Ship Manifesto: Faith/Wes - Angel
Aug. 18th, 2005 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seldearThis ship should so be called "Totally Dysfunctional To You."
Faith/Wes - Angel
I freely acknowledge that this relationship is completely dysfunctional.
In fact, the sheer dysfunction of them is what makes Wes/Faith so deliciously poignant as a pairing.
One Slayer too many and one Watcher more than necessary - both Faith and Wes are surplus to requirement in the Buffyverse. And that is their tragedy, both as individuals and as a Slayer/Watcher pairing.
When we first meet Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, he's a pansy-assed, limp-wristed, blouse-wearing girly-man who's about as much help in a fight as a soggy tissue. He's manifestly incapable of dealing with Buffy, and Buffy's considerably more toned-down in attitude than Faith.
On the other hand we have Faith, who's raw and painful, angry and bitter. She's got darkness and passion in her soul and Slaying is what gets it all out. Well, slaying and sex.
Her initial reaction to him is pure dismissal: "New Watcher?" Faith asks as her eye lights on Wesley. "Screw that." And she's out of there like a bat out of hell.
In Season 3 of BtVS, Faith and Wesley are severely dysfunctional with self-esteem and trust issues like whoa. Wesley tries to have her put away when she goes bad, and naturally, Faith objects in typical Faith-like style - which is to say she really goes beserk.
Things aren't much better between them in Season 1 of Angel, where Faith tortures Wesley, scraping her nails down the blackboard of his self-esteem in an attempt to draw Angel out of hiding. But the crux of the matter comes when Angel refuses to take Faith out, to kill her as she so badly wants him to do.
Faith goes to jail, and is largely forgotten in the Buffyverse. Wesley, on the other hand, begins to find his own niche at Angel Investigations, even running the agency for a while. For three years, all is silent from Faith other than a single cameo where she discusses the question of redemption with Angel.
Then, in Season 4 of Angel, Angelus comes back, and Wesley calls the Slayer out to help.
This is the point at which the fat starts to sizzle in the pan. Wesley, after a momentary despair, calls in the one person he knows owes a debt to Angel; the one person he can trust to capture Angelus without trying to stake the souled-vampire-gone-bad-again. Faith.
More than that, Wesley breaks Faith out of prison. Well, he gives her incentive, and more or less doesn't try to stop her or talk her out of it. From Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, that's a lot.
Wesley's changed in the three seasons since Faith tortured him. He's dealt with a few of his demons, gained some degree of competence, and has worked out that even if he's not the Champion, he can do assistant very effectively. Nevertheless, the man who speaks with Faith through the glass of the visitor's room in prison is very different from the man she tied up and tortured. And she notices it immediately with typically Faith-like directness: "You look...good."
She's not the girl she used to be, either; she doesn't want out of here, doesn't want to save the world. But the realisation that Angel is gone and Angelus is back produces a stillness in her as she realises that want is not the same as need. She doesn't want to go back into the Slaying gig, but they need her back to find Angelus. And with the words, "Stand back," everything changes.
The look on Wes' face as she punches out the guards is priceless. He's asking himself what he's done in letting her loose, but she doesn't give him time for regrets. Within an instant, they're out of the window and away in a successful jailbreak.
What follows is a massive change in dynamic between them. They're not exactly friends, but they're no longer enemies. The chips they wore on their shoulders back when they first met are gone, and they can work together for a common goal - and do it well.
In the intervening years, Wesley has found the darkness he needed to understand what ran in a Slayer like Faith. He needed to know where she'd been in order to draw her back - and the Wesley we first met in BtVS was fresh out of Watcher School. In fact, the darkness in him seems to have outdone the darkness in her. He has no compunction about torturing a woman to get information out of her, and Faith regards him with shock and more than a little revulsion at the man whose remaking began under the edge of her glass shard.
By the end of the 'Hunting Angelus' arc (Salvage, Calvary, Orpheus), Faith and Wes are compatriots; Slayer and Watcher, almost friends, although not quite. And the possibilities are limitless.
Faith spoke of the 'post-slaying hornies' back in the first days of her appearance in the show. Sex and violence are two things that drive this young woman, and there's always been a question of just exactly what kind of relationship exists between a Watcher and his Slayer.
Wes has shown himself amenable to walking on the dark side of relationships. His first girlfriend, Virginia, was initially a casual screw. His interest in Fred took too long to emerge and he was trumped by Gunn's interest. But when Lilah Morgan offered him her body and work at Wolfram and Hart, he wasn't terribly slow at taking her up on it.
Wes/Faith is one of those relationships that tickles my fancy for the pure insanity of it. It seems impossible that it might actually work out, and yet the idea of these two people , with all their ghosts of the past and their issues of the present, actually getting together, acknowledging their dysfunctionality, and making it work is hard to resist.
I consider Wes' introspection and preparation balancing out Faith's impulsiveness and her need to be in action. Her pithy humour would strike sparks against his dry understatement; and who better to deal with the unwanted Slayer than the unnecessary Watcher? At the point of their re-meeting, they're not in the fight under the roles in which they began. She's not Slaying, he's not Watching.
But they could. And the possibilities are delightful to work with.
Even if they're just a little scary.
