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Your name: Kristi
Journal: bashipforever
Email: writer@allengames.com
AIM: rageiscute
Character name: Buffy Summers
Canon: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Media: TV
Canon point they're being picked from: The Time of Your Life Part 4 (fresh out of Mekala Fray's world)
Why you want to play him/her here: ZOMBIES. Also I love the character. It's a good chance for her to play General and kick some ass.
Reaction to Soil Your Plants: Buffy will take charge almost from the moment she's dropped in because someone has to. She's used to leading, particularly from the time line I'm taking her out of. She'll organize things, bark orders and quietly emo that she doesn't have Giles or Willow or Xander with her. She'll loudly ewww over zombies and seriously couldn't the PTB find someone else to kill zombies for them? There's always that Alice chick.
Entry: Prezap. She's been organizing the survivors, taking stock of the world they've been dropped in and appointing herself as General Bitchy Pants. She patrols at night, grabs a couple of hours sleep early in the morning then spends the day making sure they've got resources gathered in a safe, central place. There's no point in having a mall full of things they need if they can't get to those things quickly. She works out in the afternoon then sits on the roof and works on her crossbow skills using zombies for targets. Dinner and then rinse repeat.
History: http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Buffy_Summers
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 lets that guard slip occasionally with her friends.
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.
3rd person introspection:
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.
3rd person action:
Buffy walks along the roof of the mall, the heels of her boots click-click-clicking. She's got a crossbow in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. She sits down on a lawn chair that's there for just this purpose and looks out over the parking lot. It only takes her a moment to nock an arrow in, aim and let it fly. The arrow flies true going straight through the head of a zombie. The zombie crumples and Buffy lowers her crossbow with a sigh.
“Figures. I finally get the shoe wardrobe I've always wanted and the only people that get to see them are undead. Previously dead. Reanimated? Is there a PC term for what zombies are? Aaaaand now I'm worried about PC-ness in a post-apocalyptic world. No one can say my priorities aren't right on track.”