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shadowkatBuffy the Vampire Slayer turned 19 this week. To be clear, this is the 19th anniversary of its air date, not the final airing. So, no, we're not quite that old. I thought it aired 20 years ago...in 1996 while I was still living in Kansas City, but alas, no, it aired in 1997. I didn't have a tv for a period of time in 1996, and then for about six months...a tiny black and white tv. In fact, I didn't get Cable until around 1999 or 2000, so I could see La Femme Nikita. I remember finally getting a VCR in 1998 - which permitted me to tape Buffy and not miss episodes, which happened a lot back then.
WB and UPN, by the way, were not reliable channels, they usually aired on affiliate broadcast networks, not in HD (there was no such thing), and often had horrific reception. Plus lots of preemptions either for Basketball or some weird news event. I remember when the musical episode aired - you were lucky to have seen all of it. Because it went over - and some stations didn't show all of it. They cut it to ribbons for commercials. See - the affiliate stations control the number and length of commercial interruptions, not the network broadcaster or the studio.
I got the whole thing in NY - the first airing, but repeat airings on F/X or even on UPN were truncated.
Another problem with distribution was they didn't always send the right episode to the distribution channels in the correct order. Luckily there was enough time for most of the channels to get it right,
but in one instance the people who were watching it on their computers by downloading it from the satellite feed - got the episodes out of order, the two episodes they got out of order were Entropy and Seeing Red. While the vast majority of people were watching Entropy, they were watching Seeing Red. Which would have been okay, if the show was something like Elementary or still in its first season, but alas, no, it was heavily serialized by this point. At the end of Entropy, Tara returned to Willow, Xander and Buffy caught Anya and Spike shagging, and the team figured out that the Trioka was spying on them. In Seeing Red - Tara and Willow are shagging, Buffy fights the Trioka and sends two of them to jail, and Spike assaults Buffy. (You can sort of see how watching those two episodes out of order would be a problem.)
Oh, and the station didn't always air an episode. There was one episode that aired months after it was slated to air...Earshot, mainly because it's original airdate was right after the Columbine Shooting. And the subject matter was a wee bit too apropos. Some affiliates would air episodes, some wouldn't. For instance? There were various episodes in the latter seasons that affiliates in certain areas refused to air. They can do that -- they don't have to bow to the network. Or if an episode got pre-empted by an evil Basketball game or High School Football Game (if you lived in Texas)...the affiliate may not choose to air it or they'd air it at 2 AM on a Sunday night, and not tell you. Some stations would carry the sports, some didn't, so the episode rarely re-aired and you'd have to wait until it popped up on F/X.
This is where being an active member of a fandom came in handy. Fans would mail each other tapes of the episode or send them via the internet (which was dicey, since we all used broadband and at times it was impossible to download, due to memory and width space, without crashing your computer. Also some vids came with viruses...unfortunately.) Being a fan of Buffy back then was frustrating. Unlike the DVR, VHS was unreliable. If the show started late? You got half of it. Sometimes the VHS would tape something else. Or not at all. I remember skipping out on social events early to ensure I didn't miss the episode. My friends made fun of me. Oh, you can't miss Buffy!
In case, you haven't figured it out by now, I was one of those rare fans that actually watched the series live as it aired in real time. Not on videotape or in reruns on F/X or DVD -- those came later. And I held off on the whole DVD thing...due to cost. I didn't buy a DVD player until roughly 2003-2004. So, I re-watched via VHS, F/X reruns (back then F/X had no original programming and basically just showed Buffy reruns every night). We had a lot less television back then.
What follows is somewhat lengthy history of how I joined the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fandom and came to love the series. Detailing what it was like to watch the series live as it aired, without the benefit of DVDS or always reruns, and handling the internet in the 1990s and early 00s, when it is was just beginning to get its footing. Also, how I ended up on livejournal.
