Buffy as a Vampire Show

So you may have noticed that the two Buffy posts I made in the middle of the month didn't include my Vampire Fiction tag, well that's because in my mind Buffy has always been compartmentalized from my relationship with Vampire Fiction in general.

You see in-spite of how much I did and to some extent still do love Buffy, it's take on Vampire lore is actually just about hands down the absolute worst in terms of what I look for.  Isn't that kind of weird?  How could this be at one time my favorite show even though it's the worst at it's face value main genre?

But that's the thing, it was only ever a Vampire show at face value, the show is about the Slayer not the Vampires.  Now originally most Vampire literature was more about the Humans dealing with them, but in Buffy's case her ability to kill Vampires was never her real obstacle.  The show could just as easily have been Buffy The Goblin Slayer and... OH MY GOD!!!! I wish I'd thought of that when that show was still relevant, the memes I could have generated.

I'm honestly more interested in comparing Buffy to Magical Girl shows then to more conventional Vampire fiction.  The show is about this particular Heroine's Journey and how the friends she makes along the way are the source of her real strength.  There are also other types of Anime that might equally apply to, like Railgun.

So why do I hate Buffy/Angel's version of Vampire lore so much?  I'll start with the core reason, then the most superficial reason, then something I don't seem to care about nearly as much as other people who take the opposite of my position.

The whole "Soul" issue and how that complicated the show's morality in general.  If someone is going to have a seemingly very different morality as a Vampire then they did as a human, I'd rather why that is be psychologically explored.  Instead it's just that killing "Souled" people is murder but killing people without "Souls" is not, some Vampires are basically the same personality with or without it, but some are not.  This should effect more then just my opinion of it as a Vampire show, and it kinda does, but in the context of comparing it to stuff like Magical Girl shows allowing if someone is good or evil to change at the flick of a switch is a bit more justified.

I hate that Buffy pretty much started the whole, they turn ugly right before biting you, thing.

They burn in the Sun.  I'm someone who's ultimate preference is for vampires to return to how they were before 1922, when the Sun had no effect what so ever, they can be nocturnal because that's how they prefer to hunt or because they like the Moon, but the Sun should mean nothing.  But as long as writers are unwilling to do that, as long the Sun is an issue they feel has to be addressed, I'll take Sparkling over being harmed by it any day.  Yes you read that correctly, it's not a Joke, I sincerely mean that.

So those are the three issues that are kind of representative of the whole.  There are some ideas I like, for example some Vampires losing the ability to look human once they become super old.  The idea of Dracula being unique among vampires is something I have mixed feelings on, but performance wise Rudolf Martin is still genuinely my number two Dracula after Lugosi, so that makes up for everything else in that department.

Buffy and Angel were over well before my interest in the general Vampire craze started in 2009 and lasted till about 2014.  If I knew way back then what I know now I might have been annoyed that Dracula was the only Public Domain vampire written into the show, I'd wanna see at least references to Carmilla and Lord Ruthven and Varney and hopefully some of Paul Feval's vampires.  But that's just the Nerd in me who wants to see a Victorian Vampire shared cinematic universe.

The fact that I don't particularly care about Vampire media anymore is perhaps why it can still not actually matter to me as I revisit my fandom for this show.  Maybe part of why it declined in my mind during my vampire phase was because of how it conflicted with my tastes there.  I had endless issues with The Vampire Diaries but it came a lot closer to what I'd want from a Vampire show.  Still I was never willing to say it was now better then Buffy even when it was my favorite currently airing TV show, it was Pretty Little Liars that dethroned Buffy.