Whatever the outcome, you know Buffy’s coming for you.
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We Know Which "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Villain You Are
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Here's What You Should Watch On Netflix During The Blizzard
Relax, we’ll do the work for you, it’s Blizzard Day.
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We Know What You Should Binge-Watch On Hulu
Time to Hulu and chill.
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16 Classic Sci-Fi And Fantasy Shows Reimagined With People Of Color As The Lead Roles
Let’s take a trip to an alternate universe.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
A young girl tasked with battling the forces of evil tries to balance high school life in a small town with maintaining her secret identity. With the weight of all of intersectional feminism on her shoulders, her white classmates rarely take notice of her daily trials.
Mike Hinson / Warner Bros.
Doctor Who
The legendary Doctor — finally having regenerated as a person of color — finds himself leaning heavily on his white companion to be listened to throughout history.
Mike Hinson / BBC
Battlestar Galactica
When an old enemy resurfaces, one crew is tasked with protecting what remains of humanity while seeking the lost colony of Earth. Can they flip the script on the entire history of colonialism? Eh.
Mike Hinson / SyFy
Charmed
Three prophesied sister witches battle the white supremacist patriarchy every day of their goddamn lives.
Mike Hinson / Warner Bros.
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16 TV Moments That Helped People Through Their Depression
“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.” – Doctor Who
We've also published a film version, which you can read here.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: When Jacqueline bursts into tears and Kimmy tries to console her.
"Kimmy Schmidt has kept me from falling back into that depression hole that I so desperately, barely crawled out off. It has helped me improve. It so greatly portrayed that message of 'shit happens and you can choose to rise above it.'"
– lujanelujane
Netflix / 3 Arts Entertainment
BoJack Horseman: When BoJack receives this piece of wisdom when he is having difficulty running.
"That quote from BoJack Horseman hit me. Long live BoJack."
– leilaa4ffefddeb
The Tornante Company / Netflix
Parks and Recreation: When Chris Traeger decides to see a therapist to treat his depression.
"It felt so real and genuine to me that this bubbly character could feel terrible and needed help, too."
– melaniem4a8088074
Deedle-Dee Productions / NBC
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9 Celebrity #TBT Photos You Need To See This Week
A Donna and Eric from That ’70s Show photo kicks off this week’s #ThrowbackThursday.
Lauren Prepon shared a photo of herself with her That '70s Show co-star Topher Grace.
Sarah Michelle Gellar celebrated the 19th anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by posting this pic from her Sunnydale High School days.
Sarah Michelle Gellar / Via instagram.com
Lena Dunham posted this adorable photo of herself enjoying a Coca-Cola.
Lena Dunham / Via instagram.com
Seth Green took us back to 1999, when he filmed this scene with Jerry Springer for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Seth Green / Via instagram.com
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Sarah Michelle Gellar Gave A Touching Tribute To "Buffy" On Its 19th Anniversary
“I am and forever will be #grateful.”
Yesterday marked 19 full years since Buffy Summers, Chosen One and Number One Slayer, first graced our television sets on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Getty Images
You remember Buffy, yes? The most important show of the '90s and early '00s?
Getty Images
The show that would, over the course of seven seasons, make us feel every emotion on the human spectrum?
Getty Images
Since those days, Buffy (AKA Sarah Michelle Gellar) has grown up and taken on lots of different roles and projects...
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16 Fictional Characters Who Actually Portray Mental Illness Accurately
“I loved that she had thoughts that I thought only I had.”
Channel 4 / BuzzFeed
"It wasn't made when I was a teenager but when I watched the show it reminded me so much of myself at 16. Rae is relatable because of her insecurities, her tendency to compare herself to those around her and her self-abhorrence. Also I loved that she had thoughts that I thought only I had."
Submitted by chloet1991.
"Rae, with her struggles to accept herself, helped me grow to love and respect who and what I am during the most difficult time of my year. Rae means the world to me and I hold her very dearly in my heart."
Submitted by Iona Bulloch, Facebook.
