Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Fanlore

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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Name: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Abbreviation(s): BtVS
Creator: Joss Whedon
Date(s): 1997-2003
Medium: television series, movie
Country of Origin: US
External Links: IMDB
EpGuides
Subpages for Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Anya Jenkins · Buffy/Faith · Buffy/Giles · Buffy/Spike · Buffy Summers · Characters · Fandom Glossary · Fanzines · Little Bad · Poetry · Rupert Giles · Scooby Gang · Soul · Spike · Spike/Xander · Willow/Angel · Willow Rosenberg · Xander Harris


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Contents

History

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a television series created by Joss Whedon, based on the 1992 theatrical movie of the same name. (Whedon wrote the screenplay, but did not direct the film, and he was not fully satisfied with it.[1]) It premiered on the WB network in March 1997, although an unaired pilot was created before that. The first season ran for 12 episodes; it was a marginal success for the fledgling network and was brought back for a second season beginning in September 1997. It ran for five seasons on the WB before moving to another small startup network, UPN, for its final two seasons. Star Sarah Michelle Gellar was eager to move on from the show, and after some controversial developments and character arcs, ratings had deteriorated.

After the third season of Buffy, in 1998, one of the series' primary characters, vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend-of-Buffy Angel was spun off into his own series on the WB. It ran for five years before being canceled.

Buffy is considered by many critics and viewers to be one of the best television series ever made. It combined horror, fantasy, drama, humor, teen angst, and action in a way no other series ever had. Buffy Summers was created as a sort of anti-archetype by Whedon, the small, seemingly defenseless blond girl who turns out to have enormous power -- and enormous responsibility. The initial seasons began with a prologue that included information about what a vampire slayer was: "Into each generation, a slayer is born. One girl, in all the world, a chosen one. One born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of evil..." to which Buffy responds, in the first episode, with: "...blah blah, I've heard it, okay?" This was typical of the way the series skewered even its own seriousness. Most of the time, Buffy simply wanted to be a regular American teenage girl, like her friends Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg, and not the one carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. In the season finale of the first series, she even rejects her calling when she finds out a prophecy predicts she'll die that night, weeping that she never wanted to be the slayer, and that she was "only sixteen" and too young to die. (Nevertheless, like all true heroes, Buffy does do her job.)

It won numerous awards during its run, but never an Emmy. Entertainment Weekly listed it as No. 10 on its 100 Greatest Shows of All Time list, and numerous magazines still cite it for Best Of articles. Its witty dialogue, pop culture references, charismatic actors, subversive tone, and dense mythology combined to make it one of the largest fandoms of the late 1990s-early 2000s.

High notes include: "Prophecy Girl," the first season finale, where Buffy faces The Master and dies for the first time; second-series two-parter "Surprise"/"Innocence," where Buffy sleeps with Angel and he loses his soul, then tries to destroy the world; the fifth series finale "The Gift," where Buffy sacrifices her life to save the world, as well as the final episode of the series in its WB run; "The Body," where Buffy's mother dies, and well-known for being a rare TV episode with no background music; "Hush," a fourth-season episode where the characters lose their ability to speak and most of the episode takes place in silence; and "Once More, With Feeling," a musical episode written by Joss Whedon, including all the songs.

20th-Century Fox has released a number of versions of DVD sets, including the original single series collections and a large "complete" box set.

The series continues officially in Season 8, a comic book serial written in part by Joss Whedon. It also has been continued in virtual seasons through a number of fanfic projects. Fray, a graphic novel set in the same universe and published in 2001, concurrent with the seventh season of the television show, is also considered part of the canon by some fans.

Joss Whedon and Buffy fandom

Creator Joss Whedon has been involved with his fanbase more than most showrunners. Himself a fan, he's put his own experiences into his series, especially on Buffy, even making a reference in one seventh-season episode to posting fanfic online. He frequently interacts with fans on the site devoted to his work, Whedonesque [1]. One of his most famous instances of support for fans came in 1999, regarding the 18th episode of season three and the season finale. The Columbine school massacre had recently occurred, and the WB decided to pull both Earshot, which dealt with Buffy's sudden ability to hear people's thoughts -- one of which is someone planning to kill people on the Sunnydale school campus, and the season finale, Graduation Day Pt. 2 (because of violent activities -- including blowing up the school library). When the series was aired in Canada on schedule, bootleg copies of the latter episode became widely available, and Whedon was quoted as encouraging people to get it, saying, "Bootleg the puppy."

He says he has an ambivalent relationship with fanfiction, both liking it and also concerned about, but he has frequently shown his appreciation for fan-made vids of Buffy and his other series. In the early days of Buffy fandom, Whedon spoke out against Fox's attempts to shut down fan web sites devoted to Buffy (and other Fox shows, such as The X-Files).

Whedon became so infamous for introducing surprising (and often heart-wrenching) plot developments and character backstories in Buffy that fan writers invented a term to describe when new canon contradicted what they had written: to be Jossed. The more heart-wrenching plot twists also resulted in the oft-repeated mantra "Joss is evil."[2]

In 2005, an attempt was made by Fox lawyers to stop the live-action showing of the musical episode Once More, With Feeling, despite the fact that Whedon had publicly stated he had no problem with the event.

Buffy Fandom

As one of the first shows to have an active Internet presence, fannish participation was a virtual smorgasbord for fen, with multiple fannish websites, email groups, and forums. Thanks to satellite programming, some fans had an early jump on the show, before its regularly scheduled air time and date, and posted complete episode transcripts online before receiving cease and desist orders.

!More possible topics for expansion:

+Better Buffy Fic List and Archive

+The neverending Spike discussion: Spike/Buffy vs Buffy/Angel, "Seeing Red" and the attempted rape, etc.

+The Kitten Board and the controversy surrounding Tara's death

+Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Season 8 and surrounding controversy

+The UCSL and pioneering (in some circles) a freer approach to pairings

+One of the earliest fandoms to "grow up" entirely online, effects of? ie, higher tolerance for experimental/short/unusual styles of writing (see also The X-Files)

+Issues with general dislike/bashing of Buffy the character, esp among slash fans

+Sites with screencaps and transcripts etc. attacked by Fox

Communities

Challenges, comms, and sites from the last 4 years or so) (please expand!)

Older communities:

Vidding

Vidding related: The Buffy and Angel fandoms had a strong digitial vidding community. Among them:

Archives

stuff goes here

Fanzines

(will include Angel fanzines, if applicable)

Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer/Fanzines

References

  1. ↑ "That character had been brewing in me for many years. I finally sat down and had written it and somebody had made it into a movie, and I felt like -- well, that's not quite her. It's a start, but it's not quite the girl." Interview with Whedon on Dark Horse website linked via the wayback machine. (Last accessed August 2, 2009.)
  2. ↑ For example, see Joss' Evil Plans for Xander (Spoilers up to 7.18). April 24, 2003, post on BABoards. See also this Flickr image by Which Witch, joss is evil, uploaded May 7, 2006
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