Nikki Stafford - Bite Me!: The 10th Buffyversary Guide to the World of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Bite Me!

The Unofficial Guide to
Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Chosen Edition

Nikki Stafford

Copyright Nikki Stafford, 2007

Published by ECW PRESS
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW PRESS.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Stafford, Nikki, 1973

Bite me!: The unofficial guide to Buffy the vampire slayer / Nikki Stafford. The chosen edition

ISBN: 978-1-55022-807-6

1. Buffy the vampire slayer (Television program). I. Title.

PN1992.77.B84s82 2007 791.45'72 c2007-904133-7

Cover design and production: Rachel Brooks
Text design: Solo Design
Typesetting: Gail Nina
Printing: Thomson-Shore

Front cover photo: John Spellman/Retna Ltd.

Colour section photo credits in order of appearance: Dale Berman/CORBIS OUTLINE/MAGMA; Scott Weiner/SHOOTING STAR; Robert Trachtenberg/CORBIS OUTLINE/MAGMA; Christina Radish; Mark Robert Halper; Challenge Roddie/CORBIS OUTLINE/MAGMA; Ron Davis/shooting star; Gary Marshall/shooting star; Christina Radish; Albert L. Ortega; Christina Radish; Christina Radish; Marissa Love Stone/SHOOTING STAR; Mark Robert Halper; Christina Radish; Albert L. Ortega

This book is set in Bulmer, Trade Gothic, and Twang

The publication of Bite Me! has been generously supported by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp), and with the assistance of the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

DISTRIBUTION

CANADA: Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, ON, L7G 5G4

UNITED STATES: Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610

PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES

When I made my first foray into the Buffyverse in 1998 with Bite Me! Sarah Michelle Gellar and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I had no idea the book would be as successful as it became. But since it only had two seasons in it, by season five I was itching to update it. In 2002 the book was re-released as Bite Me! An Unofficial Guide to the World of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and was complete up to the end of season six. I am a completist, however, and it bothered me that the book wasnt complete. In 2004, my book on AngelOnce Bitten: An Unofficial Guide to the World of Angel came out, and I put season seven of Buffy into the back of that.

Its been a few years since that book came out, and Im still receiving e-mails from the legions of Buffy fans who had bought Bite Me!, asking when I was going to bring the book out again complete with season seven. I wrote everyone back explaining the season was in Once Bitten, but a lot of fans of Buffy, surprisingly, are not fans of Angel, so they didnt want to buy a book on Angel to get the full extra season.

So finally, here is the complete edition of Bite Me!, with all seven seasons, new trivia questions and answers, revised bios letting you know what the cast of this amazing show is up to now, and a new chapter on the Season Eight series of comic books that Joss Whedon is currently helming.

Along the way, Ive been helped out by countless fans, mainly fans who had been on the original Bronze Posting Board, then the Beta Bronze Posting Board. I want to thank all of them for their help in the earlier incarnations of the book. Thank you to ECW Press for giving me the opportunity to do the book, and to Crissy, Kulsum, and Nadine for becoming avid Buffy converts and joining in my rabid Buffy fandom.

Thank you to Bailey Chase, Jane Espenson, and David Fury, who talked to me about their experiences on Buffy, and Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, David Denman, Christian Kane, Mark Lutz, J. August Richards, Stephanie Romanov, and Keith Szarabajka for taking the time to chat with me about Angel a couple of years ago.

Thank you to the fans who gave me photos, to Jennifer Kaplan for providing me with the shooting schedules from her visits to the sets of both shows, and to Leslie Remencus for helping me track down all of the music on the show.

Finally, thank you to my family and friends for their support, even if I havent been able to convert every one of them to Buffy yet. But dont worry, I will. Oh yes, I will.

As always, my biggest thanks to Jennifer Hale, who was a convert from the get-go.

Nikki Stafford, August 2007

nikki_stafford@yahoo.com

nikkistafford.blogspot.com

Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired on March 10, 1997, and immediately exceeded everyones expectations. Based on a largely unsuccessful film about a high school girl whose calling is to rid the world of demons, it carried the stigma that it would be a stupid television series for kids that was uncreative and imitative. Many people, including those who worked on the show, werent sure it would last beyond the first season. But it did, and it continues to gain popularity among both fans and critics.

Vampires, in both fiction and folklore, have fascinated readers and moviegoers for centuries. With the publication of Bram Stokers Dracula in 1897, the legend of the vampire moved into the mainstream, and in the 20th century Dracula became a movie icon. Nosferatu (1922) was the first of the major vampire movies, but it was Bela Lugosi, in Tod Brownings 1931 Dracula, who forever changed the monstrous demon into a more sexual metaphor. Dracula became suave and sophisticated, and his attacks on the necks of defenseless women were likened to a seduction. It was this image of the vampire as seducer that prevailed, reaching new peaks in the Anne Rice novels of the 1980s and 90s, which featured a romantic yet vicious vampire named Lestat. In 1992, the film Bram Stokers Dracula, starring Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, revived the idea of the vampire as a monster, remaining truer to Stokers vision than most of the adaptations before it. In that same year, Fran Rubel Kuzuis Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry was released, adding a new element to the vampire legend: the idea that someone exists to rid the world of vampires.

The fiction featuring vampires contains significantly different conventions than the folklore. For example, in vampire fiction, you become a vampire only if bitten by one. In the folklore, however, someone could become a vampire if an animal leapt over their coffin; if theyd been murdered or had committed suicide; if theyd been born with a harelip, or on Saturday, or between Christmas and Epiphany; if theyd been buried alive; if they hadnt been buried properly; and in other ways. In fiction, the vampire tends to be a rich nobleman; in folklore, hes a poor peasant wandering the countryside. In movies, the vampire is tall, thin, and debonair, with a cape, a white face, and sharp teeth. In folklore, the vampire has rosy-colored skin and is bloated because of all the blood he has drunk; his teeth are rarely mentioned; his left eye or both is wide open and staring, even while hes asleep during the day. In fiction, when the body of the vampire is staked, it disappears or mummifies; in folklore, the corpse must be disposed of. It was sometimes believed that the staking alone would not work, so the act was followed up with the cremation of the body. In both fiction and folklore, vampires are more often male than female, though in folklore the only female vampires are mothers who died in childbirth.