My fannish love of Buffy sort of fluctuated, it wasn't consistent. I was not a die-hard fan when the series started. I was only watching it because of Anthony Stewart Head, who'd I'd been a fan of since I'd seen him perform briefly in London in Chess and of course, those Taster's Choice commercials. The previous year, I'd been watching Head in VR5, which had been in Buffy's time slot on Fox. (The WB was a brand new network marketed mainly towards tween girls.)
In case you've never heard of VRF, and there's really no reason why you would - it lasted one season, here's a synopsis:
Prior to the events of the series, Sydney Bloom (Lori Singer) was the daughter of Dr. Joseph Bloom (David McCallum), a computer scientist who was working on developing virtual reality. His wife Nora Bloom (Louise Fletcher), a neurochemist, was also involved in the project. Sydney's father, and her sister Samantha (Tracey Needham), died in a car accident.
Now Sydney is a telephone lineworker and computer hobbyist. One day she accidentally discovers that she can enter an advanced type of virtual reality, where she can interact with other people. Her actions in the virtual world have an effect on the real world. She subsequently agrees to use her abilities to help a mysterious secret organization called the Committee. She receives her covert assignments from Frank Morgan (Will Patton), and later from Oliver Sampson (Anthony Head). Sydney's friend Duncan (Michael Easton) advises her and helps her when he can.
The show frequently uses inconsistencies in continuity and a distinctive color scheme as clues to suggest what is actually happening at various points throughout the series.
When VR5 ended, I found out via some news report that Anthony Stewart Head had gotten a role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - a new teen show on the WB that focused on high school. Unfortunately, so had Sarah Michelle Gellar, who at that point in time, I did not particularly like. I'd seen her in All My Children and despised her in it. Also, just a few years prior, I'd seen the movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was disappointed and unimpressed. Keep in mind that the show was advertised and marketed to people between the ages of 14-18, I was 28 and living on my own in NYC, high school was a distant memory. So, I went into Buffy with low expectations. And didn't really tell anyone I was watching it, because hello, teen show! The first two episodes were okay, a bit disappointing in their use of Head, but I found the character of Angel intriguing and it had a sense of humor. Unfortunately, it did not improve with the next few episodes. So I gave up and would jump in and out of it. Watch it if I had time, and nothing else happened to be on. The episode that made me think it had potential was The Pack, mainly because it jumped outside the box. The previous episodes felt fairly formulaic - teen kids deal with nasty monsters who represent their demons. The Pack - the sidekick becomes the demon and it actually went into some pretty dark and adult areas. But overall?
I watched it the same way I watch television now, ambivalently. VR5 actually was more compelling, and I was disappointed in the underuse of Giles. Plus the villains were beyond cheesy, it was hard to take them seriously.
So, I was on the fence about continuing. That's when the episode School Hard arrived. And Spike and Drusilla were introduced, the writing had also jumped up a notch. It became a little less campy and a bit more layered and dryly witty. I thought to myself, cool villains, this may actually be going somewhere. I got obsessed during that season, and I was a Bangle shipper. I remember combing the internet after Angel turned into Angelus -- to see when or if he'd change back. I loved the character of Angel during the second season, thought he was the most interesting character on the series.
Next to Giles. And Giles got more storyline this season.
The Second Season of the series was in some respects a turning point, I started searching out spoilers for the series -- to see if the quality would continue. I'd seen too many television shows like it in my lifetime, including VR5, that I was wary. It did not disappoint. Then along came S3, which frustrated me, as a Bangle shipper, since it was becoming increasingly clear that the relationship was going around in a circle and not progressing. But I found the Faith and OZ characters to be rather interesting additions to the series. Also Cordy/Xander worked for me, and Anya was sort of cool. But, I wasn't a diehard fan at this point. I'd scan ACIN News - the spoiler source back then, and a few websites. This was in the early days of the internet. It wasn't as fast and it was harder to navigate. We didn't have Google, we had Yahoo.
