Changed my mind. It's Darla.
Can't any one of your damn little Scooby club at least try to remember that I hate you all?
Spike ,'Get It Done'
Buffy and Angel 1: BUFFYNANGLE4EVA!!!!!1!
Is it better the second time around? Or the third? Or tenth? This is the place to come when you have a burning desire to talk about an old episode that was just re-run.
Zenkitty - May 07, 2005 8:32:06 pm PDT #576 of 10458
Every now and then, I think I might actually be a little odd.
SailAweigh - May 07, 2005 8:53:27 pm PDT #577 of 10458
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb
I think we need to rename the thread. "DarlaNAngle4EVA!!11!!
Alibelle - May 07, 2005 9:41:23 pm PDT #578 of 10458
Apart from sports, "my secret favorite thing on earth is ketchup. I will put ketchup on anything. But it has to be Heinz." - my husband, Michael Vartan
I love Darla. Seriously. I think she's awesome. But I also think that he went to such great lengths to save her because he saw himself in her. They did share a lot. I don't think it was anything special and particular about Darla herself that made him want to go out of his way to help her, I think it was just history, and what could have been, if things had gone a little differently for Angel. I still say that the most important person to Angel is Buffy.
Gris - May 07, 2005 11:03:31 pm PDT #579 of 10458
Hey. New board.
Oh, please. The most important person to Angel was obviously Cordy. TheirLoveWasSoPure!
(ducks)
P.M. Marc - May 07, 2005 11:49:28 pm PDT #580 of 10458
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear
You'd best be ducking, mister.
Buffy and Darla were, in my view, equally important to Angel, though I think Buffy has the edge if you weigh in him seeing the other as a person instead of a symbol of something. Darla had incredible symbolic importance to him, but her personal connection was to Angelus, not to Angel. (You can reverse that with Buffy: Angelus was as obsessed with destroying her in S2 BtVS as Angel was with saving Darla in S2 AtS.)
It's interesting, to me at least, though I've no doubt that I'm stating the obvious, that the further Angel was removed from himself and his mission (S5), the more Buffy reverted in his mind to the symbol she started as, instead of the person he knew and loved.
Randomly, I think that in S3 Buffy, Angel came as close to getting Buffy and her mindset and what goes on in that little blonde head as anyone ever did, which is why the S3 BtVS Angst Extended Mix doesn't bother me at all. Faith, for the record, comes second closest, but there's a Buffy/Faith mutual blind spot WRT motivations.
Without the distance of observer, Spike (who is the master of the Personal Blind Spot) didn't really get what made her tick at all, though he got her physical (beyond sexual) rhythms down pat.
Topic!Cindy - May 08, 2005 1:36:10 am PDT #581 of 10458
What is even happening?
Buffy.
Angel killed Darla for her.
Lee - May 08, 2005 7:37:07 am PDT #582 of 10458
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.
At the point he did so, I think Buffy was definitely more important. Given everything that happened after that, with Darla's rebirth, the attempts to save her, Angel's dark period and ephiphny, and Connor's birth, I think that might not hold.
My 2 cents: Angel would say Buffy was more important to him, but he wouldn't be a reliable narrator when he did so. I think Darla was a more important force in his life.
Lee - May 08, 2005 7:39:47 am PDT #583 of 10458
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.
(By the way, I think this has been fun, and I have more "who is more important" questions I would like to see discussed, so I'm going to ask a few more of them from time to time, unless someone asks me not to.)
(nicely)
(and then gives me a cookie.)
SailAweigh - May 08, 2005 8:05:56 am PDT #584 of 10458
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb
(withholds cookie)
Ask away. If the question is a good one, then you get the cookie.
Matt the Bruins fan - May 08, 2005 1:36:35 pm PDT #585 of 10458
"I remember when they eventually introduced that drug kingpin who murdered people and smuggled drugs inside snakes and I was like 'Finally. A normal person.'” —RahvinDragand
I think Perkins' take on it is mine. Angel's love for Buffy may have burned a little brighter in that first year, while they were a couple, but I don't think it was sustainable. And by the time he really got into the mission instead of skulking around and helping occasionally, they weren't really a couple anymore. I see his heroic actions from that point on as more guilt/making amends-motivated than inspired by Buffy.
Buffy.
Angel killed Darla for her.
Remember how very near a thing that was at the time, despite Angel being nominally committed to fighting evil at that point.