[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-83299-en":3,"doc-seo-83299-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},83299,1374391974564,"Clementine","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/14000253aa45c000a9e?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779874745381141002",8,"Research & Report","Buffy versus Bella: An Archetypometric Analysis and Comparison","Fictional stories and characters encode social norms, making their study a practical tool for understanding culture and society. Vampire narratives in particular refract recurring concerns about disease, sexuality, death, and immortality. This work analyzes female leads from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight using the archetypometrics framework, assessing 2,000 characters across 464 semantic differential traits to compare archetypes and contextualize them within broader social patterns.","Buffy versus Bella: An archetypometric analysis and comparison  \narXiv :2607 .07826v 1 [ cs .CY] 8 Jul 2026  \nCalla Glavin Beauregard 1∗ , Julia Witte Zimmerman 1,2 , Ashley M. A. Fehr 1 , Savannah Hinson Rivas3 , Tabia Tanzin Prama 1 , Tessa Lawler 1 , Timothy R. Tangherlini4 , Christopher M. Danforth 1,5 , Peter Sheridan Dodds 1,6,7,8†  \n1 Computational Story Lab, Vermont Advanced Computing Center, Vermont Complex Systems Institute, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, US  \n2 Computational Ethics Lab, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, US  \n3 Department of Linguistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001, USA  \n4 Department of Scandinavian, Folklore Program, School of Information, Berkeley Institute for Data Science,  \nUniversity of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1500, USA  \n5 Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, US  \n6 Department of Computer Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, US  \n7 Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501, US  \n8 Complexity Science Hub, Metternichgasse 8, 1030 Vienna, Austria  \nJuly 10, 2026  \n∗ [calla.beauregard@uvm.edu](calla.beauregard@uvm.edu)[ ](calla.beauregard@uvm.edu)†[peter.dodds@uvm.edu](peter.dodds@uvm.edu)  \nAbstract:  \nFictional stories and characters embody and encode social norms, and their study is a powerful tool through which to understand culture and society. Vampire stories and folklore, in particular, have long both reflected and refracted people’s preoccupation with disease, sexuality, death, and immortality. Here, we explore female main characters from two popular vampire franchises of the 21st century:  \nBuffy Summers from the eponymous Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bella Swan from the Twilight series. We employ the archetypometrics framework, built from 2,000 characters assesed across 464 semantic differential traits, to understand Buffy’s and Bella’s archetypes compared to one another and characters in their own stories, as well as within a larger societal context. While Buffy and Bella are female protagonists who share focus on love and romance, they differ broadly on their underlying traits and overall archetypes. Buffy—presented as a prototypical high school cheerleader—largely bucks traditional gender norms as an strong Adventurer-Hero. Bella—stylized as “not like the other girls”—largely conforms to traditional gender norms asa weak Outcast archetype. In each instance, our use of archetypometrics offers a detailed, character-based lens for assessing female protagonists in contemporary vampire narratives, with clear potential for broader application across other storytelling forms.  \nKeywords:   \narchetypes, computational stories, cultural analysis, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, television, film  \n3  \nContents  \n1 Introduction 4  \n2 Literature Review 4  \n3 Description of data sets 5  \n4 Methods 6  \n5 Results 6  \n5.1 The archetypes of Buffy and Bella within a firmament of 2,000 characters ........ 6  \n5.2 An archetypometric comparison of Buffy and Bella ................... 7  \n5.3 Buffy and Bella compared to their own stories 7  \n6 Discussion 7  \n6.1 Limitations .................. 11  \n7 Concluding remarks 12  \nA Appendices A1  \nA1Neighborhood lists A1  \nA2Cosine similarity scores for main characters A6  \n4  \n1 Introduction  \nFictional stories, in general, encode and relate fundamental aspects of human societies [1] . Reading fiction can promote personal insight [2] and build empathy responses in readers [3], and movies can change young people’s attitudes towards social issues [4] .  \nFictional characters embody social norms and their study is a powerful tool through which to understand society [5] .  \nIn this short paper, we focus in detail on a specific pair of female characters, chosen for their striking contrast: Buffy1, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1 [6], and Bella1, fro","cbCairZAG1KxkCFE","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCairZAG1KxkCFE","pdf",6742982,1,21,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n# Literature Review\n# Description of data sets\n# Methods\n# Results\n## The archetypes of Buffy and Bella within a firmament of 2,000 characters\n## An archetypometric comparison of Buffy and Bella\n## Buffy and Bella compared to their own stories\n# Discussion\n## Limitations\n# Concluding remarks\n# Appendices","[{\"question\":\"What is the main focus of the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper compares the character archetypes of Buffy Summers and Bella Swan using an archetypometrics approach grounded in quantified trait judgments.\"},{\"question\":\"Which stories and characters are analyzed?\",\"answer\":\"It studies Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bella Swan from the Twilight series, treating them as contrasting female protagonists in 21st-century vampire narratives.\"},{\"question\":\"How are archetypes measured in this study?\",\"answer\":\"Archetypometrics is used to map characters based on surveyed judgments across semantic differential traits, analyzing 2,000 characters over 464 traits and then comparing archetypal structures.\"}]",1784186585,53,{"code":4,"msg":30,"data":31},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":32,"title":13,"keywords":33,"description":14,"schema_data":34,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":27},"buffy-versus-bella-an-archetypometric-analysis-and-comparison","",{"@graph":35,"@context":85},[36,53,68],{"@type":37,"itemListElement":38},"BreadcrumbList",[39,43,47,50],{"item":40,"name":41,"@type":42,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":44,"name":45,"@type":42,"position":46},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":42,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":42,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/buffy-versus-bella-an-archetypometric-analysis-and-comparison/83299/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":40,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-22","2026-07-16",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"What is the main focus of the paper?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"The paper compares the character archetypes of Buffy Summers and Bella Swan using an archetypometrics approach grounded in quantified trait judgments.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"Which stories and characters are analyzed?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"It studies Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bella Swan from the Twilight series, treating them as contrasting female protagonists in 21st-century vampire narratives.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"How are archetypes measured in this study?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"Archetypometrics is used to map characters based on surveyed judgments across semantic differential traits, analyzing 2,000 characters over 464 traits and then comparing archetypal 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