I became a Spike fan somewhere around S4, around the same time I stopped shipping Bangle, and began to get irritated with Angel, who'd been one of my favorite characters, but appeared to just mope around LA feeling sorry for himself. Being a Bangle shipper at this point was painful, and I'm just not that masochistic. Spuffy shippers complain, but seriously, folks? It was worse being Bangle - the writers teased you mercilessly...and then there was that horrific episode I Will Always Remember You which put the nail in my Bangle shipping coffin. I read metaphors too well not to have seen clear as day that these two characters would never be together, that their romance wasn't going anywhere, and couldn't go anywhere. Why? Because Angel was more in love with the idea of having a destiny and being a champion than Buffy. He could not deal with being the sidekick or the boyfriend of the hero, or the damsel. She was supposed to be in that role. So the PTB was able to play him like a fiddle. I'd also realized with that episode...that the series was a perpetual tease. The whole thing was built around Angel redeeming himself and achieving the Shanshu, which of course could never happen, because end of series. Which meant perpetual tease. Been there done that. If it was frustrating being a Bangle shipper, it was even more frustrating being an Angel shipper. Anyhow, I became so irritated and disappointed with how Angel was being written in the episode and others before and after it, that I began to give up on Angel and his series...in fact, I started watching Angel in much the same way I'd watched the first season of Buffy - when there was nothing else on or it intrigued me. I'd come back during the cross-over episodes. The series was too much like other series that I'd seen, such as Brimstone (which was actually better), and something else, that I can't remember the name of. (Later, once I'd joined fandom, people sent me tapes of the episodes that I missed, because back then, there was no other way you could see them.)
Anyhow, in Season 4, I was shipping Buffy and Riley, and I actually liked Riley better than most people apparently did at that point. To be honest, outside of my brother, I was oblivious as to how folks perceived the character. I wasn't part of the fandom at this point. I remember skipping episodes in S4, and checking out the spoilers on ACIN News to see which ones I could skip. Although a few episodes in S4 surprised me. Restless and Hush both did. As did the Spike character, who I thought was being introduced again as a villain. They colored outside the box with that character and that intrigued me.
Season 5 - I became a Spike shipper, gave up on Buffy and Riley, because Riley was starting to remind me of Angel - unable to deal with being the damsel, and the boyfriend of the hero. Buffy and Spike intrigued me, but I wasn't masochistic enough to actually ship them at that point. I knew Tara would get killed off if the series continued, and actually thought they were going to kill her off in S5, she was definitely in the Jenny Calendar role, with Willow in Gile's role. So, I didn't get invested in Tara. Actually, I was surprised they didn't kill her - and just made her crazy. Season 5 largely followed the formulas I was used to in watching series similar to this one, with a few episodes that jumped outside the box. What they were doing with Spike fascinated me, because that was different.
Season 6 -- was the turning point. A lot of things happened in 2001, which I think, had a great deal to do with how I perceived the series. I also think that it is really hard to appreciate bits and pieces of Season 6, if you hadn't experienced 9/11 first hand. Because in a way, S6, was the writer's response to 9/11 and what was happening in the world at this point in time. For me, personally, it was relatable, because I felt as if I'd been drug from heaven to hell. My world had turned upside down. And I had to redefine myself - Buffy spoke to that feeling in its sixth season, more so than anything else did.
It was during this season that I became a true fan of the series, and obsessed enough to search out a fandom to dissect the series and the spoilers with. It was not easy finding that fandom. For one thing people tend to be cliquish. I lurked on the Bloody Awful Poet Society site, but found it to be frustratingly myopic (only interested in Spike's redemption), and impossible to discuss anything on, some great essays and fanfic though, if mainly from a small group of people. Someone that I met at a party directed me to Spoiler Slayer, a website that posted spoilers on the episodes and discussed them in depth. (They directed me to spoiler slayer, because I was driving them nuts with emails on Buffy). I started emailing the person running the site, trying to discuss the show. (And irritating them. I was desperate to find someone, anyone to discuss the cool themes and layers. My friends considered a tween show that was beneath their notice and they made fun of me, when I brought it up. "You do realize this a show marketed to tween girls, right?" So, I didn't bring it up. It had been my guilty pleasure for years.) Which lead spoiler slayer, to direct me to Buffy Cross and Stake -- and finally, I found a group of vaguely like-minded folks to discuss the show in-depth with.
