The Slayer as Self Care: Reparenting via the Buffyverse
Words: Melanie Robinson
During arts and crafts hour, we beaded bracelets using the same decades-old supplies as the mental health patients before us. Vowels were hard to come by, so we strung 3’s backward. “RESILIENT,” said our wrists at the end of class, but we did not rejoice.
What no one tells you about resilience is that it’s bitter, exhausting, occasionally debilitating, and once it's lauded at you in reverence, you’d much prefer ease or stability. As someone forged by substantial trauma — and a mental disorder derived from said trauma —, I’m barraged with the patronizing refrain constantly, applauded for surmounting but utterly unequipped to flourish. Following another recent deluge of adversity, I sought to reclaim the word and the resilience I’d grown so resentful of and embrace the vulnerability that makes art possible. So I ventured into the Hellmouth itself, supernatural Sunnydale, with Buffy and her gang, to sort some things out.
The timing was serendipitously affirmed by Gail Berman, the Executive Producer who championed Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s improbable television adaptation following the poorly received 1992 B-movie of the same title. She said in her 2024 acceptance speech for the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television at the Producers Guild of America Awards, “I gotta say, it all comes down to resilience…that is the secret sauce. Yes, we may take some time to lick the wounds, but we must come bouncing back.” Ugh, fine. Bounce I shall.
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Buffy Summers gets it as the teenage prophesied ‘one’ who will “stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness.” Sarah Michelle Gellar undeniably understands this dynamic as well. She is credited with unfathomable composure and resilience despite arduous conditions and considerable responsibilities at a tender age. Gellar was just 19 when she began playing the titular 16-year-old vampire slayer in 1997 and carried the seven-season monolith on her back. It’s no wonder that her co-star James Marsters (dubious, undeniably hot Spike) recently praised her diligence and professionalism, noting that the 20-hour work days alone would have leveled most. I’d hazard an educated guess that the cult Buffy fandom has been seasoned by trials, too.
“I began to see myself in Buffy, and not just because she has an absentee father and mother who called her a witch and tried to burn her at the stake.”
In February, Gellar confirmed rumours on her Instagram that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was returning after 28 years, just in time to save our perilous world from what feels like a technocratic fascist abyss. “I promise you, we will only make this show if we know we can do it right,” said Gellar. “And I will tell you that we are on the path there.” She later told People magazine that the new series is progressing quickly, but continues to be thoughtfully developed. Gellar seems hell-bent on crafting a revival that honors the canon, upholds the legacy, and respects the legions of fans, namely the girls and the gays. The news sadly comes just months after the tragic passing of Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Dawn Summers in Seasons 5-7.
Billed as a continuation rather than a reboot, the series is reported by Deadline to be nearing a pilot order at Hulu, sans toxic original creator, all-around bad guy Joss Whedon. Instead, an illustrious female-fronted team will resurrect the hallowed Buffyverse, including original Executive Producer, Gail Berman, Buffy superfan and Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman (“Poker Face”), and Dolly Parton (!). Gellar is slated to executive produce plus reprise her iconic role as Buffy Summers and will officially pass the sacred stake to Ryan Kiera Armstrong (“Skeleton Crew”).
My childhood was, what the professionals call, adverse, which led to the aforementioned bracelet making in a psychiatric hospital. I’m now estranged from my immediate family for a variety of outlandish reasons that read like a soap opera plotline. Triggered most recently by a funeral and the subsequent destructive outburst from my mother, as well as the crumbling of the American government, I sought a source of ease for my emotional dysregulation. I dove headfirst into 144 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which were finished in an ungodly three weeks. What resulted was the distillation of a peculiar time for reparenting. Rather than a simple comfort watch (shoutout to 30 Rock), I sought to confront literal demons via fictional ones. Like all of the series’ viewers, “I began to see myself in Buffy, and not just because she has an absentee father and mother who called her a witch and tried to burn her at the stake.'“
It’s truly evergreen content.
