Buffy/Angel vs Clark/Lana and why they're so similar

[liliaeth]

Rather amusing, and somewhat lacking in importance...
I was reading the digest for Nummy Treats, a viddinglist I'm on at yahoo groups and someone made a vid that I didn't bother to download. (sorry, B/A tends to leave me so cold that I don't bother wasting bandwith on it, unless there's spuffy in the vid as well, or unless it is to show how wrong B/A is*eg*)

Anyway, there was this new vid, 'celebrating' and comparing the similarities between Buffy/Angel and Clark/Lana and I couldn't help thinking how apt that really is.
I mean, both ships are advertised as the main hero's first 'true love', they're both highschool crushes, they're both destined to end.

See, that's where the funny crept in, cause no matter how much you enjoy Clark/Lana (something I've never really understood, Clark/Lex for me*g*), there's always that voice in the back of your mind saying, but she's not his real true love. Not the person he'll end up with, not the person that he'll love for the rest of his life.

Anyone who knows even a little about Superman, knows that Clark's true love is Lois Lane. A woman who up to season three (four?, not sure) had never even been shown on the series. Lois is snappy, slightly adversarial when they first meet (in the comics at least, don't know anything about the series beyond season 2), but in the end, she's destined to be Clark's wife and the love of his life (so far at least*eg*)

See there's the funny, B/A is also advertized as being this 'great love' (pukes), yet in reality, Angel hasn't really been there for her since season four. Buffy, like Clark will, has moved on. First to Riley, and then to Spike.

I'm not saying that Spike is Buffy's Lois, I'd want him to be. I want them to get back together and end up happily ever after. Or at least together to share their better and worse ;-)
But to ask for such is a dream, (esp. in the Jossverse) which I'm not stupid enough to be fanatic about.
But see, in the end, Clark didn't go back to Lana, just like Buffy won't go back to Angel.

So yeah, that vid is kinda wellsuited for those two relationships.
(not that I'd want to ever end up with S/A being compared to Lex/Lana, cause Lana really really bores me*eg*)

Comments

[trude.livejournal.com]

Hi. Sorry for barging in. Found this via someones friendslist.
I'm a Buffy/Angel-shipper (not in a "OMG! They're the most romantic couple EVER! They should live happily ever after!"-way, but I enjoyed watching them more than I enjoyed Buffy/Riley or Buffy/Spike) and I don't enjoy Clark/Lana at all. While I think the similarities you listed exist, I also think there are some significant differences between the two couples.

1. Apart from the romantic part, the characters have quite different functions. Clark is on his way to find his mission in life (and he has still a long way to go there), Buffy has known her basic mission since day one. Lana is a comparatively normal person, Angel is anything but normal.

2. Buffy and Angel are partners in a way Clark and Lana never has been. While there is a large amount of angst and schmoop in the B/A-storyline, on of Angels functions was to help Buffy, both with his strength and with his knowledge about the demon world. Lana doesn't even know Clark's secret, and way too often her main function seems to be to stare wistfully at Clark or be saved by him.

3. While Angel left Buffy at a relatively early stage (and even if that only happened because DB was leaving, I think that was the right thing for the character and the show to do), there is no supertext reason for them to remain apart forever. Technically, "Not Fade Away" COULD have ended with an epilogue where Angel shanshus after all, marries Buffy and they spend the rest of their lives together in their romantic villa in Tuscany. A lot of viewers (me included) would have found that a really stupid ending for various reasons, but "because in all previous major versions of this story, Buffy has ended up with Spike/Xander/Faith/whomever" would not have been among those reason.


No reason for you or anyone else not liking of being indifferent to both Buffy/Angel and Clark/Lana, though. :-)

[liliaeth]

I guess my main problem in this is, where you call Buffy and Angel partners. They weren't.
On Buffy, Angel was the older man who hung around, got a crush on a highschoolgirl and abandonned her when it was made clear why it wouldn't work.
(sorry, but I really really despise B/A)

My main issue with B/A, compared to C/L, which is just boring, is that B/A makes Buffy look bad.
It turns her from a competent leader, fighter, ... into a starstruck little girl without a clue about anything.
See, Angel wants to be in charge, Cordelia can handle that, make him think he's the boss, while she's got him wound around her little finger. Buffy on the other hand doesn't. If they got together again, they'd both fall into the illusions they have about one another for a short while, till those could no longer last, and then they'd start fighting, and possibly kill one another.
Because they share too many of the same personalitiy faults.
They're both somewhat self centered, both need to be in charge and they're both high maintenance. Honestly, they wouldn't last a month if their relationship had to be more than sneaking out for a quick rendez vouz, or a 'Buffy you're in danger' kinda message.

[trude.livejournal.com]

I guess my main problem in this is, where you call Buffy and Angel partners. They weren't.
Not a healthy partnership all of the time, and not one that would have lasted - but compared to Clark and Lana they definitively had one.

It turns her from a competent leader, fighter, ... into a starstruck little girl without a clue about anything.
She was 16 when they met. Some 16-year olds aren't very emotionally mature. And she seems perfectly capable to make stupid choices after he leaves, too.

I don't disagree with you that both of them probably had a better chance to end up in a happy long-term relationship with someone else than they had with each other, though.

[liliaeth]

Sorry for being a bit harsh in my previous response. B/A tends to get a really bad rise out of me*g*, worse even than an attack on B/S ;-)

It's weird really, it's not that B/A leaves me indifferent, it's that I actively despise the ship. Even if I could see Spike with someone else, and be happy for him, or hell, even see Buffy happy with someone other than Spike(even if I'll always prefer her with Spike), the idea of B/A getting together would infuriate me beyond anything. Because B/A degrades Buffy.