Linda Delurked who wrote long essays on Willow, motivated me to write my own essays, I played with her style, and gradually expanded on it. Taking what I learned in college, and in the years after, melding it with the styles that appeared to work online - and turning it into a meta. I did characters. My first was Giles -- who I selected for two reasons, one, he was the reason I'd started watching the series, and two, no one else had written an essay on him on that board. I posted and was amazed by the reaction that I got. People loved it. So I tried another one, this time on Xander, and again, I got a wonderful response. I was being careful about Spike -- who was controversial and a topic of dissent. There was a Shipper War on BC&S between Xander and Spike fans. They even had a bet on what Spike would do once he lost his chip. (Whedon had put out a fake spoiler that Spike was going to get his chip removed in S6, and the fans bought hook line and sinker.) Between January and February 2002, I must have posted at least ten essays to that board. And during that time, people asked me if they could repost them or if I could send them a copy, since BC&S didn't archive, and posts were often lost in a matter of hours. A woman on that board offered to set up a web site for me, where I could archive all my essays. She'd design it and everything. I gave the go ahead, you can still find it HERE. The graphics are long gone but the text remains.
But, I was still frustrated. As much as I liked BC&S, these weren't my people.
Most of the people on the board were "shippers" only invested in the romantic relationships in the series or a specific character -- hence the obsession with spoilers. (I sought out spoilers for different reasons - I was hoping the writers would continue to color outside the box and didn't quite trust them to do so.) Few cared about the overall arc or themes, or the story as a whole. They really didn't want to dig that deep. Also most were college students who were writing porny fanfic. Which is great, but wasn't what I was looking for. There were a few likeminded folks on that board, cjl, destiney, linda delurked, but not many.
Then, I wrote an essay entitled "Dawn: Buffy's Inner Child", and someone read it, loved it, and asked if he could post it on another board, the All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series. I checked it out. Reviewed the rules, there were less rules than BC&S - the only big rule was no spoilers! Under no condition, post any spoilers. And if you do, warn people in the heading. Also, try to stay away from foul language.
Now, as you can see from the links, these posting boards were different than our current ones. They were on Voy. VOY had a tendency to crash -- if it got too many responses. There was a no character bashing or writer bashing rule on most boards, including ATPO, mainly because it tended to lead to a kerfuffle that crashed the board. You also were not permitted to bash posters, or be a troll.
These rules got hazy at times. Because all of the above occurred and frequently, resulting in Voy crashing.
Boards had moderators. BC&S' moderator was still in college and in her early 20s, while ATPO's moderators were in their 30s and post graduate school. The moderator of the ATPO board was a frustrated philosophy and psychology major, who had actually taught philosophy at one point. It had a much older group of posters. And their main interest - to discuss the metaphors, themes, character arcs, and philosophy of the series. There was a Tibetan Monk on that board, or so he claimed. A British geneticist, an attorney who defended cases in front of the Supreme Court, people working in British politics... and all frustrated writers, who had read a lot and seen alot. When I posted an essay on that board, the threads were go off on tangents about the difference between Sartre and Kant or Jung and Freud. We had one lengthy debate that almost turned into a kerfuffle over the political correctness of Joseph Campbell. Another debate was about whether women could be firemen.
