But again -- Spike puts the coat back on. I had some second thoughts, during the vid-making process, about what it meant to end on such a bleak moment, about making the story a tragedy instead of a compromised triumph, and I decided that was the story I wanted to tell because I was angry and I didn't want that outrage to be ignored because of a partial later victory.

Every time I watch the vid, the energy and the motion and the anger catch me again and sweep me up, and I think, THIS TIME, this time it'll be different! And then it ends with Spike putting on that fucking coat again.

I think it works for the vid. It *should* make the vid-watcher sit up in their chair and protest "No, it can't end like that!" and feel angry and grim and sad. Because the clips that might have fixed this vid *aren't in the source*, and that realization-- the slow realization, once you've seen it, that there wasn't any other way it *could* end, that the vid has to end the way the show did-- with the same *focus*-- is harsh. And powerful.

A vid about these particular characters and issues that wasn't bleak... would be constructed reality, not critique. *wry grin*