Hey NYC: Tem Lenk is in the House

He'll be performing at Don't Tell Mama this Wednesday, July 8th. We're totally going to see him in action. If you're going, see you there!

It's in the theater district. Go here to reserve seats in advance:

http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/reservations.php

fanvid sunday:friends are friendly edition

Having cleansed my personal need for venting about a certain network that shall go unnamed I figured it was as good a time as any to cleanse the palate with a video that's about the scoobies getting along and working together and just being in an upbeat place.



A head's up: this video only runs for 3:30 minutes but, for some reason, has a long blank spot at the end. Regardless, this new vid from KaileeA42 is very cute and just what the Doctor (he popped round in the Tardis to tell me so) ordered. Enjoy and, as always, Happy Sunday, Buffyfesters!

More crossover madness

Ok, I don't know why these have been playing on my mind so much lately, but here's some more ideas for crazy Buffy crossovers that I've been having; this time inspired by the world of literature.

Buffy/H.P. Lovecraft: Buffy may seem more suited to tackling slasher and monster movie cliches and turning them on their respective heads but I see no real reason why she can't also hunt down and dismember the eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu-verse and cheat both death and the madness that typically plague Lovecraft's protagonists. Plus, there's already a proven market for little ironic pokes and prods at Lovecraft. Surely you geeks out there are familiar with those "Hello Cthulhu" plushies, no? And I know for a fact that there're at least two H.P. Lovecraft/P.G. Wodehouse crossovers, so clearly Lovecraft's estate have a sense of humour about the whole thing. Could a Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover not be far behind? There've already been hints at a Lovecraftian mythology what with the whole the-world-was-once-overrun-by-giant-demon-monstrosities thing, and that beast under the Hellmouth didn't look too unfamiliar. Frankly, I'd be surprised if some very literary Buffy geek hasn't already written this one and I'm just currently unaware of it.


Buffy/William Shakespeare: It's no secret that Joss is a big fan of the bard and famously had the BtVS cast round for regular play readings. I'm almost surprised that he hasn't already referenced the guy directly by shoving Titania or MacDuff's ghost into the precedings (ooh, now there's a way that they could exploit that Scottish castle in the comics...by bringing in the "Scottish play!"). A lot of Buffy episodes even come across like Shakespearean comedies half of the time, with the love polygons, mistaken identities and magical spells of "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" et al seemingly coming straight out of Twelth Night or A Midsummer Night's Dream. What with the fairies, witches and magical potions already present in Shakespeare, a crossover like this wouldn't be too much of a stretch at all. Hey, even Doctor Who has had a Shakespeare crossover or two, you know.


Buffy/Frankenstein: Yes, we've already had Dracula turn up (after all, as Joss pointed out, he is public domain now, you know) and yes, there's already an episode or two in the Buffycanon that owe a debt of gratitue to Mary Shelley's monstrous classic for their inspiration, but still, just try and tell me that you wouldn't be excited at the prospect of Frankenstein's monster actually showing up. Frankenstein's monster was last seen wandering around in the arctic, right? Ok, so imagine the scene...Buffy and pals go North after some vamps who are going in for a sort of 30 Days of Night deal and exploiting the months-long nights that regularly affect human settlements within the Arctic circle. Buffy at first finds herself a little out of her depth, but don't worry, because soon supernatural help arrives in the form of - drum roll - Frankenstein's monster! Since he's already a character in the Buffy universe, maybe Dracula could even show up again, giving us a little taste of the old Universal horror flicks that would ofte shove these characters together.


Buffy/Nancy Drew: Buffy owes a lot to the 'teens solving mysteries' genre, and wow, would I love to see Buffy pastiching the whitebread world that Ms. Drew and in particular the Hardy boys seem to inhabit, maybe even introducing a little much-needed supernatural horror (at which point they truly would become the Scooby Gang, I guess). Nancy Drew fans would likely have kittens, but I still think it'd be a laugh, no?


Buffy/The Brothers Grimm: I've already briefly mentioned that series that Marvel Comics did a little while back in which they had their characters appear in adaptations of various world fairytales, and I still think that it's the kind of thing that the Buffyverse easily lends itself too. Just imagine, Buffy, Angel et al as postmodern heroines & heroes, princesses and princes in a series of feminist fairytale reimaginings that, in true pre-Disney fairytale tradition, don't for a moment skip over the bloody supernatural violence inherent to a lot of tales. Both Hansel & Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood have had their mentions in the TV series, so there's clearly an undercurrent of fairytale sensibilities, I'd just love to see it get truly exploited some day.

Ok, wow, I really didn't think that I'd think on this anywhere near as much as I have. Still, any more ideas for literary crossovers that you can think of? There's a couple of blindingly obvious contemporary literary series that I haven't mentioned, but feel free to bring up them and any others in the comments.