At this point, I was still bit intimidated by the Board. So I posted first on BC&S spoiler board (which always liked my stuff, and then to ATPO. Careful to cut any reference to spoilers out of the post, or to reference it as spoilery. The advantage of posting to ATPO was it archived everything. So if you posted on that site and the moderator did not decide to delete you or accidentally did so, you were there for posterity. You can still find my posts on that board. Not so much on BC&S - my posts are long gone from that board - it didn't archive.
Then Seeing Red happened. And I realized I needed to leave BC&S, and spoiler boards. That board got nasty, so nasty that the moderator who'd been sexually assaulted, came out and told them that she had been assaulted and if the following posters did not behave, she would summarily ban them. All posts regarding this topic would be removed. I thought, okay, that's it, these people are crazy, I'm moving to a saner environment, less blood pressure inducing. Life is hard enough. (At that time, it was.)
ATPO board dealt with Seeing Red differently, mainly because it wasn't really a shipper board. Most of the people in the board were interested in the story as a whole, not whether Buffy rode off into the sunset with another character. Spike assault of Buffy fascinated them from a pyschological and philosophical perspective. We had great discussions on the topic. The people who wanted to bash the character or other posters were quickly and quietly shut down or ignored.
I'd found my people! YAY. The ATPO Board introduced me to livejournal, and the main posters all moved over to LJ. Through ATPO, I found and briefly posted on an academic version of the Bloody Awful Poet Society - entitled Tea at the Ford - but it didn't quite work for me. Too character centric, and far too academic. We didn't quite click. And for a bit, I had stuff referenced on Whedonesque, formerly the Bronze Beta. After a while, I left the boards completely and migrated with the rest of my friends from ATPO to Livejournal, where we've been interacting ever since.
Long story short, if it weren't for this cult television show marketed at tweens, I'd never have met any of you. We wouldn't be interacting. Doing Time on Planet Earth, the book that I self-pubished last year, would not exist. (It's not fanfic, but it was inspired by my experiences in the Buffy fandom.) Which strikes me as...really ironic in a way, considering that when I started watching Buffy way back in 1997, it was a guilty pleasure that I didn't think that highly of, and occassionally used to deal with intense boredom and frustration at work. (By surfing Buffy websites, and eventually posting on boards.)
Through Buffy, I meet people who helped me find the strength to leave a job and career that I despised. It may sound silly to say this....but the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fandom saved my life. Let me make this clear -- it wasn't the show by itself that did it, it was the people that I met through my desire to discuss it. It was you.
Writing this is oddly inspiring, because it shows how things can start to pop, when you hit something you care a lot about -- whether it be a television series, an activity, a book, anything really.
Obsessing about something...in a good and positive way can lead to wonderful things. It can also cause one to stagnate.
I've drifted away from Buffy in the last few years. And for me that's been a good thing. But I've stayed in touch through livejournal with the people who I friended during it, if only via the internet.
So Happy Birthday Buffy, and thank you for introducing me to all these cool amazing people along the way.
WB and UPN, by the way, were not reliable channels, they usually aired on affiliate broadcast networks, not in HD (there was no such thing), and often had horrific reception. Plus lots of preemptions either for Basketball or some weird news event. I remember when the musical episode aired - you were lucky to have seen all of it. Because it went over - and some stations didn't show all of it. They cut it to ribbons for commercials. See - the affiliate stations control the number and length of commercial interruptions, not the network broadcaster or the studio.
I got the whole thing in NY - the first airing, but repeat airings on F/X or even on UPN were truncated.
Another problem with distribution was they didn't always send the right episode to the distribution channels in the correct order. Luckily there was enough time for most of the channels to get it right,
but in one instance the people who were watching it on their computers by downloading it from the satellite feed - got the episodes out of order, the two episodes they got out of order were Entropy and Seeing Red. While the vast majority of people were watching Entropy, they were watching Seeing Red. Which would have been okay, if the show was something like Elementary or still in its first season, but alas, no, it was heavily serialized by this point. At the end of Entropy, Tara returned to Willow, Xander and Buffy caught Anya and Spike shagging, and the team figured out that the Trioka was spying on them. In Seeing Red - Tara and Willow are shagging, Buffy fights the Trioka and sends two of them to jail, and Spike assaults Buffy. (You can sort of see how watching those two episodes out of order would be a problem.)
