All Inclusive App

[whattingawhat]

Reservation Journal:
Link to Reservation: here

Are you over age 18?: Yes
Characters you currently play at All Inclusive: None

Character Name: Buffy Summers
Canon Name: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Canon Type: TV
Tag Formatting: btvs (tv): buffy summers

Tell us about your character's history:

Once upon a time, Buffy Summers was a typical, teenage girl. She was a cheerleader dating a football player. She was popular, very shallow and very self-absorbed. She wanted to be a fashion buyer and marry Christian Slater. That all changed the day she was visited by someone from the Watcher's Council that informed her she was the slayer; Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer. Buffy protested this destiny. She fought against it tooth and nail even when confronted time and again with evidence that Merrick (her first watcher) was right, but vampires nearly ate her entire class and invaded the school dance. Buffy burned down the school gym because it was full of vampires. That's not something that looks good on your school record. She transferred to Sunnydale, California and again went through the motions of protesting against being the slayer. She had thought Sunnydale would be a fresh start only to show up and find the school librarian, Rupert Giles was her new watcher. Becoming a slayer, slowly, irrevocably changed who Buffy was. Over time, with many objections and mistakes, Buffy evolved from the shallow, self absorbed cheerleader she had once been into someone that can only be described as a hero. Many events along the way served to shape and mold her.

She died once. It was only for five minutes (she protests in the show at one time) but what led up to her death was a major turning point. Buffy had been juggling a double life fairly successfully: normal sixteen year old by day, vampire slayer by night. She'd deluded herself into thinking that she could keep her old life and her new one. Reality obliterated that delusion in the form of a prophecy. She over heard Angel (her quasi-boyfriend) and Giles talking about it. Understandably, she falls apart, crying and tells Giles “I'm sixteen years old. I don't want to die” and then she quits. She decides she'll avoid death by quitting her night job (slayer) and ignoring the impending apocalypse. She's going to go to the school dance and pretend that she's nothing more than a high school student. Pretend time is derailed by her burgeoning conscience and sense of duty. For the first time, but not the last, Buffy acts like the hero she is destined to be. She fights the Master; he drowns her, thereby fulfilling the prophecy. He leaves her for dead as he goes out to rampage Sunnydale. Buffy's friend, Xander, gives her CPR and like the trooper she is, she gets up and kicks the Master's ass. It's the first inkling that we get that eventually the word quit won't even be in Buffy's vocabulary. She doesn't know how to quit, even when she desperately wants to quit. Maybe it's the slayer in her, but if I were taking bets, I'd bet on it just being the girl in her.

Buffy's transformation from ditzy cheerleader to hero isn't the only way her life affects her. Becoming a hero isn't the end of Buffy Summers but the beginning. Another important aspect of Buffy is her friends. She allows them to take part in her life and they in turn give her something to fight for. Angel, her high school boyfriend and vampire with a soul, has a huge impact on the way she views romantic love. At first he shapes her ideas of romantic love in some pretty typical ways. Love is passionate, hormones going wild, make-out sessions. The real impact comes when she and Angel decide to consummate their love on her seventeenth birthday. Sure, some guys change after having sex but most of them don't try to kill all of your friends and family. Angel lost his soul when he experienced a moment of pure happiness and impacting Buffy's idea of love forever; Love is pain and without the pain it can't be real. She tells Willow this later on when she's beginning a new relationship with someone 'normal'.

Angelus rampages across Sunnydale for several months while Buffy is unable to kill him because she still loves him and eventually Angelus tries to suck the world into Hell, literally. Buffy has to stop him and a fight ensues. There's a crucial moment in the fight with Angelus where he backs her into a corner. She's got no weapons and he's holding a sword on her. He tells her 'No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all of that away and what's left?' he shoves the sword at her and she closes her eyes, apparently bracing for the impact of having the sword shoved through her throat. At the last moment, she catches the blade between the flat of her hands. Her eyes fly open, she holds the blade back and tells him 'me'. She then shoves the sword back at him, leaps up and continues the fight. This is crucial because at that moment Buffy realizes, she doesn't need a weapon. She is the weapon.

