⭐ = a personal favorite

Comics

Stake Holders (October 2017) ⭐

A mini webcomic. I only made seven strips, but I’m pretty happy with them. No plans to make any more, although I might someday if I get some free time. (In case you’re wondering, the lack of Xander and Anya is just due to small sample size — I don’t hate the characters.)

Image manipulation

I did all the images below in Paint.NET.

Giles jam (November 2016)

A quick, fun little creation. But even with something “easy” like this, it’s surprisingly hard to find screenshots that fit.

Magazine covers (October 2016) ⭐

This took something like a month to finish. For a while there I was obsessed, working on it 3 or 4 hours every night. I’m pretty pleased with the results, though.

Buffy vs. Vader (October 2016)

In the original Empire Strikes Back screenshot, Luke was in the background, so I had to edit him out. The glow of Luke and Vader’s lightsabers also had to be removed, which meant reconstructing a large section of the screen.

Willow and the Iron Giant (September 2016)

Willow’s taken from one of the Buffy Season 8 comics. I think she and the Iron Giant would get along just fine. (One of my all-time favorite movies, by the way.)

Just add Dawn (August 2016)

In Season 5, Buffy gets a little sister named Dawn — and, by retcon, has always had a sister. So of course I had to insert her into screenshots from Seasons 1 – 4. I found earlier movies that the actress (Michelle Trachtenberg) had done, and tried to match her to the age Dawn would have been. You can tell it’s not a professional job, but I think some of them look fairly real if you don’t stare too hard.

Buffemian Rhapsody (July 2016)

Pretty self-explanatory.

Wheel of Fortune (July 2016)

A fairly quick job, but I love how it turned out. Somehow the facial expressions just seem perfect.

“Empty Places” alternate ending (June 2016) ⭐

If you want to piss off a Buffy fan, make them watch the ending of “Empty Places” (Season 7, Episode 19). After Buffy spends seven years fighting and sacrificing to save the world, at the height of an apocalyptic war, her friends kick her out of her own house. A lot of TVs and monitors get screamed at during this scene.

Since I had similar feelings myself, I went ahead and did my own alternate ending — mostly joking, but a little serious too. Catharsis is nice.

Parallels with Avatar: The Last Airbender (June 2016)

Pretty self-explanatory.

Visual poetry (December 2015) ⭐

I like poetry. I like Buffy. Matching up lines with screenshots was fun.

Tarot cards (July 2015)

I was doing a lot of research on tarot around this time. I thought I might do a whole deck, but only finished two cards.

Music videos

Amazing Grace (March 2017)

This time I opted for something a little simpler. Fewer clips, slower tempo, shorter song.

Also, look at the dates for this video and the last two. Apparently every twelve months I get an overwhelming urge to make a Buffy video? Well, I won’t question it.

Remember the Name (March 2016)

Here’s the deal on this one. Avatar – Remember the Name, by YouTube user ravenhpltc242, is the best fan-made Avatar video I’ve ever seen. It’s fast, it’s strong, it’s precise, it knows exactly what it’s doing. Mostly it appeals to the teenager in me, but since when is that a bad thing?

I had wanted to do a Buffy version for a long time, and I finally did. Same music, same concept, same design, just a different show. Call it a tribute video. It’s not as good as the original — few tributes are — but I think it captures some of the same spirit. I’m pretty happy with it.

Thrift Shop (March 2015) ⭐

Not gonna lie, this is one of my favorite things that I’ve ever done. I probably shouldn’t even try to guess how many dozens of hours it took me.

Fan fiction

Class of 1999 Graduates in Completely Unremarkable Ceremony (July 2016)

An imaginary newspaper article from the town of Sunnydale, where nothing much ever happens, there are certainly no vampires or monsters, and the mayor definitely didn’t turn into an enormous snake demon and eat some kids and then get blown up along with the entire high school.

Summers’ Fall (May 2016) ⭐

I rewrote an entire episode — Season 5 finale “The Gift” — as a Shakespearean play. This was a big challenge, but a lot of fun, too. And I learned a ton about Elizabethan English in the process. For instance, it’s “thy lips” but “thine eyes” — the form depends on whether the next word starts with a consonant or a vowel, just like “a” & “an.”

The Witch and the Dragon (February 2015) ⭐

A huge novella-length Buffy story that I wrote in a frenzy of activity shortly after I finally won my three-year battle with clinical depression. (“Frenzy of activity” after depression makes it sound like bipolar, but actually this was just healthy excitement.) Normally a really quick first draft followed by minimal revision leads to a pile of crap, but in this case, I think it turned out extremely well. In my own totally non-biased judgment, of course.

Impossible (January 2015)

Essentially a new episode inserted into the middle of Season 6. There’s some Spuffy stuff, but it’s part of a larger plot that involves everyone. I think I got the characters down pretty well, if I do say so myself — relationships, dialogue, mannerisms, and all. I’m especially proud of the Buffy & Tara scene.

Why Didn’t You Tell Me? (January 2015)

A short little Spuffy story. I’ve been a Spuffy shipper since I knew what the term meant. It’s partly fluff romance (it contains the phrase “scent of her desire,” if that’s any indication — I regret nothing!) and part serious character study, depicting a reunion scene that we never got to see on TV.

This is the first Buffy fic I ever wrote.

Nonfiction—Humor

Buffy summarized in 26 words, A to Z (June 2016)

Self-explanatory.

The Marzipan Code: Buffybot’s Secret Revealed (April 2016) ⭐

An April Fool’s joke. Conspiracy theories are even more fun in fictional universes. You can find “hidden” connections in anything if you look hard enough.

English-to-Buffy translator (August 2016)

Wordplay!

28 awful Buffy jokes (October 2015)

I’m still not sorry.

Nonfiction—Serious

Defense of fan fiction (February 2015) ⭐

As a writer and editor, I take copyright and intellectual property issues very seriously. So I felt it was important to lay out the moral and intellectual case for fan fiction in general, and for Buffy fan fiction in particular. Spoiler alert: If you think fan fic is universally stupid, you shouldn’t read the Aeneid (fan fic of the Odyssey) or Paradise Lost (fan fic of the Bible).

Postmortem: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (November 2014)

Postmortem: Buffy season 8 (comics) (October 2016)

Postmortem: Angel (January 2015)

My brief thoughts and impressions — too brief to call a “review” — of the Buffy TV show, the first “season” of comics that followed, and the Buffy spinoff show Angel.

Transcendence in “After Life” (September 2015)

My favorite moment from my favorite episode.