An old 'fest picture

Ok everyone, ready to see me break with internet anonymity by actually posting a photo of myself on the internet? Ok, it's a couple of years old and I am wearing vampire-style prosthetic make-up, but still...
Just to prove that Buffyfests happen across the pond too, here's me at a Buffy the Vampire Slayer 10th anniversary night (March 10th, 2007) that I organised in Colchester, England. There were episode showings, prizes for best costume and general merriment all round (there's a somewhat more embarrassing pic out there of me doing the "YMCA" dance in that make-up; it's truly terrifying stuff, believe me). My friend and flatmate pictured above as Lorne won the fancy dress, quite deservedly, really. That green make-up took a lot of time and effort to put on. Plus it didn't come off for days afterwards, as I recall. Speaking of which, my shirt collar seems to suggest that I could have perhaps been a bit more careful with my make-up too; oh well.

There are dozens more pics, but my friends get antsy when I post pictures of them without their permission. Plus, this is the single best photo of the night to not feature any 'norms' (i.e. people just enjoying a normal night out at the club we'd appropriated, or more likely having been tempted by our aggressive PR to come and lurk). You'll have to trust me when I say that more than just the two of us did dress up though. There was a girl there who came as a scarily convincing Spike, actually.

A handful of games

Now, there are a decent handful of Buffy the Vampire Slayer games out there, right? The console games are pretty ok although from all accounts the handheld games are in the oh-my-god-when-will-the-hurting-stop category. Still, what if one was really gaming on a budget? What BtVS games are there out there for free? A quick Google search will turn up a handful of fan-made flash games to experience. Let’s take a look at them, shall we?

Ok, first up there’s Be the Slayer, available here, amongst other places. Frankly, this thing is pretty horrible, largely because it’s so unbelievably taxing! You will have a sore clicking finger after about five minutes of this thing, if you even give it that long. The gameplay basically involves throwing stakes (?) at vampires who spring from out of graves and from behind tombstones, essentially making this a very simple kind of first person shooter. The problem? Those vampires are just too fast! If you don’t stake them the very moment that they appear, they will slash out at you with their claws (??), doing you a lot of damage. How on Earth they can reach you with their claws when you’re halfway across the graveyard and throwing stakes is anybody’s guess. Anyway, after a few attempts at this, all ending in your swift death, you’ll soon realise that the only way to beat the game is to learn the pattern in which the bad guys appear in order to pre-empt them appearing and slashing at you (!!!). Trust me, this is a game for people with a lot of time on their hands. Time that they don’t mind spending on horrible but mercifully short games. Here, let me save you the trouble of playing: this is the screen you’ll see most often:

Next up, there’s Chronicles of the Slayer by Chromeshark. This is actually a fairly fun little fan-made game that was clearly made with a lot of affection for the show and its characters. The game also features a couple of different game modes, multiple characters, weapons... In essence it’s like a simple, fan-made version of one of the console games. Still, the emphasis here is on simple, as this thing really could do with a bit more polishing all round and the gameplay is, once again, definitely going to end up hurting your fingers after about five minutes of play. Pressing Q, W, A and S in rapid succession in order to hack away far too slowly at wave after wave of vamps and other monsters is going to end up killing your left hand. Still, I can’t fault Chromeshark for his cute takes on the characters. With the artwork it seems as if he just deliberately decided to eschew realism and go straight for making things cutesy and, well, square.

Cute!

Chromeshark has several other flash games available at his website.

Phew! After all that I need to give my hands a rest. They are dog tired! Ooh, here’s a simple, relaxing little ‘game’ (or so it calls itself): Dress Up Buffy. If you’ve ever spent a spare second wondering what an almost-featureless Sarah Michelle Gellar decoy would look like in a series of blander-than-bland outfits, please, feel free to give this a try. Believe me though, it gets painfully dull after about thirty seconds. What’s next?

Ooh, it’s good to see that the BBC Buffy site is still around, and it includes a ton of quizzes and a couple of games. Well, one ‘which character should you date’ quiz, something that’s hardly exclusive to the BBC, and one simple Top Trumps game (that appears to be impossible to lose, might I add). It’s not too flashy, but I still have some affection for this site, so can’t find myself being even remotely harsh towards it.

Ok, now let’s see whether the Dark Horse Comics Buffy page has any...

Gahh!!

Eek; I’m never going there again. I’m really not in a hurry to see a super-deformed, ghostly pale ‘Buffy’ looming at me like that.

So, in summary, if your curiosity regarding free Buffy games just cannot be sated, I guess I’d recommend Chronicles, but you may need some kind of futuristic, high-tech prosthetic left hand before even attempting to start.