Oh, and the station didn't always air an episode. There was one episode that aired months after it was slated to air...Earshot, mainly because it's original airdate was right after the Columbine Shooting. And the subject matter was a wee bit too apropos. Some affiliates would air episodes, some wouldn't. For instance? There were various episodes in the latter seasons that affiliates in certain areas refused to air. They can do that -- they don't have to bow to the network. Or if an episode got pre-empted by an evil Basketball game or High School Football Game (if you lived in Texas)...the affiliate may not choose to air it or they'd air it at 2 AM on a Sunday night, and not tell you. Some stations would carry the sports, some didn't, so the episode rarely re-aired and you'd have to wait until it popped up on F/X.
This is where being an active member of a fandom came in handy. Fans would mail each other tapes of the episode or send them via the internet (which was dicey, since we all used broadband and at times it was impossible to download, due to memory and width space, without crashing your computer. Also some vids came with viruses...unfortunately.) Being a fan of Buffy back then was frustrating. Unlike the DVR, VHS was unreliable. If the show started late? You got half of it. Sometimes the VHS would tape something else. Or not at all. I remember skipping out on social events early to ensure I didn't miss the episode. My friends made fun of me. Oh, you can't miss Buffy!
In case, you haven't figured it out by now, I was one of those rare fans that actually watched the series live as it aired in real time. Not on videotape or in reruns on F/X or DVD -- those came later. And I held off on the whole DVD thing...due to cost. I didn't buy a DVD player until roughly 2003-2004. So, I re-watched via VHS, F/X reruns (back then F/X had no original programming and basically just showed Buffy reruns every night). We had a lot less television back then.
What follows is somewhat lengthy history of how I joined the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fandom and came to love the series. Detailing what it was like to watch the series live as it aired, without the benefit of DVDS or always reruns, and handling the internet in the 1990s and early 00s, when it is was just beginning to get its footing. Also, how I ended up on livejournal.
My fannish love of Buffy sort of fluctuated, it wasn't consistent. I was not a die-hard fan when the series started. I was only watching it because of Anthony Stewart Head, who'd I'd been a fan of since I'd seen him perform briefly in London in Chess and of course, those Taster's Choice commercials. The previous year, I'd been watching Head in VR5, which had been in Buffy's time slot on Fox. (The WB was a brand new network marketed mainly towards tween girls.)
In case you've never heard of VRF, and there's really no reason why you would - it lasted one season, here's a synopsis:
Prior to the events of the series, Sydney Bloom (Lori Singer) was the daughter of Dr. Joseph Bloom (David McCallum), a computer scientist who was working on developing virtual reality. His wife Nora Bloom (Louise Fletcher), a neurochemist, was also involved in the project. Sydney's father, and her sister Samantha (Tracey Needham), died in a car accident.
Now Sydney is a telephone lineworker and computer hobbyist. One day she accidentally discovers that she can enter an advanced type of virtual reality, where she can interact with other people. Her actions in the virtual world have an effect on the real world. She subsequently agrees to use her abilities to help a mysterious secret organization called the Committee. She receives her covert assignments from Frank Morgan (Will Patton), and later from Oliver Sampson (Anthony Head). Sydney's friend Duncan (Michael Easton) advises her and helps her when he can.
The show frequently uses inconsistencies in continuity and a distinctive color scheme as clues to suggest what is actually happening at various points throughout the series.
