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Date Posted: 03:57:22 10/28/05 Fri
Author: Celebaelin
Subject: Severance
In reply to: Ninerva 's message, "Angel/Angelus: Exploring the paradox." on 10:40:04 10/27/05 Thu

I agree with so much of what you've written here it almost seems churlish to suggest some alternatives, but I'm going to do it anyway!

Going back to 'The Prodigal' Darla astutely recognises that Angelus will never now get the one thing he desires, the approval of his Father.

This much we know.

Maybe his contempt for his victims comes from his envy of them, because their desires, however childish and mistaken, are real to them, whereas he has no achievable desire of his own.

Except the desire of achieving a nothingness if you accept Angelus as the Anarchistic Nihilist, or perhaps the self-imposed torment, purgatory if you like, of Angel's brooding satisfies a long lost need to feel something. It could be conjectured that Angelus' BtVS S2 desire to suck the entire world into hell is related to this mental self-flagellation but this aspect, this path to an integrated Angel/Angelus is rejected by Angelus because Angel holds it to be a sign of contrition and supplication in persuit of grace.

Maybe his anger, his hatred and his contempt comes from an absense of passion, which in turn comes from the impossibility of realising his one desire.

Or maybe the initial act of murdering his father was a futile attempt to remove the frustration caused by a lack of a passionate, artistic, emotional response. This is the severance I refer to in the title.

Angelus had a great deal of passion when he killed his Father, but once that was done he was sat with his feet up on the table of his Father's house, not glowing from victory, but searching for it and finding it absent.

I concur about the observation but I feel that the reason the victory is absent is that what Angelus was seeking was closure essentially and that can't be achieved without response from the counter opinion. What he sought in fact was a violent, heart felt, passionate argument not simply his fathers death (although post-vamping that probably would have come later).

As Darla said, it was acceptance that Liam/Angelus wanted, and now he would never have it, and it left him with a void, a lack of desire.

Not so much a void IMO but without anyone who has enough invested in him to give a hoot about his need to feel, Angelus repeatedly expresses his emotions in a twisted parody of love and romance. Subverting peoples desires and feelings is his favourite tool and that implies an intimate understanding of the process rather than a lack. I would even go so far as to say that Spike fulfills the need for an emotional reaction in Angelus to some extent. Animosity is a strong emotion after all and on some level, though not necessarily the conscious one, both vampires realise this link perhaps through the additional similarity of their both being ensouled.

As Angel he drifted for years, still without passion, remorse yes, but no desire, no motive to act, not until he saw Buffy that is.

Again, not without passion but without anyone to respond to his passion IMO.

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