Buffy and Angel Comics: Vlog Review

Greetings and salutations, dear readers, old and new. Today is not only an important day in the 'verse but also for our little site. Forbidden Planet (my favorite comic book shoppe) has graciously agreed to include free Buffyfest inserts (read: awesomely smexy bookmarks) with the purchase of any Buffy or Angel related fare. These are some tasty hotcakes though, kids, so they be goin' fast!

In honor of our newfound readership and the release of both new Buffy and Angel comics today, we present to you Bitsy's Bearded Buffyfest Review! Please enjoy with Darjeeling.



In conclusion: welcome once again to our new readers. Feel free to take a gander around this little site of ours. Since you are likely (like me) a comic book nerd, might I reccommend our recent articles with Peter David and Scott Allie? Go on. Click 'em. You know you want to.

P.S. You can follow Forbidden Planet on Twitter here

NYC Can't Stop the Serenity Recap

Can't Stop the Serenity in New York's East Village was definitely shiny! Bitsy and I had a fantastic time. There was dancing, there were prizes, there was of course, Serenity. From what I hear, the Browncoats of NYC raised somewhere around $6000 for Equality Now! This bunch really knows how to throw a party all while doing something amazing and important. We were very proud to sponsor and attend this sold-out event. Can't wait for next year!

Bitsy and I - Browncoat Style.

Buffyfest with part of the NYC Browncoat crew.

Fabulous door prizes and Silent auction items. There were so many prizes that many walked away with 2 or 3 gifts. And party favors to boot! Chinese food containers full of Firefly-esque charms and Serenity comics. Class.

Browncoats of NYC.

Buffyfest's twitter pal @_adair in a very Buffy-esque city setting.

Check out the slide show below with more great pics from this CSTS event. 

Oh yeah, and we got really, really drunk. Again.

Now THAT I'd like to see...

Hello there readers, I’m Jayunderscorezero (aka Michael, so feel free to call me that if you like) and thanks to the kind people here at Buffyfest, it looks like I’m going to be your guest blogger for the next week.

When discussing Buffy/Angel, I can get a bit heavy (due largely to the influence of Buffy-based academic works; thank you, Roz Kaveney et al!) or just a bit bitchy (blame the stereotypical geek in me, I suppose), but today I’m going to go for something a bit lighter and just ask you guys to look in on a fun little thought experiment I’ve been having. I recently got around to reading “Time of Your Life”, the “Buffy vs Fray” storyline (I moved away from my local comic store last year and so have had to follow things like “Season 8” in the trades for now at least, hence the slight delay before reading it). To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the storyline, but that’s neither here nor there. One thing it did get me thinking about, though, was what other Buffy crossovers I’d like to see Dark Horse put out in the future. Now, these range from the slightly-ever-so-possibly-feasible to the never-gonna-happen-but-wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if they did, but still, I invite you to join me on this little stream of consciousness and see what you think.

Crossover idea: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Aliens/Predator

Inspiration: These guys are Dark Horse’s classic crossover pair. Their original crossover seems to have been inspired by a simple “hey, these are both Fox/Dark Horse properties, so why not...?” and the same criteria is also true of Buffy now. Also, it’d be kind of nice to see Buffy return to her roots of taking on and subverting classic slasher/horror film clichés, and hey, Alien is one of the prototypical slasher films, you know, so it’d be a great place to start. Ooh, plus there’s that whole Whedon-connection to Alien Resurrection and the fact that Alien’s Ripley was part of the inspiration for Buffy.

Other than that though, it’d no doubt just be an excellent excuse to see these guys fighting, no?

Premise: Hmm, I don’t know, since the Buffy comics have already introduced time travel, it’s always possible that they could just jump further into the future and happen to encounter the aliens/Predators and perhaps even Ellen Ripley (unlikely perhaps, but with good potential for awesomeness). If one wanted to get truly silly, one could even have someone create some kind of Alien/vampire hybrid, just so we get to see Buffy take one of those things out with a crossbow. I mean come on, am I the first person to connect the vampire/H.R. Giger’s alien dots here? They’re both predators with alarming psychosexual undertones...Ok, I’m officially reading too much into this now. Still, think about it: Buffy, alien, crossbow...Cool, no?

Potential quality: Meh. There’s potentially a lot of good ideas here to be exploited, especially if Whedon himself got on board and brought some of his ideas from Alien Resurrection along with him. Otherwise though, this’d likely just be a silly fight comic.

Likelihood: There’ve been Alien/Predator crossovers with every comic property from Green Lantern to Magnus: Robot Fighter. Surely it’s only a matter of time...? Nah, I’m probably just being wildly optimistic there.

Crossover idea: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Star Trek

Inspiration: There have already been a couple of X-Men/Star Trek crossovers, you know, so there’s clearly a market for crossovers that feature two completely different but similarly popular franchises.