When VR5 ended, I found out via some news report that Anthony Stewart Head had gotten a role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - a new teen show on the WB that focused on high school. Unfortunately, so had Sarah Michelle Gellar, who at that point in time, I did not particularly like. I'd seen her in All My Children and despised her in it. Also, just a few years prior, I'd seen the movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was disappointed and unimpressed. Keep in mind that the show was advertised and marketed to people between the ages of 14-18, I was 28 and living on my own in NYC, high school was a distant memory. So, I went into Buffy with low expectations. And didn't really tell anyone I was watching it, because hello, teen show! The first two episodes were okay, a bit disappointing in their use of Head, but I found the character of Angel intriguing and it had a sense of humor. Unfortunately, it did not improve with the next few episodes. So I gave up and would jump in and out of it. Watch it if I had time, and nothing else happened to be on. The episode that made me think it had potential was The Pack, mainly because it jumped outside the box. The previous episodes felt fairly formulaic - teen kids deal with nasty monsters who represent their demons. The Pack - the sidekick becomes the demon and it actually went into some pretty dark and adult areas. But overall?
I watched it the same way I watch television now, ambivalently. VR5 actually was more compelling, and I was disappointed in the underuse of Giles. Plus the villains were beyond cheesy, it was hard to take them seriously.
So, I was on the fence about continuing. That's when the episode School Hard arrived. And Spike and Drusilla were introduced, the writing had also jumped up a notch. It became a little less campy and a bit more layered and dryly witty. I thought to myself, cool villains, this may actually be going somewhere. I got obsessed during that season, and I was a Bangle shipper. I remember combing the internet after Angel turned into Angelus -- to see when or if he'd change back. I loved the character of Angel during the second season, thought he was the most interesting character on the series.
Next to Giles. And Giles got more storyline this season.
The Second Season of the series was in some respects a turning point, I started searching out spoilers for the series -- to see if the quality would continue. I'd seen too many television shows like it in my lifetime, including VR5, that I was wary. It did not disappoint. Then along came S3, which frustrated me, as a Bangle shipper, since it was becoming increasingly clear that the relationship was going around in a circle and not progressing. But I found the Faith and OZ characters to be rather interesting additions to the series. Also Cordy/Xander worked for me, and Anya was sort of cool. But, I wasn't a diehard fan at this point. I'd scan ACIN News - the spoiler source back then, and a few websites. This was in the early days of the internet. It wasn't as fast and it was harder to navigate. We didn't have Google, we had Yahoo.
I became a Spike fan somewhere around S4, around the same time I stopped shipping Bangle, and began to get irritated with Angel, who'd been one of my favorite characters, but appeared to just mope around LA feeling sorry for himself. Being a Bangle shipper at this point was painful, and I'm just not that masochistic. Spuffy shippers complain, but seriously, folks? It was worse being Bangle - the writers teased you mercilessly...and then there was that horrific episode I Will Always Remember You which put the nail in my Bangle shipping coffin. I read metaphors too well not to have seen clear as day that these two characters would never be together, that their romance wasn't going anywhere, and couldn't go anywhere. Why? Because Angel was more in love with the idea of having a destiny and being a champion than Buffy. He could not deal with being the sidekick or the boyfriend of the hero, or the damsel. She was supposed to be in that role. So the PTB was able to play him like a fiddle. I'd also realized with that episode...that the series was a perpetual tease. The whole thing was built around Angel redeeming himself and achieving the Shanshu, which of course could never happen, because end of series. Which meant perpetual tease. Been there done that. If it was frustrating being a Bangle shipper, it was even more frustrating being an Angel shipper. Anyhow, I became so irritated and disappointed with how Angel was being written in the episode and others before and after it, that I began to give up on Angel and his series...in fact, I started watching Angel in much the same way I'd watched the first season of Buffy - when there was nothing else on or it intrigued me. I'd come back during the cross-over episodes. The series was too much like other series that I'd seen, such as Brimstone (which was actually better), and something else, that I can't remember the name of. (Later, once I'd joined fandom, people sent me tapes of the episodes that I missed, because back then, there was no other way you could see them.)