--
Next up, the much-dismissed Sheppard/Teyla of Atlantis.
Faith/Wes - Angel
I freely acknowledge that this relationship is completely dysfunctional.
In fact, the sheer dysfunction of them is what makes Wes/Faith so deliciously poignant as a pairing.
One Slayer too many and one Watcher more than necessary - both Faith and Wes are surplus to requirement in the Buffyverse. And that is their tragedy, both as individuals and as a Slayer/Watcher pairing.
When we first meet Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, he's a pansy-assed, limp-wristed, blouse-wearing girly-man who's about as much help in a fight as a soggy tissue. He's manifestly incapable of dealing with Buffy, and Buffy's considerably more toned-down in attitude than Faith.
On the other hand we have Faith, who's raw and painful, angry and bitter. She's got darkness and passion in her soul and Slaying is what gets it all out. Well, slaying and sex.
Her initial reaction to him is pure dismissal: "New Watcher?" Faith asks as her eye lights on Wesley. "Screw that." And she's out of there like a bat out of hell.
In Season 3 of BtVS, Faith and Wesley are severely dysfunctional with self-esteem and trust issues like whoa. Wesley tries to have her put away when she goes bad, and naturally, Faith objects in typical Faith-like style - which is to say she really goes beserk.
Things aren't much better between them in Season 1 of Angel, where Faith tortures Wesley, scraping her nails down the blackboard of his self-esteem in an attempt to draw Angel out of hiding. But the crux of the matter comes when Angel refuses to take Faith out, to kill her as she so badly wants him to do.
Faith goes to jail, and is largely forgotten in the Buffyverse. Wesley, on the other hand, begins to find his own niche at Angel Investigations, even running the agency for a while. For three years, all is silent from Faith other than a single cameo where she discusses the question of redemption with Angel.
Then, in Season 4 of Angel, Angelus comes back, and Wesley calls the Slayer out to help.
This is the point at which the fat starts to sizzle in the pan. Wesley, after a momentary despair, calls in the one person he knows owes a debt to Angel; the one person he can trust to capture Angelus without trying to stake the souled-vampire-gone-bad-again. Faith.
More than that, Wesley breaks Faith out of prison. Well, he gives her incentive, and more or less doesn't try to stop her or talk her out of it. From Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, that's a lot.
Wesley's changed in the three seasons since Faith tortured him. He's dealt with a few of his demons, gained some degree of competence, and has worked out that even if he's not the Champion, he can do assistant very effectively. Nevertheless, the man who speaks with Faith through the glass of the visitor's room in prison is very different from the man she tied up and tortured. And she notices it immediately with typically Faith-like directness: "You look...good."
She's not the girl she used to be, either; she doesn't want out of here, doesn't want to save the world. But the realisation that Angel is gone and Angelus is back produces a stillness in her as she realises that want is not the same as need. She doesn't want to go back into the Slaying gig, but they need her back to find Angelus. And with the words, "Stand back," everything changes.
The look on Wes' face as she punches out the guards is priceless. He's asking himself what he's done in letting her loose, but she doesn't give him time for regrets. Within an instant, they're out of the window and away in a successful jailbreak.
What follows is a massive change in dynamic between them. They're not exactly friends, but they're no longer enemies. The chips they wore on their shoulders back when they first met are gone, and they can work together for a common goal - and do it well.
In the intervening years, Wesley has found the darkness he needed to understand what ran in a Slayer like Faith. He needed to know where she'd been in order to draw her back - and the Wesley we first met in BtVS was fresh out of Watcher School. In fact, the darkness in him seems to have outdone the darkness in her. He has no compunction about torturing a woman to get information out of her, and Faith regards him with shock and more than a little revulsion at the man whose remaking began under the edge of her glass shard.
By the end of the 'Hunting Angelus' arc (Salvage, Calvary, Orpheus), Faith and Wes are compatriots; Slayer and Watcher, almost friends, although not quite. And the possibilities are limitless.
Faith spoke of the 'post-slaying hornies' back in the first days of her appearance in the show. Sex and violence are two things that drive this young woman, and there's always been a question of just exactly what kind of relationship exists between a Watcher and his Slayer.
Wes has shown himself amenable to walking on the dark side of relationships. His first girlfriend, Virginia, was initially a casual screw. His interest in Fred took too long to emerge and he was trumped by Gunn's interest. But when Lilah Morgan offered him her body and work at Wolfram and Hart, he wasn't terribly slow at taking her up on it.
Wes/Faith is one of those relationships that tickles my fancy for the pure insanity of it. It seems impossible that it might actually work out, and yet the idea of these two people , with all their ghosts of the past and their issues of the present, actually getting together, acknowledging their dysfunctionality, and making it work is hard to resist.
I consider Wes' introspection and preparation balancing out Faith's impulsiveness and her need to be in action. Her pithy humour would strike sparks against his dry understatement; and who better to deal with the unwanted Slayer than the unnecessary Watcher? At the point of their re-meeting, they're not in the fight under the roles in which they began. She's not Slaying, he's not Watching.
But they could. And the possibilities are delightful to work with.
Even if they're just a little scary.
--
Next up, the much-dismissed Sheppard/Teyla of Atlantis.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-19 07:28 pm (UTC)