Buffy The Vampire Slayer

by Lorna, January 2001

OK, I freely admit the title sounds really bad and that the plot isn't exactly as complex as Babylon 5. However it is an amazingly fun series, with action packed episodes, golden globe nominated acting, emmy nominated scripting and (for those that like that sort of thing) pretty people. Episodes are packed with action, humour, romance, drama and more humour thrown in. Give it a chance, you might like it.

Plot

The basic deal is the Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is the vampire slayer, there's just the one at a time and her duty is to keep the vampires and other assorted demons from doing dire things to the world. She lives and works in Sunnydale, a small American town in LA that just happens to be over a hellmouth and hence has more than it's fair share of unpleasant things. Over the course of the last 6 series she has passed through High School university and various jobs.

Characters

• Giles (Anthony Head best known for being the Gold Blend Man) is Buffy's watcher, a tweedy English librarian who knows all about demons, researches lots and occasionally wields a chain saw, just to help out.
• Willow (Alyson Hannigan - Flute girl in American Pie) is Buffy's red headed boffin friend (everyone should have one). She also trains as a witch, works wonders with a computer, dates a werewolf, then another witch... busy girl.
• Xander (Nicholas Brandon, best known for... erm... this?) Willow's best friend from a young age and possessor of a much cooler name than Buffy. He's the clown of the group, dated Cordelia then moved on to an ex-vengence demon. Other than that he doesn't do much other than be inept. But he's very good at that.

Other characters change around a lot, there may be some spoilers in this section.

• Angel (David Boreanaz) is a vampire, but a good one. He went out with Buffy, turned evil, got sent to hell, came back, went out with Buffy again, left and got his own show in Los Angeles. (As you do).
• Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter - apparently that is her real name!) was basically the school bitch. She hated the 'Scooby Gang' (don't ask), made snide comments and humiliating them at every opportunity. Then she started dating one of them and joined them. This apparently upset her so she left and coincidentally ended up in LA with Angel.
• Riley Finn (Marc Blucas) Buffy's boyfriend for seasons 4 and start of 5. By day he's an Iowa Farm boy majoring in Psychology, by night he's a member of a secret army squad who's mission is to capture demons for study by the government.
• Oz (Seth Green - the son of the baddie in Austin Powers) a monosyllabic werewolf, guitarist and Willow's boyfriend for a series or so. He eventually went away to 'find himself' in Tibet or something of the like.
• Spike (James Marsters) a vampire who starts off as a big villain (along with his girlfriend Drusilla) but eventually turns to the side of good... kinda.
• Anya (Emma Caulfield) - a vengence demon who arrived in season 3 to punish Xander for cheating on Cordelia but things go a bit wrong. She ends up turned into a human and dating Xander.
• Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) - Buffy's younger sister appears in season 5 thanks to a cunning spell or two by some monks. She's pretty much a standard irritating 15 year old.
• Tara (Amber Benson) - another witch who meets and eventually dates Willow at university in seasons 5 and 6.

Above pictures are copyright © 1998 The WB Television Network

Links

 The First's Journal

Link submitted by John Kirk on 2003-04-19

Contents include - Spoilers, Humour, Weblog

Subjects include - Blog, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

A LiveJournal, allegedly written by "The First Evil" (from Buffy). By it's nature, the posts will refer to episodes, so it contains spoilers for season 7; specifically, I assume that the latest entries will refer to episodes that haven't been seen in the UK yet (I skipped past them).

There's quite a collection of these types of journals about for lots of different series. It's kinda a form of fanfic I guess, some of them can be quite entertaining and it's an interesting application of Livejournal

 BBC Cult TV - Buffy

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-18

Contents include - Information, Images, Synopses, Reviews, People, News

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel

This is yet another great site from the BBC. It's almost entirely limitted to information that people watching Buffy on terrestrial TV will appreciate so spoilers are usually avoided. It's got news, quizes, episode guides, interviews, images... just about everything you could want. There's also a comparable Angel site, even though it's not shown on the BBC.
Slick, simple, fast. It's a BBC site... what were you expecting?