"Similar to Charlie, I was sexually abused as a child by a very close relative. I was too young to understand it, but the vague memories I have suppressed still haunt me. I had depression as a teenager, and the abuse was something that I would always go back to in my mind. I have yet to tell anyone about it. Reading Charlie's emotions on paper really helped me in seeing that my post traumatic stress was valid."
Submitted anonymously.
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27 Things You Won't Understand Unless You Went To High School In The Late '90s
You had mail, but you had to wait ’cause your mom was using the phone.
Having your parents begrudgingly agree to allow you to have a pager.
And then learning pager code:
3579 : This is weird
1423: I want to die
143: I love you
187: I want to kill you
Via 90s90s90s.com
Rocking a JanSport backpack, which you, of course, one-strapped and would customize with a Sharpie or Wite-Out pen.
And maybe, if you had to, an Eastpak. MAYBE.
Via etsy.com
Using your TI-83 graphing calculator basically just to play Space Invaders with.
Of course, occasionally pulling it out to do a math problem.
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9 Celebrity #TBT Photos You Need To See This Week
A photo of Justin and Selena kissing kicks off this week’s #ThrowbackThursday.
Justin Bieber posted this photo of him and his ex, Selena Gomez, during happier times.
Justin Bieber / Via instagram.com
Kirsten Dunst took us back to the 1994 premiere of her film, Little Women, where she posed on the red carpet with her co-stars Christian Bale and Winona Ryder.
Reese Witherspoon also took us back to 1994, to the premiere of True Lies where she rocked some serious '90s mom jeans.
Jenny Lewis remembered her cult classic film, Troop Beverly Hills.
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23 Of Buffy Summers' Most Iconic Lines
“If the apocalypse comes, beep me.”
When she laughed in the face of death.
Warner Bros. / Via sunnydales.tumblr.com
When she knew some dude wasn't necessary in her life.
Warner Bros. / Via chloegemel.tumblr.com
When she let Giles know it always came down to her.
Warner Bros. / Via buffygif.tumblr.com
When she lost her memory but quickly realized she was a badass.
Warner Bros. / Via watcherspet.tumblr.com
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Eliza Dushku's Ass-Kicking Days Are Not Over
Dushku at New York Comic-Con in October 2015.
Daniel Zuchnik / Getty Images
Eliza Dushku was raised by a feminist mother alongside three brothers; she believes that upbringing infused her with an innate sense of strength. And that strength has been an asset that helped lead casting directors to dish her roles as “the badass” in “a sexist Hollywood world” of male-only ass-kickers, as she explained to BuzzFeed News.
Best known for playing Faith Lehane on Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dushku has occupied the tough-as-nails niche for years — in comedies (2000’s Bring It On), horror movies (2003’s Wrong Turn), and post-Buffy TV shows (Tru Calling in 2003–2004 and Dollhouse in 2009–2010). From a reluctant cheerleader to a deeply flawed vampire slayer, these are gigs that could easily — and simplistically — be corralled into the “strong female character” trope. But Dushku sees them as more than that; as she said on a chilly day in Midtown New York late last year, “There are so many different meanings of ‘strong.’”
Dushku on Buffy.
Warner Bros. Television
“Does it mean she [can] bench-press 240? Does it mean she is physically strong? Does it mean she is so tough that she's always walking around with a chip on her shoulder? A strong female character is deeper than that,” she said. “Unfortunately, a lot of people think that all it takes to make a strong character [is] to throw her in a couple of fight scenes and show her flipping a car. But the strong female characters that I know — from Joss and from Sigourney Weaver characters and from Meryl Streep characters — are so many things at the same time.”
Dushku happily played these roles, in part because she was having a blast, but mostly because she quickly saw the impression these characters left on young viewers.
“When I played Faith, I started getting letters from young women — and men — that said, ‘Your character made me confront my abuser’ or ‘Your character made me feel for the first time like I was strong, because you are strong,’” recalled Dushku, her leather pants–clad legs curled underneath her. “That was such a shift for me. I couldn't turn my back on that.”
