#angel and faith

[travllingbunny]

Angel sparing Holtz after Holtz stole Connor proves he's the better man between them. Agree or disagree?

Should I assume that you've read the Dark Horse (sadly) canon comics, specifically the Angel and Faith series, and that this is what inspired you to ask this?

That series was a perfect example exactly how you should not treat your morally grey protagonist, and of what people sometimes refer to as the "Protagonist Privilege". The TV show never, or almost never, made me feel this way, but Christos Gage wrote a series that was not about really exploring the issues of Angel's guilt and struggle for redemption - it was all about the narrative downplaying Angel's horrible acts (especially the newest and particularly damning ones he had just committed in the Buffy comics that preceded it) and having all the good guy characters (especially Faith) straight up tell him over and over - and through him the audience - that Angel is a great guy who deserves to be forgiven, because he feels bad and wants to do good. No ambiguity, no tension over the issue - will be prove himself worthy of redemption? Will the people he hurt (including Buffy) be able to forgive him? No, the series made sure you understood there was never any uncertainty about their protagonist being a good guy, and it consistently portrayed people who had a grudge against him (for things like him having killed their friends and loved ones) as misled and in need of changing their outlook on life.

One of the things that really has stuck in my mind, and one of the low points of the season in my opinion, was a speech by Faith, (IIRC) where she was reassuring Angel that he was a better person than Holtz, because Holtz couldn't let go of his obsession with revenge against Angel.

And that made me incredibly angry. You don't get to murder someone's entire family, traumatize them horrifically, and then be considered a "better" person than them when they don't want to forgive you and when they want revenge. You just don't.

So Angel didn't take revenge against Holtz that Holtz did as revenge for what Angel had done to him? So what? Holtz stealing Connor does not make them even. Don't get me wrong, I consider Holtz a tragic villain, and he considered himself evil by the end, when he was asking Justine to kill him so he could execute his revenge to the end. But Angel is responsible for Holtz becoming the way he became.

And the reason Angel spared Holtz is because Angel was aware of this, and felt guilty for what he had done to Holtz, and for turning him into what he had become. It's not like Angel is generally an incredibly forgiving kind of person. What did he do after Connor was stolen? He tried to strangle Wesley in his hospital bed - and not even impulsively. He was refusing to forgive Wesley (even while knowing Wesley did not intend for Connor to be hurt and was acting out of a misguided concern for the child), and Wesley had to save him from years if not decades or centuries of hellish existence for forgiveness to even be possible. And I loved this and loved Angel for it, for being portrayed as a real, human (!) person, with believable human emotions, not some flawless heroic angel that the comics wanted to tell me he was.

I could also mention the fact that Angel, after getting cursed with having his soul back, wasn't doing any good for almost a century. He tried to get back to Darla but wasn't evil enough for her taste, was mostly roaming around aimlessly, and showed himself to definitely not be the forgiving kind when he left all the people who had lynched him to be devoured by the demon in the hotel. It was only in some 90 years after his re-soulment, after Whistler approached him and told him he had a mission and showed him Buffy, that he started to actively try to redeem himself.

Holtz went through a horrific trauma of finding his family murdered, probably tortured before that (Angel made hints about having raped his wife) and his young daughter turned into a monster - which, as far as he knew and/or believed, as a religious man and a vampire killer, meant he had to kill her, and also made it questionable if she could go to heaven. No surprise he became even more obsessed with finding and killing the perpetrators. We don't know how long he was on Angel's and Darla's trail, but this couldn't have been too long - months to maybe a couple of years? And then he was transported to the present by a demon who offered him a chance of revenge. From his POV, it had not been centuries, it all happened over a relatively short period. Would you be satisfied and said "oh well, I don't need revenge anymore" if someone told you "he's good now"? We also don't see Holtz surrounded by a bunch of people trying to dissuade him from revenge and giving him a taste of normal life and friendship. The people he gathered in LA were those as desperate and traumatized as himself, and none of them seemed to question him. Now, yes, he did get 16 years with Connor, and you could imagine a heartfelt story where raising Connor and being his surrogate dad could heal Holtz and made him decide this was more important than revenge.... but these 16 years were spent in a hell dimension, just him and a child in hell . Not something that seems likely to help anyone's mental health.

In short: even if I accepted the premise of judging "is the perpetrator a better person than their victim if they didn't take revenge after the person they hurt took revenge on them?"!," I don't think we could even compare Angel and Holtz as they were not in the same circumstances.