This scenario brings another personality altering moment with it. Unbeknownst to Buffy, Willow is working on a spell to give Angel his soul back. The spell works but only after Angelus has opened the portal to Hell. The only way to close the portal is Angel's blood. Buffy kisses Angel, tells him she loves him and then shoves a sword through his gut. The portal closes, taking Angel with it and reiterates that love is pain. She quits slaying, runs away without saying a word to anyone and spends the summer in LA, which teaches her another lesson and impacts how she views herself as the slayer. She's in another city entirely, she's not slaying, she's not poking around at mysterious things and yet a mysterious thing finds her anyway and forces it's way down her throat. Not literally this time. There's a demon stealing homeless teenagers away to a Hell dimension. She stops him and comes to realize that she can't run away from being a slayer. It's not job, a duty or even a destiny. It's what she is.

Buffy's return to Sunnydale is an eventful one. Most notably for her, Angel comes back from Hell and doesn't hold a grudge. Another slayer shows up (Buffy died once, remember) and settles in. She and Angel take several steps back and resume a relationship that includes more UST than David and Maddy (you know, from Moonlighting). For the most part, it's Sunnydale as usual. Buffy's birthday ends up sucking. The Watcher's Council has a test they do for every slayer on her eighteenth birthday called the Cruciamentum and it involves giving a slayer a combination of drugs that takes away their powers. Once Buffy's powers are gone, she's forced to fight an insane vampire. This makes Buffy appreciate her powers. She wants to be a normal girl but she wants normal with powers. She realizes that she's seen what hides under the bed and she can't be helpless against it. It's a step on the very long road to accepting her powers. She survives the test because Buffy has a knack for thinking out of the box. She's not your average slayer.

Faith's arrival (and stay) in Sunnydale affects Buffy in a big way. Faith is the 'fun' slayer. She's the one that says damn the man, I'm a super girl and I'm gonna do what I want. She's the one that all her friends are interested in. She makes them laugh and think she's so cool. She captures the attention of all the boys and Buffy ends up with some serious 'I'm not special anymore' type feelings. Buffy may protest the dying and social-life-ruining aspects of being a slayer, but she likes being the only one. She likes being a hero. This is a theme that will recur throughout the series at various points. It's an excellent example of the bratty, contradictory aspects of Buffy's personality. She wants to be normal and have a normal life but she wants to be special and the only one.

Angel breaks up with her in the sewers just before prom. He's leaving her for all good reasons. She deserves a little bit of normal in her life and he can't really give her that. Buffy, true to form, protests that her life is never going to be normal and she wants him in it. This reinforces the abandonment issues that began with her parents divorce. The people that you love leave. She sucks it up and helps save the Prom, despite the fact that her date just broke up with her and at the prom the senior class is gracious enough to acknowledge the work that Buffy does. She has long believed that no one notices what she does or appreciates it. The senior class giving her a class protector award shows her that people do notice and she is appreciated. It gives her something to fight for and lessens her resentment toward being a slayer. It's another tiny step on the road to acceptance.

Graduation from high school is on everyone's mind in Sunnydale. The second slayer has gone rogue (evil) and Buffy is going to have to stop both Faith and the evil mayor from destroying the town. The second major life altering moment comes for Buffy when Angel is poisoned and dying. She pleads with the Watcher's Council to help Angel and they refuse. This is important because this is the moment that Buffy quits the Watcher's Council. She realizes that she no longer needs them, but without her, they're just watching Masterpiece theater. In that moment, she becomes independent. She's always done things her way with little regard to authority but she's never made it official. She's always been a bit apologetic for doing things her way; no more. It's a buck against authority, which is also text book Buffy, but it's the ultimate buck against an authority she's not meant to cross. With help from her friends they find out the only cure for the poison Angel is infected with is to drain a slayer. In a desperate bid for Angel's life, Buffy goes after Faith. She stabs her in the gut with a knife, intending to take her to Angel so he can drink her blood. Faith escapes and ends up in the hospital. This is a guilt that Buffy will forever feel. It is the moment she was willing to take a human life. Her feelings toward Faith are deeply complicated and this is one reason. She knows in this moment that the only difference between her and Faith is a choice. It only takes one moment to go from hero to villain. Buffy's only option left is to make Angel drain her. Now remember, it's the night before graduation, the night before the mayor eats the graduating class. Buffy has drawn a line in the sand and it's the first time she's ever done it. She gave Angel up for the world once before and she's not willing to do it again. She will sacrifice her life before she sacrifices his. In the end, Angel is cured and he manages to stop feeding from her before he kills her. She spends the night before graduation in the hospital getting a transfusion and, in typical Buffy fashion, she comes back stronger than she was before and kicks some major mayor ass, blowing the school library up in the process. This is only one example of how Buffy doesn't quit. She doesn't go down and she really shouldn't be underestimated.

