Polychromatic App
[nick / name]: Kristi
[personal LJ name]: bashipforever
[other characters currently played]:
Myrnin :: Morganville Vampires :: trapdoor_spider
Lucy Locke :: OC :: mghtbconcussed
Richard Castle :: Castle :: cuffmeonce
Dean Winchester :: Supernatural :: dude_imbatman
Rebecca Locke :: The Inside :: cant-just-hang
Tony Stark :: Iron Man :: idmakeitaweek
[e-mail]: writer@allengames.com
[AIM / messenger]: rageiscute
[series]: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
[character]: Buffy Anne Summers
[character history / background]:
http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Buffy_Summers
[character abilities]:
Enhanced strength, speed, durability, coordination and healing. She's strong but not throw a building strong. More like bench press a Buick once strong. She's fast, not quite blur speed but close. She's far from invulnerable but girl can take a beating and not look like a domestic abuse case the next morning.
Giles once said Buffy was a natural. She picks up all things weapon and combat related very quickly. She is proficient in most weapons, guns excluded. She's very skilled (and most often prefers) in hand to hand combat. Her fighting style is a combination of martial arts, a hint of gymnastics and a lot of hit-them-until-they-don't-get-up. She likes to use her kicks a lot as well.
Buffy is also a leader. Particularly from the time frame I'm taking her from. She's been the General for so long that it comes very natural. When shit hits the fan, she will rally an army, form a plan and get it done.
[character 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.
[point in time line you're picking your character from]: The end of The Time of Your Life Part 4 Comic book Series (Season 8) She's fresh from Mekala Fray's world.
[journal post]:
[The City is kind enough to dump Buffy into the fountain. She comes up sputtering, pushing her hair out of her face. She's got on a gold mini dress, black boots and she's carrying a wicked looking scythe]
So not where I thought the hole of suck was going to take me. I would have worked harder at getting away.
[She slogs her way out of the fountain and looks around. Despite the flippant commentary, her body language is defensive.]
Alright, no flying cars, no freaky future mini-me with pink and black hair trying to prove herself and-Ooooh! Coffee. I could really go for a mocha right now.
[Refocusing except she's not unfocused. She's still defensive, still on task and completely at odds with her words and tone]
Someone wanna let Buffy in on the joke? Anytime now. That'd be fantastic.
[third person / log sample]:
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.
Her friends:
Canonically, Buffy is really the first slayer to have friends and they're sort of part of Buffy's rebellion against her destiny. Having friends is the first step Buffy has taken in telling all of these British stick-in-the-mud watchers that the regime has changed. They're doing it Buffy's way now. They're a part of her life that she insists on making room for and they've not only helped her maintain a normal part of her life, they've saved her life on more occasions than she can count. She's fought for her friends both in the danger Will Robinson sense and against the Council for the right to even have friends. They're as much her family as her mother is and more so than her father. Her friends are the people who accept her as she is. They're what gives her strength to continue fighting when the odds are against her. As long as Buffy has her friends, she's not alone. She's got backup and every single one of her friends serve a purpose. She knows they're all pieces to the reason she's alive. Without anyone of them she would have died and she knows this so there's a great deal of gratitude toward all of her friends.
Xander is Buffy's rock in a way. She feels like she can always count on him to smack her and say hello? You're doing it wrong. To her, he is the heart of their operation and in her mind often falls into the category of people she can't risk regardless of how important he might be to the battle. When Sunnydale was going boom literally in Season 7, Xander is the one that Buffy sent with Dawn, not because he wouldn't be useful but because as long as he is safe she feels like she can give her all. She trusts him with the most important thing (Dawn) in her life.
Willow is the one Buffy feels like she can count on when the chips are down as well as Buffy's BFF. She knows without a doubt that in a lurch, Willow will be there. If Xander represents trust and security to Buffy, Willow represents stability.
Giles is Buffy's father figure. He is comfort to her and someone she can turn to when she's uncertain about what she's doing or should be doing.
Buffy's friends are one of the few things she can count on. She knows that if things go south, if she ends up needing someone, they'll be there whether they agree with her or not, she has their support. In a fight that support and that knowledge makes the difference between winning or losing.