[pulpsandcomics2]

Angel and Faith

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Everyone thinks it's hilarious that Wesley poses as Faith's lawyer in order to break her out of prison in season four of AtS (and for good reason. This is really funny.)

But in the books, before this happens (chronologically, anyway), Angel always had to pose as Faith's lawyer in order to talk to her while she was in prison. LOL.

In fact, it's sort of implied that Wesley is essentially pretending to be Angel, her lawyer, when he breaks her out in S4 (at least if you choose to see the books as canon).

[absolutely-wretched]

finishing buffy s8 and starting angel&faith

spoilers under the cut

so, i did notice there were many writers in buffy s8 finally, confirming my suspicions that the badness of it wasn't joss alone. but let me tell you i was completely correct in thinking the last volume was going to piss me off. spike comes back and not only does she describe having sex with twilight to him, she KISSES HIM. i literally fell back onto my bed in exasperation. except she didn't actually kiss him, it ws a fantasy, which doesn't stop my annoyance, and neither does her immediately thinking she's gonna get into bed with him. i wanted to say like "buffy seems a little ooc, much more self-absorbed than she was originally". then i watched Hell's Bells since I was watching the dvd commentary, and her first words about Xander leaving Anya at the altar was "They were supposed to be my light at the end of the tunnel." and I was like oooooh nope she's still in character. just a bit worse, which is fair bc of the whole "leader of slayers" and "ultimate power" thing. also i was all excited about spike's design coming back in my last post bc of his nail polish, but then he's in like brownn boots and a tan sweater. idk just weird, i aggresively do not like it. i do like that Spike knew who twilight was immediately. very on-brand.

so angel kills giles and buffy doesn't stake him, but instead kills all magic. definitely needed to be done (poor willow, though), but it still seemed unrealistic that she didn't kill him, but i get why. angel&faith (abbreviated to a&f from here on out) pointed out the fact the angelus killed jenny in the same way, which i was surprised i didn't pick up on. faith gets giles' estate, which was a bit surprising but her explanation about it makes sense. that faith needed more help and all that. and faith is going to rehabilitate angel, which i love. angel's relationship with women like cordelia or faith are much nicer to me than anything about his relationship with buffy. and all magic is gone from the world except for the magic that's already there, tying these events to why the world is how it is in Fray (buffy having been the last slayer 200 years prior)

i'm curious to know how Willow was an Uber-witch then in the future, of whom Buffy goes back in time to kill. Also, Fray ended on a cliffhanger, the only continuation being when buffy went in time in s8. but i really want to know the rest of her story with Harth, especially because of that shocking kiss that's just like... what and why and what.

so warren is dead for good again, thank christ. everyone is mad at buffy for killing magic. it's all pretty fair since she boned twilight and birthed a whole universe and all that, being fairly selfish in their eyes, but since her and angel (mostly angel) were pretty possessed, it wasn't as selfish as it looks to everyone. but i'm glad they did it, a bit, because it brings us back to more of a similar world in the show. no more slayer military and all that, less bombastic fights and crazy mass demons. joss said "i learned what you like and didn't like" which i think means i'll like the seasons coming up much more. i don't like that willow has been nerfed, though. i love her so much, and she's so sad. and after goddesses and monsters, i knew she was into the snake goddess, and they're in love and she can never see her again. just... poor willow. i'm interested to know how that will turn out.

we also got to check in with riley, which i didn't care about, but it's part of the canon so i didn't skip it. and i was rewarded with finding out whistler is evil and an agent of twilight pulling the strings since buffy was 15. which was cool. oh! and giles leaving buffy the book that he pulled out in s1e1 was a nice touch. i dunno, the normalness of the epilogue gives me a lot of hope for s9 :) and so does the first vol of a&f

first off i'll say that I LOVE the art of a&f. Buffy art is really hit or miss, and while reading it i longed for the writing and art of Spike and Angel s5/6 comics (Urru and Lynch) even though when changing colorists/inkers around it could also be rendered hit or miss. But the a&f art? *chef's kiss*. The likenesses art great, the inking is amazing, I love the cell shading (which for comics is a much better fit to me than the airbrushing shading of buffy s8). I may be partial since it's the art style i'm personally trying to learn, and i'm seeing it being used professionally, but damn! it's really well done. and gone are the days of storyboarding being so confusing you dont know what's going on! i dunno if buffy s9 will lose that problem too, but here's hoping.

