OOC | Summary of Buffy's Canon
Buffy Summers’ first experience as a Slayer were strange dreams in which she lived past lives of Slayers, and battled with vampires. She assumed they meant nothing, brushing them off as nightmares. That was until her first watcher, Merrick, approached her on the school steps and informed her of her true destiny.
Buffy then was the popular girl in school, someone obsessed with fashion, cheerleading and boyfriends. She had a complete facade in play to cover for the fact her parents were going through a painful divorce. Slaying could just be the out she needed; a new world she could lose herself in to push away the harmful reality of her life.
At first Buffy doesn’t take to vampires so well. In fact, they pretty much give her the creeps. But gradually her skills build, and it’s hard to deny she’s a natural - the automatic boost in strength, reflexes, and hand-eye coordination helping her immensely. Unfortunately Buffy loses her mentor and Watcher to the Big Bad Lothos, a vampire working on terrorising her home city of LA. She teams up with outcast, Pike, to defeat him - getting herself expelled for burning down the school gym during the big dance.
Buffy’s mother, Joyce, divorces Hank Summers, and Buffy and Joyce find themselves in the Californian town Sunnydale. Buffy figures this is a fresh start, something to get her away from the Slaying which she has effectively retired from. She doesn’t need the heartache, the broken nails, or the stress that comes with leading the double life.
Only the Powers that Be have different plans, and she finds herself face to face with her new Watcher, Rupert Giles, in the high school library. It’s his perfect cover, and a way to keep an eye on his new charge. Buffy doesn’t make things easy though, choosing to ignore him, her calling, and the fact that Sunnydale seems to be built on top of a Hellmouth.
It’s only after she starts to make friends with Xander, and Willow, and they find themselves in danger - that she starts to realise there is no ignoring her supernatural responsibility. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is out of retirement, and now also has a new tall, dark, handsome guardian in the form of the mysterious Angel.
Buffy continues to struggle with balancing life as a student, Slayer, and daughter. Her mother continues to remain in the dark about her graveyard lurking tendencies, and the things that go bump into the night. All she really wants is to be a normal girl who can party, and date. The dating thing gets extra complicated though, when it turns out the handsome Angel is actually a vampire with a soul. A Slayer loving a vampire... she knows there’s irony in that.
The Master, the vampire trying to escape his hold underground to walk the Earth again, is her nemesis from the moment she sets foot in Sunnydale. Every battle brings her closer to facing him, and Giles stumbles across a prophecy that says the Slayer will not survive. She will face the Master, but at the cost of her own life. Buffy can’t handle it, she reacts to hearing the prophecy with hysterics. After all, she’s only sixteen. She hasn’t even lived yet, and now she has to die? This isn’t what she signed up for. Unfortunately for her, she does die. For two minutes, the Slayer is legally dead, and it’s only Xander’s CPR that brings her back to life - Angel standing by helplessly given a vampire has no breath.
It’s the first time Buffy dies, but it’s enough to activate another Slayer - Kendra. Buffy’s never been one for following rules, so why shouldn’t she create a first in the history of Slayers with two of them walking around?
Her and Angel fall deeper, and deeper in love, and on the night of her seventeenth birthday while trying to stop Spike and Dru getting hold of a part of the Judge - an all powerful being that can destroy everyone and everything - they make love. It’s perfect, everything Buffy could have asked for in her first time. That is until she discovers that the moment of perfect happiness is enough to rid Angel of his soul. It’s the one condition of the curse that restored it to him; he is never supposed to experience true happiness without becoming the monster he once was.
Angelus is now back, and ready to terrorise Buffy and the rest of Sunnydale while joining forces with Spike and Drusilla - both vampires he used to hang out with in his darker days. Buffy has never faced anything like Angelus, and she struggles to reconcile the fact that she has to kill him, with the notion that he was the man she loved. As it all starts to build towards the denouement, Kendra is killed by Dru, Giles tortured by Angel, and Buffy forms an alliance with Spike. The Slayer finally faces up against her former lover, the two locked in a sword fight until Buffy finally drives her blade through him - at the exact same moment Willow manages to cast a spell to restore Angel’s soul.
Buffy is left broken despite managing to save the world again, and runs away to Los Angeles to become Anne and try and get away from Slaying once and for all. She can’t escape for long though, and once again Fate reminds her that her destiny lies elsewhere. Buffy returns to Sunnydale to her friends, and mother, Joyce now trying to accept that her daughter is a Slayer.
The teenager continues to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, but Kendra’s death has led to the activation of another Slayer, and Faith Lehane arrives in town. The darker version of Buffy seems to embrace her calling, and Buffy is tempted to leave it all to her to deal with. The blonde might finally be able to retire and leave it behind, only Faith is tempted by the Mayor, and the calling of the darkside, and suddenly Buffy is left try and save her, and Sunnydale once again.
