Fic Commentary: Abandon Hope
(The Mary Quite Contrary Remix)
by Snick (snickfic)

It turns out that what a discussion of this fic really needs is a line-by-line commentary. With additional author’s notes. Yeesh.

~~~~~

Aadler’s fic “All Ye Who Enter” appears to be about how Angelus gives Joyce a surprise visit in S2, intending to kill her, and how she manages to take him down with her. However, at the end we find out that it’s all been one of Dru’s visions, and Dru, deciding she’d like to keep Angelus around a while longer, distracts him from his plan to visit Joyce. The end.

I read it and thought to myself, wouldn’t it be interesting to make this a fic about Dru, instead? I could write a series of drabbles (’cause I love drabbles and like drabble series quite bit) and focus on the role of her visions in her life — a thematic extension of what was in the original fic. Dru’s been my default icon (*points*) since I first got this journal and I’d always wanted to write her, and this seemed like a good excuse.

My only concern was that it might stray a bit too far from the original to be a proper remix. Panicked, I described the whole idea to deird1, who opined that it didn’t, but who then complicated matters by saying it sounded interesting and she looked forward to reading it. Eep, expectations! But I really liked the idea, so I decided to forge ahead.

First problem: it turns out Drusilla is really hard to write. I think I’d subconsciously guessed that, which is maybe why I’d never written her before. It wasn’t so hard writing things that sounded like Dru might say them: throw in a few concrete nouns and some highly creative logic, and presto, you have Dru-isms. The problem came in actually trying to make a narrative composed of the Dru-isms. Linearity, not her strong suit. I wanted to both preserve her voice and her bewildering view of the world and yet convey meaning to the reader. I’m … not convinced that I always managed it; I think some meaning got lost in the madness. (Hence, part of the reason for this commentary. Sigh.)

Second problem: In S2, Dru functions largely as a plot device. Spike and/or Angel needs to know something? Give Dru a vision! And I’m not convinced the writers had any guidelines for how Dru’s visions worked. However, Dru as plot device ended up being one of the themes of the fic, at least in my head. As noted below, it ended up being largely about the fallibility of her foresight, and the misfortunes this leads her into.

Aadler, bright man, also noted in his comment on the fic that I contrasted between Dru’s foresight and the madness that keeps her from using that foresight effectively. I hadn’t thought to put in quite those words before, but yes! I have trouble remembering it, but according to canon Dru’s visions and her insanity aren’t actually related; they’re entirely separate afflictions.

And … hmm. Between these notes and the commentary below, I seem to have said everything I wanted to say about this. Here’s the commentary, then. The fic appears as it did originally; commentary is inset. Original fic may be found here.

Abandon Hope (The Mary Quite Contrary Remix)

The title and subtitle, which I put off figuring out until the very end, turned out to be ridiculously easy — the only easy thing about the fic, really. “Abandon Hope” was the first, most obvious remix of the original title, “All Ye Who Enter,” but it also happened to be totally appropriate, since the fic is about how miserably the events of S2 come out for Dru. The ‘Here’ implied by the rest of the quote would probably be Sunnydale and the Hellmouth.

Meanwhile, “Mary Quite Contrary” refers to gardening, is a nursery rhyme (which seems singularly appropriate for childish, bloodthirsty Dru), and describes Dru herself rather nicely.

(Bizarre trivia tidbit: Google tells me that Jamie Foxx once did a “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary Remix” of a song.)

Hellmouth. A silly name. She’d been near it hours now and it never spoke. It wasn’t a mouth, but a field made fertile with blood and flesh.

Here’s the introduction of the gardening theme. I wanted to compare Dru’s repeated references to flowers and growing things with all the plans she tries to make in S2, aided by her visions.

What should she grow in it?

She knelt. A single daisy pushed upwards from soil crawling out between the cracks of pavement.

Timewise, this drabble takes place just a little before Dru and Spike first meeting the Anointed One in “School Hard,” and explains why daisies were on Dru’s mind: “Do you like daisies?” This exchange becomes the frame for the whole fic.

Yes, she decided. Daisies. She would plant daisies and when they bloomed she’d squeeze their heads off one by one, as she’d pop the heads of children when Spike made her well again. It wouldn’t matter that her seeds so often died, not in earth so rich and red as this.

And that last sentence above is the first bit of foreshadowing for how things will turn out (if, yanno, the title wasn’t enough).

***

She’d forgotten how like wine her Angel was, how many grapes had been crushed to make him. He wouldn’t let her taste, now.

Here, wine is blood (because she’s tasted Angel’s blood before) and the evil of Angelus (locked down by the soul). Food is another one of Dru’s major touchstones in S2 — she describes her entire family in terms of their favorite foods (in “What’s My Line” Part II), and in the shooting script of the same scene, she says that Angel used to feed her, and doesn’t anymore.

But he was new wine in an old wineskin, and that mustn’t be done. The bad book said.

