Today I had a hard time coming up with a good subject to write about here. But after thinking for a while, I decided, I will just go for one of my absolute favorite subjects...
Vampires!
I have just about started a course in "paranormal romance" or "horror and romance" at my home university and I'm so excited to see if it is good or not.
So, I have decided that in honor of Joss Whedon, I'm going to write a post on why I think Buffy is the most awesome vampire story ever.
Well, I'll start from the beginning:
1. The vampires - They are exciting and they look scary, behave like blood sucking soul less beast should do. And this is important to think of when hearing people saying: "If Edward Cullen is so wussy, why don't say that about Angel" and that is the fact that in Buffy, the soul has an important role in the whole series. Angel has a soul, and do feel remorse for killing, Spike has a chip, but he would kill if he could, but he then get his own soul. This is also very obvious in episode "Gingerbread" season 3 when Buffy said after finding molested children "A group of ... human beings? Someone with a soul did this?"
You can obviously see here how the soul plays an important role in whether you are human or not.
Also how they transform into vampires are really great. In most vampire media they still look the same, but Joss has really came up with a great idea with the "bumpy heads".
2. The characters - They are maybe not the most original, but who can blame it, High School characters are quite the same in most films/TV-series/books etc.
But Joss has really got them to work together in a good way. They seem real enough for you to believe in them, but still, they are not "real". It's interesting. Joss is very good at developing them trough out the series and if you (as me) grew up with them,
My two favourites being:
Cordelia - I don't know why, but my fascination for Cordelia is beyond anything. I'm also impressed by Joss ability to transform her character from vain High School girl to
a much more mature and sensible Cordelia trough the series and develops her role in Angel. I think that was a smart move as if not, people would be annoyed with her instead, at first people love to hate her, now you might even say you can love her. Even though she is vain and thinks most of herself, Cordelia has a depth to her even from the start, it's just hard to see, but she symbolizes everything Buffy can't have. A normal life, being the popular, most beautiful girl at school. Have a normal relationship and friend who are not in danger because they know you are the slayer. And without Cordelia, the concept of Buffy would probably work less well.
Spike & Drusilla - Well, here we have him! The meanest of all the meanest vampires. Spike, would I
say is the ultimate vampire. He is mean, manipulative, has no regrets and do whatever he likes. He is a pure bad boy vampire and that makes him very sexy. Not even when he becomes one of the "good guys" (even as a ghost in Angel) he becomes truly good, and you never know whether he will turn against people, and he does everything for himself first, even if it seems like he does it for someone else. And even though Drusilla is out of the picture, he and Drusilla are one, it is very hard not to associate them with each other.
Dru has such a great character and she is also a great picture of how a true vampire should look like, no remorse, only pleasure.
3. The Story - innovative? Well, somewhat. That humans have a sexual/romantic fixation with vampire and vice versa is not really that uncommon, but in Buffy it develops into something else, as we have something to compare about. The good thing is that as it was such a long running series, we got to develop a relationship with the characters and their good and bad sides and personality development. As every happening made one or more of the characters to grow as persons (even though Buffy seemed to be a goof far into the season, you can see in the last season how she can take responsibility and grow up), and everyone can relate to these phases in their lives. Even though we might not be vampire slayers, we all have big secrets, and we will find out that life maybe not always become what we think.
And this I think because there are all kinds of characters in this. We have the single-mother, we have families that work great, that work less great, the goofy ones, the popular ones, the high school kids in different stages, the adult who has been through a lot and so on, everyone can find a character to relate to and that's why the story and whole concept of Buffy the Vampire Slayer pleases such an great audience.
... and most importantly, even 14 years after the first episode of the TV-series was aired, it still works! It's still not out of date, and with the new popular vampire wave, it becomes even more popular.
If you watch Buffy, your view on vampire and how vampires should be, will forever change. It has everything. Romance, horror, family drama, friendship troubles, everything in one package named "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
I usually don't do this, but I will put up 2 videos from youtube with Spike and the best of him from the series:
(Pictures from:
