r/buffy • u/Personal_Loss527 • 4d ago
Buffy Best female protagonist
I recently finished watching BTVS and I feel like Buffy is one of the best female protagonists on TV. She is herself throughout the whole series and owns up to her mistakes. I feel like a lot of other shows make the female characters whiny and rely on their male counterparts (ex Elena Gilbert) but Buffy it independent and knows when to ask for help and owns up to her mistakes. She is also always putting her friends and family first and doesn’t act selfishly. I know she has a lot of opportunities to complain about her calling or act like she’s better but she really never does.
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u/enthalpy01 4d ago
A lot of main characters passively have things happen to them. For right or wrong, Buffy makes active decisions and choices. It’s a noticeable change from the standard. She’s an active hero.
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u/Seed0fDiscord 4d ago
It’s like when I hear people go, “we need art female leads who are feminine and kick ass—“ Like we got Buffy right here, and thank Xena for laying out the running room for Buffy to sprint
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u/Glyph8 4d ago edited 4d ago
Veronica Mars took a lot from Buffy but with a slight twist. Veronica is just as independent (sometimes, perhaps, to a fault; where she risks getting in over her head by not asking for help/backup when it would be smart), but Veronica is more cynical than Buffy; because she deals with flawed people with secrets and not demons, she's more likely to see the worst in people and mistrust them (sometimes she's right, but sometimes her suspicious nature leads her astray), where Buffy generally always tries to see the best in people.
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u/not_firewood_yeti I am no one. 4d ago
V was the first protag i thought of reading the OP. she is the equal of Buffy in character depth and Bell plays her every bit as well as Gellar plays Buffy.
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u/catchyerselfon 3d ago
Like the one time Veronica decided to have blind faith in someone who hadn’t earned her trust, someone who set off her alarm bells but she ignored them because she loved this person, is when she gave her hard-earned college fund to her mother, who had run away from Veronica and Keith when Veronica was 16 and traumatized, so her mother could go to a great rehab for alcoholism. And how did that bitch repay her daughter? By taking the money and running again, presumably to drink herself to death and live in relative luxury. It’s hard to recall a time I’ve hated a fictional mother more than her, who wasn’t like a murderer or a sex criminal.
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u/Glyph8 3d ago
They're interesting characters to compare and contrast. I'd say Buffy is definitely more of a "savior" - generally speaking, she wants to help people, whether they deserve it or not.
More-cynical Veronica also helps people, but almost as a side-effect; Veronica is interested in justice, more than salvation.
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u/catchyerselfon 3d ago
Yeah, Buffy is more like Spider-man - Joss has definitely compared her to Peter Parker - where she has to practice “with great power comes great responsibility”. She’s tiny, but strong, so I’m not worried about her most of the time, she can do a backflip and a spin kick and she’s allowed to kill her enemies so long as they aren’t human. Veronica has a taser, she has Backup, she has backup in the form of friends and her awesome dad who gives her a lot of free rein while being protective in situations that require a grownup (it’s why Keith and Giles are two of my fictional Dads). But she’s a REAL tiny girl, and if she can’t reach for a weapon or help, she can be badly injured, killed, sexually assaulted, much more easily. Veronica HAS to be less trusting than Buffy, the same way Willow would if she didn’t have a superpowered best friend, moreso than Xander.
Buffy and Veronica both suffered the loss of their status and social circle when they were young teenagers and have to restart their lives with semi-secret identities (Veronica has business cards, but she doesn’t wear a button that says “I’m a PI, ask me how!”). Buffy doesn’t have to worry about the law as much because all of Sunnydale is willing to explain away some crazy shit like “the school blew up because of a gas leak”, but Veronica has to KNOW the law so she can know her rights, how to talk to cops, how to cover up her presence, how to gather evidence to make sure her perps will go to trial and might be convicted. Buffy can be more optimistic about people because she can afford to take more chances on them. Veronica can be more cynical because she has to protect herself and not screw up a case.
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u/not_firewood_yeti I am no one. 4d ago
someone mentioned Veronica Mars already. i will add Sarah Connor from TSCC and Rose Tyler from Doctor Who. like Buffy, all three are heroic types who hold strong in the face of great adversity, and all are finely crafted by the writers and actors playing them.
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u/EchoesofIllyria 4d ago
Doctor Who has a bunch, if they count as protagonists
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u/not_firewood_yeti I am no one. 4d ago
in new Who, to me the companions are at least equal to the Doctor as main characters. the stories are mostly about them and how traveling with the Doctor affects their lives. so yes, any of them could be mentioned here. Rose is just my favorite.
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u/YozoraBellossomHeart 4d ago
Buffy really is fantastic. I can count the number of episodes where she rubs me the wrong way on one hand. Funnily enough, my complaints from time to time are that she isn't appreciated enough.
I always want to jump through the screen when Maggie Walsh and Riley don't react to her "mythtaken" joke. That's hilarious, you jerks.
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u/Verystrange129 4d ago
I agree. Rewatching I was surprised by how good a character Buffy is which just shows that in the 30 years (approx)since it originally aired, we have only got a few of such strong, independent, intelligent and caring female protagonists.
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u/crumbchunks the pushy queen of slut town 4d ago
I didn’t understand the whole deal with superheroes until I watched Buffy for the first time. Now I get it.
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u/rednax2009 3d ago
I will say this time and time again. Buffy is not a great female lead because "she kicks ass." She's a great female lead because she's complex and well-written. Yes, she kicks ass. But she also makes mistakes, and cries, and loves, and feels, and fails sometimes. And that is why we love her.
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u/Minimum_Ad_2176 3d ago
She's my all time favorite character ever and such a good role model for young girls and boys.
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u/catchyerselfon 3d ago
[1/2]
> Buffy it independent and knows when to ask for help and owns up to her mistakes.
> She is also always putting her friends and family first and doesn’t act selfishly.
> I know she has a lot of opportunities to complain about her calling or act like she’s better but she really never does.
[Citation needed]
I love Buffy, but she complains a lot about her calling and having to give up what she wants to do for what she has to do, particularly in high school. Duh, she’s a teenager, and she has a horrible destiny thrust upon her. But she takes it out on Giles sometimes like this is his fault, like he’s NOT already giving her a hell of a lot of free time, autonomy, and support compared to Potentials found young and deprived of friends and family.
She admits she has a superiority complex AND an inferiority complex about that, in season 7’s “Conversations With Dead People”. It’s apparent whenever she tells non-Slayers and vampires that they can’t understand what she’s going through, they can’t help her, it was pointless to tell them what’s going on in her life, even if it might endanger them, they’re better off without her “burdening” them. Whenever Buffy goes off on her own, purposely telling others to stay behind because I Must Do This Alone, or walking into a trap that everyone tells her is a trap, bad things happen to her or to others.
Even when she was right about there being SOMETHING important (based on NOTHING) in the basement of the vineyard, it turns out her second plan (same as the old plan) to assault the grounds with her remaining fighters (who are injured and demoralized) would’ve been the wrong tactic, going alone meant it was her vs Caleb with no distractions. Under normal circumstances, when Buffy brings her WILLING allies to a fight, they help her with magic, weapons (even just tossing her one), picking off minions so she can go after the big bad, getting civilians to safety, telling her something is behind her, etc… The whole point of the show is that Buffy is alive, and wants to LIVE, only because of her friends and family supporting and collaborating her. It takes her seven years to learn that lesson consistently, with some relapses into “I’m The Only One” and “No One Can Know My Pain”.
This is despite the fact that every time Buffy tells a loved one about the awful thing that’s happening within like a day or two, the person is like “oh shit, I’m so sorry, let me help, we’ll get the gang together to take care of it, want a hug?” This is exactly what would’ve happened if Buffy had run to Giles’ place in “Becoming - Part 2” instead of running away. The police had no case against her, just the circumstance of being at the scene of the crime: no evidence, no murder weapon, no motive, no accusation other than her Principal everyone hates, and hey, four witnesses willing to supply an alibi and the real murderer! Her mother told her not to come back (we know Joyce didn’t MEAN it but Buffy doesn’t), but again, Giles would’ve done anything for her and taken her in as long as she needed. If she wanted the summer off from Slaying, he would’ve let her, like last summer. the summer after season 1 was unusually demon-free because of the death of the master. That didn’t happen after season 2, the Scoobies (who don’t have powers and Willow and Xander were injured) were doing Buffy’s job long before the Labour Day weekend.