On April 1, Dushku will add another ass-kicking character to her résumé when she joins the cast of Cinemax’s Banshee as Agent Veronica Dawson, a mysterious new character that quickly makes her mark on the town. “Nobody comes to Banshee without some serious fucking skeletons in their closet,” she said, with a laugh. “She's got her skeletons, she's got her demons, she's got her habits — and she's got some bad ones — but she’s also really cunning and smart. She's a profiler that gets into people's heads using a lifetime of fucked-up experiences to make her really, really good at what she does. It's who she is, it's how she deals, it's what she does … and she's not going to apologize for it.”
Dushku on Banshee.
Gregory Shummon/Cinemax
While filming Banshee in the summer of 2015, Dushku balanced a second role: college freshman. After delaying college in 1998 to star on Buffy, she returned to her hometown of Boston in 2014 and re-enrolled in undergrad with an emphasis on sociology. “I'm a 34-year-old freshman — loud and proud,” she exclaimed. More specifically, she plans to study addiction and recovery. “You don't meet one person today who isn't connected to addiction in some way. It's like cancer: Every single person walking this earth now has somebody in their life that's suffering with it. … So it’s about erasing the stigma of addiction. That’s somewhere I think I could make a difference.”
Dushku at the Banshee premiere in March 2016.
Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images
She was quick to quash rumors that she’s quitting acting, but equally swift to acknowledge that it’s risky to step away from Hollywood for an extended period of time to immerse herself in school. “If it happens, it happens,” she says of leaving acting behind — or, conversely, acting leaving her behind. “Being an actress was an unexpected turn for me — not a mistake, but an accident. It's like I tripped and fell into it when I was young.”
Many in her position might balk at the idea of stepping outside Hollywood’s intoxicating bubble. While acting has afforded Dushku an embarrassment of riches, she’s hoping the same fans that looked up to her ass-kicking characters will see her decision to make education a priority as equally kick-ass.
“I've been a part of such awesome things: Bring It On and the Buffyverse and working with Joss Whedon three times, and now Banshee. At the end of the day — whether it's through playing these strong female characters that made other women feel strong or being a 34-year-old freshman in college — this is my story, and if my story inspires you, fucking right on.”
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13 Shows To Binge With The Gryffindor In Your Life
Indulge in tales of daring and courage.
Amplionus / Thinkstock
Friday Night Lights
Honestly one of the most emotionally fulfilling Gryffindor sagas out there. It's about the courage of daily life, and the nerve required in finding your best self. Give your heart over to this show for a while.
The entire series is available for streaming on Netflix.
NBC
Daredevil
It makes all kinds of sense for a lot of superhero stories to fall into Gryffindor territory – but even within that arena Matt Murdock distinguishes himself as extra Gryffindory. Rest assured, Godric himself would give this self-torturing brand of heroism the nod.
The entire series is available to stream on Netflix.
Netflix
Jessica Jones
Jessica does heroism differently than a lot of superhero stories. She embraces her own flaws in a much more head-on way than a lot of brooding heroes; she stares right in the face of her own shortcomings and works to resist self-flagellation. She also runs from her own desire to help – until she stops running, turns around, and dives right in. It's a much more raw fight for justice than your average modern vigilante tale.
The first season (and the only season so far) is available to stream on Netflix.
Netflix
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Meet the Filmmaker Who Wants to Save Horror From Cheap Scares
The masked killer (John Gallagher Jr.) in Hush.
Netflix
For viewers who associate horror films with panicked screams, Hush may be a breath of fresh air. Throughout the movie, final girl Maddie (Kate Siegel), a writer who is deaf, is terrorized by a crazed attacker (John Gallagher Jr.) while remaining almost entirely silent: She’s a scream queen who can’t speak, let alone scream.
Hush, which is now streaming on Netflix, was conceived by Oculus director Mike Flanagan and Siegel out of their love for the 1967 film Wait Until Dark (in which Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman evading a killer) and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” (in which the Scooby Gang lose their voices, stolen by the demonic Gentlemen). But Maddie’s deafness isn’t merely a source of dramatic tension — it’s also Flanagan’s response to what he sees as horror films’ overreliance on noise as a crutch.
Mike Flanagan at the premiere of Oculus.
