Buffy, River, Faith and Fray, Female Heroines in the Whedonverse

From the fictional universes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Fray", "Angel" and "Firefly" that form the overall Whedonverse, the creations and works of writer, director and producer Joss Whedon, these are populated by strong heroines. "Warrior Women" of a sort updated for a demographic that is as much female as male, relying not on outsized Amazonian muscles or revealing superhero costumes of conventional warrior women in fantasy literature, but existing as real and often troubled teenage girls, female versions of Peter Parker, saddled with powers and destinies they do not want that keep them from living the normal lives they can only wish for.

"In your dreams you're someone else. A slave. A princess. A girl in school in a sunlit city," says Melaka Fray, heroine of "Fray", the futuristic comic book follow-up series to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "Fray" serves as a sort of "Spider Man 2099" or "Batman Beyond" to the Buffyverse or Buffy universe.

Like most Buffyverse heroines, Fray is a layer of cynical stocism pasted over by the necessities of life across more hopefull and girlish dreams. The Buffyverse heroines may have dreams but they have learned to suppress them beneath a glib remark, a pun, a sneer or a twist. They have taught themselves to harden their exterior and interior against feelings and suppress their need for deeper friendships and companionship. The griefs and burdens that weigh them down represent one source of strength. But it is a fragile strength that snaps under pressure, as was the case with the Buffyverse's Faith, who temporarily came to serve evil. The stronger power comes from friendship and on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", it was Buffy's friendships that enabled her to survive to the end and fulfill her destiny.

The slayer's cynical outer shell is hardened through being forced to be on her own with no one to help or care for her. Fray, having lost her older brother to Lurks, the Frayverse's version of Vampires, is a lone thief, with some resemblance to the competing Buffy series, James Cameron's "Dark Angel." Buffy came to Sunnydale blaming herself for her parent's divorce. Faith was on her own, betrayed by her Watcher and eventually imprisoned. River Tam, had her brother Simon Tam and the rest of the crew to protect her, but in the climax of the Firefly motion picture, "Serenity", River watches Firefly's crew which had served as a buffer for her, die all around her, at the hands of the Reavers-- degraded humans who are the Firefly universe's version of vampires, and finally sees her brother too fall.

As Simon lies there, River tells him he can't die. "You won't. You take care of me. You've always taken care of me."

Then realizing that he no longer can, River stands up and saying simply, "My Turn" she dives into battle fighting off the Reavers in a furious melee, tossing a medical kit to her brother while locking the door and facing down the enemy.

Only at the very end of "Firefly" did River emerge at a "slayer" and a classic Whedonverse heroine, having realized that there is no one else to take care of her anymore and that it is indeed her turn now to take care of others. Like Buffy, who ultimately had to face a task she did not want, to protect others and the first season finale, even sacrifice her life to do so, River's childhood had ended forcing her into a premature adulthood.

Like many teen characters on teen soaps, Joss Whedon's heroines have grown older before their time, but unlike those teen soaps like "Dawson's Creek", "The O.C." or "One Tree Hill", this does not stem from an unnatural convenient precociousness, but from facing a life in which they have no one to rely on but themselves and in which they must make their way through the world in this manner.

"Mel. Mel. Haven't you learned by now that you can't protect anyone." Harth, Fray's brother who has become a vampire, tells her. When slayers do find friends or companions, they are often targeted and brutally murdered.

Giles, Buffy's Watcher, had repeatedly told her that her friendships and associations were inappropriate for a slayer. In the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" two part episode, "What's My Line", Buffy is confronted by Kendra, a slayer who lives by a code of rigid discipline and has no friends or recreation time. In "Firefly" River is abandoned by everyone, including her parents, with only her brother being prepared to fight for her and save her, against all odds. "Faith" was truly alone in the world, until Mayor Wilkins' attentions gave her a pseudo-father figure, until he too was killed.

On "Angel" Cordelia is faced with a future in which she can leave behind the horrors of the past and fulfill her dreams of becoming a superstar and have all the fame she wants, and instead having achieved all that, she still chooses to return and fight the good fight. By first losing her wealthy parents and being reduced to work for a living and in the subsequent batterings produced through her aspirations to fame in the cruel celebrity culture of L.A., the old Cordelia Chase is stripped away and recreated as a Joss Whedon heroine, who despite having her body co opted by an evil force, nevertheless returns one final time to help Angel save the day.

Joss Whedon's innovation was to treat the female heroine as male heroes had been, creating female Peter Parkers, but also to recognize the painful reality this imposed particularly on the feminine psyche. The psychological punishment of loneliness and having to shoulder impossible burdens with no one to lean on is at the root of the Whedonverse heroines, as it is at the root of the Whedon influenced "Veronica Mars."

The self-sacrifice of the heroines created by Joss Whedon is rooted in what they can never have. When in the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode "Anne", Buffy abandons her responsibilities and escapes to L.A. where she works as a waitress and turns her back on her destiny, as she is drawn back to search for a missing boy, in her confrontation with a worker at a blood bank who had been feeding the names of healthy teenagers to a demon slave labor camp, Buffy says; "I don't want any trouble. I just wanna be alone and quiet in a room with a chair and a fireplace and a tea cozy. I don't even know what a tea cozy is but I want one."

This is an attitude typical of Whedonverse heroines who remain girls at heart, wanting a more feminine life, wanting to be the princess, the girl in the schoolroom and knowing that they cannot, push away the heartbreak and get on with the job that needs to be done and the fight ahead that needs to be won. They do not and cannot look forward to a happy ending. In the Buffyverse most slayers finish up by being killed by that one Vampire or Demon who has himself, in Spike's words, "A lucky day." A day that comes about when the Slayer finally gives up hope and allows herself to be killed. They do not fight on out of hope, but out of the recognition that what they do must be done and that their own nature and the nature of the world around them has left them no choice but to go out and do it.