Look, I despise the disgusting man that is Joss Whedon as much as the next person, he is a nasty piece of work. However, I grew up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It replaced Sabrina the Teenage Witch as my obsession. I’d tape episodes off the TV in all sorts of whacky orders – season 3 aired on BBC2 while season 4 aired on Sky One (I think that’s who held the satellite license?) and I watched both. Eventually, we got the video box sets and I watched them all in order, I was part of a Buffy chat community on the MSN chatrooms, I ran my own Buffy fansite (it was called Something Blue, Hush and Welcome to the Hellmouth were taken), and I collected the novelisations and the Watcher’s Guides they put out. I loved Buffy.

What’s my point? You see… I got a bit of a hankering to revisit the books I read when I was growing up. I was putting together a post draft for a different project and started wondering if the Buffy books I used to read hold up to time. So I started going through a list and adding them all to a not-public Amazon wishlist and thinking about a potential project. I will get to that in a moment, I promise! Then I thought you know, maybe my dad still has those old books. I distinctly remember him selling a bunch of my old books and stuff (RIP witchcraft books and Sims 2), but I wasn’t sure about my Buffy collection so I texted him and not long after, he replied saying he’d found a few and was willing to send them over to me, probably over time because there’s a few.

The Buffyverse Project

So here’s my thinking. I haven’t watched Buffy in years, I still have the DVD collection of all 7 seasons and a DVD player in my PC. Heck knows where Buffy is streaming these days, bless physical media! I also have never seen Angel all the way through, and I know that is up on Disney+. So what if I watched Buffy and Angel in chronological order, and read the books alongside the seasons, so I get a refresher of what’s going on in the show and while the novelisations are standalone and basically non-canonical, I thought it could be fun to read them dependent on the seasons they are set in.

The whole point is to revisit a world that brought me so much joy when I was a teenager growing up, absorb a little nostalgia, and see how well it all holds up. My tastes have certainly changed over the years, but the Buffyverse was pretty seminal for me, and I’m interested to peek back in. Pick-up whatever I’m missing second hand, maybe check out some fan-fiction as well. It could be a lot of fun!

My only caveat is the Joss Whedon issue. I would do a post looking over everything he’s been accused of over the years though honestly, this Variety article covers things pretty well. But I’m not going to be putting money into his pockets, and I want to give some love to everybody else who made this franchise what it was, especially those who suffered from his cruelty. If all goes well, I’d like to wrap this project up with Kiersten White’s Slayer novels! I’ve been intrigued about those since I first heard about them and while they’re not reviewed amazingly well, I like to make my own mind up! As for the comics, I do want to read them someday and I suppose this would be a great time for it but I’m not sure just yet if I’ll jump into those on the Buffyverse project or maybe I will. This will be a long challenge as I’m a slow reader and I won’t be exclusively reading Buffy tie-in novels, so we shall see down the line!

The Buffyverse Project Posts

• The Buffy Movie Post – My thoughts on the Buffy movie following a rewatch looking at the lore differences between it and the series.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Buffyverse project! Were/are you a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan? Did you ever read the novelisations? Do you want to join me?! Or perhaps do a similar challenge with a different franchise!