Her family:
I mentioned that Buffy's friends are her family. However for Buffy there's friends, there's family and then there is Dawn. Dawn is more than family. Dawn is a part of Buffy literally and metaphorically. The monks made Dawn from Buffy and Dawn's blood is Buffy's blood. Dawn is the part of Buffy that's supposed to get everything good. As long as Dawn gets a good life, happiness and something somewhat akin to normal, Buffy doesn't mind so much that she hasn't and probably never will. She's got a very motherly affection and protectiveness for her sister. Buffy tries to protect Dawn from the uglier parts of her life. She's not always successful in this endeavor but she never stops trying to the point that she's over-protective, forgetting that Dawn is a teenager instead of a little kid. Much as a parent always sees a child as younger than they actually are, underestimating how well they can take care of themselves, Buffy underestimates Dawn and constantly sees her as a child.
Dawn is Buffy's 'line in the sand'. If it's crossed, she quits. That's a non-negotiable point as far as the slayer is concerned. In S5 Buffy gives up on Dawn when she is taken by Glory. That knowledge that she gives up and that Dawn is gone Buffy goes into a conscious coma. Willow has to go inside Buffy's head and bring her back because Buffy failed in saving her sister and for a moment to Buffy that was acceptable. She'd like to wrap Dawn up in cotton and lock her away where she'll always be safe and sound. Naturally that's not ever going to happen. Giles says to her in Season 7 that Buffy would let Dawn die to save the world. Buffy says 'If I have to. To save the world.' That's a change from S5 when she tells Giles that she won't kill Dawn. However, what Dawn means to her doesn't change in these two years. What changes is Buffy's dedication to the job. Dawn dies and Buffy quits. Dawn is what Buffy saves the world for; so she can shop and eat and love. Without Dawn, there's no point to saving the world.
Buffy's Love Life:
This is a point Buffy would like to never discuss. That's because she navigates a love life poorly. She swears it's not her fault but slayer + love life = complicated. Normal boys end up in danger of becoming dead. Vampire boys...well they're vampires and really that's complicated enough. Army boys never feel like they measure up to ex-vampire boys plus they don't get the darkness in Buffy's life that is always going to exist. At this point, Buffy has mostly given up on a love life. It's just one of those things that she doesn't get.
Angel is the love of Buffy's life. He always will be but he is the one thing that Buffy knows she'll never get to have. Angel was her first serious boyfriend and the model that first serious relationship cast is the one that influences Buffy's ideas of relationships. Love is pain and if you love it, it will be taken away from you. Touching is dangerous and nothing good ever comes of it. Because Angel is the love that Buffy never gets, she's often very prickley around him. She turns into a sixteen year old girl with all of the pitfalls of being one. She tends to snap at him, to snark and often their arguing comes to blows. There exists a tension between them that never really gets resolved. He insists in the S7 finale that he's not getting any older and while Buffy thinks it's a nice idea, it's not something she's ready for. Buffy has to figure out who Buffy is.
Spike is someone Buffy loves. He's also someone that she feels a responsibility to. He says he got his soul for her and that makes her obligated in a way to him. Spike was there for her during some of her darkest days and she will always feel a loyalty to him. Now that their relationship is dissolved, they've got a good friendship. Spike can understand her in a way that most people can't. He understands that darkness inside.
Riley was the 'normal' boy that was just abnormal enough to fit into her life. In a way, Riley will always be the one who got away. He was her attempt at the normal life Angel wanted her to have. I believe she purposely let him leave because she has to fulfill that idea of 'the guy always leaves' and she knew that in the end they'd both search for a way out.
New People:
Buffy actually gets along really well with new people. She enjoys meeting them and talking to them. It reminds her what she's saving the world for and reminds her that the world is wider than herself, than her friends and more importantly than the evil things she fights.
In the City, she'll be fairly social. Part of it will be curiosity about the City and the residents in it. She'll consider it information gathering. Part of it will be that naturally Buffy is social. She enjoys talking to people and being a 'real' girl. She assimilates people fairly quickly into the 'friends' group and from there she feels responsible and protective of them. While Buffy is naturally social, she also clashes with people on occasion. She's a leader and she likes to have things done her way. In a City with such a varied population, it's a given that she's going to clash with some people. She won't openly go looking for a fight though, not with humans. She'll save that for the monsters in the Underground. She's fairly accepting of people whether they're actually human or demon. She tells Xander and Willow at one point that if she were anymore open-minded her brain would fall out. This is fairly true. She's learned that prejudices are generally wrong and everyone just ends up with egg on their face.