Premise: Ever see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, where Kirk, Spock et al travel back in time to 1980s Earth...and hilarity ensues? Imagine if they’d gone back to 1990s/2000s Sunnydale instead. Plus, what with the recent Star Trek reboot, you could even have the younger, sexier versions of the Enterprise crew meet up with the Buffy cast. Although that’d no doubt lead the way for some fans coming up with the craziest ship, the ship to end all ships and no doubt the ultimate expression of bizarre online fan love: Buffy/Kirk ("Birk"?).

Potential quality: Probably not good. Still, if you got a good artist involved, I really would like to see Chris Pine’s likeness making typical Kirk-like advances on SMG’s likeness.

Likelihood: Almost nil, sorry.

Crossover idea: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Wizard of Oz

Inspiration: Likely inspired by me just being a massive fairytale/oz geek. This one doesn’t make a lick of sense, but just hear me out, ok? Plus, Wizard of Oz crossovers aren’t so crazy, didn’t Marvel do that thing a while back where they did Wizard of Oz but with the She-Hulk as Dorothy (who falls asleep and dreams the whole thing after being attacked by the villain Whirlwind, natch)?

Premise: Remember that one issue where Buffy falls asleep and dreams that she’s in an episode of the Buffy animated series? That’s not so far removed from the opening of the classic Judy Garland film, you know, and I’d be more than happy to read the further adventures of Buffy’s crazy psyche. So yeah, Buffy falls asleep (perhaps, in a little nod to continuity, after having just tried to watch Apocalypse Now again) and dreams that she’s in Oz (ok, maybe it’d make more sense if she were actually watching The Wizard of Oz). The good witch Willow instructs her to go and see the great wizard and on her travels she meets someone in need of a brain (Giles?), someone in need of a heart (Spike?) and someone in need of “the nerve” (Xander?). In the classic Wizard of Oz reveal, it’ll turn out that Giles always was the cleverest of the group, he just felt like an ineffectual “stuffed shirt” (get it? ‘Cause he’s a scarecrow, right?), Spike always had the biggest and most emotive heart (one could almost say “effulgent,” if one wanted to get really continuity-geeky about it) and Xander has always been the brave person he wished he could be.

Potential quality: This is too odd to really judge, honestly.

Likelihood: Almost nil. The more I write about it, the more I seem to convince myself that it’s an amazing idea and that it not seeing the light of day would be unfair to all of the fans who could potentially experience it, but then I just remember that I’m completely crazy and that Wicked warped my mind.

Crossover idea: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Firefly

Inspiration: This one just suggests itself, doesn’t it? I mean, picture the venn diagram of Buffy/Serenity fans; I can imagine a lot of people that’d buy this one. Plus, did you know that from the very moment Firefly started, I always pictured it taking place in the same universe as BtVS, just in the far, far future. Yeah, I know there are no vampires, but still, isn’t the whole point of them that most people are unaware of their existence anyway? It’s not so impossible, you know.

Premise: The crew of the Serenity encounter some vampires, they somehow find a way to bring some experienced vampire slayers from the past forward in time to help them out...This one just writes itself, really. Plus, imagine all of the cute little character moments that you could extract from this: Jayne being all dismissive of Buffy because she appears to be just a diminutive little girl, which promptly leads to a swift joint beat-down from Buffy & River; Willow and Kaylee having a massive geek-out together (shades of the Willow/Fred meet-up in Angel); Xander having lusty-wrong feelings for Inara...

Potential quality: Non-fans would find it inscrutable, fans would “squee” over the whole thing regardless.

Likelihood: I think they may have ruined this one by already making Firefly a property that exists within the Buffy universe. Didn’t Buffy wear a Serenity t-shirt in one issue? Still, I’m also convinced that they had one of the slayers reading Fray at some point, and that little artistic Easter egg didn’t prevent that crossover, did it?

I could likely come out with dozens more, but I think I’ve had enough of my own strange thoughts on the matter for now. Still, as crazy as these may seem, do try to remember that we live in a world in which Archie/The Punisher exists.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thoughts? Suggestions? What reality-shattering crossovers would you like to see take place? I’ve only really covered the incredibly geeky side of things, but if you’re really desperate to see a Buffy/Gossip Girl crossover or something, let me know.

Welcome Guest Blogger JayUnderscoreZero

Michelle will be out of town for a spell, but we're happy to announce that blogger JayUnderscoreZero will be over to fill in. J_0 runs 2 fabulous blogs As, If and When (a potpourri of internet goodness) & Little Red Riding Blog (a selection of media relating to Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales.) We're very excited to see what he has in store for Buffyfest and would like to extend a warm welcome!