Nothing goes according to plan, and Buffy eventually makes the decision to end things with Faith - for better, or worse. The two Slayers go up against each other after Faith shoots Angel with a poison arrow, hitting Buffy where she knows it’ll really hurt. It ends with Buffy stabbing Faith, and the original Slayer is left with the guilt of knowing she nearly ended someone’s life.
Buffy also manages to learn her greatest lesson - none of her efforts to help the teenagers of Sunnydale have gone unnoticed, and the student body unites to defeat the Mayor with Buffy leading them. It’s her first real taste of life as a leader, and she can’t help but realise she’s good at what she does. She quits the Watcher’s Council though, going rogue when a replacement for Giles - Wesley Wyndam-Price - and the Council themselves continue to interfere to her detriment. She and Giles are on their own, going rogue.
In order for Buffy to enjoy her life, and to not feel anchored, Angel breaks up with her before she graduates, urging Buffy to be herself. When she starts college, the feeling of abandonment and alienation doesn’t leave. She knows her friends are there, but they seem to embrace college life better than she does. Everything seems harsher, adult life something she was never prepared for. In college, Buffy learns of the Initiative, a secret organisation researching monsters, demons, vampires, and things that should have been her realm - not that of the military. She meets Riley, though. Her first human boyfriend, and someone that she could love.
Only Buffy doesn’t quite shake her feelings for Angel, and her continual journey of what it means to be the Slayer, and to be Buffy leads her to separate herself more and more from Riley. She stops relying on him, she stops talking to him - and he seeks solace in a vampire brothel where he’s fed upon by the creatures Buffy hates most.
A monk has also changed Buffy’s life forever by hiding a mystic key that a Hell God is after in the form of a sister. All the minds of the Scoobies are altered to suddenly accept Dawn as the youngest Summers, and while Buffy does discover the truth, she is driven to protect the girl made from Summers blood. Dawn is her sister, and the Slayer will do anything to protect her. She sacrifices her life, jumping to her death in order to close a portal to a Hell dimension to stop it from entering their dimension so that her friends, family, and the world can be safe again.
Buffy is ready to die this time - she knows she is doing it for all the right reasons. This is her gift.
Unbeknownst to her friends, Buffy winds up in Heaven. She is not trapped in a Hell dimension like they assume, so when they bring her back to life - Buffy can’t handle it. She thinks Earth is really Hell, and can’t understand why she’s been brought there. She was happy; she had played her part, and all she wanted to do was rest. She struggles with the knowledge that she’s not in Hell, just back on Earth, and the fact that she is suddenly expected to be normal and happy again. Her friends expect it of her, and the only one that seems to get it is Spike. She starts a sexual relationship with her that at least has her feeling something other than empty. Her destructive spiral is mirrored by Willow, who is finding out that magic is addictive, and not all of it is good. Willow becomes something evil, and this time Buffy has to try and stop her best friend from destroying the world, only she doesn’t. Xander does. The Scoobies are lost without Giles, the father figure they all knew and loved, and he comes back to find them all scattered in different directions, taking Willow back to England to try and teach her how to control her magic.
Buffy is once again left alone, her life as guardian and sister to Dawn after their mother’s death a couple of years ago driving her to try and take responsibility. She has bills to pay, and needs to prove that she is capable of caring for Dawn. Buffy surprisingly gets offered a job as counsellor at the now rebuilt Sunnydale High, and jumps at the chance - especially when she realises the Hellmouth is still under the building, and it seems to be growing with Dark Forces. The ultimate Big Bad - The First Evil - is in town, and Buffy struggles to defeat it. Any move she makes just seems to make her side weaker, especially when she’s left with Potentials to protect - the Slayers that aren’t quite; the girls with the potential to become the next Slayers. An unlikely ally in the form of Faith Lehane returns to town, and the two original Slayers seem to finally bond, and accept each other. They’re not instant best friends, but they understand each other’s motives. Only the group seems to prefer face as leader, and Buffy is sent away after one too many mistakes are made.
As she tries to lick her wounds, and accept the fact that she isn’t the leader she wanted to be, Buffy forms a plan - a crazy idea that needs everyone to work together, and to work as one. If two Slayers can exist, why not an army? Why can’t all the Potentials have their powers now when they’re needed? With the help of an ancient scythe that is the true weapon of a Slayer, and Willow casting her witchy mojo, the plan is carried off. Buffy, Faith, and the Slayerettes go in the Hellmouth and battle the Uber Vamps, and the First. The Hellmouth is destroyed with help from Spike, and with it goes Sunnydale, the town now a massive crater in the ground.
Buffy’s done it. She’s defeated the First, and destroyed a Hellmouth. Her future is unwritten and full of possibilities. For the first time in her life she has a choice.