(Buffy) Concerning Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
- Thread starter Edena_of_Neith
- Start date
Crothian
First Post
Lizard said:
I don't think it's that simple. Angel going bad was a huge plot hook. And he didn't stay that way. The first college guy was just charmingly sleazy. Riley never turned bad becasue of Buffy, his problems were more from the intiative. And Spike was a bad guy to begin with. Sleeping with him made him more helpful.
Lizard said:
Well, you must remember on of Joss Wheadon's basic principles - for purposes of television, happy relationships are boring. Happy relationships don't make for interesting TV, so they don't exist in Joss' shows. It isn't just, "sleep with a guy, he becomes a jerk". It's more like, "Get romantically invovled, and you will feel pain."
Well, it's not that they don't exist. It's just that they don't *last*. Either one of the two dies, or is forced to/chooses to leave, or something like that. However, there are some relationships that were happy for quite some time - Willow/Oz, Willow/Tara, Xander/Anya, Buffy/Riley.Umbran said:
Staffan said:
Right -- for some time. That way, when they end, there is ample misery, angst, and suffering. It's also worth noting that, in each relationship, there were always seeds of conflict -- Oz was a werewolf and there was the Willow/Xander thing going on, Buffy was always way out of Riley's league, Anya was always uncomfortably clingy/demanding, and Willow's willingness to casually mess with Tara magically didn't speak well for her.
It seems likely Season 7 will be the last. We'll see if anyone is happily involved by the final episode.
Edena_of_Neith
First Post
SPOILER CAUTION
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Well, I checked out (what I think) is the official Buffy site for the first time.
The Scooby Gang? LOL.
Having watched Scooby Doo quite a lot as a kid (I was too young to go to Woodstock
) I can only wonder what Shaggy, Scooby, Thelma, and the others would have thought, if they were suddenly dumped in the Buffy universe.
Heh. I do not think Scooby Doo would have found too much protection jumping into Shaggy's arms, in this situation.
Anyways ...
DYING is an interesting experience.
Sometimes it's fast, and sometimes it's slow, as in my case after we collided head-on with a semi on the road (a 100 mph collision.)
First, there is disorientation and numbness throughout the whole body.
Then, everything becomes very surreal and disconnected.
Then, there is nothing.
Fade to black.
Obviously, I survived - in the end - or I would not be writing this.
However, for 2 days I lay dying in the hospital, until surgery saved my life.
Such experiences tend to change people, and certainly I was changed.
Buffy was actually killed, apparently - according to what I read - at the end of Season Five.
Now, she is back.
Resurrected.
How has being killed and subsequently resurrected affected Buffy?
I realize that our high level characters in Dungeons and Dragons might undergo this experience, and remain relatively unchanged - maybe - but this is Buffy we are talking about here.
And I simply must ask all of you ...
Why doesn't Buffy use Holy Water as a weapon, and the Cross as a weapon and a defense?
Why doesn't Buffy employ garlic, mirrors, and running water? And the other things anathema to vampires, classically?
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Well, I checked out (what I think) is the official Buffy site for the first time.
The Scooby Gang? LOL.
Having watched Scooby Doo quite a lot as a kid (I was too young to go to Woodstock
) I can only wonder what Shaggy, Scooby, Thelma, and the others would have thought, if they were suddenly dumped in the Buffy universe.Heh. I do not think Scooby Doo would have found too much protection jumping into Shaggy's arms, in this situation.
Anyways ...
DYING is an interesting experience.
Sometimes it's fast, and sometimes it's slow, as in my case after we collided head-on with a semi on the road (a 100 mph collision.)
First, there is disorientation and numbness throughout the whole body.
Then, everything becomes very surreal and disconnected.
Then, there is nothing.
Fade to black.
Obviously, I survived - in the end - or I would not be writing this.
However, for 2 days I lay dying in the hospital, until surgery saved my life.
Such experiences tend to change people, and certainly I was changed.
Buffy was actually killed, apparently - according to what I read - at the end of Season Five.
Now, she is back.
Resurrected.
How has being killed and subsequently resurrected affected Buffy?
I realize that our high level characters in Dungeons and Dragons might undergo this experience, and remain relatively unchanged - maybe - but this is Buffy we are talking about here.
And I simply must ask all of you ...
Why doesn't Buffy use Holy Water as a weapon, and the Cross as a weapon and a defense?
Why doesn't Buffy employ garlic, mirrors, and running water? And the other things anathema to vampires, classically?
