It's DEFINITELY the monkey crack talking, right?

I like it better with Faith. I dunno, with Illyria, it could just get really, really preachy. But cool nonetheless, since Illyria=HOT.

Read it anyway. IJS. It's not like other comics. It's JOSS!

This just makes the potential for backsliding worse. Because if it's good, then I'll want to poke around and see who ELSE might be doing good stuff these days, and I'll find much swill and a few gems, and I'll spend much time seeking out the gems and....it'll just end ugly. Me in the gutter with a brown paper bag full of crappy comics.

If you are a good person, you will not sell me another comic.

(You want to come play City of Heroes with me, though, I'm on server -- what else -- "Champion" :)

Because if it's good, then I'll want to poke around and see who ELSE might be doing good stuff these days,

Winick, Grayson, Simone, Rucka.

The ending - I didn't love it, but I can accept it. Because it wasn't a cop-out. But I can tell you how it ends. The fight gets interrupted. Maybe the SPs realize they can't unleash umpteen thousand bad dudes on the world without killing the underlying project. Otherwise they'd have released their baddies before. So they suck them back into the hole (like the Gift). Maybe the PTB send their minions to protect them (because the SPs are no longer playing "fair"), or maybe Connor shows up again and asspulls them all to safety. The point is, there's no way they win that battle (without a super-dooper amulet), and there's no way they go down in a blaze of glory either. They'll survive.

Wolfram, I love this premise. I'm not ready to let these people go, and this seems reasonable, for lack of a better word. It's all based on the show's lore. Now if someone could figure out a way to wank Wesley back to life, I'd be happy.

I still haven't processed that last night was the end. I want to watch it again, but I don't know if I can. What am I saying? Of course I will. Pain is my friend, and Joss knows how to dish it up in the exact quantities guaranteed to hurt the worst.

Pain is my friend

Maria, can I tag this?

and I want Illyria to tell it to him. (What? She can survive! Someone gets to tell the tale!)

It may be a completely spurious connection, but when I saw that posted, all I could think was:

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

(Hamlet, 5.2)

My take on the ending is that it was appropriate--the way it was always supposed to go down. Angel and the survivors were finally free to get to the business of getting rid of the bad guys. This is what they know -- not board rooms and paperwork, but freakin' dragons and armies of doom. In a certain vein, In my mind they win because they choose to fight.

Last season Angel told Faith about never completely atoning, and that it went on every day. The Shanshu Prophecy was at best, misplaced hope, and at worst, an outright lie. The neatness the prophecy embodied seemed inconsistent with what I think is one of the paramount iron rules of the Jossverse -- NOTHING is gained by the protagonists that easy. There is a price for everything, and it gets higher depending on that that everything happens to be at a given time.

And so the finale dealt with "the Price." Buffy's finale did much of the same thing.

Maria, can I tag this?

Absolutely, Stephanie. My first tag. Squee! And congrats on selling the house...

Hm. How about a "Faith/Spike/Illyria on motorcycles, fighting crime/stuff/whatever" show? I would so watch that.

Hm. How about a "Faith/Spike/Illyria on motorcycles, fighting crime/stuff/whatever" show? I would so watch that.

Spikey's Angels.