“The bad book” being the Bible, specifically Matthew 9:17 — Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. (New International Version)

Why not? She knew, but the caterpillar wouldn’t tell and she’d forgotten now.

In canon, Dru attributes her foresight to a number of things. Caterpillars aren’t mentioned, but they seemed to fit the trend. Also, Dru’s grasp of what her foresight tells her is sometimes weak, as shown here — she knows she knew something, but she isn’t sure what.

He told her to leave. Silly Daddy. He should have known this was just the beginning.

This drabble takes place during “Lie to Me,” when Dru meets Angel in the playground. “Just the beginning” is a direct quote from Dru.

And all the while watched the poor little Slayer. Angel was wine and the Slayer a scythe, and what did they suppose happened when a blade and a wineskin danced?

The scythe, of course, being the red shiny symbol of Slayer power from S7. And that last question would be more foreshadowing.

***

Some things the pixies wouldn’t tell her of — not proper for nice girls, they said.

The Slayer must have been very naughty, for they rarely spoke of her. They told of the little lost boy with the lovely white bulbs in his head — such pretty black flowers they’d bloom! — and how he’d snare the Slayer. But they didn’t tell her how the Slayer would vault to the catwalk, wrapping her in nasty arms and pressing dead wood to her heart. It was Spike that saved her, not the pixies.

The comment about pixies rarely speaking of the Slayer refers mainly to Dru’s line in “School Hard” about how she “can’t see” the Slayer. I envision this as being a little bit like how Alice in Twilight can’t see Bella, although that may be extrapolating a bit too far, and anyway, it wasn’t a connection I really wanted to make. :)

The action described comes from “Lie to Me” again, this time the big fight scene when Buffy gets Spike to let everyone go by threatening to stake Dru.

She wondered sometimes if they were so wise as they thought.

One of the main themes of the fic — Dru’s visions clearly aren’t infallible or omniscient, or the season would have ended much better for her. She’d have been able to predict more of the setbacks. At the very least, she would have foreseen the ultimate loss of everything she hoped for.

***

She told Spike of the Slayer’s sister, little sky-eyed emerald girl. He didn’t understand at first; he thought to steal the girl away, bait to a trap. No taste for green blood, he said. But she told him how the zephyrs of dimensions flowed in those veins, and then he promised to bring the girl for her, a dainty draught for Princess. Make you strong again, he said.

The emerald girl is Dawn, of course. I originally got the the idea of Dru seeing her even when she isn’t there from deird1’s fic Future Echoes, although in that case the person sees Dawn just because the person is crazy, whereas here Dru’s visions alone could explain her seeing Dawn. It’s an idea I’d like to give a whole fic of its own sometime.

He came back to her at dawn, weary, with dark purpling bruises and no green girl. “Slayer doesn’t have a sister,” he said.

This drabble is also the closest thing the fic has to humor — poor Spike, gone to steal a girl that doesn’t exist.

No good telling him that sometimes the pixies lied.

Again, the fallibility of the visions — through no fault of their own this time. Not Dru’s fault the reality she’s seeing won’t have existed for another three years.

***

“Time’s all the same to you,” Spike said, soft, like rose petals, like eyelids, as though words could comfort when the heavens fell silent.

More flower references. This drabble is actually a bit of a cheat — the basic gist of Spike’s speech was an outtake from Seraph, which I then built a drabble around. So, um, yay for recycling?

Also, it occurs to me that between this and Spike’s comment about Dawn above, he’s actually the only character in this fic with directly quoted dialogue. Appropriate, I suppose, since he does talk so much.

“‘Now’ is just a glass you see through. The world mostly doesn’t change to someone seeing it all at once. You’re not even in the world, not really — there’s not a thing in it that can change you.”

He laughed, low. “You’re the real immortal. The rest of us — Angel, me, Darla when she was still about — we’re only pretending at eternity.”

Drusilla: the most static recurring character in the Buffyverse. These two paragraphs above are pretty much my distillation of how I see Dru as a character, which seemed justification enough for including them in the fic.

She let him feather kisses along her collarbone and hoped the stars sang soon.

Yep. Spike showers her with sweet nothings and his usual insight, and she’s barely paying attention. And yet it’s a relationship that worked for a hundred years.

***

Mostly she knew things from the pixies or the stars or the crawling things, but sometimes, like now, she dreamed. It was her party, she saw, the table all arranged and the presents heaped in stacks. Vines wound verdant round the chairs. The Slayer walked in, white, radiant, and when the blade was pressed to Angel’s throat how sweetly the Slayer screamed.

Awake, she cried, for there were blossoms draping the vines where there should be none. But dear Spike saw them taken away, and once they were gone the Slayer came, just as she’d dreamed: an extra special present.