“Look, Buffy, any person, grownup, shrink, Pope, any person who claims to be totally sane is either lying or not very bright. I mean, everyone has problems. Everybody has demons, right? ... So, the hope I bring you is that demons can be fought, people can change.” So says our central heroine’s high school counselor, Mr. Platt, in the Season 3 episode Beauty and the Beasts.
He is mauled by a student experimenting with a Jekyll and Hyde-esque substance shortly thereafter, but the didactic thematic throughline remains. If teenage Buffy can get through losing her virginity to a vampire whom she loves desperately but can’t be with due to an ancient Romani curse that removes his soul if he experiences happiness, thus turning him into a sadistic killing machine, save the world repetitively and sport sick fits all at once, I can get through my own respective hellscape, right? I was not prepared for the sheer volume of tears.
I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in 2021 and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) shortly thereafter, both stemming from severe childhood physical and emotional abuse. A particularly resonant moment came for me during season 5, episode 6, Family. Willow’s girlfriend and queer Wiccian icon Tara contends with her oppressive family’s unannounced presence in Sunnydale. “I was just afraid that if you saw the kind of people I came from you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.”
Willow responds, “See, that’s where you’re a dummy. I think about what you grew up with, and then I look at what you are… it makes me proud. It makes me love you more.” My father is a racist, homophobic coward. My mother is a raging narcissist and emotionally terrifying. The internalized shame that accompanies sharing your worst traits with a partner is compounded when your worst trait is the people you come from. It feels intrinsic to who you are, inescapable.
They say blood is thicker than water, but the idiom is an example of semantic reversal. originally mean the opposite of how we use it now.
“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” refers to how bonds formed through shared experiences, which were often sealed with blood rituals in ancient times, are stronger than familial ties. The bonds shared by Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles (my daddy) run deep and coalesce around blood, albeit involving pointy-toothed foes with their eternal lives. Family in this context is chosen over and over again, and it gives me hope.
In the wake of my diagnosed acronyms, I’ve lived in fear of myself and what I’m capable of, not unlike our protagonist. Like Buffy, I am considered dangerous, though my threat is predominantly emotional. Because of the intense maladaptive coping mechanisms, impulsivity, and feelings of abandonment, I am generally regarded as volatile and untoward. Those affected by BPD and/or C-PTSD have an understandably difficult time maintaining personal relationships. We lash out at those closest to us, and suicide is common.
Post-Buffy binge, I am affirmed in my thought that at the very least, the most interesting characters are those who teeter at the Hellmouth. In Buffy, the audience is presented with an array of tempestuous characters like the annoyingly brooding Angel, the Ramones-listening, chipped-nail-polish-having and two-cigarette-at-a-time smoking Spike, Willow/veiny Dark Willow, second slayer leather-clad badass Faith, and Buffy herself, of course. They are partially good and partially something else; their tensions stem from the inevitable oscillation. That mundane messiness, as well as the occasionally surreal structure of Buffy lends itself to a prolonged, intricate exploration of identity. There is room for possibility and complexity in this exploration. Redemption is possible because no one is merely “good” or “bad;” no one is beyond saving.
The last five years of my life went something like this: losing friends, a clichéd tectonic breakup or two, a move from Texas to Los Angeles, a career apex in a crushing environment, an emotional descent, isolation, the complete disintegration of my already fractured family, and the relentless churn of the socioeconomic collapse of my country. It’s strange to grieve people who are living, or for a life you should have had, but look: Buffy’s doing it too — the grueling, agonising, and unrelenting work of grappling. As she puts it, "I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be."
Despite all the therapy, ketamine treatments and self-help TikTok, I think I’m still in the initial stages of reparenting — maybe the “recognising unmet needs” or the “creating safe spaces for yourself” part. Turns out that’s okay for someone who's been to the edge of the Hellmouth and back again. For those who developed strength out of necessity rather than desire, “We never win completely,” says Angel. “We do it because there’s things worth fighting for.” What a privilege to know the worst the world has to offer and persist regardless. What an honour.