Temperament:
Buffy tends to be easy going. She rolls with the punches, only standing up and protesting when she thinks it's wrong. Got a slew of potential slayers? Sure, Buffy'll put them up. Best friend suddenly gay? Give her a second and things will be right as rain. Work for a secret military operation? Can she get night vision goggles with that? This easy going nature is often seen as perky, a bit ditzy and leads others to assume that Buffy isn't really very bright. It's often a fatal mistake to make if Buffy is your enemy. Buffy is prone to using gallows humor when in a dire situation. It makes everything seem less dire but it does tend to rub some people the wrong way. Rather than apologize for the inappropriate humor she makes light of that as well. In fact when Buffy is joking she tends to be more serious about something. She doesn't have any need to make fun with the things she doesn't care about. She's a control freak, preferring to be the one in charge of making decisions despite the fact that canonically she complains about making decisions. It's a learned habit rather than one she was born with. If she has control then she's the one who can fix 'it'. Whatever it happens to be. If she doesn't have control then she knows someone like a Watcher from England is going to try and take over and she won't like the results of that. Early in her slay career she made the choice to make her own decisions and her own way in being a slayer because of that she has to follow up on that. Taking that control made Buffy grow up and she realizes that she can't go back to the days of letting someone else take care of everything.
Speaking of complaining, Buffy does that sometimes. Okay, Buffy does that often and to be fair, she's got a lot to complain about. She sucks it up on a regular basis when she has to choosing to complain about things like the sweater she ruined or the nail she broke instead of the fact that while ruining the sweater and breaking the nail she was fighting for her life. It goes hand in hand with the gallows humor. If she complains about her sweater or her nail then she's not thinking about nearly losing her life.
She's rarely prone to anger and when she does get angry she doesn't lash out at people but rather things. She knows she has to control her anger because she can do a great deal of damage if she loses control. She goes cold with anger, stern and hard rather then ragey and hot. She will methodically destroy things, turning her anger into physical destruction on things or vampires rather than the person or situation that angered her (unless that person or situation happens to be the sort that she can legitimately slay) but instead of wailing on a wall or a vampire indiscriminately, she's perfectly controlled in her anger.
Buffy is focused. She's narrowed things in her life down so that surviving and bringing as many people as possible with her is Buffy's goal. Everything in her life is streamlined toward that end. She doesn't date anymore because of it. In S8 (the comics) she sleeps with Satsu but after wards tells her that she can't have a relationship with her. Being The Slayer won't allow it. While there are now other slayers, she's still the big gun. She's the role model, the General and the one all the other slayers look up to because of this there's more pressure on her. To balance this, she's still The Slayer (capital letters) to the bad guys. They don't want to kill the baby slayers. They want the one that's got a rep. Sort of like taking down the toughest guy in a new school. She deals with her public reputation by closing up and presenting a front to the world. Her friends and Dawn are the only ones that get beneath that front. Occasionally the 'general public' gets to see cracks. For example in S5 in the finale, she slays a vampire in an alley while a little boy watches and the little boy says 'But you're just a girl'. Her response is 'That's what I keep telling everybody'. Part of her wants to be just that girl but she knows she'll never be that girl no matter how she longs for it. Buffy got over being normal a long time ago.
Her first response to aggression is always going to be fight rather than flight. Even when she's rendered helpless by some drugs Giles gave her, she fights for her mother against a vampire that's crazy, strong and blood starved. And she wins. Running isn't ever an option, which gets her into a lot of trouble with the potentials and her friends in S7. It ends up getting her evicted from her home. She's tired of waiting for The First to bring the fight to them and she's bringing the fight to The First. Much in the way that Buffy doesn't know how to quit, she doesn't know how to run. Retreat is one of those words that makes her go 'huh?'. Buffy knows that as a slayer she is a weapon all by herself. She likes having her stakes and her crossbows but she knows all of that is window dressing.
She's quick to react (again usually aggressive) when something sneaks up on her but she prefers to be on the acting end of things. She's obsessive about patrol because of this. It also drives her to question Giles (and other research-y type people) about what's coming next? What do we do next? What what what. Often it comes off as being annoying but it's really Buffy acting as opposed to reacting.