Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It was definitely an absurdly powerful spell, second only to Anya's Wish Universe. I preferred when Angel did the whole reality rewrite thing, as it was treated as a Deal with the devil and not just getting a tattoo.

Well, there are obviously some limitations in place on what such a spell can be used for (though we never get the specifics on what they are). The monks can rewrite reality to create Dawn and all the memories and physical evidence of her life, but can't do anything to actually kill or contain Glory. And Wolfram & Hart can do a similar spell to rewrite Connor's whole life, yet in all their efforts to corrupt Angel to their side, they seemingly never did a similar memory rewrite to make him more receptive to their offer.

Generally speaking, the worldbuilding in the Buffyverse isn't meant to hold up to much scrutiny. They do make an effort not to blatantly contradict past episodes, but if an episode's plot would be facilitated by some previously unmentioned and game breaking spell or monster showing up, then that's what'll happen.

P.S. Speaking of insanely powerful spells, if Willow was a little more careful with her wording, the "my will be done" spell from "Something Blue" could have been used to solve pretty much every problem.

I think Joss has stated the monks and Wolfram aren't actually altering reality.

They turned Dawn from a glowing object into a teenage girl and rewrote everyone's memories.

They didn't alter reality.

That's where the term "rewriting reality" is vaguely defined as a concept. Things like the multiverse or alternate timeline have more concrete examples, but a Reality Warper can mean anything from manipulating the perception of your environment/history to actual altering of space and matter.

It can't be just altering memories, though. Otherwise, where did all of Dawn's clothes come from?

Obviously, Dawn didn't own any clothes. She just had an illusion projecting them on to her every day.

Until later when she got some real clothes. But before then she was actually naked all the time - it is just that nobody could tell.

I don't see why it has to be either/or. It could just as easily be a combination of different things, turning the Key into a girl, turning a room in the Summers house into her bedroom and stocking it with entirely ordinary clothes, altering memories so it was as if she'd always been there. Anything before the memory change could've really been done in any order.

I guess it's sort of a Required Secondary Powers thing.

Well Buffy tried the spell that gave her the D&D Detect Magic ability, and was able to perceive a continuous, active glamour in their environment. Obviously the monks were able to create a new life (it's even said that other than her role as the Key, Dawn is functionally human in every respect), alter memories and cast an illusion in their everyday life. Magic, in and of itself, makes someone a Reality Warper by that concept.

Been a while since I saw that episode, but didn't that Detect Magic spell also cause Dawn herself to appear to fade in and out of existence to Buffy's sight? But Dawn's physical body is clearly no glamor; the Season 5 finale would make no sense otherwise.

I assume Dawn's clothes came from the same dream space that the rest of her room came from.

During "The Graduation, Part II", Faith foretells Dawn's arrival with the cryptic riddle, "Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0." 730 days equals out to two years, foretelling Dawn's arrival in season five.

...though because Dawn arrived at the beginning of season five and the dream was at the end of season three, it wasn't an exact estimate. In Buffy's second Dawn dream in "Restless", Tara notes a clock that reads 7:30 and comments that the time is wrong.

Buffy and Tara proceed to make the bed, setting up Dawn's room for her impending arrival while they chat.

In case the dream was too subtle, Tara then proceeds to tell Buffy to "be back before dawn" when the latter heads out to help her friends.

EDIT: No, wait, I might be misremembering. Dream logic is weird. The 730 is a reference to when Buffy dies. Faith is telling her that two years from today, she is going to die, and that "Little Miss Muffet" Dawn will be responsible.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 13th 2018 at 7:27:48 AM

The monks would have to have powerful magic because they would also need conjure up school records, health insurance history, alter the memories of high school freshmen back in Buffy's old home, alter the memories of Buffy's extended family, bill history to compensate paying for two mouths to feed, and create roughly 5000 days worth of backstory detailed enough for the key for this plan to not have any holes

Judging by the resources sunk by Wolfram and Hart into Angel's signing bonus, big league reality shifts appear both immensely difficult and taxing, as well as relatively fragile-Buffy is able to see through the Key's using an easy-bake recipe spell, prepared by someone with very little magical aptitude. Over in Angel, that reality shift can be undone by a fairly minor spell, or simply ignored by a powerful enough entity like Illyria.

And we know they put in the effort because Angelus, over in Angel's show, knew who Dawn was. This is true despite the fact that it was an explicit plot point that Angelus would know about the Beast since not being the dominant identity at the time protected him from a reality-warping memory wipe that eradicated all reference to the creature.

They brought out Angelus specifically because he was unaffected by reality-warps and he popped out having absolutely no questions about Dawn being a thing that exists.

