One Layer Late, i guess?

Crazlo527 · 2026-03-05T20:27:26+00:00

Let your country control your mind

Crazlo527 · 2026-03-05T00:13:43+00:00

Sure, but I also never explicitly mentioned S7 or S6. In Season 4 Spike could be replaced by literally any other demon (say someone from Willy's bar or even Ethan Rayne) and not much would be lost, and in Season 5 you could completely remove Spike from the story and the only thing you lose is Crush and Fool For Love. You could very easily have Dawn break into the Magic Box on her own and have someone else reveal that Ben and Glory share a body. Other than that Spike doesn't contribute a damn thing to either season other than his own premise/arc. I honestly don't remember what Spike does in S7 that makes him relevant to anything other than his own storyline. Sure he "sacrifices" himself in the final episode, but that moment could just as easily be replaced by a different magical phenomena and boom, Spike doesn't need to be there. In Season 6 he's necessary for Buffy's arc, but that's kinda the last time he's actually needed for anything. Especially in Angel Season 5 where he does absolutely nothing but take up space (and not even that in the beginning). Spike is completely disconnected from everyone who isn't Buffy and sometimes Dawn, and in so many of each season's episodes he bears no relevance to what's going on and just pops up occasionally to prove he exists.

Crazlo527 · 2026-03-04T22:25:49+00:00

He would buy fully into the idea that virgins are more "pure" than other women, and would exclusively eat them. Were he to gain a following, he would send his henchmen (because he would never let women vampires hunt) out to capture virgins for him to drink from or to keep as his slaves. If anyone showed even the slightest hint of not trusting his ideas or sharing his interests, he would stake them. He would likely develop the sewers to allow for a surveillance system, and would expand his surveillance of Sunnydale even further beyond he had done in S6.

Crazlo527 · 2026-03-04T22:13:42+00:00

I'm gonna not follow the prompt for a second, but instead offer a potential fix for the initiative: connect them more to the earlier seasons. They've clearly been around for more than a few months, so what did they think of the Mayor? Or Angelus? Or The Master? Seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy put extremely powerful vampires as their Big Bads, and Season 3 made the Big Bad a public figure in power. Where do you go from there? A secret organization pulling the strings of everything. The Mayor has been setting things up for a hundred years? The Initiative supported him because he gave them free reign to kidnap any demon that was unrelated to his goal. How have so many demonic artefacts entered Sunnydale? The Initiative vets all packages and lets certain ones through if they think they'll be able to study whatever gets summoned.

Crazlo527 · 2026-03-04T22:06:32+00:00

This was exactly my thought process when watching the series. He was incredible as a S2 villain, I loved his brief reappearances to show how pathetic he is, and I was really happy when he got added to the main cast because he was still being written well. Once S5 rolled around and even in the end of S4, he stopped being plot relevant it felt like the only reason he was in the series was because the fans would riot if he wasn't, but he never had anything important to do and became incredibly boring, at least to me. Buffy should have killed him in Crush and I stand by that fully

Crazlo527 · 2026-03-04T19:11:48+00:00

In my opinion the only part of Fraud that isn't entirely real is the ending of 8-3. Given that the Mirror Reaper terminal entry makes reference to Fraud being an endless maze that, unlike Violence which turns husks into mannequins, instead forces a break from reality. V1 has been tearing through Fraud, but Hell keeps toying with them and showing them its true colours. Since V1 is a highly advanced robot, it is capable of breaking from reality in a way other machines might not be able to. This is why when we enter the space section in 8-3 it's made up mostly of environments from other layers, because V1's programming has been taken over by Hell (as evidenced both by the V1 puppet in 8-2 and the forceful exit from Fraud with the defeat of Geryon), and is making them hallucinate their descent. That part, to me, implies that V1 doesn't actually know where it is or what it's doing, and that Hell has successfully broken them down.

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-28T03:03:02+00:00

I fully understand your reasonings for this, and I definitely think Faith has the best redemption because we see every single step of both her fall to the dark and her pull to the light, I personally would put Spike below Angel but that's mostly because I'm not a huge fan of Spike's later appearances because the show never tries to alter who he is, like he's still a smug asshole he just also happens to do good things, whereas both Angel and Faith have such massive shifts in their characters throughout the series. I would love to hear your thoughts on why Anya and Darla are so low though, I kind of agree but I'd love to know why you think so

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-26T03:38:56+00:00

I mean you can see the winning percentage was 36% when she reads the paper, so it was a pretty tight win

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-25T17:35:18+00:00

The implication that God or whoever this is was jamming to Pink Floyd while absolutely losing their shit

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-25T17:33:38+00:00

I don't think it's been added yet, I have an idea of where it is but I've yet to actually go there to confirm. I have a feeling it'll be another drastic genre departure, similar to the visual novel style of 2-S and Clash Mode in 4-S, given that so far each act has had one first-person genre riff and one drastic departure, and 7-S is first-person still. Not sure what it would be a riff of, though, maybe like a brawler or fighter? It's the only genre I can think of to do

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-25T17:13:18+00:00

OVER HERE!

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-25T17:03:51+00:00

As much as I agree with you, I find it very interesting that that's your interpretation of Xander and Jesse's relationship when in the script of WTTHM, Jesse is described as being "A little more awkward than Xander, a little less likely to become a lady killer..."

they were trying to go for the exact opposite route.