Mike Windle / Getty Images
“Horror itself is becoming mistaken for loud sounds,” Flanagan told BuzzFeed News in an interview at Austin’s Intercontinental Hotel during this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival. “The more I can work against that, just career-wise — I will always want to.”
While Hush may work as a protest against the state of horror, Flanagan was initially concerned with the smaller-scale question of what a deaf hero meant for the audience. Part of the terror in Hush is that the audience will always have a much clearer idea of what’s happening than Maddie does. For example, when the killer makes his first appearance at Maddie’s secluded home in the woods, he murders a neighbor on Maddie’s doorstep, but Maddie doesn’t hear the commotion and turn to see the source.
“The suspense that’s inherent in us being aware of danger that Maddie’s in when she’s not [aware] was one of the earliest and easiest expressions of why that was such a cool shade to put on the movie,” Flanagan said. “Ultimately why [deafness] works better for me than blindness or something like that is that it forces us to lean completely on the camera.”
Maddie (Kate Siegel) doesn't notice the killer lingering outside her house.
Netflix
As they co-wrote the script, Flanagan and Siegel had to decide early how much sound to include. While Flanagan was tempted to make the film completely silent, allowing the story to be told entirely from Maddie’s perspective, he was dissuaded by the practical issues involved, namely the inability to screen the film in actual silence. “You’re not hearing silence. You’re hearing popcorn and you’re hearing coughing and you’re hearing somebody’s phone vibrate,” he explained.
Instead, Hush allows occasional moments in which the sound drops out and viewers are afforded a glimpse into Maddie’s world. On the whole, it’s still a much quieter experience than almost any other recent horror film. Because it’s largely composed of scene directions with little dialogue, the script came in at only 50 pages. (In standard screenplays, a page is equivalent to about a minute of screen time.)
As Hush relies so heavily on action over words, Flanagan and Siegel wrote the the screenplay to be incredibly specific in terms of movement. With a standard script, Flanagan said that one could simply jot in basic blocking and refine it on set, but for Hush, they carefully plotted out and choreographed every movement.
“Kate and I would actually act things out through the house, and that’s kind of how we wrote it,” Flanagan said. It helped that he and Siegel, who are married, share a home. “I would try to look around our house and be like, how could I get in if I want to? How can I scare her if I want to? And she would look around the house like, what can I use to defend myself? How long will it be effective?”
Netflix
The “role-play,” as Flanagan called it, helped add realism to the film’s tense cat-and-mouse game between Maddie and her pursuer. Once the creative team had secured their location — an isolated house in Alabama — Flanagan ran through similar role-playing scenarios with cinematographer James Kniest and producer Trevor Macy to fine-tune what he and Siegel had worked out.
Hush is a far more contained movie than Flanagan’s last film, 2013’s Oculus: As in Oculus, the action is almost entirely restricted to one home, but Hush offers sparse dialogue and none of Oculus’s complex exposition. He called Hush’s minimalist nature “a blessing and a curse” given the film’s low budget and accelerated shooting schedule.
“We only had 18 days, so the claustrophobia of the location from a practical point of view allowed us to actually make the movie within that time,” he said. “The problem is, a viewer gets familiar with that space in about five minutes, and you can’t cover a scene the way that you might want to instinctively when you first approach it in a vacuum. There needs to be variation in the aesthetic visually, or people will get bored.”
Keeping his audience engaged was, naturally, a major goal for Flanagan, but he eschewed what he considers to be cheap tricks. He cited the overdone trope of a leading lady shutting a door to reveal the nerve-rattling surprise of someone standing behind it. Jump scares — those moments of an attacker coming up behind you and shouting “boo!” — are, more often than not, announced with loud, jarring noises, the very thing that Hush’s persistent silence rebels against. “I don’t even like to call them jump scares. They drive me nuts, because I think it’s just startling,” he said. “There’s no artistry in walking up behind somebody and smashing a cymbal behind their head and making them flinch.”
At the same time, Flanagan realizes that audiences have come to expect these moments from genre films. He noted that even horror fans who claim to want “something new” will often reject films they perceive to be “not scary” because they don’t make them jump. And studios, who monitor this kind of response, continue to view jump scares as essential to a current horror film’s success.