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Edena_of_Neith said:
a)Season-long depression, basically.
b)She does. She killed a vampire by tricking him into drinking a Holy H2O cocktail at one point. She always wears a cross, and the Scoobys often carry big crosses to use against vampires. Problem is, they don't work if the vamp sneaks up on you...to a large extent, waving crosses around is a sort of comic relief move. The idea is not to repel the vamps, but to kill them, and that's hard to do when holding a cross...
c)I don't think running water affects Vampires in the Buffyverse. Garlic has been used to ward areas, but I don't recall how effective it is. As for mirrors...why hold a mirror when you can hold a stake?
DM_Matt
First Post
Edena_of_Neith said:
1. At first, Buffy's allies were pretty weak, but then again, so were many of her enemies. For a while, they were something of a liability when fighting, but still occasionally got some kills and were important in research. However, over time (Season 7 is about to start) the Scoobies have increased in power. Also, only Xander and Willow (and Giles, but his helping is part of his Watcher duties) consistently fight, with those others only being used when necessary.
Willow, who began learning magic between seasons one and two, is now just as powerful as Buffy overall. Before her magic was as good, she was useful for research, hacking, and helping Giles with rituals, although she did rarely fight and sometimes even get in a dusting or two. As the monsters that Buffy faced got more demony and less vampirey, Willow became more and more necessary, needing to use various abjuration-type spells to break down their defenses so that Buffy can beat them physically. Her physical weakness has sometimes posed a problem, but the problem is not unlike the powerful but vulnerable mages that permeate most RPG adventuring parties.
Xander has been fighting since day one, and has never been great at it, but now he can kick minion @$$ pretty well while Buffy handles the big bads. He is pretty much one of those "15th Level Commoner" types, who have tons of experience but never trained in special skills.
Oz rarely fought, almost never actually going with to battle situations, but he fought reasonably well when he had to. His heightened sense of smell in human form (a side effect of his lycanthropy) made him useful as a tracker, though. He also helped in research and electronics on occasion.
Cordelia also rarely fought, and left the show before the bad guys were as powerful. She mainly did research and driving (she and Oz were the only Scoobies who owned cars). She became a Scooby because in Season one she was a monster magnet, always the victim of the latest creature to strike Sunnydale, and after the Scoobies saved her enough times, she began to help. Again, however, she rarely got into battle situations, although she and Xander evaded once and killed the second time the Worm that Walks Assassin and she stakes a vamp in one season-finale pitched battle.
Anya as a human is a valuable source of information, as her 1,000 years as a demon makes her quite knowledgeable about monsters and magic. She can cast spells form books just fine, and was pretty handy with a baseball bat in one battle against minion-types. But again, she rarely puts herself in harms way. However, once she became Anyatka again (A Vengeance Demon, a type of Genie, prolly Lawful Neutral, who can only grant revenge wishes), she got back to fighting, being that vengeance demons regenerate (They regenerate bigtime...another VD took a magical sword through the chest and was back up in seconds.). Dark Willow prolly dropped her five times or so during the 2-hour season finale this year, and she just kept coming back for more.
Tara was always a reasonably powerful spellcaster (equiv. of L8-10 Wiz in dnd), but didn't put herself on the line often. In emergencies, though, she was generally able to take care of herself...until she was killed last season by a stray bullet.
Buffy's boyfriend du jour (Angel, Reiley, Spike) is almost always a fighter-type almost as powerful as she, and fights often.
2. The people and police of Sunnydale are in denial about the supernatural events that occur. They have been conditioned over the years t deny rather than accept the fact that they live in monster-central. The mayor was evil at one point, though, and the US Army did have a demon-hunting operation running in Sunnydale for a while, although it was eventually abandoned.
Edena_of_Neith said:
Many of those things don't work in the Buffy universe. Also, you'll note how most of them are purely defensive? Mirrors and garlic don't hurt a vampire. And it isn't like one can carry a small river around to hold one off
In general, Buffy is there to destroy the vampires. Anything that doesn't directly aid that is baggage. Baggage slows you down. So, Buffy relies on the simple and highly effective stake.
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Mirrors don't repel vampires in the buffyverse. Vampires don't have a reflection, but they aren't adversely affected by mirrors.Lizard said:
And Matt, Willow started getting an interest in the occult after Jenny Calender died, in season 2. Her first actual spellcasting was restoring Angel's soul (just before Buffy stabbed him and sent him to Hell) in the season 2 finale.
