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"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg.
     
 
Buffy vs. Harry Potter
  
 

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter, two series about adolescence in a fantasy world, told with enough technique to make some writers jealous. Okay, so JK Rowling uses easy techniques, but it is for kids. Buffy still has enough technique for both of them. (Not many television series get courses developed to try and analyze them.) Both Buffy and Harry have special purposes in life. Buffy is the Chosen One a.ka. "she who will stand alone against the forces" or "the [Vampire] Slayer." Harry Potter is known to the wizarding world as "the Boy Who Lived." He is the only one to have withstood Voldemort, the darkest wizard of all. The two also come in sevens, but that's just the surface of their similarities.

Riley/Cho:
Riley - created as a love interest for Buffy/ bland and lacked depth/ ended relationship, just didn't realize that it was his fault it was going down South in the first place
Cho - love interest for Harry/ bland and lacked depth/ ended relationship, just didn't realize that it was her fault it was going down South in the first place

Death of a Parent Figure:
Buffy - Season 5/ when Buffy discovers her dead mother, she refuses to let anyone call her a body, and insists that her mother isn't gone/ she imagines that the paramedics are able to save her mother and is truly convinced that that is reality, but is brought back to reality as her mother is still flatlining
Dawn - also in denial, she doesn't believe that their mother is dead when Buffy tells her at school/ has to go to the morgue for closure/ refuses to let her mother go and hopes that she'll be able to come back via witchcraft, despite the "side effects"
Harry - Book 5/ when Harry sees Sirius go through the curtain, he expects him to come right back out and refuses to believe that he's really gone/ Harry hopes that Sirius will come back via becoming a ghost

Scoobies/Harry's Gang(for lack of a better word):
Willow - she's the smart, studious one of the gang
Hermione - ditto
Xander - has felt inadequate/ more important than he thinks he is/ loyal friend/ "butt monkey," in other words, is usually made the fool/ comic relief
Ron - again, ditto

Government Negativity:
Watcher's Council/ Initiative - showed that, despite good intentions, they end up causing more harm *In the last few episodes, Buffy's arrogance shows how senseless taking everyone to war can be *coughs* Dubya *coughs* *
Ministry of Magic - showed that, despite good intentions, they end up causing more harm (yeah, I'm redundant)

Guardians/Order of the Phoenix:
Guardians - helped out the Watcher's Council without their knowledge/approval
Order of the Phoenix - assisted the Ministry of Magic in the same manner

Giles/Dumbledore:
Giles - is a father figure to Buffy (she has a "shiftless, absentee" biological father who seemed to vanish after her parents' divorce)/ did some bad stuff when younger, i.e. summoning a demon with some friends to get a high/ nickname from gang was Ripper
Sirius - is a father figure to Harry (his parents met an early demise)/ did some bad stuff when younger, i.e. sneaking around campus with some friends after hours/ nickname from gang was Padfoot

Principal Schnyder/Professor Snape:
Prinicpal Schnyder - out to get Buffy/an unfortunate authority figure
Professor Snape - out to get Harry/an unfortunate authority figure

Faith/Draco:
Faith - foil for Buffy, she shows what Buffy could've become had things been different
Draco - foil for Harry, he shows what Harry could've become had things been different

Spike/Snape:
(old)Spike - nasty behavior/ cunning and manipulative/ hurt in his past
Snape - see above ^

Casualties of War:
On Buffy - Dead Slayers-in-Training a.k.a. SIT
In Harry - Dead members of the Order of the Phoenix (and other innocent individuals)

Predictions: Based on the similarities, here are my predictions for the next Harry Potter book.

-- Harry will start screwing Pansy Parkinson because he doesn't think any of his friends will be able to help him cope
-- Hermione gets too into the Dark Arts and becomes addicted (read: crackwhore)
-- Ron dates Luna only to break up with her so he doesn't hurt her, which leads to her becoming a vengeance demon again - okay, that's a little far-fetched…maybe he takes the Dawn approach and whines through the whole thing

Note From the Author: I know that there are probably many other similarities, but I tried to keep out the trivial bits, i.e. Jenny was a cool teacher and so was McGonagall and Buffy and Harry both have 5 letters in their first names. My purpose was not to point out the possibility that one stole from the other (although, Buffy did come first…). (It was actually three in the morning, and I was bored.) I think that both Joss Whedon and JK Rowling found formulas that worked really well.

AudOne

 		 

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