“If a studio sees a cut of a movie that doesn’t have five jump scares by this point of the movie, they’re like, ‘It’s not going to work,’” he said. “Startling people is easy. … You can do it so artlessly that now it’s like, OK, we can put a movie out there that startles people 15 times in 90 minutes and call it a successful horror movie.”
Maddie keeps her eye on the killer.
Netflix
That’s why the suspense in Hush is grounded in a more restrained perception of scares: It builds throughout the film toward a climax rather than getting diffused in jump scares throughout. Flanagan knows his approach doesn’t work for everyone: Oculus, he admitted, was polarizing for rejecting contemporary mainstream horror norms. But he’s not willing to give in to what he sees as laziness, even if Hush is criticized for its scarcity of jolts. (His next film, Ouija 2, is a studio movie and not an indie like Hush, though he’s confident he’ll be able to maintain his stylistic preferences.)
But while Flanagan is delighted when critics recognize the subtler scares of certain horror films, he’s admittedly disappointed by audience gripes over movies that “just aren’t scary,” and box office numbers that reflect that lack of engagement.
“For every kind of interesting or moody or atmospheric horror movie like It Follows or The Witch that comes out, there’s gonna be 10 more that are just jump-scare delivery machines, and those are all gonna outgross the others,” Flanagan said. “[Movies like It Follows] perform better than a studio would have expected, but they’re still not gonna do the numbers that Annabelle did. And that can be disheartening.”
For the time being, however, Flanagan is focused less on the economics of horror and more on what he can do as a filmmaker to preserve the kind of movies he actually wants to watch. Hush may not cause anyone to jump off their couch, but its simmering, largely silent suspense is something Flanagan is proud to showcase.
“It goes back to when you’re a kid,” he said. “When you’re sitting up in your bed at night and you’re scared of something in your room, you’re not afraid that something’s about to pop out at you — you’re afraid that something’s waiting. And that’s where the fear is.”
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Here's What The Main Cast Of "Buffy" Looks Like Now
These guys were ~slaying~ before it was even a thing.
20th Television
Brad Barket / Stringer
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What "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Would Be Like If It Took Place Today
There would definitely be a Tinder demon.
1. Cordelia would own a Kylie Jenner Lip Kit.
2. And be low-key Instagram famous.
3. Anya would wear a "misandry" T-shirt on the regular.
4. Jonathan would have a brilliant but under-appreciated Twitter account.
5. Xander would try to become a Vine star.
6. He'd also spend a lot of time on Reddit, and his username would be NobodysButtMonkey.
Keely Flaherty / Warner Bros. / BuzzFeed
7. Harmony would say "literally" in all her Facebook posts.
8. And be super into spinning.
9. Buffy would love to point out the inaccuracies in all the Marvel superhero movies.
10. But she'd be a huge Jessica Jones fan.
11. Giles would be addicted to Making a Murderer and really admire Dean Strang.
12. Willow would binge-watch every season of Orange Is the New Black.
Keely Flaherty / Netflix / Warner Bros.
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If "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Quotes Were Motivational Posters
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This Actor Is Recreating Red Carpet Looks With Random Household Items
This honestly slays.
If you've ever been lucky enough to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then you probably remember the loveable Andrew Wells.
You know, the brother of Tucker, he used to be in the Trio, summoned demons a lot, the usual stuff.
UPN
Tom Lenk, the actor who played Andrew, is now re-creating red carpet looks on his Instagram.
Instagram / Via instagram.com
And they're honestly BRILLIANT.
Instagram / Via instagram.com
Who knew Kristen Stewart had a twin???
Instagram / Via instagram.com
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Only A True Late-'90s Teen Girl Can Ace This Test
Only look at this if you understand the struggle of who would be Brandy and who would be Monica while lip-syncing to the “Boy Is Mine.” *still fights with friend’s over who is the Brandy and who is the Monica*
Zoë Burnett / Buzzfeed
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Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Animated Series
Buffy creator Joss Whedon adapted his show for Fox as a Saturday morning cartoon in 2001, but the series was never made. Now the four-minute pilot has been leaked.
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