Can't help loving that man
Mar. 18th, 2003 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI’ve been working my way very slowly through the S1 Angel series DVDs, and reacquainting myself with the setup and the introductions of some characters. It’s been especially interesting to watch Wesley, because he’s become the main reason I watch the show now, and it’s odd, because I hated him initially when he came on Buffy, and was absolutely cringing in horror when he joined Angel. Especially the twittery and humiliation, because those are my huge squicks and it made the show almost impossible to watch. His development into a grim, dark, lonely man who still is trying desperately to connect with others is fascinating to watch now with the advantage of hindsight, and some of the antics, while still cringe-worthy, are really glimpses into a man in search of a character.
Although there’s still a certain rigidity to him, one of the things that’s changed the most is how unwilling he was to bend rules or to think outside the box, as it were. He’s very linear, very focused on following accepted standards of practice when he first comes on Buffy in S3, and later we begin to understand why as well as see him testing those rules he’s lived by, often finding them wanting. To my eyes, in his early days working with Angel Investigations, what he’s looking for the most is acceptance. At the end of... I think it’s Parting Gifts where he first shows up (I’m not as good with Angel titles as I am with Buffy), he keeps saying he’s going off now, to be a rogue demon hunter alone, because men like him are loners, all the while desperately waiting for an invitation to stay and to be with people, to be accepted into their world. He is, I think, aware of his failings — his dorkiness, his silliness, his stuffiness — but not yet ready to completely admit them and try to change, but this is his first step towards change.
And I can understand this about him, whereas when I first saw those eps, I couldn’t and sat cringing in horror at his doofiness. I’ve spent my whole life just wanting to be accepted by a family that wouldn’t and told me frequently what a failure I was (Wes, we learn later, hears this from his father endlessly), by “friends” who love to tell me how horrible I am all the time (the Council, probably the closest Wes has come to peers and cohorts), by bosses who love to rule by intimidation and see nothing wrong with telling me what a fuckup I am because I do things differently than they do (a lot of the folks in Sunnydale when Wes first came there — following the standards he’d learned, doing what he was taught was his sacred duty, even if we and they saw it as mismanagement). So I totally, totally get what drove Wes at the beginning, and I can identify much more painfully with him now, looking back to see where he was then and how he got where he is now.
One of the most interesting things about the discs for me was seeing the eps with Faith and comparing them to the relationship now that she’s back. I actually did not remember her torturing him — I kind of vaguely knew about it, but at that point hated Faith so much, I didn’t pay attention to the Angel episodes she was in. And there’s an interesting duality going on in their scenes together — in her own way, Faith had been desperately searching for acceptance as well, something Wes didn’t know how to give her as her watcher, compounding the lack of it from others in the Scoobies. For her, it took the form of homicidal rage. When Wes lost everything — his job with the Council, his sense of who he was, his destiny — he turned even more inward, became more lonely and isolated, which amplified his quirks and his failures with relating to people.
In some ways, being tortured by Faith may have finally opened up floodgates that would never have been opened otherwise. He is confronted in the most horrifying way with his failure of character, with how his rigidity and linear adherence to duty only helped amplify a terrible situation and contributed to pushing a dangerously unstable person hovering on the brink of psychosis right on over the edge. While Faith’s blaming of him for being a bad watcher may go too far, he knows at that point that being a bad watcher contributed to what happened, and I think at that point the Wes we see now was in its nascent stages. The other Wes, the weaker one, would never have withstood that torture, but what little acceptance he’d gained from Angel and Cordy at that point were giving him strength to withstand it, and finding a darker person who wasn’t afraid of confronting his flaws also helped him recover. It’s his turning point much more than it is Faith’s.
He defined his own need for acceptance this year, as well — “I got my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me.” I think in his early days, he would never have assumed he had friends, let alone that he could be close enough that they could abandon him, that he would care. But through the past seasons, he’s changed so much — so many dark things happening to him, losing so much, watching others go through so many painful changes — that he had assumed he had a family. Like any family, it wasn’t totally great and a shiny, happy place to be, but he relied on it in a way I doubt he could ever have imagined back when he showed up at AI in the early days.
And this is something I get on a personal level, too, because when you’ve heard over and over in your life that you’re worthless, you come to believe that. If enough people tell you you’re a loser or horrible, you come to look at it like “why bother to act any other way?” For the first time in his life, Wes was getting a different message — that he had value, that he could do things others couldn’t, that he was worthwhile. It didn’t come out in showy, flowery ways, but slowly through Angel’s reliance on him.