The second direct canonical mention of Dru and flowers is in “Surprise,” when she begins tearing at the flower decorations prepared for her party. “I can’t abide them,” she says. Watching the ep really carefully, it turns out that in Buffy’s dream at the beginning of the episode, there are no flowers on the chairs. Later, when she and Angel actually show up at the factory, the flowers have been removed (on Spike’s orders), and the green viney decorations are again bare. This, combined with Dru’s later comment to Buffy (“I only dreamed you’d come”), pretty much confirms to me that Dru actually experienced Buffy’s dream with her. I’m still working on theories for what that means, and why, if it means anything, the fact was made so obscure.

At any rate, here I simply let Dru view the flowers as sort of cause-and-effect — in order for the events of the dream to occur, the setting must be the same. She insists that the flowers be removed in order to bring the dream about.

If I had any really cool meta insight into canon in the writing of this fic, this was it.

***

When the wineskin tore, she tore, too, ripping open from crown to soles, although there was no blood. It was all on the inside. The pixies told her it was Angel being torn, and she remembered about the wine flowing free but not what it meant, only that it was wonderfully bad. She must wait to find out.

This is the scene in “Innocence” when Dru is physically struck with the knowledge that something has happened to Angel, but she doesn’t know what.

After the pixies had sewn her up again — but not the wineskin, that took stronger thread than theirs — she waited, teasing the stars, until Angel came. Then she remembered: new wine bursts old wineskins. Now, finally, she might taste the wine again.

Dun dun dun. Angel has lost his soul; the wine/evil is flowing free again. This is the one original metaphor/symbol that I used in the fic more than once. It seemed to refer very nicely to Dru’s pre-turning plans to enter a convent, although I’ve never been able to decide if the wine/evil, wineskin/soul parallel works.

***

Angel meant to play with the Slayer’s mother, pleasant games of bruises and then blood. Wasps buzzed to her: the empty-veined delivery boy’s strange camouflage, lamb’s wool for the wolf. An arm bent wrong and a forced invitation. Angel taunting, teasing. Sour fear turned to struggle, little trapped rabbit. Lamp broken, oil spilt, spark lit.

Angel and the woman, both ash.

A pretty fire, oh yes. How the Slayer would rage and weep.

But … Angel.

Ice skaters, she suggested, shiny and sweet. Can’t we eat them? Leave the woman for another night.

Laughing, he agreed, never knowing how he’d burned.

And this right here would be the condensed drabble version of the original fic. Angel tricks his way into the Summers’ house, plays with Joyce for a while, and gets burned to death; then Dru decides she doesn’t actually want that to happen, and distracts him.

This is really the only drabble in the entire fic in which Dru’s visions help her effectively, with no unfortunate side effects. That makes me a little sad, because the original fic really was all about Joyce’s success killing Angelus and Dru’s success saving him, and this remix is all about failure. Alas.

***

She told Angel how the Slayer had fallen ill. She knew just what room, how many flights of stairs. Yet he’d come back snarling of white knights, and he’d done nothing.

It makes sense that Dru’s visions accomplish more in S2 than is actually acknowledged onscreen; this is my example. After Buffy ends up in the hospital in “Killed by Death,” there’s no particular reason it couldn’t have been Dru who knew where Angelus should go.

The “white knight” comment refers to the Faceoff of Awesome between Angelus and Xander in the hallway. One of the best Xander moments of the series, IMO.

Delicious tendrils of power wound round his voice when he talked of hurting the Slayer, but she began to believe he wouldn’t. Perhaps — still bewitched by the foul, bright Slayer? — he couldn’t.

But he could end the world. A jaybird had said it: the Slayer was in the world. End it and end the Slayer, too.

The stars whispered of a block of stone, and she began to listen.

Maybe this was why Dru thought ending the world would be a good idea: because neither of her boys had managed to get rid of the Slayer any other way. The “jaybird” is Spike, of course, from back in “Innocence,” I think, talking to Angelus about the Judge. And the block of stone is Acathla, the world’s world-endingest gargoyle.

***

They ’d all wilted, her daisies and her pale, glistening jasmine. Every blossom she’d planted drooped on its stem.

Now we come back to the gardening metaphor from the beginning. The jasmine mention is a reference to there apparently being jasmine in the garden at the mansion, as mentioned in “I Only Have Eyes For You” — the last canonical connection between Dru and flowers.

A whiff of char hung about Spike even after he bathed and bathed again, and she tried not to think of how he’d got it scorching himself on the Slayer’s fire, helping to send Angel away. Now Angel was gone, and even the stars couldn’t say where. The world still wasn’t ended, and somewhere the Slayer laughed.

The “whiff of char” and “scorching” are the beginning of the end of Spike/Dru, and in particular refer to her declaration in “Fool For Love” that he tastes “like ashes.” The rest of the paragraph describes how badly all her hopes have failed

She clung to Spike and pretended pleasure at the scarlet bouquets they gathered, and tried to forget how everything she put in the ground withered and died.

And here, finally, we get to the line from “School Hard” that I’d been trying to get to from the very beginning of the fic.

Poor Dru.

END

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