Women, Connected Again
Good gosh, guys! Yesterday and Friday I was running a mega-fever which left me with no recourse but to stay in bed and watch S4 of Buffy all day between naps. Then today I wake up and BOOM! Better! What a bizarrely strange and fortuitous recovery.
I have been trying for the past week to get this finished up, but various scholastic and health impediments kept...um...impeding me. But I'm taking advantage of my non-fevered state to get it all finished up.
Thanks to some feedback on my Women, Connected post, I have a couple things for you. For one, I realized - as I knew I would - that some characters were left off the originals that shouldn't have been. Chantarelle/Lily/Anne, Olivia, the individual potentials, among others. I wanted to add those ladies in.
Also, someone said it would be interesting to see a similar chart for the male characters, and I agree. For comparative purposes. Does having such a female-heavy structure mean that the men's relationships get overlooked? Is this an either/or thing?
So, I got some new charts for you guys under ye old cut! :)
First, the revised ladies of BtVS. It became unwieldy to do in 800x600, so if you click on the image, it'll take you to a larger version.
And now, the men. Again, click the image to see the larger version.
The male characters aren't as centralized around one main character (such as Buffy or Willow), but the connections are quite numerous and intense. It is noteworthy that there are a good number of lone male characters without any connections to other guys, though.
To ensure I didn't overlook any character, I consulted good ol' Wikipedia's character list. Any character that was on that list and appeared in more than one episode made the cut. Wikipedia did list a few characters that were only present in one episode (such as Veruca or Cassie), but I felt I had to draw a line on the episode rule.
The connections were a bit more subjective. It's based on relationships, which can be difficult to gauge. However, I was pretty strict on that standard. An interaction does not equal a relationship. Olivia and Buffy interact once in The Freshman, but I don't feel that adds up to an actual relationship. We're trying to get away from the low standards of "Two women talked to each other! Yay!" to get at something more substantial.
However, I'm sure there'll be some disagreement on my assessments, especially when it comes to the line width (which indicates the intensity of the relationship). It happens. These are rough illustrations, as noted in the original post.
But let's see how Buffy stacks up to other shows! I used both Star Trek: TNG and Babylon 5 for comparison last time. I'm doing so again this time. Also, while I used Wikipedia for the characters, I'm going very much from memory for the relationships, so I claim only tenuous confidence in the accuracy. :)
The ladies of TNG:
As you can see, I'd missed some characters last time. As you can also see, they wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Now the men:
Yep. Onto the B5 ladies. Last time, I missed Anna Sheridan. So I just added her on this one:
And the men. Getting the characters was difficult as B5 has so many minor male characters coming and going. I limited it to the ones I have a fairly clear memory of. Which is still a good number.
There you go! I feel so much better now that I finally got that done. Whew!
Oh, and I don't hold ownership over the concept or anything. Feel free to make similar charts for other shows if you like. No need to credit. :)
I have been trying for the past week to get this finished up, but various scholastic and health impediments kept...um...impeding me. But I'm taking advantage of my non-fevered state to get it all finished up.
Thanks to some feedback on my Women, Connected post, I have a couple things for you. For one, I realized - as I knew I would - that some characters were left off the originals that shouldn't have been. Chantarelle/Lily/Anne, Olivia, the individual potentials, among others. I wanted to add those ladies in.
Also, someone said it would be interesting to see a similar chart for the male characters, and I agree. For comparative purposes. Does having such a female-heavy structure mean that the men's relationships get overlooked? Is this an either/or thing?
So, I got some new charts for you guys under ye old cut! :)
First, the revised ladies of BtVS. It became unwieldy to do in 800x600, so if you click on the image, it'll take you to a larger version.
And now, the men. Again, click the image to see the larger version.
The male characters aren't as centralized around one main character (such as Buffy or Willow), but the connections are quite numerous and intense. It is noteworthy that there are a good number of lone male characters without any connections to other guys, though.
To ensure I didn't overlook any character, I consulted good ol' Wikipedia's character list. Any character that was on that list and appeared in more than one episode made the cut. Wikipedia did list a few characters that were only present in one episode (such as Veruca or Cassie), but I felt I had to draw a line on the episode rule.
The connections were a bit more subjective. It's based on relationships, which can be difficult to gauge. However, I was pretty strict on that standard. An interaction does not equal a relationship. Olivia and Buffy interact once in The Freshman, but I don't feel that adds up to an actual relationship. We're trying to get away from the low standards of "Two women talked to each other! Yay!" to get at something more substantial.
However, I'm sure there'll be some disagreement on my assessments, especially when it comes to the line width (which indicates the intensity of the relationship). It happens. These are rough illustrations, as noted in the original post.
But let's see how Buffy stacks up to other shows! I used both Star Trek: TNG and Babylon 5 for comparison last time. I'm doing so again this time. Also, while I used Wikipedia for the characters, I'm going very much from memory for the relationships, so I claim only tenuous confidence in the accuracy. :)
The ladies of TNG:
As you can see, I'd missed some characters last time. As you can also see, they wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Now the men:
Yep. Onto the B5 ladies. Last time, I missed Anna Sheridan. So I just added her on this one:
And the men. Getting the characters was difficult as B5 has so many minor male characters coming and going. I limited it to the ones I have a fairly clear memory of. Which is still a good number.
There you go! I feel so much better now that I finally got that done. Whew!
Oh, and I don't hold ownership over the concept or anything. Feel free to make similar charts for other shows if you like. No need to credit. :)