Friendship group

nightshade

nightshade

Your grandfather is a cat
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Black Thorn
Do you think there will be a new Scooby Gang? Or an all female group? Maybe just a singular best friend that knows the Slayer secret?
 
I think there definitely needs to be a group. Unless they go a whole new route and actually kill off the main slayer, kind of like a "Doctor Who" scenario, where every couple of seasons, it shifts. That would add longevity to the series.
 
I would like a group if it comes organically and doesn’t feel forced.

With shows like How I Met Your Father and That 90’s Show they were trying too hard to recreate the original format, not letting new characters find their grove, so it was just bad. I hope they don’t try to re-create that original Scooby magic, cause they need to find their own
 
I can see an all-female group of friends, but some boys would be fine, too. I just hope no one in the new Scoobies has a crush on the Slayer, since that was problematic before.
 
T
thrasherpix
I'd add no-vampire romances as well, but I won't hold my breath.
I would like a friendship group to form naturally, just as the first one did, and I would also prefer that there is a mix of females and males in it. Perhaps another older Watcher character like Giles could be one of the males, just as in the original.
 
No plot details have revealed. But most of the recent CW superhero series have been ensembles, so somebody likes the formula. As much as I like Blade, him yelling at Chinese Whistler or Mercury Girl wouldn't work for Buffy.

Also, friends and family anchoring us to the world was a big series point.
 
HowiMetdaSlayer
HowiMetdaSlayer
please dear gawd anywhere BUT the CW!
The new series needs all aspects of the group formula.

Friends, family AND romance. That was the formula of both shows before it.

It wasn't only two groups of platonic friends and a total rejection of biological family in favor of only "found family". That's disingenuous. It's utterly false. That's saying that Joyce, Dawn and Connor weren't important parts of their respective casts because they were only there as family, yet were obviously more important to the main characters than anyone else in their casts. Half of the Scoobies were really just there when they were the boyfriend/girlfriend of a core Scooby and left when they broke up!

And I would bloody start with Buffy Summers herself having some kind of family structure around her and not a dwindling group of fragmented friends who only pop-in occasionally with the glaring fact that Dawn and Xander can't be in the picture anymore.

Given that she herself could easily have a teenage child or children, that's one way you could believably begin to fill out the young cast around the new Slayer in a very organic way that isn't just a repeat of the new Slayer meeting some new friends on her first day transferring to a new school.

The question would be if this hypothetical child of Buffy (whether by Shanshu'd Angel or just some dude, though I wouldn't recommend it--especially if he were made absentee, which would be all of Buffy's abandonment fears come true) would be aware of all the family secrets already or would be learning them right alongside the new Slayer. That's one way to differentiate the shows and the younger cast member dynamics.

And yes, you're going to have to probably have a few characters amongst the younger set who are a bit supernatural themselves. And those characters are going to be obvious picks for major romantic leads.

I would avoid any more vampires with a soul (done twice, it would further damage the uniqueness of its original usage and add an uncomfortable morality conundrum to Slayers having the moral right to slay without remorse), which pretty much limits use of any romantic vampires at all because of the mythology rules not being comparable to other vampire romance dramas.

I would heavily back using a half-demon (especially given how short Doyle's storyline was, which had plenty of material for a character with a demonic side who was raised human) or demon love interest instead. The Buffyverse already had something like this with Anya, though waited far too long to deal with the consequences of having a love interest who showed little remorse for a past that was arguably worse than Angelus and Spike combined.

Another way of working supernatural members into the group would be giving someone a special power or becoming magical over the course of the story, whether they be given visions like Cordy (which killed her, lest we forget) or Willow becoming a witch. Probably a safe bet there will be a magic user in there.

Buffyverse werewolves are unfortunately rather limited in the sorts of stories that get told about them with little actual ability for the characters in human form and end up just becoming MotW filler to pad out seasons. The difference with the vampire love interests is that their species doesn't just turn on for three nights a month and they can't pretend they're mostly human.

I still say there should be a stronger delving into the Watchers' Council mythology and history. I think adding a Watcher character in addition to Buffy's mentor/mother role would be a good idea for building the group dynamic. Buffy is unlikely to work as the main researcher of the group, though characters like human!Angel or Giles could conceivably provide a lot of exposition information. Probably need to bring in a younger Watcher character, perhaps.

The Old Ones would be another interesting route to go. Wolfram & Hart and the Powers that Be are still juicy concepts that could play a part, given they still remain undefeated and unanswered as to what their full plans were. I'd avoid the First Evil unless they massively retool its presentation.

