I find it amusing that this is part of Buffy's personal mythology that people still talk about, especially in a list of notable ones -- Buffy's "double life" really was dropped from the mythos during Season 4 and was more or less completely gone starting in Season 5 (she goes to Warren actually expecting -- correctly -- that he'll know who she is). Where once, her very survival depended on people not knowing she was the Slayer (the original film, and early in Season 1), by Season 6 it was preferred for everyone's safety that she was a known presence in Sunnydale ("Bargaining").

KingofCretins | August 19, 18:25 CET

But in season 3 end the Sunnydale High class already had some clue about Buffy.
Maybe Dawn should be tha slayer. She will use a secret identity to protect her loved ones.

Brasilian Chaos Man | August 19, 19:08 CET

In Champions/HERO system terms, she traded her secret identity for a public identity, then picked up a new DNPC (Dawn) to make up the points. Then she lost one DNPC (Joyce), and picked up a whole lot of psych lims (Bargaining... heck, all of S6) to compensate for that.

It's one of the reasons I love Champions as a superhero RPG system... it does a remarkably good job of describing character changes that actually happen in the genre.

jclemens | August 19, 19:09 CET

Echo is not eligible because she doesn't only have two lives :).

zeitgeist | August 19, 19:12 CET

Valley girl? Really?

My inner California girl is offended.

BrownCoat_Tabz | August 19, 19:27 CET

That's kind of awesome, jclemens, I'm going to have to look into Champions.

kishi | August 19, 19:38 CET

Kishi, I'm not even sure if it's still in print. If not, there should be copies on eBay or wherever. Mind you, Champions itself doesn't have characters from any licensed property... but you can use it to describe anything. I have a ton of the supplements and whatnot, but if I had to pick only one role playing rulebook to use for the rest of my life, (you know, the "desert island" question) I'd pick Champions 4th Edition hardback.

jclemens | August 19, 19:48 CET

"Being Human" isn't easy to pigeon-hole but though it has humour i'm fairly sure "comedy" would be the very last box i'd end up putting it in. And comparing it to "Man About the House" (the UK original of "Three's Company") baffles me, like, a lot.

'Chuck' is a fair choice since his double-life plays a fairly major part in the show, not sure about "Joan of Arcadia" since Joan was who she was pretty much all the time (the blurb's too-hip-for-its-own-good use of the 'she' pronoun for God may not make it clear that it's the almighty that appears as "a cute teenage boy, a small child, an old lady, whatever" and not Joan).

And yep, Buffy only had a semi-double life. Which, thinking about it, is just a life ;).

[ edited by Saje on 2009-08-19 20:33 ]

Saje | August 19, 20:32 CET

Alias wins, in my opinion, for the double life. Unlike Buffy, Sydney was forced to lie to her best friends. The show always did a great job of portraying her struggle.

CowboyCliche | August 19, 21:55 CET

Loooooved Alias. Unfortunately after season two that storyline kinda went by the wayside. But it was still a good show for the most part....

"Francie doesn't like coffee ice cream."

[ edited by didifallasleep on 2009-08-19 23:14 ]

didifallasleep | August 19, 23:14 CET