See, I agree that Clark/Lana and Buffy/Angel aren't that alike. C/L is an innocent ship with two children getting a crush, it's boring, harmless and easy to ignore. B/A on the other hand destroyed Buffy and turned her into a closed off little girl. It harmed her character more than any ship on any show I've ever seen for any which character.
Even in S7 we still saw the aftereffects of B/A on Buffy, the standoffishness, the constant fear to lose her friends if she put a step wrong, fear to really connect.
I like to believe that Spike healed her from that. That the Buffy at the end of Chosen was capable of loving again, which is why she was able to tell Spike she loved him. (finally and for the first time in years) But even despite that, she's still that scattered little girl that Angel left behind, leaving Spike like usual to pick up the shards and build her up again, like he had to do for Dru before.
(sorry, my spuffyness coming through again)

Either way, I can in no way see B/A as a good thing. Neither of them really knows the other.
Angel sees Buffy as a little girl, naive, childish, which she hasn't been in years.
%

[liliaeth]

While Buffy sees Angel as a white knight, which he couldn't be further removed from.
And the thing is, neither of them bothered to actually get to know the other. As far as I've seen them in both series, neither of them ever cared to try and get to know the other. Cause it's not really the other that they're interested in regaining.

And there I'm off again.
Geez, I used to think it was weird to be anti a ship, still think so on occasion, but B/A for many many reasons just pisses me off too much.

[trude.livejournal.com]

I've only seen the first five seasons and the first ten episodes or so of season six. I've read about what happens afterward, but I can't make a final judgment on say, Buffy and Spike.

B/A on the other hand destroyed Buffy and turned her into a closed off little girl.
See, I think that while the relationship with Angel hurt Buffy, it wasn't enough in itself to break her. (One of my favorite B/A-scenes is in "The Yoko Factor" when he comes to her dorm and they have a quarrel about Riley etcetera - and then start laughing and realize that they both have moved on with their lives.) But before she lost Angel Buffy lost all meaningful contact with her father, and she lost Kendra and Faith. After that, she lost Riley in a really painful and humiliating way, she lost her mother, she gained Dawn (whom she loves and who loves her, but who nevertheless is a huge responsibility she really didn't need), Willow and Xander screwed up their friendship by dragging her out of heaven, Giles abandoned her. (And while some of those losses can be connected to Angel, a lot of them can't.) All of this turned Buffy into a closed of little girl.

This is interesting to ponder, and I don't think you've been to harsh, but since I'm unlikely to make you change your mind, and have no interest in doing so, it's OK for me if we agree to disagree here.

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

Ah, Clark/Lana. You've hit on something that makes me want to smash my TV and stab things violently here, and I'm only a casual Smallville viewer.

I think there are some superficial resemblances between B/A and C/L--idealized first high school love, both partners idealizing the other without really knowing them, doomed, blah blah blah. There are also a lot of differences, but I think they had more to do with the respective qualities of the shows than with the relationships themselves.

At least Buffy and Angel had a relationship. They spent time together, fought demons together, consummated their physical relationship as people are wont to do, and so forth. I'm not a fan of B/A 4EVA (I ship S/B), but it was an important part of Buffy's life that forever shaped who she was, and it also had a major impact on Angel finding his direction and his mission, which ultimately led him away from Buffy.

Clark and Lana, not so much. They had a bunch of severely awkward flirtations and longing looks that started and ended at the same point. I've never seen them have an actual conversation. All of their working together to fight the kryptofreak of the week was a result of the fact that the kryptofreak of the week is always stalking Lana; it was always chance. Any growth the characters have undergone has been because of forces outside the "relationship;" the "relationship" is kind of an emotional time warp where nothing ever changes. It's extraordinarily boring. Thank god the Luthors are on the show to give it some emotional nuance.

But, I rant. Really, I think the difference in the two boils down to the vastly superior writing on Buffy, where relationships between characters had depth and emotional nuance and actions had consequences and reverberations that could carry down through seasons. B/A was doomed, but it was sad, and it marked both characters profoundly. C/L is doomed, but it was never anything to start with but a bunch of angst set to the week's feature teen rock single, and it bores me to tears and won't they please make it stop? Although I generally don't have very many inclinations towards slash, I totally gravitate towards Clark/Lex because it's the only relationship Clark can have that would actually have some emotional nuance.

[liliaeth]

Oh I agree completely.
I find Lana one of the most boring characters on television and that's saying something*g*
And the Clark/Lana pairing is utterly lifeless. Hell you don't even have to be a slasher to realize that there's a million times more depth put into the Clark/Lex connection, than they ever tried to put in Clark/Lana.

This might of course also be because of the history, both future and past, and because Lana serves no real purpose other than get the pink bedroom crowd to watch.
At least Chloe is interesting beyond how you can pair her with Clark, and that's something I've never been able to say about Lana.

For a show that knows it'll never make any of it's shippers happy, they really don't even seem to be trying to bring Lana to life.

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

For a show that knows it'll never make any of it's shippers happy, they really don't even seem to be trying to bring Lana to life.

I guess the B/Aers at least had some hope. It wasn't totally predetermined, even if it was set up as a doomed romance from the start. But, yeah, as doomed as it was, it was at least interesting. What really scares me is that they seem to be trying to bring Lana to life this season, and it's not working at all. In fact, it's both boring and horrifying, all at the same time, which I would have thought was impossible. Then again, my bedroom is not pink. :)