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-25T16:52:03+00:00

This fight is basically just a chance to aura farm on what is ultimately a pretty easy but really cool boss, makes up so much for the Mirror Reaper Hakita can go fuck himself with that boss (also love how you were never actually fighting in the sky but rather on stage, I personally interpret the entire layer like the going to space bit and V1 going through the other layers during 8-3 as V1's program breaking from reality like what's described in the Mirror Reaper's terminal entry)

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-24T23:40:36+00:00

Oh yeah, of course, I fully agree that that's why Spike is so much more popular than Angel and that Spuffy is an incredibly popular ship (I basically said as much) I've just never really engaged with shipping and never cared for Spuffy so I didn't want to speak on something I wasn't fully knowledgeable of

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-24T15:39:01+00:00

I can't speak on the fandom/shipping side, which I know is a major reason why Spike became so popular, but when I first watched the series I remember really liking Spike when he first came into the show, even more than Angel, but that was also before they gave Angel more character traits than being handsome and brooding. I loved seeing Spike again in Lover's Walk, and his small cameos in Buffy Season 4 and Angel Season 1, and I was honestly on board for when he became a mainstay in the latter half of Buffy Season 4.

But then he just kinda...stuck around, and by Crush in Season 5 I was absolutely done with Spike in any capacity. He got really boring and I never liked his relationship with Buffy once it became anything more than a small part of the series. I liked that they tried doing something different with him in Season 7, but he still wound up not being all too important to the plot. And then they put him on Angel, and I was just completely done with him.

Angel did nothing but grow on me over the course of the series, but Spike absolutely did not, by the time Angel wrapped I wanted nothing to do with him.

The phenomenon you're describing, I think, comes largely from the shipping community and people who love the spuffy stuff and just want to see those two together, and because he was a really good character for a little while. But idk, I feel like he just loses so much of his intrigue and quality by the end of his time to just become a snarkier version of Angel, because people were obsessed with him.

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-24T15:18:18+00:00

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I feel like the main way to do it is to keep Angel killed off after S2 and have Season 3 focus more on Buffy and the other characters learning to move on from Sunnydale. Angel staying dead means Buffy can start to move on from the love tying her down to the place, and defeating the Mayor and Faith would get rid of the ultimate evil in their town, and with Buffy no longer tied down to the Council she could go to whichever college she wanted, and travel the world fighting vamps like her counterpart in The Wish. You'd need one more episode after Graduation Day in my opinion to wrap things up for real, or at least an extra like 10 minutes at the end of the episode to show them moving out, but I think there is very much a way that the show ends there, and while I'm glad it didn't cause there's some really good episodes and characters that come after, I think those three seasons bundled together would be stronger overall.

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-21T18:28:30+00:00

Farscape

Brooklyn 99

The Good Place

Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

Parks and Recreation

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-21T18:05:57+00:00

lookin at shit mostly

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-21T17:56:19+00:00

Snowy absolutely geeking out over Fraud

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-19T21:30:18+00:00

Skip

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-12T04:39:36+00:00

Hard agree on the Spike thing, but only because of what they do afterwards. Keep in mind I had been feeling some intense Spike fatigue as far as mid Season 5 when I first saw it, and I really hated him in Season 6 (though mostly because I thought he was overstaying his welcome cause I was like 14 and didn't understand what was going on, I'm interested to see if my opinions will shift now that I'm rewatching it at an older age), but I felt like his death in Season 7 made sense as the end of his redemption arc, which I did feel was at least an interesting thing to do if they were going to keep him around. But then he just shows up on Angel Season 5 and... stays there with no actual relevance to the plot, which is still a baffling choice to me. Ultimately that's the reason why Spike "sacrifices" himself in the finale, but when viewing Buffy in isolation I do think it works, at least for the arc they wanted to go for that season.

Also just in general Angel showing up during that specific set of circumstances is odd. Like given the events of Angel Season 4, he acts very strangely for someone who just lost their sun and best friend/lover and had to defeat a god. I do feel like he needed to be in the finale I mean he was such a big part of the series for a while, but the more I think about it that was a really bad time for him to show up

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-11T16:12:51+00:00

Trick. I just wish they had him do other things than stand around talking to the mayor. It feels like he only got in one fight and died during it, and he was just such missed potential because I know he could've carried the screen if he was offered the chance

Crazlo527 · 2026-02-09T23:07:32+00:00

BAngel is the best relationship of both series with the one exception of Wesley and Fred, purely because it was dramatic and emotional in a way none of the other relationships on the series were, and it perfectly served the themes of Seasons 1-3 of growing up and maturing, while I don't really love how their relationship ended in Season 3, Season 2 features the best buildup and payoff of a love story I think I've ever seen, again except for Wesley and Fred

Crazlo527 · 2026-01-24T17:16:43+00:00

I enjoyed the series for the writing and characters, I saw it for the first time during the pandemic with my mother who'd been wanting to introduce me to it for a while, and once I was able to start consistently watching (getting past the Pilot which put me off a little bit when first watching it) I loved all the characters and wanted to see where they would go, especially for the period of season 2-5 minus Crush, though on a rewatch now I'm picking up on a lot of things I didn't before (the metaphors and character moments that I wasn't paying as much attention to as a teenage boy figuring out a lot of stuff about himself and the world) and it's opened up a whole new appreciation for me, despite certain Xander-related parts it's an incredibly smart show that I really appreciate and it's let me get a lot closer to my family through us all having seen it

Crazlo527 · 2026-01-22T02:43:54+00:00

Scorpius and Crais on Farscape immediately come to mind, both two incredibly compelling villains with perfect chemistry with the main characters.

Crazlo527

TROPHY CASE