I really do think we need answers about the end of Not Fade Away just as badly as we need to see the fallout of the Chosen Slayer spell, even if just in exposition. I think it would be a lot more fair for the new Slayer to have some uniqueness returned to her by paring that Slayer count back down to Buffy and Faith first. It would up her importance in her own story intensely.
 
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NileQT87 said:
Buffyverse werewolves are unfortunately rather limited in the sorts of stories that get told about them with little actual ability for the characters in human form and end up just becoming MotW filler to pad out seasons. The difference with the vampire love interests is that their species doesn't just turn on for three nights a month and they can't pretend they're mostly human.
Click to expand...

Several different kinds of werewolves were shown over the shows, so it would seem that there are still open options there. Just have another, different, kind of werewolf to, say, Oz, or to Nina, and you aren't contradicting anything but could have another type of werewolf. One that can wolf out at will, perhaps, and have human-level control and intellect when they do. Though that kind of werewolf should probably be uncommon.
 
The chosen family stuff was always overread. Just like the feminism.

Sarah has had a pretty successful family life, by all accounts, as opposed to Joss, who lost his mother and wasn't speaking to his father, and was clearly cheating on his wife with a lot of ex-ballerinas with dirty blonde hair, and was clearly still working out his issues. If Sarah does have creative input, we'll probably see that side of Buffy, as opposed to Liz Lemon 2025: Vampire Hunter.

P.S. Do I think Joss was a sincere Feminist? Yes. Do I think Joss's mother was the type to put more emphasis on repeating and reciting the correct doctrine over doing the right thing? Yes.
 
TV shows always need some kind of group, to have conversations and plot explanation. You notice that when someone lives alone on TV, they either have friends coming in all the time (ala Seinfeld) or have voiceovers. I think a group would work better than one friend for this purpose.
 
I love the chosen family stuff and rekon its more important to promote now than it was in the 90's. So I would like to see another scooby gang, complete with lying about sleepovers to go slaying.

It'd be nice to see a booksmart dude and laid back chic this time round. Someone chill and someone clever to round out the warrior.
 
Here is a thought for all the religious types,
have the Scooby gang meet up at the Quakers meeting house and have them be Quakers.
 
It's overread, I am not saying, it's not there, just outside of "Family," the show doesn't have a lot to say about it, and that the scholarship surrounding real life chosen families seem to focus on how lesbians and gay men deal with geriatric health care concerns, not how a lesbian couple mooches off their best friend's mother's estate.

Quakers aren't interesting. Generally, motion picture horror gravitates towards Sacramental Churches due to the large Catholic presence in LA & NY, and due to the visual qualities of pre-1960s churches. Quakers really don't have that. Their churches are deliberately plain, and they don't have a sacramental life, in most cases. Just as a visual thought experiment, imagine an exorcism with three Orthodox Rabbis versus three Reform Rabbis. It's just not as interesting.

That's not to say having Nova have a religious life isn't a bad idea. Buffy touched on Christian themes and imagery several times throughout the series, and you generally want to explore things in sequels you didn't really touch a lot in the original series. I assume that's why religion played a complicated role in Firefly. But, you also want main audience insert characters to be as vanilla as possible.
 
NileQT87
NileQT87
According to stills from Ryan's own audition tape posted by her father, the character is named Nina, not Nova (though that may also change).
ILLYRIAN
ILLYRIAN
Your views on the various religions made me laugh.
Definitely a mixed friend group.

I'd enjoy having the parents more involved this time around, though. We barely saw any of the parents in the original show except for Joyce.

It would also be interesting to follow different groups of characters. Have a larger cast, maybe spanning multiple locations.
 
Having been a Quaker for the first eleven years of my life I do remember that the Quakers met in a Meeting House (like the Pilgrims) and not in a church.
I stopped being a Quaker when my dad left home at the age of eleven.

Warning here follows a rant brought on by my passed experiences.

What religion would you choose to have in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a religion that its leaders rape little boys and girls?
A religion that seems to be supportive of the murder of the American Natives?

Keep to having alternative names for religious groups might be better, that
and Joss was not very supportive of the recognized churches.
As for the comment that Quakers don't have the appeal, a bit like the Pilgrims, true. Quakers and Pilgrims were not known for doing bad things.
When I was at school, a very long time ago I got in trouble during the first year of senior high school for refusing to go to a C. of E. church and for complaining about having the C. of E. stuff 'rammed down my throat'.
My religion at the time in the first year was ignored by the establishment as was the Hindu and Islam believers.

Rant Over.
I am sorry if my rant upset you.
 
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