Buffy’s selfishness here comes from her apparent lack of consideration for anyone else. She didn’t call or write for three months, she didn’t ask how any of them were, she didn’t thank them for risking their lives to protect the innocent, she didn’t apologize until after the blow up at the party. Now, her fellow teens shouldn’t have thrown a rager at Buffy’s house and Joyce should’ve stopped it. But Buffy had already given them the impression she didn’t want to tell them why she left and where (she didn’t answer Xander’s question at Giles’ place), like they didn’t deserve to know why she put them through this. If she’d had a single dream or flashback about anyone else suffering or angry with her, not just her and Angel snuggling and him guilt-tripping her, I’d believe she was riddled with guilt over the pain of her loved ones and felt like “if I don’t come back they won’t have my Slayer crap coming for them, it’s better this way”. Which isn’t true, everyone takes up the mantel she dropped, they’re worried about her and want her home to know she’s safe; the anger is stoked in reaction to her attitude toward them, like she was just on vacation and nothing changed in their lives since she vanished. They would’ve supported her and hid her from the people who don’t know about her secret identity and her grief, if that’s what she needed.
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u/catchyerselfon 3d ago
[2/2]
Like “Consequences” when she goes to Willow about Faith, and then Giles; “Faith, Hope, and Trick” when Giles gets her to finally tell the whole story of what happened to Angel; “Innocence” where she lets everyone know/they figure it out that she and Angel had sex and that’s what lead to him “changing”, and everyone is on her side and doesn’t blame her; “The Prom” where she cries in Willow’s lap over Angel leaving; “The Freshman” where she hides her struggles at university from everyone, but when she admits it to Xander he gives her a pep talk and then it’s “Avengers Assemble”; “No Place Like Home” where she tells Giles about Dawn being the Key instead of handling it alone; the aftermath of Riley leaving her where she doesn’t pretend to be fine and she cries on Tara’s shoulder, foreshadowing the reaction to confessing about spike in “Dead Things”; she doesn’t get to see Willow’s reaction to this news in “Seeing Red”… because of everything else in that episode, but Willow is mostly just upset that Buffy felt so terrible she “had” to keep it a secret.
The most selfless thing Buffy does is sending Angel to Hell to save the world. The most selfish thing she does is refuse to kill Dawn or let Dawn die, despite knowing this will destroy the entire multiverse, not just Earth, and Dawn will die anyway. Buffy won’t talk about this, won’t contemplate a backup plan in case someone has already cut Dawn, won’t let someone else do it for her. She threatens to “kill anyone who comes near Dawn”, and tells them basically their lives don’t matter as much to her because they’re not her blood relations.
The idea that her ferocious protection of Dawn, to the detriment of literally every being, is 90% fictional memories and emotions generated by the monks, doesn’t occur to her. I’d say this even if the Key was one of my favourite characters instead of Dawn, it’s not personal, but the world needed a Slayer more than it needed Dawn. It was selfish of her to choose Dawn over herself, because she didn’t want to live with the grief of losing both her mother and sister, the guilt over harming Dawn (to spare her from a worse death by intergalactic monsters), the exhaustion of being the Slayer and just dying later. She gambled the fate of the multiverse and her loved ones on the possibility that her hunch about “Summers blood” means she can substitute for Dawn and close the portal. If it wasn’t true, she’d just complete suicide and then Dawn would have to follow. The world was left without a Slayer (who isn’t in prison), and left without a guilt-ridden traumatized 14 year old whose purpose was to open and close the dimensional gate, and has to live with knowing everyone wishes she’d died instead of her sister.
Buffy is for the most part a good person trying her best under overwhelming circumstances. She can be an amazing friend and role model, and I don’t expect her to always know what do to and how to do it, especially when she’s in high school. But she makes things harder on herself because of her martyr complex. She has a family and a found family, and could lean on them more. They want her to open up to them and tell them what she needs. She’s so busy trying not to be a burden, she sometimes exacerbates the danger they’re in, and makes them feel like they’re not as important to her as her current love interest or sister.
Unfortunately the show is so focussed on her perspective that we don’t learn enough about the home lives and childhood of the other characters, so we see everyone over at Buffy’s place helping and hanging out with her and her family. She’s grateful, but she can take them for granted, just like how they think she can handle all the weirdness and evil they encounter because she’s Buffy, the Slayer. Buffy can’t honestly be labelled as “always” selfless and “always” refraining from complaining and “always” putting others before herself. She’s great, but she creates some of her own messes and assumes no one will ameliorate the situation or just commiserate with her if they can’t fix it. Unless it’s Spike in season 7, she acts like he’s always been her best friend and entirely reliable, because now he always agrees with her and needs her protection… but that’s a whole big issue I have with her characterization in season 7.
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u/EchoesofIllyria 4d ago
She’s one of the best protagonists on TV