 The Spoiler Slayer

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-18

Contents include - Spoilers

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This offers a summary of spoilers found for upcoming Buffy episodes. They grade each spoiler according to how reliable the sources are. THERE ARE MAJOR SPOILERS ON THE FRONT PAGE - don't go there if you don't want to know. That simple.
ridiculously simple and plain, there are no images, no frames, no complicated code. Absolutely beautiful.

 Psyche Transcripts

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-18

Contents include - Synopses

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel

The most important bit of this site is the shooting scripts for Angel and Buffy. These are complete scripts for all episodes (usually up to the last one aired in the US) including stage directions and explanations.
Functional. No images or real concessions made to prettiness but the scripts themselves are nicely laid out.

 The Complete Buffy Episode Guide

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-18

Contents include - Links, Information, Shop, Images, Synopses, Reviews, People, News

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This is a very extensive Buffy site including images, cast and crew info, news, a forum, a huge link database and most importantly an episode guide. These guides are very extensive for the episodes they cover featuring quotes, synopses, analysis and explanations. However they only (currently) go up to late 5th season.
Well laid out and structured, but a bit cluttered in places. Also a whole bevy of banner ads, merchandise, pop ups and hovers and the like.

 All Things Philosophical on BTvS and AtS

Link submitted by John Kirk on 2002-04-18

Contents include - Spoilers, Synopses, Information

Subjects include - Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

An excellent site - it has an entry for each episode of Buffy/Angel, discussing issues that they raise, as well as more general pages. I always visit this site as soon as I can after I've seen new episodes.
Very easy to navigate. Has a few small images dotted around, but they're certainly not the focus of the site. The episode summaries normally come about 3/4 per page, but there are anchors to hop you to the part you're interested in.

 Buffy.com

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-10-15

Contents include - Official Site, Information, Synopses, Spoilers

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The UPN reincarnation of Buffy.com is sadly much lighter than the original Warner Bros one. The episode synopses for seasons 5 and 6 are very detailed, but for every other season jsut gets an overview. Cast and character bios are the standard blurbs and other than a few wallpapers that's about it.
A nice looking design it's quite graphics heavy but reasonably efficient. Surprisingly uncomplicated.

 Slayer's Fanfic Archive

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - Fanfiction

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel

Huge amounts of fanfic mostly pretty well categorised and reasonably frequently updated. Unfortunately the search functions don't seem to be working at the moment, but you can still list the fic's by authors.
Very simple, fast loading. Almost too simple a little bit of prettiness doesn't hurt...

 fanfiction.net

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - Fanfiction, Bulletin Board/forum

Subjects include - X-Files, Gerry Anderson , X-Men, Star Wars, Angel, Farscape, Babylon 5, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pratchett, Books, Comics, Movie Site, Star Trek - General, Stargate SG1, TV Show, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Enterprise, Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Dark Angel, Sliders, Highlander, Charmed, Blake's 7, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Red Dwarf, Star Trek: TNG, Dr Who, Firefly

If you want fanfiction, go here. This site is absolutely immense and beautifully layed out. I recon there's about 210 shows and 15,000 stories in the tv section alone. This site has many nice features - Categorised - sorted into large categories, like tv, comics, movies. Then sorted into smaller sections by tv show. Updated regularly - Updates appear every few hours, depending on how many authors are writing for a particular section. Author searches - each author has their own page, giving a full list of their fic's, links to their homepage, their favorite authors, whatever they wanna put there really. Discussion forums - if you are an author yourself, there's plenty of help available. Ratings - each fic has a summary, rating, word count and record of last update. You can even change the site colour scheme! How much more do you want?!
Brilliant. Fat loading and simple. You can even change the colour scheme if you want.

 The Watchers Web

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Links, Quiz or competition, Information, Reviews, Spoilers, News

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel

This used to be a really great site for Buffy and Angel news, aimed at British viewers and very sensitive to spoilers. However the site has been on hold for a while. If it returns as promised though it's worth following. The forums still seem active though and the links sectio is useful. I have to plug them - i won a video box set off them ;0)
I like the look. It's fairly slow loading and has quite a few graphics, but I like it, particularly the banners at the top which change.