Those monks worked some solid voodoo.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 18th 2018 at 9:05:20 AM

Angelus remembering the Beast might have been deliberate on Jasmine's part, since it would prompt Angel Investigations to de-soul Angel to get information, thus distracting them further from her real plans.

Though I'm still kinda pissed about how so much of Season 4 was literally pointless conflict put there just to keep everyone distracted.

Edited by RavenWilder on Aug 18th 2018 at 4:15:27 AM

Well, they're monks, right? Maybe they had a spare miracle lying around from one of the Powers That Be. Look at the way wish demons work — that kind of power exists, it's just a matter of how it's allocated. Whatever gets you there, plot-wise.

It would've been kind of interesting if Anya had been able to see the seams around Dawn before anyone else.

I really did like the starting point they had for Angel Season 4 — they'd written themselves into a corner, but it was an interesting corner. Sadly they just didn't seem to have any ideas for getting out of it. I'm always going to feel like unceremoniously killing off Lilah and Gavin was a wasted opportunity, that having Angelus back is cool but seems oddly abrupt and kind of irrelevant, the Beast is intensely generic, and while I do like those 3 or 4 episodes where everyone gets Jasmined, it doesn't quite make up for the rest of the season pretty much going nowhere.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 19th 2018 at 10:08:15 AM

It's really a testament to how unsure they were of where they were going or how to proceed that they implemented a plot point about creating peace on Earth by robbing people of their free will and enslaving their minds to worship a messianic figure, then decided that didn't sound sinister enough and hedged their bets with "Um, also, she eats people, I guess?"

Jasmine didn't need to eat people. She didn't need to abandon a world that once worshipped her for reasons. The premise we were presented with initially was horrifying enough. It just needed more time to be explored.

And I agree that Lilah and Gavin's deaths were a waste. The following season with Angel's crew running Wolfram and Hart would have been so much more interesting with those two still around.

Lilah maybe but Gavin was really just a poor man's Lindsey.

As for Jasmine needing to eat people, maybe they wanted to avoid a Misaimed Fandom problem with her. You'd be surprised how often audiences take stuff like free will for granted.

Edited by windleopard on Aug 19th 2018 at 6:37:03 AM

No, no. Gavin wasn't like Lindsey at all. Admittedly he hadn't really been given much in the way of explicit characterization yet, but Gavin was a utter weasel who was in way over his head, without any of Lindsey's ambivalence. But I liked the idea of a character who got ahead at Wolfram & Hart by virtue of kissing enough ass and being just that good at the finer points of mundane law that he could compete with Lilah's cunning and manipulation. Like, that would've funny to me. Different aspects of being a lawyer.

Now there's a comment on humanity — she eradicates free will, she doesn't eat people, but she does look horrifying underneath her glamour, and she can't keep her hold on the world once they've seen her for what she is — but is it because they're rightfully horrified by the idea of stamping out all individuality in exchange for a pliable, peaceful human race, or simply because they look at her and see a monster? Like, how much horror are you willing to put up with in the name of doing your god's will? Cynical, but that's the kind of thought that lingers, the kind of question about humanity's underlying morality that twists in your gut at night.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 19th 2018 at 11:35:26 AM

I think one of the biggests missteps of season 5 was dropping zombie!Lilah. Having her as the initial liaison to the Senior Partners as a non-negotiable transition package would have been sooo much better than what we got. She can still be replaced late in the series by Hamilton, perhaps because the Senior Partners are worried the group has gotten too good at tuning out/avoiding/sidestepping Lilah. They actually addressed this in the comics-they considered zombifying Lindsey to act as a new liaison, and Lilah remained active on earth and other dimensions working for Wolfram and Hart-including the occasional, incredibly awkward meeting with people she had known previously.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Aug 19th 2018 at 1:06:57 PM

Season 5 was another case where they had a great premise but didn't really seem to know what to do with it. I love the last third of the season, Hamilton, Illyria, and Lindsey's final sputtering comeuppance, but while there are some great character beats and individual episodes before then, most of the arc stuff gets heavily bogged down. But if it had been Lilah instead of Eve? And then that shared history when Lindsey returns? That really could gone places.

I remember quite liking season 4 and 5 of Angel, but I also agree that they had some flaws going on that weakened both (totally agree that showing Jasmine eating people kind of misses the point of what made her evil so specific).

Marti Noxon throws her support behind the new series despite initially being against it

https://io9.gizmodo.com/former-buffy-showrunner-marti-noxon-shares-her-changed-1828575697

"Once More With Feeling" will be released on vinyl.

Anyone find it funny that we never saw Cordelia's parents on screen in either of the two shows?