the characterization and story is really good, and angel is trying to bring giles back to life. i was thinking that wasn't really in character, but with eveything he did when he was (mostly) possessed by twilight, i can understand why. and faith promising to kill him, as usual. I just love it. it's got all the angel vibes of ats. I wonder how faith is going to reconcile that the slayers she helps want to kill angel. how she's going to allow him to bring giles back. it's a bummer, though, that new vampires that are turned since the seed was destroyed are like zombies. makes me uninterested in vampires. we get to check in with harmony at the end of the volume, which is fun. I love clem, he's continuously so cute.

i like the new villains. and they're working with Whistler, too. I'm interested to know more about the whistler lore. i wish they'd bring doyle back in some way. or cordelia. in comic form, not attached to an actor, i think i may actually like her, lol. i like that the seed rendered mohra blood unusable, since that could have changed angel's game completely, making him human. though, it doesn't make sense that he still says "i can't be what i need to be if i'm human". since he was human all through after the fall in Hell A and was able to save the world and all that while fighting demons constantly.

and what's up with that, too? so angel being twilight means eveyone hates him, he's infamous now. how does that reconcile with everyone in LA that he saved, making movies about he and Spike and Team Help the Hopeless, naming libraries after them and all that. Oh and I'm interested to know about the buddy comedy of illyria and gunn that was happening at the end of angel s6. i just love illyria and wanna know what she's up to.

TLDR: Joss says he learned a lot from doing buffy s8, seeing what worked and how certain things work in comic form. i feel like i'm going to enjoy the comics going forward, and really love a&f. the only thing that will make me really love s9 of Buffy when I start it, is if they change the entire art team (minus covers). I'm not sure if it's the inks that make it bad, but the shading definitely is bad. the pencils could be the problem, but since i can't see them, i'm not sure. the storyboarding was absolutely terrible, though, i had no idea what was happening a lot of the time. i'll be back after reading vol 1 of Buffy s9

[perplexingly]

Spirit companions

[fictiongods]

The problem is Buffy’s taste is absolutely atrocious but she’s right. Like look at this man he’s supposed to be some stealthy vampire guy but he’s tripping when he walks in the door. He can’t fucking stand correctly. He has social anxiety so bad he hates to talk to everybody but his girlfriends. Oh look at this other guy he’s supposed to be evil and monstrous but he’s crying to your mom about his ex and asking for marshmallows in his coco. He has one dream about a girl and that doesn’t make him think he’s just attracted to said girl, he immediately thinks he’s in love and becomes obsessed. He has to dye his hair every so often and he chooses a neon white for some reason. Oh take a look at this girl she’s supposed to be cool girl tough girl who is down and good with everything but she sits alone all the time in one of the worst parts of town. She’ll only ever tell you that she’s five by five and you or anyone else has no idea what that even means. She’ll lie about stuff that didn’t happen to sound cool, all while walking around saying she has no friends. And here’s the kicker - they all mirror each other, have a history of violent murders, look good in leather and somehow all give off pathetic wet rat and babygirl vibes at the exact same time and no one has any idea where the line is. Plus they’re all some kind of gay and in kahoots with each other.

[goaskmalices]

[seraphim-eternal]

You have been with me from the beginning.

John 15:27

[tubesock86]

the scoobies (plus faith and spike)

[sly-kitty]

Angel Youngs & Angie Faith

[buffygirlfail]

btvs tweets 3/?

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Cordelia having visions and thinking about Buffy:

Angel novel, "Haunted," that takes place during Angel season 2/Buffy season 5:

Buffy classic comic "Note from the Underground" that takes place towards the end of Buffy season 6/Angel season 3:

[elizadushkudaily]

ANGEL THE SERIES | 1.19 "Sanctuary" └ requested by @juanabaloo

[izel-scribbles]

extremely rare izel blindfaith spotted in the wild 🤯🤯🤯

cas n jay this is for you guys

[alostwanderernotfound]

Do you think maybe that there’s a chance you are REALLY, REALLY behind on current events & the statue is the beast? I mean literally. Like the statue sits there until the apocalypse & then it turns out it’s an actual robot that a consciousness can switch into when they decide it’s the right day. I’m sorry to be scary, but It is. It’s not just a warning. This is really happening, just like all those other signs you see are also there. It’s there because it’s supposed to be hidden in plain sight to then be switched on, just like other things/statues/etc hidden in plain sight. You’ve been warned many, many times, but each time until the end there’s always a chance to change the future. It’s never hopeless, but you have to come to terms with the fact this has been right in front of you for a very long time. Do you want to take it seriously or do you want to ignore it till it’s too late? The decision is always in your hands.

[fyepertine]

The gangs are all here!!

(except BW and GH cuz I can’t draw furries 😭❤️‍🩹)