College brings new challenges. There's a new guy who turns out to be another one night stand and bolsters Buffy's abandonment issues and insecurity in regards to sex a little. Then there's another new guy who she thinks is normal: Riley Finn. He's actually a roided up soldier in a government program that hunts down vampires and demons but he's the closest thing to normal that Buffy's ever had in a relationship and for a little while she thinks Angel was right about leaving. Riley is exactly what she needed but there are little signs that there will be trouble in paradise, like he's very competitive when they spar. He doesn't accept that Buffy is stronger than him and always will be. When they compare vampire slaying numbers, Buffy avoids giving hers because they're so much higher than Riley's number. In some ways, she tries to make herself less of what she is in order to make Riley more comfortable. Eventually, the dam breaks (in s5) and Riley leaves Buffy ultimately because she doesn't love him enough and he's unable to deal with the dark things in her life. This affects her in a couple of ways. It reinforces the 'people you love always leave' mantra she's got going on and it makes her believe that a normal guy is never going to stay with her. It invalidates all the reasons Angel left her.

But before Riley even decides to leave, Buffy has to deal with the government program that he's involved in, the Initiative. Mostly it serves to remind her that other people can slay vampires but she's still The Slayer, the only one. It's one more building block to the 'always alone' issues that Buffy carries around. She doesn't want to be alone but the world keeps reminding her that it is her responsibility to save it without being a part of it. Her friends balance this issue by helping her kill the big bad through literally joining with her magically so that she is indestructible. She ends up (temporarily) with Xander's heart, Willow's magic and Giles' knowledge. Once the big bad is vanquished, she goes back all Buffy, all the time. This creates a backlash that is somewhat important. Through her dreams, Buffy meets the first slayer. The first slayer tries to drive home the always alone tidbit and tries to make Buffy fit into the preconceived notions of what a slayer should be and what a slayer as (presumably) always been. She defies the first slayer, holds her ground and becomes more firmly rooted in doing things her way.

The fifth season starts off with a bang and a situation that makes Buffy more dedicated to being a slayer. Dracula comes to visit her, specifically, in Sunnydale. He makes Buffy question where a slayer came from, exactly what her origins are and unsettles her a bit in this whole acceptance thing that she's been attempting. It also creates a rift in her and Riley's relationship, one that eventually they will be unable to over come. There will be other problems such as a sick mother and a sister made from a ball of energy that's actually a key to a hell dimension and Hell goddess that would like to use that key. More on Dawn in a moment. Buffy's sick mother provides an excellent example of Buffy's need to be in control. All of her 'stands' against those who tell her how to be a slayer are less traditional examples. There is a certain element of her life that is out of her control (being a slayer) so to retaliate against that, she often wants control of all the other parts of her life. When her mother is sick, we see Buffy taking everything on her shoulders. She tries to wear all the hats and take care of her mother. She's unwilling to share that with Riley because he might not do it right: the old 'if you want something done right, do it yourself' adage. This is the point where Riley leaves her. After some time being sick, and then a period of apparent remission, Buffy's mother does die. She finds the body and any hope of any kind of childhood she might have had is over. Everything is on her shoulders now and while she does allow her friends and Giles to take over a bit, she still feels responsible for everything. A great sense of responsibility is one of Buffy's major personality traits but it's something we only see in regards to slaying until her mother dies.


