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Any of a variety of speech patterns used to indicate that a character, while intelligent, is perhaps too young, too inexperienced and/or insufficiently educated (or simply talks too fast) to properly express the complex ideas and thoughts that they clearly possess. One of the most obvious elements is a lack of relevant vocabulary, leading to both unconventional adjectival-noun structures like "shooty-gun thing", and incomplete, foundering similes that turn back on themselves in frustration: "That idea went over like... like... like a thing that doesn't go over very well." Metaphorgotten is frequently a side effect. Often includes Oh God, With The Troping! or similar.
Buffy Speak frequently combines these with idiosyncratic syntax and slang-like constructions that result in a distinct "flavor" to the character's speech. One of the more notable oddities is the use of definite articles with object nouns that do not normally take them (for example, "He does not inspire the trust"). In its most common manifestations it is a more intellectual descendant of Valley Speak, and bears some resemblance to the Southern Californese spoken by characters in the movie Clueless.
When properly handled, Buffy Speak can give the sense of a teenaged group's special jargon or argot without necessarily imitating anything actually found in the real world. Improperly handled, it can sound ludicrously fake and may damage Willing Suspension Of Disbelief.
Named for the distinctive speech patterns of the teenage characters in Buffy The Vampire Slayer — particularly its title character — who while sounding nothing like any teenager this editor has ever met or been, still somehow managed to sound like real teenagers.
Contrast with Totally Radical. Compare I Pulled A Weird Al. See also Shaped Like Itself.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Obviously, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- Played with in the new Doctor Who's second-season episode "School Reunion," where a villain calls K-9 a "Shooty Dog-thing", made more amusing by the villain in question being played by Buffy veteran Anthony Head (Giles).
- Blackadder the Third used this once to good effect, since the Blackadders are known for their razor-sharp wits, and because even without a decent metaphor, he still says it with confidence. As he says to Prince George regarding the causes of a threatened peasant revolution, "Disease and deprivation stalk our land like two giant stalking things."
- Also, Melchett in Blackadder II: "You twist and turn like a...twisty, turny thing!".
- Blackadder again, in II: "The grave opens before me like... a big hole in the ground."
- A guy buying flowers at the 2008 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
BBC Presenter: What have you got there?
Guy: I've got a pink fluffy-thing, and a red flowery-thing.
- A variation in Firefly: Jayne, talking about Saffron, warns Simon & River "She'll turn you in faster than you can say... 'Don't turn me in, lady'."
- Derek in Strangers With Candy, running out of insults for the new blind student: "Well, if it isn't Mr... no... looking at things... guy."
- Lost:
Sawyer: What's your problem, Jumbotron?
Hurley: Shut up! Red... neck... man.
- In the first episode of Farscape astronaut John Crichton gets hold of his first raygun. After accidentally letting off a few shots he decides to try threats instead.
"Don't move, or I'll fill you full of... little yellow bolts of light!"
Western Animation
Web Comics
- Due to being Raised By Wolves, Red from Gunnerkrigg Court lapses into this when describing esoteric concepts like rooms and chairs. "Sitty-downy things,
 " indeed.
- This is implied to be a function of serious gaps inherent in the education process prior to becoming human, because while chairs are a foreign concept she jabbers off about some seriously advanced nonsense.
- In this strip of Loserz: "You'll be defeated like... like... like... like some easily defeated thing!"
- Scary Go Round pretty much does this all the time, especially Shelley.
- Mab's gut feeling in DMFA.
- Parodied in the "Muffin the Vampire Baker" story of Sluggy Freelance. "I'm going to do my best to distortify the English languagism thingies."
- Antihero For Hire
Dechs: You want to catch me, like the spider caught the fly, huh? Well now the spider has become the spided!
- At one point in Goblins, huge lizard-man K'Seliss says, "...There is battle happening right now all around me and I'm stuck in this pathetic hut like some... hut... stucky... thing!
- Fighter's true power:
Red Mage: We'd be better off using harsh language than the pathetic wooden pieces of... pathetic... weapons that these people call... weapons.
Black Mage: Um...
Red Mage: Shut up. I've been hanging out with Fighter all day. I could literally feel him sucking away at my... brain-thinky score thing.
Black Mage: You mean intelligence?
Red Mage: By Mordekainen's +5/+5 wand of sorcery, he's lowered my INT score just by being near me!
- Adventurers! gets some mileage out of this.
Film
- Ratatouille's Linguini, tired of the marionette treatment, tells Rémy: "I am not your puppet! And you are not my puppet... controller... guy!"
- Valentine from Mirrormask: "I will slip unnoticeable through the darkness like a dark, unnoticeable slippy thing," "We will do what rich people do! We will bathe in... fish!"
- Men In Black also had this little exchange.
Kay: When you grow up.
- The titular character of Juno has a most idiosyncratic syntax.
Video Games
Comic Books
- One of the many endearing traits of Molly Hayes in Runaways. Especially when written by Joss himself:
Molly: Why aren't you awesomed by me!?
- In the first issue of Babe, a comic book by John Byrne, the narrator talks like this in acknowledged homage to Blackadder.
- In the hilariously over the top Doom comic Doomguy utters this immortal line when he sees some Cacodemon.
Music
- They Might Be Giants have a song called "They'll Need a Crane" consisting almost entirely of this sort of thing.
- In O'Malley's Bar, Nick Cave sings about killing one of his victims "with an ashtray big as a really fucking big brick"
Anime
- In the Yu Yu Hakusho dub, on the way to Sensui's hideout, Yuusuke ask Kurama what the seeds he's spreading around are for, and our favourite red-haired Bishounen goes into an explanation about lighting their way, trailing off into phosphorus and bread crumbs. In that case, it sounded more like Kurama (who is a Really Seven Hundred Years Old Chessmaster and former White Haired Pretty) was trying to Buffy-Speak so that Yusuke would understand him.
Literature
- Pops up occasionally in Discworld, of all places. Variations on "It [somethings] like [something funny that somethings]" crop up now and again. Ironically, I can't actually think of a specific instance now, making this a meta-example.
- There was something similar to "Its eyes were as big as very big eyes".
- You're thinking of Tiffany in The Wee Free Men: "Its eyes were the size of the kind of soup plates that are ten inches across." Not so much Buffy Speak as a preference for precision over...fancy-words...thingy.
- Actually, they were thinking of the Dragon in Guards! Guards!, which was indeed described as having eyes the size of very large eyes.
- The Georgia Nicholson books often refer to "snognosity". Not classic Buffy Speak, but definitely related.
Web Animation
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