And after the torture, I think he understood he had reserves that hadn’t been tapped before, and by understanding that himself, he was able to show it to others so they had no choice but to see it in him too. His relationship with Cordy grew stronger and less taunting, his friendship with Gunn developed, and he and Angel even reversed roles after Angel went Billy Jack there for a while. The shooting, like the torture, forced more introspection and reaching father into depths Wes didn’t know he had; as did nearly losing his friendship with Angel. So over and over, Wes was being confronted with a message that he didn’t have to accept the lifelong belief that he was a loser and worthless, even though horrific things were happening to him. Probably if he’d had some confidence and a bit more understanding of his own worth, he might not have made the decision to kidnap Connor, but then we wouldn’t have had all that storyline, so of course he had to.
I know there are fans who don’t like this darker version of Wes, or find it uninteresting (especially because ME keeps making him pine for Fred, who is so not worthy of his affection, if you ask me). But to my eyes, he’s galvanized the show. He didn’t become dark because he was evil or what have you, which is the standard M.O. on television; he became dark because he looked inside himself and saw the darkness that all people have, and accepted it. He’s had every reason to grow dark and bitter, and even as he’s done so, he’s acknowledged it and made use of it. He joked that people kept putting him in the leadership role while they were in Pylea, but people do keep expecting him to lead because he is capable of juggling both his dark side and the positive, hopeful, caring side. Few people can do what he does.
Angelus knows that, in some ways. He tried to prey upon Wes’s weaknesses, but even he seemed to know that it wasn’t going to be Wes he could break — that he’d have to go for the others, who aren’t as self-aware and haven’t confronted their own limitations to the level Wes has. And Faith sees it too — they had such a great, innate understanding of each other, and Wes knew just how much she was vulnerable to Angelus, because he understood his own vulnerabilities both to her and to Angelus.
I wish so much Faith could stick around and see what develops with Wes. Mostly because I love how it parallels a lot of what I see in Spike and Buffy — the idea of learning to love someone who represents a lot of fear and pain, who may be the antithesis of everything you believe, who has the potential to cause you great harm. But also someone you feel an undeniable attraction and affection for. Wes and Faith have these cool scars, and both of them have spent most of their lives looking for acceptance and unconditional love, only to lose it time and again through their own mistakes. It would be fascinating to watch these two struggle with all that baggage, with their dark sides, with changes they may or may not want to go through. Wes especially has come a long way in his understanding of what he wants from others, but he’s still got steps to take. Integrating this newer person he’s become will make him even more dynamic as a character, and with Faith mirroring much of that, they could have been a very powerful duo to watch.
Although there’s still a certain rigidity to him, one of the things that’s changed the most is how unwilling he was to bend rules or to think outside the box, as it were. He’s very linear, very focused on following accepted standards of practice when he first comes on Buffy in S3, and later we begin to understand why as well as see him testing those rules he’s lived by, often finding them wanting. To my eyes, in his early days working with Angel Investigations, what he’s looking for the most is acceptance. At the end of... I think it’s Parting Gifts where he first shows up (I’m not as good with Angel titles as I am with Buffy), he keeps saying he’s going off now, to be a rogue demon hunter alone, because men like him are loners, all the while desperately waiting for an invitation to stay and to be with people, to be accepted into their world. He is, I think, aware of his failings — his dorkiness, his silliness, his stuffiness — but not yet ready to completely admit them and try to change, but this is his first step towards change.
And I can understand this about him, whereas when I first saw those eps, I couldn’t and sat cringing in horror at his doofiness. I’ve spent my whole life just wanting to be accepted by a family that wouldn’t and told me frequently what a failure I was (Wes, we learn later, hears this from his father endlessly), by “friends” who love to tell me how horrible I am all the time (the Council, probably the closest Wes has come to peers and cohorts), by bosses who love to rule by intimidation and see nothing wrong with telling me what a fuckup I am because I do things differently than they do (a lot of the folks in Sunnydale when Wes first came there — following the standards he’d learned, doing what he was taught was his sacred duty, even if we and they saw it as mismanagement). So I totally, totally get what drove Wes at the beginning, and I can identify much more painfully with him now, looking back to see where he was then and how he got where he is now.
One of the most interesting things about the discs for me was seeing the eps with Faith and comparing them to the relationship now that she’s back. I actually did not remember her torturing him — I kind of vaguely knew about it, but at that point hated Faith so much, I didn’t pay attention to the Angel episodes she was in. And there’s an interesting duality going on in their scenes together — in her own way, Faith had been desperately searching for acceptance as well, something Wes didn’t know how to give her as her watcher, compounding the lack of it from others in the Scoobies. For her, it took the form of homicidal rage. When Wes lost everything — his job with the Council, his sense of who he was, his destiny — he turned even more inward, became more lonely and isolated, which amplified his quirks and his failures with relating to people.