Monks made Dawn (the little sister) from Buffy's blood (there's never a comment on where they got that blood) and instilled memories of Dawn in every one's head so that they would believe Dawn had always been there. Eventually, Buffy finds out the truth but that doesn't change the way she feels about Dawn. She loves Dawn regardless of her origin and she's got memories of a life with Dawn. The hell goddess is still after her key to open the portal to Hell; eventually she finds out about Dawn and kidnaps her. Buffy prepares to go after her, but time is of the essence because Glory (the hell goddess) is desperate to open the portal. This is another point that Buffy draws a line in the sand. She tells Giles and her friends that if Dawn dies, she's done. This is an even more monumental line than the one she drew for Angel. This time she's not talking about quitting for a few months. She knows what quitting is like and she's prepared to do it for good for Dawn. Buffy has long come to terms with all the things in her life that she's never going to get and that's okay because in her mind, Dawn gets all those things. If Dawn can have the house, the kids, the loved ones and the growing into an old, old woman, Buffy is okay with not getting any of those things. Dawn is a part of her and she's the part that gets all the good things in life.

Despite all of her efforts, Buffy is too late to keep the portal from opening. Dawn's blood opens it and only when all of Dawn's blood stops flowing will the portal close. There's a pivotal moment on top of this tower where Dawn is standing and the portal is open where Buffy realizes that Dawn is a part of her. She was made from her blood, Summers blood and Summers blood will close the portal. It's a moment where we see how tired, exhausted and so over this life Buffy really is. Being a slayer has worn her out and she's ready for it to end. She tells Dawn that the hardest thing in this world is to live and for Buffy that has been the hardest thing. She's lost everything she cares about except Dawn. This is the job; this is what the slayer does, so she tells Dawn to live for her and takes a glorious swan dive off the end of the tower into the portal. The portal closes and we're left with a broken, dead Buffy Summers.

The next time we see Buffy is several months later. Her friends have come up with a half-cocked plan to bring her back from the dead because they think she's trapped in a hell dimension. Their intentions are good but their follow through less so. They leave her in her coffin buried six feet under so when the spell works, Buffy wakes up trapped in her coffin, desperate to breath and she has to bust through the coffin and dig her way out of her grave. She returns so very broken. She thinks that this world she's been brought back to is Hell, even with her friends and family here, she thinks it's Hell because we find out, she wasn't trapped in a hell dimension; she was in Heaven.

This kicks off a very dark period in Buffy’s life. She can’t bring herself to commit suicide, but she can’t bring herself to be happy that she’s back in this dimension again. Giles had left Sunnydale when Buffy died. He returns to reunite with her, but doesn’t stay. He feels like she needs to learn how to live without him to guide her. She sees this as abandonment and her life is reinforcing her issues on that again. Love is pain; the people who love you leave so on and so forth. She goes through the motions of slaying; she starts up a very unhealthy relationship with Spike that’s more about escaping her life than it is about celebrating or enjoying her life. It’s about making sure that she is mired in the dark things that she thinks she deserves. Eventually, she heals enough to realize what her relationship with Spike is doing to her. She begins to want to live again and she breaks off things with Spike. He doesn’t react well. He breaks into her house one night and attempts to rape her. For one moment, Buffy forgets that she’s the slayer, that she’s stronger and faster than Spike, that she’s the one with the power. It’s a helpless moment that will have greater impact later. It also kicks off an event that will become important in Spike’s life. He leaves Sunnydale on a quest to have his soul returned to him.

Season 7 opens up with potentials all over the world being killed. The Watcher’s Council is blown up and Giles starts sending the few potentials that are alive to Sunnydale so that Buffy can protect them. Spike is back presenting a whole host of problems, primarily that The First Evil is controlling Spike and he’s killing people. Buffy makes the decision to help him rather than kill him. This is culmination of all the things Buffy has learned about evil and it’s gray areas throughout the series. She recognizes that Spike can do good because he has a soul now and he’s not responsible for the actions the First Evil is compelling him to do. It’s something that many in Casa Summers are against. It works out, but things are touchy for a little while.

