In the beginning:

I am horrible at blogging and am going to say this as a disclaimer for not keeping up with my blogging.

In the beginning, Joseph (A.K.A. Joss) Hill Wheddon had this idea of a "typical ditzy American Blonde girl" who would wind up fighting vampires and eventually demons with superhuman strength (slayer power), which would bare the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Kristie Swanson and Donald Sutherland. The film bore little to no resemblance of what he wanted so he started writing the television series thinking of how he saw Hollywood's cliched idea of horror films, which consisted of little blonde girls going into dark alleys and winding up food for the fodder by getting slaughtered by some maniacal person with some dark evil purpose that will continue by slowly killing her piece by piece with her screaming for her life. Joss states how he wanted to subvert the idea by creating someone who would wind up being the hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joss_Whedon