So I’m poking around on Amazon, looking for comprehensive reference books about vampires, and I realize the sheer number of books devoted to critical analyses of BTVS. In no particular order, here are the ones I found, excluding those that focus primarily on shows other than BTVS:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, by James South and William Irwin
• Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer?, by David Lavery and Rhonda Wilcox
• The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampires Slayer, by Matthew Pateman
• Buffy Goes Dark: Essays on the Final Two Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Lynne Edwards et al.
• Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon, by Michael Adams
• What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, by Jana Riess
• Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Rhonda Wilcox
• Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan, by Lorna Jowett
• Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Elana Levine and Lisa Parks
• The Psychology of Joss Whedon: An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel and Firefly, by Joy Davidson
• Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show, by Glenn Yeffeth et al.
• Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Complete, Unofficial Guide to Buffy and Angel, by Roz Kaveney
• Blood Relations: Chosen Families in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, by Jes Battis
• Existential Joss Whedon: Evil and Human Freedom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Serenity and Firefly, by J. Michael Richardson and J. Douglas Rabb
• Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon, by K. Dale Koontz
• The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality, by Emily Dial-Driver et al.
• And don’t forget Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies!
• Incidentally, Slayage’s online bibliography includes many books and scholarly articles.
• Just for shits and giggles, I notice that there’s an entire issue of the European Journal of Cultural Studies 8(3), August 2005, about Spike: "The Vampire Spike in Text and Fandom: Unsettling Oppositions in Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I’ll have to find that. UPDATE: Abstracts of articles here.

There are an even larger selection of books that are hugely informed by BTVS, including The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Milly Williams and Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most by William Day. [Both of these look interesting, by the way, and much more pertinent to my general interest in the folklore of vampires and modern manipulations of the vampiric signifier.]

As I’m scrolling through the list, I’m thinking that I enjoy reading criticism of BTVS almost as much as, if not more than, watching the show. In the same way, I enjoy reading movie reviews much more than watching movies themselves. I also like Labyrinth- and RHPS-related discussions, art, audience participation, etc., much more than the actual movies. At the same time, I am really not interested in a prime movie- or show-related activity: fan fiction. I like the communities that grow up around audiovisual works of art, but not fan fiction.

I understand the many reasons for which people write fan fiction, the many ways in which they do so, the many ways in which they find it enjoyable and fulfilling and the many arguments for its existence as a beneficial phenomenon. I just am personally not interested in it because I am not as interested as I used to be in expanding someone else’s fictional multiverse. I would rather be making my own.