In some ways, being tortured by Faith may have finally opened up floodgates that would never have been opened otherwise. He is confronted in the most horrifying way with his failure of character, with how his rigidity and linear adherence to duty only helped amplify a terrible situation and contributed to pushing a dangerously unstable person hovering on the brink of psychosis right on over the edge. While Faith’s blaming of him for being a bad watcher may go too far, he knows at that point that being a bad watcher contributed to what happened, and I think at that point the Wes we see now was in its nascent stages. The other Wes, the weaker one, would never have withstood that torture, but what little acceptance he’d gained from Angel and Cordy at that point were giving him strength to withstand it, and finding a darker person who wasn’t afraid of confronting his flaws also helped him recover. It’s his turning point much more than it is Faith’s.
He defined his own need for acceptance this year, as well — “I got my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me.” I think in his early days, he would never have assumed he had friends, let alone that he could be close enough that they could abandon him, that he would care. But through the past seasons, he’s changed so much — so many dark things happening to him, losing so much, watching others go through so many painful changes — that he had assumed he had a family. Like any family, it wasn’t totally great and a shiny, happy place to be, but he relied on it in a way I doubt he could ever have imagined back when he showed up at AI in the early days.
And this is something I get on a personal level, too, because when you’ve heard over and over in your life that you’re worthless, you come to believe that. If enough people tell you you’re a loser or horrible, you come to look at it like “why bother to act any other way?” For the first time in his life, Wes was getting a different message — that he had value, that he could do things others couldn’t, that he was worthwhile. It didn’t come out in showy, flowery ways, but slowly through Angel’s reliance on him.
And after the torture, I think he understood he had reserves that hadn’t been tapped before, and by understanding that himself, he was able to show it to others so they had no choice but to see it in him too. His relationship with Cordy grew stronger and less taunting, his friendship with Gunn developed, and he and Angel even reversed roles after Angel went Billy Jack there for a while. The shooting, like the torture, forced more introspection and reaching father into depths Wes didn’t know he had; as did nearly losing his friendship with Angel. So over and over, Wes was being confronted with a message that he didn’t have to accept the lifelong belief that he was a loser and worthless, even though horrific things were happening to him. Probably if he’d had some confidence and a bit more understanding of his own worth, he might not have made the decision to kidnap Connor, but then we wouldn’t have had all that storyline, so of course he had to.
I know there are fans who don’t like this darker version of Wes, or find it uninteresting (especially because ME keeps making him pine for Fred, who is so not worthy of his affection, if you ask me). But to my eyes, he’s galvanized the show. He didn’t become dark because he was evil or what have you, which is the standard M.O. on television; he became dark because he looked inside himself and saw the darkness that all people have, and accepted it. He’s had every reason to grow dark and bitter, and even as he’s done so, he’s acknowledged it and made use of it. He joked that people kept putting him in the leadership role while they were in Pylea, but people do keep expecting him to lead because he is capable of juggling both his dark side and the positive, hopeful, caring side. Few people can do what he does.
Angelus knows that, in some ways. He tried to prey upon Wes’s weaknesses, but even he seemed to know that it wasn’t going to be Wes he could break — that he’d have to go for the others, who aren’t as self-aware and haven’t confronted their own limitations to the level Wes has. And Faith sees it too — they had such a great, innate understanding of each other, and Wes knew just how much she was vulnerable to Angelus, because he understood his own vulnerabilities both to her and to Angelus.
I wish so much Faith could stick around and see what develops with Wes. Mostly because I love how it parallels a lot of what I see in Spike and Buffy — the idea of learning to love someone who represents a lot of fear and pain, who may be the antithesis of everything you believe, who has the potential to cause you great harm. But also someone you feel an undeniable attraction and affection for. Wes and Faith have these cool scars, and both of them have spent most of their lives looking for acceptance and unconditional love, only to lose it time and again through their own mistakes. It would be fascinating to watch these two struggle with all that baggage, with their dark sides, with changes they may or may not want to go through. Wes especially has come a long way in his understanding of what he wants from others, but he’s still got steps to take. Integrating this newer person he’s become will make him even more dynamic as a character, and with Faith mirroring much of that, they could have been a very powerful duo to watch.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-19 12:05 pm (UTC)Well, now that sounds lame, doesn't it. "Poor Gwyn won't know if she exists unless I offer validation!" Shut up, brain. I don't care. Go Team Gwyn.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-19 12:28 pm (UTC)And I'd love to hear what you have to say about Wes. I even like it when people seriously beg to differ with me, and explain where they're coming from. That's what's so cool about LJ, I think.