Twilight's mask comes off. I remember this. I don't remember it in detail, but my head instinctively goes into my hands. The trauma. The pain. The cringe. I've never felt so betrayed by Joss until I read the single worst thing he's ever written. and it hurts, just like in 2020. except not i'm reading it with my fiance and it compounds the cringe.

Spike got his SOUL BACK FOR YOU. He died for YOUR CAUSE. And just like when Angel comes back to give her the amulet, it all goes out the window for captain fucking forehead and I'M PISSED. Not to mention the most painful sex I've ever had to witness. Painful in the sense of cringey. Also, is Buffy possessed by Twilight too? Because why in all fuck would she be superpower fucking her ex just because he says "don't you want to be happy?". He's not acting normal at all, and all of this is bombastically weird and makes very little sense and Buffy just does it without questioning it? Let's live in our own microuniverse? WHY?????? Help? Why? Joss what were you going through when you wrote this??? I couldn't have come up with something worse when I was writing fanfiction at 14. I know that's the worst hurdle in the comics but damn. At least there's swearing in the comics, though, I'm not complaining that, it's very realistic.

Okay and why is NO ONE concerned about angel losing his soul??? Everyone knows it's happening and no one asks. Buffy doesn't ask. I'm screaming at the pages for someone to ask bc I'm asking and it makes no sense. the chill days of me defending the writing choices of buffy and satsu and taking mecha dawn in comedy stride are over. what in the absolute fuck. I hate it so much.

so then we get to buffy rejecting this INSANITY finally and that's cool. fuck destiny and all that. there's my girl. my selfishly driven girl (and no, that's not a chracter trait the comics invented, i could write a dissertation on buffy's character flaws from the show, they just seem to be amplified in the comics). dawn is actually the only one who seems to be questioning everything so i'm now team dawn. and xander rejecting buffy. i like xander a lot in the comics.

The best thing about this volume is this:

But I fear, since it's the end before the last volume, that i will be SO FURIOUS about a lot of things said and done in the issues cooming up, since we will have Spike and Angel and Buffy all in the same room together, and I really hope they don't do to Spike what they did in s5 of Angel which is downplay how great he is to make captain boredom look better in comparison.

and GOD i miss lynch so much. i'm not sure if it's the people writing joss's ideas or writing with joss, because I know lynch wrote after the fall but it was joss's story, so I'm thinking maybe the people writing the comics might have made it worse (even if joss's story BEATS for this was already bad). I at least know whoever storyboarded made a god damn mess of it, because half the time i couldn't figure what was going on based on the drawings in the panels.