Buffy Dialogue Database

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Website
Name: Buffy Dialogue Database
aka BuffyDB, BDB
Owner/Maintainer: Vrya
Dates: 2001
Type: Database, Transcripts
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series
URL: bdb.vrya.net (archived link)
BuffyDatabaseButton.jpg
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The Buffy Dialogue Database is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fansite created and run by Vrya. The origins of this site can be traced to Vrya's VCR failing to fully record an episode of BtVS, and their resulting discovery of online transcripts. [1]

An icon honoring the VCR of glitchiness that led to the creation of BDB

Vrya used transcripts from other sources, such as AleXander's Transcripts or BuffyWorld, to extract dialogue that was then categorized by Character, Episode and Story Arc. Interpersonal relationships was a subcategory of Story Arc, and included pairings of characters with links to all dialogue featuring both characters. Originally envisioned as a Buffy Database, the site expanded to also include dialogue from Angel the Series. Many episode also had links to Episode Art, in the form of manips created by Vrya.

The Buffy Dialogue Database was an oft recced resource for fans and fanfiction writers, and it also had a very useful search function. Buffy DB won The Top Stakes Awards for Best BtVS site in 2002. It was also nominated in the Slayer's Heart Awards, Nightmare Awards and Loving Enemies Awards.

Introduction

From the website's original introduction:

Welcome to the Buffy Dialogue Database. This is a little project of mine (O.K., big project, but we're going to pretend it's NOT scary how much time I've devoted to it) designed to facilitate some fun trips through the Buffyverse via various significant and/or just plain amusing snatches of dialogue. Click on the links above to start exploring.

Obviously this is still a work in progress. I'll be adding new episodes as they become available to me, and working backwards through old episodes as time allows. I start with a transcript of the episode, and extract snippets of interesting dialogue to add to my database. Each one is given a title, and marked as to what episode it was in, what order it appeared in, who was speaking, and what overall story arc (if any) it played a role in. With that done, automatic scripting adds the clip to all appropriate pages. So the same clip will figure on the character pages of each named speaker, on any relevant Story Arc pages, and on the appropriate Episode page. Not only should this make it easy to browse through the clips in whatever way you prefer, it should also be interesting from a literary perspective to see what kind of patterns emerge from bringing clips from far-flung episodes and scenes together.

The "character" pages are done automatically by a script that goes through each clip looking for the character's name. For that reason, these may not be perfect (for example, "Faith" shows up in clips where people are talking about having faith in something as well as ones where Faith is actually being referred to, so her page has some extraneous clips listed. Ditto for "Glory".). The "Story Arcs" are extremely arbitrary. I've added those manually, and assigned clips to them based on my own analysis (or misanalysis, or mistake, as the case may be!). The episode lists should display the clips in order. I've tried to include all the significant and/or funny bits in a given episode, but it's quite possible that I've missed some in my efforts to skim the cream. [1]

References

  1. ^ a b About this site and other misc stuff, archived page from June 12 2010.