Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2

"Seize the moment, because tomorrow you may be dead!" Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy to Willow, "Welcome to the Hell Mouth"

As promised, I would like to continue how I relate the characters in the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I would like to continue with the main character of the show Buffy Summers. She is the "main" hero of the show and also the title character. As Joss Whedon says they, the writers, "put her (Buffy) through her paces". Throughout the entire series her constant dream is to be just like other girls.

At the beginning of the show Buffy is just moving to small town Sunnydale, California after being expelled from her last school for burning down their gym, full of the vampires, and just wants to live a normal life without worrying about the vampires. Unfortunately for Buffy, Sunnydale is on top of a hell mouth and vampires and other nasties really love it there. Yet still, at first, she refuses because she just wants a normal life. Her resistance to take up the fight doesn't last long.

Buffy along the way in the first episode meets Xander and Willow and she becomes fast friends with the two. Willow gets into trouble in part because Buffy tells her to "Seize the moment, because tomorrow you may be dead." (one of my most favorite quotes EVER!) and Willow proceeds to do so by going to talk to a boy, who turns out to be a vampire. Buffy identifies the guy as a vampire and sees Willow go off with him. Buffy, feeling a little bit responsible, but also because she doesn't want to see Willow get hurt, goes and to find them and kill the vampire. Buffy's friends are a lot of the reason she accepts her slayer duties in the end. I don't fully believe she "chooses" to do this, but is forced too because she has no other choice. Buffy is forced to fight all the time.

In the third season episode Homecoming while running away from killers with Cordelia, who she is competing with for Homecoming queen, are in a cabin and Cordy asks Buffy why she cares so much about winning homecoming queen when she gets to have all this, meaning the danger and the fighting. Buffy responds "Because this is all I do! This is what my life is like! I just thought, Homecoming Queen. I could pick up a yearbook someday and say, 'I was there, I went to high school, I had friends and, for one moment, I got to live in the world.' And there'd be proof; proof that I was chosen for something other than this. Besides, I look cute in a tiara." All Buffy does is fight monsters and save the world, she doesn't really do anything else but fight.

As my last post said I feel the same way. Obviously I don't go out every night and kill vampires, would be AMAZING if I did, but I still fight. I don't really do anything else but fight. I don't get a chance to just live in the world and just be me because I am always fighting. I don't really have a choice in whether or not I fight cause I have to deal with the bullshit everyday. I get drained and just want to stop sometime, but I can't. A 31 year old transgender womyn was found murdered in Puerto Rico recently, no doubt because she was transgendered. My own safety and the fact that trans people are constantly being harassed, assaulted, and killed is reason that I can't stop fighting. No breaks, no rest, and no real peace. All of it is emotionally draining and sometimes physically draining.

I have very often wished that I was just like every other girl who didn't have to wonder if people saw her as a girl everyday, but I can't. That is not the hand I have been dealt in life. On really bad days I wish that I was just like every other girl, on the best days I am proud of of the fact that I am not and the average day I go through both feelings equally. Whatever day is happening, it is a fight. A fight within myself to be strong and a fight with the outside world to just let me live my life.

I realize full well that A LOT of what I am saying, minus the specific situation, most, if not all, people can relate to in their own lives. We all have something we are fighting either within ourselves or with societies ignorance and stupidity or both. Joss Whedon has given us a character that I feel everyone can relate to on some level. Being a transgender womyn has allowed me to connect with this fictional hero because I, like her, feel like all I do is fight and sometimes I just want to STOP, but I can't, like she can't.