 YesWes

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - History, Fanfiction, Bulletin Board/forum, Links, Information, Synopses, People

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel

A site devoted to Wesley from Angel (and Alexis Denisof). These people are a little obsessive and scary, but they put a lot of effort into the site. There's lots of screen captures and other images, the fiction is pretty good and the episode guide is (naturally) Wesley-centric.
The graphics are rather nice, but a little large sometimes. Plus the fading in and out thing gets irritating pretty fast.

 BBC - Cult

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-10-14

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Links, Information, Synopses, Reviews, Spoilers, News

Subjects include - Gerry Anderson , Hitchhikers Guide, Farscape, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Star Trek - General, TV Show, Science Fiction and Fantasy

"Classic TV - Packed with cult television pictures, quizzes, video clips, star interviews, nostalgia, trivia and gossip..."
Loads of great content on specific popular shows like Star Trek and the Simpsons as well as information on less well known shows like Gerry Anderson series and Bagpuss! It's also very UK friendly, so they'll try not to post spoilers for US episodes without lots of warning.
It's the bbc, it's simple, quick and very usable. Personally I'm not so sure about the background green/blue colour, but that's just me.

 Whedonesque

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-11-05

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Spoilers, News

Subjects include - Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel

This is a great resource. Basically it's a weblog written by lots of people about Joss Whedon Projects. It means other people crawl the web for news stories and you don't have to bother. There's usually some new stuff each day, and the site only gets better as more people get involved.
A nice simple site that's got a great idea behind it. My only complaint is that they don't want me to link to their banners directly *shrug*

 Cassie's Poetry and Paintings

Link submitted by John Kirk on 2003-02-11

Contents include - Artwork

Subjects include - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

In the season 7 Buffy episode "Help", the Scooby gang look up Cassie Newton's website. This is a fan-run site, which mirrors the one in the episode (poetry etc).
It's hosted on GeoCities, so it keeps exceeding the bandwidth limitation - took me a few days until I could actually connect to it. So, if you can't get through, try again later.

 Spoiled Rotten

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2003-01-08

Contents include - News, Spoilers

Subjects include - Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

A site dedicated to collating spoilers for Buffy and Angel. They seem pretty well informed and mark whether they think they're 'good or bad' spoilers.
Structure is quite nice. Can look at the spoilers by date or by episode.

 Television without Pity

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2003-05-16

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Synopses, Reviews

Subjects include - Charmed, Enterprise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, TV Show

A recap site. Basically a collection of reviewers rewatch episodes of lots of different shows and give a recap of what happens. It's not only a good way to catch up on missed episodes, but it's absolutely hilarious. The one's I've read tend to be extremely sarcastic and had me laughing out loud repeatedly.
The site is pretty slow to load and often seems to get completely jammed, which makes the fact that recaps are spread over about a dozen pages even more frustrating. But once you're there it's very easy to get trapped.

Hmm, I had a brief glance at this, but I wasn't very impressed. I looked at the recap for the latest episode of "Charmed" that's been on Living, which the author describes as "gushing". Within the first paragraph, Leo is referred to as "the Dolt" eight times (and never by his actual name, so I'm identifying him having watched the episode). Now, I have no problem with people being sarcastic/critical (e.g. saying that Porthos has had more screen time than Travis in "Enterprise"), but I prefer it to be vaguely imaginative/entertaining. If you don't like Leo, fine, but at least think up different ways to insult him...

On the other hand, this particular recap may not be representative, and my patience isn't really at its peak right now.

Fair enough if you don't like it, but that's one of the things I find funny. The 'recaps' do tend to make more sense if you read from the start, alternate names tend to crop up when the recapper wasn't entirely certain of someone's name when they first appeared and a nickname stuck. Recaps for different shows also vary wildly as there's different reviewers. I'm not entirely fond of the fact that sometimes recappers seem to get 'assigned' shows that they don't actually like.