01/11/10

Welcome to the Year of the Happy Goose! I know it's been a new year for the better part of two weeks now, but you'll have to forgive my lateness. It's only today that I've found space and time to invest in this journal.

Today begins my fourth semester of graduate school. I'm studying English literature. I'm about to embark upon writing my thesis, though I'm still a bit at sea concerning the specific topic. And so why am I here?

Relaxation and unabashed fun: to let my fandom flag fly! (Not impossible to say five times fast, but tongue-twisty nevertheless.) This will probably involve rambling about television (Doctor Who! Lost! Supernatural!) and the occasional posting of fanfiction. My original writing comes first and goes elsewhere, but I've recently found myself inspired to write fanfic for the first time since high school. (Probably not on any of the aforementioned fandoms.) It was  yuletide  that jumpstarted my interest, and I've been browsing the unfilled requests today with vague notions to commit New Year's Resolution fic.

Today really is just a brilliant day to start things: the date is both a palindrome and is a binary-iffic. Welcome to this year (and to y'all) indeed. Let's close with one of my favorite sentiments, brought to us by Moleitau on Flickr:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Analysis, Part 1: The Movie

I have to admit that I've almost always had a thing for vampires-- ever since I got over being afraid of them, anyway. Funny factoid about me: I generally come to embrace that which I fear as a means of getting over it. This only works for some things, of course: wolves, witches, vampires.

Anyway, it means that I've almost always been attracted to vampire flicks and, given my strange guilty pleasure involving compulsively watching stupid movies, it's guaranteed I'll pick up pretty much any vampire movie I find. It means that movies like My Best Friend's A Vampire, Love at First Bite, Once Bitten, Night Life, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are all definite shoe-ins.

My mom and I definitely couldn't resist a movie called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was just too cheesy and provocative. The premise behind it tickled our fancy-- you know, the usual Helpless Blonde "Oh, look, help me, I'm monster food in the first five minutes!" archetype is turned all topsy-turvey when said blonde is made the main character and given the power to kick the monsters' asses. Also, I've always appreciated seeing a seemingly shallow heroine deepening.

Buffy has, of course, become a phenomenon since its beginning as a cheesy valley-girl/vampire flick of the early 90's. And I love the show more than I ever liked the movie. Still, I think it's important to analyze the show's inception. In this post and the next one, I'll examine both the movie that was made from a severely modified screenplay and the comic book (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Origin) that sticks closer to the original screenplay.

Now, I'll mainly be looking at Slayer mythology and how this movie set up themes, Buffy's character, and introduced Joss' particular world of darkness. So, without further ado:

( spoiler-heavy observations )

The Principal really was one of my favorite characters. He was portrayed by Stephen Root, y'know, who also played Milton in Office Space. I guess we know what made Milton the way he is, eh? ;)

Trivia: Seth Green was actually in the movie, but his part was cut during editing. Apparently you can still see him vamping out on Grueller on the DVD and Video packaging, though. That makes him the only actor to be in both the movie and the series.