Meanwhile, Buffy is living with a dozen girls that are all potentials, trying to train them to defend themselves and protect them from the First Evil’s minions, which are uber vampires that are much harder kill and some crazy priest guy that embodies the first evil. She actually gets her ass kicked for a little while and once again, she has to find her footing, realize what her strength is and remembering that she has the power, she is the weapon and no one can take that away from her. Most notably in this season, Buffy reconnects with the first slayer through a magic portal thing and finds out the origin of the slayer. Some old men infused a young girl with the essence of a demon so that she could fight the vampires plaguing their village. Buffy agrees to take more of the demon in so that she can be stronger, strong enough to fight the First Evil and it’s minions.

Faith returns to Sunnydale to help. Buffy is kicked out of the house (abandonment and alone issues reactivate!) and eventually she gets her act together. She finds the slayer scythe (think Excalibur for girls) and with Willow’s help they decide to give the potentials the choice to fight, the choice to be a slayer, the choice to stand up. Willow does a spell using the scythe that makes every potential slayer a real slayer. With that army, Buffy defeats the First Evil, but sacrifices Spike to do so.

They crater Sunnydale (or rather Spike does while being self-sacrificing) but half a dozen or so now slayers along with the rest of the Scoobies escape Sunnydale in a school bus. This opens a whole new world. Buffy and Willow are determined to find the rest of the new slayers and to help them. Eventually, they’ll set up in Scotland in a castle and run a slayer school. Evil will still try to take them down, they’ll fight and they’ll win, but not without casualties. Buffy keeps getting stronger and the number of slayers keeps diminishing. The castle in Scotland is bombed and a large number of slayers are killed. Buffy finds out that it’s something called Twilight. Eventually, she’ll discover Twilight is Angel and she’s getting stronger because the deceased slayers’ powers are returning to the slayer power pool and she’s drawing from that. She and Angel have sex and as per usual, something bad happens. She destroys all the magic in the world. She chooses to go back to the world and help out (rather than stay in some weird pocket universe with Angel and have lots of sex). Angel goes with her, they fight. Angel is evil again (like no one saw that coming) and he kills Giles. He leaves remorseful and not!evil again.

Season Nine picks up with Buffy trying to help out in a world that doesn’t have magic, but still has demons, vampires and a new breed called zompires. Yeah, they’re what they sound like, some hybrid zombie-vampire thing that doesn’t dust. Buffy is living with Xander and Dawn (who are an item now) and she’s trying to control the zompire population while being a barista. She ends up wanted by the San Francisco police because they think she’s killing people. This puts her on the run. Eventually she realizes she hasn’t had her period in a while. She thinks she’s pregnant because of a night during party that she can’t remember. Spike sort of comes to the rescue. He’s being supportive guy anyway. She contemplates an abortion, talks to Robin Wood, who is the only child of a slayer that’s on record, and through all of this, finds out that she’s a robot. Andrew programmed her brain onto an advanced version of the Buffy Bot so that real!Buffy could have a normal life. Except doesn’t get a normal life. Some of the slayers that are pissed off about both the slay thing and the magic thing find her, corrupt her and are using her to get to Buffy Bot that thinks she’s Buffy. Long story short, Andrew reprograms everyone so that Buffy is real, the bot is decommissioned and life is back to ‘normal’ except that Buffy has a lot to think about. This is the point I’m bringing her from. This where she decides to pick up with Kennedy’s security company and attempt a normal life.

Eventually, she’ll give that up and return to slayerdom full time. She’ll even take on someone to train. Her next struggle comes in the form of losing her sister. All the magic is gone from the world and Dawn is made from magic. She starts losing her sister a little at a time. In the most recent canon, she’s just managed to get together with Willow and come up with a way to not only defeat the zompires (I think) but also to return magic to the world, saving Dawn in the process. The attempt is successful as far as we know. Dawn has just reappeared.



