painful way, but then I suppose he had to expect that, given the life he'd lived.

I agree that Dru was too much under daddy's influence, but I don't really blame her for that. I blame Angelus. And we are certainly both agreed that for Spike to go back to Dru would be a hugely retrograde step for him, just as Angel returning to Darla in 1900 was one for him.

[ex_peasant441]

I've never been convinced by Spike/Dru. Beyond the fact that she did a sort of thrall thing on him in the alley it is very hard to understand what he saw in her. Maybe a mutual joy of destruction in later life? But that would hardly have appealed to William so why was he so enchanted? Given which there is an air of falsity about everything that ensued. But as you say the main problem is we just don't have the scenes.

His love for Buffy may have been brief by comparison but it seems so much more understandable and we were able to watch the changes he made for her sake. If he changed himself for Dru (as opposed to for himself) we never knew about it. All the key moments, the pivots of their relationship, are missing. Do we even know for certain that he was there in Prague?

I love the idea of Spike/Dru, but I think it is an idea I have had to create for myself, not something drawn from canon.

[shapinglight]

Well, Dru is very beautiful. That on its own might have been enough for a romantically inclined young man like William. But no. Not enough scenes.

We don't know for certain he was there in Prague, but it's implied that he is, when he says, "Idiot mob!" At the least, he knows what happened there.

If he changed himself for Dru (as opposed to for himself) we never knew about it

Yes, I think this is the key thing for me too. Dru changed him - ie. made him a vampire - but he had to change himself for Buffy.

I'm not even sure I love the idea of Spike/Dru. Often, it just gets in the way, and when I write it, I feel like I'm just playing with it until I can get to the 'good' stuff. Some fic writers can make me feel differently, though. Notably, hello_spikey.

But as you say the main problem is we just don't have the scenes.

[ex_peasant441]

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.

Oh! Oh I think I get that one!

::waves hand frantically in the air::

::tries to wait patiently for the post::

[shapinglight]

It might be a while. I'd have to think about it a bit more.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

*ahem* Is this thing on?

As you well know, I am an unreserved Spike/Dru shipper, which in no way detracts from my Spuffy love. In fact, part of my Spru love is that it funnels so beautifully into Spuffy (after the requisite whirlpool of trauma and strife).

I do see Dru as essentially unchanging, stuck in a permanent childhood by madness. A very, very kinky childhood, it must be said. In contrast, Spike is always changing. He makes himself into exactly the sort of dark knight that appeals to both Dru (fairy tales) and himself (Romantic poetry). He had a very long way to go, from the virgin in the alley, to the mama's boy in the parlor (after being turned), to the scrapper that defies Angelus, to the Slayer of Slayers. He's constantly in motion, constantly trying new things, and I see much of that as his reaction to the stasis of Dru. He never stops trying, and I suspect (in the dark recesses of my shipper brain), that the striving is largely to break through to where his princess is trapped in her tower.

The relationship is tragically one sided, which is why it couldn't last, even with all of Spike's considerable energies shoring it up. But Dru did make her contributions. Simply by noticing him, and singling him out, she turned his world on its axis. I mean that emotionally, not just the death bit. Also, I suspect that by introducing him to the delirious pleasures of physical love, he would have followed her around like a puppy for a couple of decades, even if they hadn't been vampires. (She's a bit of The Blue Angel, or if we're being charitable, Sister Carrie in her effect on a ripe and ready William.)

His enormous amount of practice (117 years, I think we all agree) at changing (contorting?) himself to meet the nuanced needs of his lover, is (to my mind) the very thing that made him capable of winning Buffy. (He won her. I don't care what anybody says. Lalalalalala.) Drusilla made Spuffy possible.

To me, the lack of screen time, while lamentable, just leaves lots of space for Thee Fic. The framing is there, but it's up to us to do the finish work. Hallelujah!

[shapinglight]

What a great comment. Yeah, that works very well, though I'm not quite sure about all the changes Spike made to himself while he was with Dru being for her sake rather than his own. But I think him being constantly in motion as a reaction to her stasis is very true. It's something that often crops up in fanfic, where writers often find it hard to imagine Dru moving with the times and changing her style of dress (we only ever see that in TGiQ aforementioned ciao! scene) rather than staying eternally the same.

But yes, you're probably right. Without Dru, there could have been no Spuffy.

[cafedemonde.livejournal.com]

Where Buffy's love is concerned, I'm of the opinion that it was puppy love with Angel. First and hardest toget over because you just-can't-imagine-living-without-that-feeling-you-get-with-him. And in normal teen life she would have been like, OMG I was sooo into him but it really wasn't the real.

