Let's Discuss Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV Series

[Indigo]

Here, I wanted to make a forum thread of anyone who likes watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Talk about your favorite characters/seasons/episodes and discuss or critique about what you takeaway from the show,etc.

The spin-off series, Angel, is also free to talk about on here as well. And the original movie and comics if you want too.

Hopefully this is a good forum discussion on the good, the bad, and the ugly of BTVS.

[bodypoetic]

HELLO. I AM BANGING ON THE WINDOW OF THIS THREAD AND BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR WITH THAT STUPID S7 SLAYER SCYTHE. I AM SO INCREDIBLY HERE.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was (unfortunately, given its creator) unbelievably formative for me. To give you some idea: I spent pretty much the entirety of I Saw the TV Glow sobbing my eyes out - because I, too, was a deeply lonely queer teenager who coped by hyperfixating on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have very vague plans to make a webshrine for it - only I'd like it to also constitute an in-depth critical analysis. It would probably also end up being an intensely personal piece of writing. So I keep putting it off!

Some quick and hopefully provocative hot takes (there will be spoilers; also while I am being a little intense about it these are all just my opinions and you are more than welcome to disagree):

1. Series 5 is the best, but series 6 is my favourite. If series 6 had stuck the landing with its finale, it would probably supplant series 5 for me. Alas, while Two to Go/Grave has a lot of the right ingredients, it completely fails to deliver the necessary catharsis. Give me Willow and Buffy screaming the most hurtful things imaginable at each other! Give me Willow and Buffy inflicting the kind of wounds you're only capable of after six years of deeply intimate and nebulously gay friendship!! I want it to feel as interpersonally apocalyptic as the Buffy & Anya fight in Selfless does, but MORE and WORSE!!! I am convinced that s6 would be a hundred times more popular if it delivered on this - it's basic Aristotlean theory of drama! You can't do a tragedy without catharsis, that's the entire point!

2. Spike is the kind of god-tier character that can only be produced via five different writers in furious disagreement about what direction should be taken with him. You can't make a character this good on purpose. You just can't. That particular blend of sex symbol + romantic lead + comic relief + villain + pathetic loser + narrative punching bag just hits different.

3. Relatedly, everybody should read the Lesbian Spuffy Manifesto - it's probably the best piece of fandom media analysis I've ever come across

4. Over in Angel - Doyle and Illyria are so so so so SO satisfying as a diptych. Character who is only here for the first nine episodes of the show and character who is only here for the last eight episodes of the show. Characters who, between them, perfectly encapsulate the core themes of Angel (when it's at its best): doing the right thing even when it will cost you everything, and having to continue when you have already lost everything and there is no hope of ever getting it back. Not Fade Away lives in my chest like a physical ache to this day. It's so incredibly beautiful and so incredibly sad. (Absolutely no ill will towards anyone who headcanons otherwise but this is why I am very hard-line on 'no, actually, they did very much all die at the end of that. MAYBE Illyria survived but nobody else stood a chance. Buffy will not be ending up with Angel OR Spike because they are both DEAD.' Anything else undercuts the beauty of that ending.)

5. Spike/Buffy is the ship of all time for me, they were the first pairing I ever truly shipped and they hold an incredibly special place in my heart. Forever shaped the kinds of relationships I go crazy for in fiction, and if I ever publish the novel I am working on, that is going to be extremely evident! As the Lesbian Spuffy Manifesto touches on - Spike is Buffy's Jungian shadow, all the parts of herself she does not want to acknowledge, and I think there is something so profoundly transformative and beautiful in the idea of falling in love with somebody who represents everything you most hate about yourself.

6. That said, I am very much a multishipper at heart, and I also adore Faith/Buffy, Willow/Buffy, Willow/Anya, Willow/Faith (specifically post-s6, for obvious reasons), Cordelia/Buffy, Cordelia/Angel, Spike/Angel, and the Fanged Four as an unspeakably toxic polycule.


7. The comics are not real and cannot hurt me.

[Indigo]

HELLO. I AM BANGING ON THE WINDOW OF THIS THREAD AND BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR WITH THAT STUPID S7 SLAYER SCYTHE. I AM SO INCREDIBLY HERE.

Omg I enjoyed reading your hot takes and thoughts about the entire show! I agree with you on Buffy being a flawed show, given Joss Whedon and how he treated the cast members while also still wanting to watch the show because other writers and the actors really did their best at the roles they were given in the show.

For instance, I am watching season 4 of Angel right now and that is, of course infamous, for how they shifted Cordelia's character and is also part of how the actress, Charisma Carpenter, went through the roughest experiences with Whedon on that season. He was so callous on how he wrote her character, yet I admire Charisma for how she committed and selling her character's arc to me watching. I give her the hugest bouquet of flowers to her.

Also I totally agree with seasons 5 and 6. They're so underrated. I absolutely love Glory in season 5 and season 6 was such an intimate and dark character driven season. I think for me season 3 would always be my favorite because of the sad friendship(?) Buffy experienced with Faith and it made me cry.

Funny enough, I got into the show because of I Saw The TV Glow as well. lol. I wish you luck on your Buffy fan project. We definitely need more of that in the fandom because we are an inclusive bunch that loved Buffy yet wanted more complex stuff in general.

I totally understand waiting out to watch it. This is my second rewatch of the show, and first time watch with Angel and I feel drained and need a break from it for awhile as well.

[Dan Q]

"Dawn's in trouble. We're talking about Buffy. Must be Tuesday."

OMG Buffy FTW. I was lucky enough to grow up with it, and I've watched it many times since (also Angel, also the comics, also I was really sad that Ripper never came to anything 'cos that show could have been awesome too).

But what's especially delightful for me is getting to re-live that first watch through vicariously through my 12-year-old. Her mother and I introduced her to it a year or two ago and we've been picking our way through it ever since. We're a little over half way through the excellent Season 5 (so yeah, we've just had some tears over I Was Made to Love You / The Body). And I can't wait to start working through some of the banger episodes of Season 6 (which I maintain has the best "Big Bad", 'cos it's not one that anybody could have possibly predicted pre-mid-Season 5).

Anyway, yeah: love me some of the Buffster.