Tell us about your character's personality:

Buffy has layers. Like a blooming onion fried and complete with that spicy sauce at the middle, she'd tell you. It's true though. The outside layer is quirky, bouncy, ditzy and a little self absorbed. She has a tendency to make things about her even when they aren't really about her. The outside layer also has things that are a little deeper. She's self deprecating at times. She has a great, gallows sense of humor. She rolls with the punches and sometimes she pouts about how hard the punches hurt. She's confident, talkative to the point of rambling and open-minded. She's fiercely protective and there's little that invokes her wrath more than someone she cares about being harmed. 

The second layer is compromised of things that are a little harder to admit to. She'd say those bits have been left in the fryer too long. She can be bitter, resentful and tactless. She's hard-headed and stubborn beyond the telling of it. One of Buffy's greatest strengths in battle is that she doesn't know how to quit. It's not even in the girl's vocabulary. She's been dead twice and that's only made her stronger. She's resourceful and this is also one of her greatest strengths. At the end of the day, she'll do what it takes to get the job done even if what it takes makes her question who she's become. She's loyal but she can be a bit of a control freak bitch. She can also be impulsive, working with her gut instinct and her heart more than her head. She says things she doesn't mean in a disagreement and she's very slow to take the words back. In fact apologies are something that Buffy sucks at. She can be self destructive when depressed—not a condition she usually finds herself in—pushing herself to the point of breaking and enduring things because she thinks it's what she deserves. She's wickedly possessive of everything from her scythe to her 'people'. Although she's learning to let go a little at a time. Living with a gaggle of girls has mellowed her possessiveness a bit. Sometimes she's contradictory and she has no idea what she wants. A normal life? Except then she starts craving slaying? Destiny spread out a bit to other people's shoulders? She misses being the only one. Some of this is lingering immaturity. Some of it is because her child hood was ganked from her so violently. Some of it is just that no one, least of all Buffy Summers, is a saint. 

She can be jealous, petty and selfish on a day to day basis but when the cards are down and everything counts Buffy is selfless. She has sacrificed the things she wants and the things she needs in order to save a thankless world. She carries around a boatload of guilt and regrets. Most people's should have's, would have's and what if's don't come with nearly the amount of weight that Buffy's do. She's not much of a brooder (she tends to shop her brood-worthy thoughts away) but she's always aware of that list of things she could have prevented or the people she could have saved if she were faster/stronger/better. On the nights those get to her, she hits something until they go away. In fact that's the way she handles most problems. It settles her, lets her think and gets rid of emotions that get in the way so she can deal with something more calmly.

Onto the third layer. Underneath all her faults (and there are many) Buffy is a true blue heroine. She's the girl that saves the day in spite of all the odds; the blonde that goes into the alley with monsters; the girl that everyone expects to die within the first five minutes of the movie and she surprises them all. She's unpredictable. She loves being an underdog because when everyone's expectations are low she can come out shining. When she sets a goal, she will meet it because she can't stand failing. It's too much like quitting and we've already discussed how she doesn't do that. She's a rebel. When someone says you can't, she responds with just watch me. Rules are made to be broken because in her experience rules are made by old men sitting in towers with cups of tea. Buffy will do what she thinks is right even when it's the hard decision because that's what heroes and leaders do. They make the hard decisions. She didn't ask to be made The Slayer but after years of living that life she's finally comfortable in her skin. She knows what she has to do. She knows that it's going to be ugly and she knows that if she doesn't do it someone else will have to. She'd rather protect the world in general from the kind of things she does. 

And at the bottom of all this (the crunchy, black fried bits left on the plate when you've eaten the entire blooming onion) Buffy has some very deep seated issues. There are Daddy issues, commitment issues, relationship issues, hero issues and a couple of issues of Seventeen she's ashamed to admit she read. Love is pain. It's something that life has taught her and an idea she embraces and believes. No she doesn't want it to be painful but part of her thinks it has to be. Otherwise it isn't love. This applies to all forms of love, not just romantically although it is doubled when it comes to romantic love. People leave. They disappoint you. They hurt you. They break up with you in inappropriate places. No one will ever be what you really want them to be and in a way she's okay with that because she doesn't think she's ever what anyone really wants or needs her to be anyway. She wears too many hats for that. She doesn't think about the future because her goal in life is to make 30. Not many slayers do. It's hard to plan a future around apocalypses and impending death. She's a bit of a masochist in all ways. She works out until it hurts, loves until it hurts and sometimes she eats so much ice cream it hurts. 