And her and Spike were more of a mature relationship, even though she could never admit that and sshe became abusive to him because of that. But it was adult, if warped.

Spike and Dru's thing was more him taking care of her when she needed it and leaving her to do her thing when she didn't. And probably some great, wild, sick sex in between. Angel has alluded to the fact that Dru was fickle and Spike was always enraged by that so I figure there must be some truth to it. But through it all they always came back to each other, until Buffy had Spike's attention.

So theirs was a love affair but not a relationship. IMO. If any of that made sense cuz I am at work and in a rush to get this posted.

Ciao

[shapinglight]

So theirs was a love affair but not a relationship. IMO. If any of that made sense cuz I am at work and in a rush to get this posted.

Yes, that actually did make a lot of sense. And I'm sure that the business with the Chaos demon was far from the first time that Dru was unfaithful to Spike.

It's no wonder really that Spike had the view of love he expresses in Lovers' Walk and Seeing Red. It's a teenager's view of love (like Buffy and Angel, which is probably why what he said rang so true for Buffy in Lovers' Walk), and the nature of his love for Dru and his uncertainty about her must have been a big contribution to that.

[rahirah]

Yeah, I've never been able to get a grasp on their relationship, beyond the bare bones of it. Spike took care of her - he was made to take care of her. But the problem I always have is, who the heck IS Dru, under the madness? Is she actually an interesting person above and beyond the tragedy of her making?

Juliet's always had a very rosy view of Dru though, so I expect that factors into it.

[shapinglight]

But the problem I always have is, who the heck IS Dru, under the madness? Is she actually an interesting person above and beyond the tragedy of her making?

I really don't think there's any way to tell. Dru's madness is an integral part of her - something that I thought hello_spikey showed beautifully in her story Madcap Redemption, but it means that she's all surface. One is left with the nagging suspicion that underneath that surface there's nothing but an empty shell.

Juliet's always had a very rosy view of Dru though, so I expect that factors into it.

Absolutely, as does JM of the Spike/Dru period. I think it was a great deal easier for him actingwise so he looks back at it with more fondness than he looks at later, tougher stuff.

[candleanfeather.livejournal.com]

Yes Spike and Drusilla relationship certainly stays nebulous for its greatest part but there are a few very revelatory observations from Spike about her and what he did see in her. In FFL there's this piece of dialogue:

Spike: This is Drusilla, girl! You have the slightest idea what she means to me? It's the face of my salvation! (looks at Dru, smiles slightly) She delivered me from mediocrity. For over a century we ... cut a swath through continents. A hundred years, she never stopped surprising me.

SPIKE: (quietly) Never stopped taking me to new depths. I was a lucky bloke. (Dru smiles) Just to touch such a black beauty.

It's short but very rich as how Spike lived his relationship with Dru: there's some mysticism (face of salvation), gratitude (delivered me from mediocrity), proximity born from crime (WE cut a swath) and history (for over a century), she appears also as a very dynamic and unpredictable character (though we couldn't see it on screen but it's very clear in A hundred years she never stopped surprising me), she's also his guide in the exploration of evil (Never stopped taking me to new depths). I think there's something of a Beatrice to Dante here. There's of course her beauty (and J Landau is really a woman of a rare and particular beauty)which fits with the canons of Romantism. I think everything in Drusilla (her beauty, her story, her madness, her mystery, her unpredactibility and her strength (we only saw her sick for the most part)all appeal to the Romantic poet in Spike. I remember another moment where he spoke about her madness, her seeing bleeding angels in the sky: it was evident it appealed to his poetic side.

I think these little passages are Spike's most beautiful declarations about a woman he has been in love with. This sort of inspiration for the writers seemed to disappear later, alas: by comparison Spike's declaration to Buffy seems rather pedestrian in season 7.

As for saying her relationship with Spike is more important than the one he had with Buffy, obviously no. They are very different in their nature and have opposite effects but each constitutes an equally important part in Spike's life: they can't be separated IMO, without his relationship with Dru, his relationship with Buffy doesn't have the same meaning: the first one is the ground for the second one.

[shapinglight]

They are very different in their nature and have opposite effects but each constitutes an equally important part in Spike's life: they can't be separated IMO, without his relationship with Dru, his relationship with Buffy doesn't have the same meaning: the first one is the ground for the second one.

This is true, and I understand that Dru was Spike's muse in a way that Buffy wasn't. Buffy was more of a role model. But I suppose that's one reason why I think his relationship with Buffy was more important. It turned him away from childish things, because although Dru may have brought poetry and romance into his life she also made him emotionally static, like all vampires. So yes, she was important but in a negative way, and I can't see that as having the same moral weight, if you like.