The point I'm bringing Buffy in from, she's very worn. She's closed off emotionally because emotions make her job harder. She's vulnerable in an emotional and 'life' sense as opposed to weak in her position. As The General (leader of a slayer army) she's solid, she's strong and while she struggles with 'why me' or 'I wish I were sixteen again', she's already buckled in and down. She's a little cold and hard because of this but she covers it (when not actively at war) with a veneer of ditsy, bubbly, blonde that never quite reaches her eyes these days. She's also a little hopeful right now. She may not be able to live a normal life ever but she is finally comfortable with her power. She's reached a kind of acceptance about her power and her life for the first time ever.

In regards to Dawn, she struggles with not being enough like their mother, not giving Dawn enough time, not being present enough for important things or for the silly things like Molly Ringwald movies. She walks the typical single parent line. She has to work (not for pay now but because of her destiny, duties and responsibilities to others) but she wants to be a big sister (instead of Mom). She tries to be everything to Dawn and she's realizing that no one person can be everything. That's hard for her because Dawn is the part of her that's supposed to get everything Buffy really wants; a normal life, with a normal family in a normal world. Dawn is the part of Buffy that doesn't have to wear the mantle of slayer and sometimes she tries to impose this upon Dawn even when her little sister doesn't want it imposed upon her. Despite all the weird in their lives, Dawn really is the little niche of normal. Their relationship is very much a normal sibling relationship. They just tend to bond over apocalypses and lattes.

In a way, this struggle extends to everyone Buffy knows. She tries too hard to be what everyone wants her to be, friend, hero, mentor, daughter, sister etc ad nauseum. It wears her out, wears her thin and it's a fruitless exercise. The fact that she continues the vicious cycle is part stubborn, part being human and part rebellion. If she stops trying to be what everyone needs her to be then she's compromised herself somehow and she's giving into in some way what the original Watcher's Council wanted her to be; a weapon and nothing more. She refuses to accept that for herself, for the other slayers and she's not going to give a bunch of dead (literally) English guys the satisfaction of 'having won'. She'll do this slayer thing on her terms, thank you very much because that's how she's always done it and it's worked so far.

At the point I'm taking her from, she's fairly vulnerable. She's had her personality, brain, everything pretty much transferred onto a robot while the real her was living a normal life in suburbia unbeknownst to either of them. She is glad to be back, in control of her life (as much as she's ever been) and hey, not a robot, but she's also stuck in a sort of emo girl place. She accepted that she was never going to get a normal life and yet, Andrew with his brain transfer and Buffy bot proved her wrong. Now, she's missing something she doesn't remember (the normal life), mourning something she didn't want (the baby she thought she was pregnant with because Andrew is a guy and didn't program in periods) and wondering if there's some place where she can have at least the potential for these things and still be who she is, the Slayer.


Tell us about your chosen exit point, why you chose it, and why you want to play the character at All Inclusive:

My chosen exit point for Buffy is from the comic books that continue the series. It’s season 8: Guarded Part One. I’ve chosen this canon point for several reasons. In the beginning of S8, Buffy is an improved version of the Buffy Bot, but she doesn’t know that. Andrew programmed her brain onto the Buffy Bot and programmed the real Buffy’s brain to think she’s a normal girl. Believing she’s pregnant (and having to deal with all the implications and emotional issues that come with that) eventually leads to the revelation that she’s a bot. Andrew fixes her, but it leaves Buffy with a lot to think about. She had a normal life for a little while, even if she didn’t know it, and she still managed to fall into the supernatural world. She had a couple of days to contemplate the idea of having a baby (or not) before both the potential of a child and any hope for a normal life were snatched away from her. She’s struggling to find her footing on that and still dealing with some of that. Because of these events, she’s decided to try and step away from slaying. Kennedy, one of the other slayers, has started a security company using slayers, specializing in protecting high powered people from demons and other supernatural beings. She offers a job to Buffy and Buffy takes her up on that position. Part one of Guarded has her struggling fitting into that lifestyle, dealing with being able to have a financially secure life for the time ever, and tussling with what she is willing to give up in order to fit into this new lifestyle. It’s a really excellent, thoughtful, crossroads sort of point for Buffy that I think will be interesting to play with. It also leaves her open to the idea of something more than slaying. From a plotting stand point, it gives me lots of established canon to pop her back into via the doors and pull others into for plots and storylines and AU shenanigans.

As for why I want to play her at All Inclusive, I love the premise of the game. I love that she can pop back into her canon and play with things that have and will happen. I adore that she can pull her CR from the hotel into her world. I also really like that I can play a little bit of slice of life with her, but when she gets restless she can open a door to a world that’s not familiar to her and do her slay thing or just explore a bit. From another stand point, I really like the prose aspect of the game as well as the fact that from what I’ve seen the posts and threads of other characters are well written, well thought out and very mature in thought and style.

If your character is an alternate version of someone already in the game, explain how they are markedly different:

Prose example post:

Buffy is exhausted but then she thinks she's been exhausted since she was sixteen years old. Tired body does not mean tired mind and with everything that she's got to ponder over sleep is more elusive than a vampire ever tried to be so she climbs out the window to sit on the fire escape, grabbing her scythe on the way out. She doesn't think she's going to need to kill any baddies but it centers her, calms her—a little like Valium with the potential to be lethal.

She killed Willow. Buffy runs the fingertips of her left hand over the curve of the scythe's blade. Blood springs to the tips of her fingers instantly like four tiny papercuts then runs her hand down the wooden shaft, smearing her blood along it. She buried this in Willow's body all the way up to the curved blade. She remembers how it felt, a little more resistance then if she'd used the blade. Witches don't dust, even the blackest of them but shove something sharp and pointy through their hearts...

you'dbesurprisedwhatastakethroughtheheartwillkill



Willow doesn't know and one day it will be Buffy's job to tell her. That's the thing about being The Slayer. The things that nobody else wants to do always fall on her shoulders and she wouldn't have it any other way no matter how much she hates it. It's part of protecting them and in the end, selfishly, she'll admit Dark Willow was right. It's not so much how you die as who kills you. It's who you'll let kill you. It's the last thing you want to remember and you do remember. She knows you remember in heaven and in hell. 

She reaches up and pinches the bridge of her nose with fingertips that are already half healed.
Death is your gift



And it can be dealt or told or screamed. It can be sacrificed and given. Death isn't always unwelcome and it's taken her a lot of years to learn that and even more to admit that. That doesn't mean it was easy to slide the scythe through Willow's heart and she's happy for the pain that resides somewhere just beneath her rib cage. When it stops hurting, when it stops making her throat close with tears she will never shed then she's not human anymore and she's not much of a slayer because love is pain and a slayer has to love. She has to love life. She has to love death. She has to love the world and the kill and the feel of a stake in her hand. 

She has to be the only weapon.

She has to be more than a weapon. 

There are rules and exceptions and they all get turned around in her head which is why she tells all the girls that instinct is best even when Giles poo-poos that advice. It's the way she's made it this far; instinct and heart and friends. She makes sure they know that's important too. Slayers need a reason to keep fighting. Slayers need friends.

And she's back full circle to the reason she's out here instead of in there. She killed Willow. Her best friend in the whole world.

And whether she likes it or not in the same situation, she'd have to do it again.

Maybe that's curse of the slayer, If you love it, if you want it, if it's not absolutely essential to your being then you have to kill it. You have to watch the light die and feel the body go limp. You have to have the blood of all the things you love on your hands.

Sugar and spice and the blood of everything nice. That's what slayers are made of.