Anyhow, in Season 4, I was shipping Buffy and Riley, and I actually liked Riley better than most people apparently did at that point. To be honest, outside of my brother, I was oblivious as to how folks perceived the character. I wasn't part of the fandom at this point. I remember skipping episodes in S4, and checking out the spoilers on ACIN News to see which ones I could skip. Although a few episodes in S4 surprised me. Restless and Hush both did. As did the Spike character, who I thought was being introduced again as a villain. They colored outside the box with that character and that intrigued me.
Season 5 - I became a Spike shipper, gave up on Buffy and Riley, because Riley was starting to remind me of Angel - unable to deal with being the damsel, and the boyfriend of the hero. Buffy and Spike intrigued me, but I wasn't masochistic enough to actually ship them at that point. I knew Tara would get killed off if the series continued, and actually thought they were going to kill her off in S5, she was definitely in the Jenny Calendar role, with Willow in Gile's role. So, I didn't get invested in Tara. Actually, I was surprised they didn't kill her - and just made her crazy. Season 5 largely followed the formulas I was used to in watching series similar to this one, with a few episodes that jumped outside the box. What they were doing with Spike fascinated me, because that was different.
Season 6 -- was the turning point. A lot of things happened in 2001, which I think, had a great deal to do with how I perceived the series. I also think that it is really hard to appreciate bits and pieces of Season 6, if you hadn't experienced 9/11 first hand. Because in a way, S6, was the writer's response to 9/11 and what was happening in the world at this point in time. For me, personally, it was relatable, because I felt as if I'd been drug from heaven to hell. My world had turned upside down. And I had to redefine myself - Buffy spoke to that feeling in its sixth season, more so than anything else did.
It was during this season that I became a true fan of the series, and obsessed enough to search out a fandom to dissect the series and the spoilers with. It was not easy finding that fandom. For one thing people tend to be cliquish. I lurked on the Bloody Awful Poet Society site, but found it to be frustratingly myopic (only interested in Spike's redemption), and impossible to discuss anything on, some great essays and fanfic though, if mainly from a small group of people. Someone that I met at a party directed me to Spoiler Slayer, a website that posted spoilers on the episodes and discussed them in depth. (They directed me to spoiler slayer, because I was driving them nuts with emails on Buffy). I started emailing the person running the site, trying to discuss the show. (And irritating them. I was desperate to find someone, anyone to discuss the cool themes and layers. My friends considered a tween show that was beneath their notice and they made fun of me, when I brought it up. "You do realize this a show marketed to tween girls, right?" So, I didn't bring it up. It had been my guilty pleasure for years.) Which lead spoiler slayer, to direct me to Buffy Cross and Stake -- and finally, I found a group of vaguely like-minded folks to discuss the show in-depth with.
Linda Delurked who wrote long essays on Willow, motivated me to write my own essays, I played with her style, and gradually expanded on it. Taking what I learned in college, and in the years after, melding it with the styles that appeared to work online - and turning it into a meta. I did characters. My first was Giles -- who I selected for two reasons, one, he was the reason I'd started watching the series, and two, no one else had written an essay on him on that board. I posted and was amazed by the reaction that I got. People loved it. So I tried another one, this time on Xander, and again, I got a wonderful response. I was being careful about Spike -- who was controversial and a topic of dissent. There was a Shipper War on BC&S between Xander and Spike fans. They even had a bet on what Spike would do once he lost his chip. (Whedon had put out a fake spoiler that Spike was going to get his chip removed in S6, and the fans bought hook line and sinker.) Between January and February 2002, I must have posted at least ten essays to that board. And during that time, people asked me if they could repost them or if I could send them a copy, since BC&S didn't archive, and posts were often lost in a matter of hours. A woman on that board offered to set up a web site for me, where I could archive all my essays. She'd design it and everything. I gave the go ahead, you can still find it HERE. The graphics are long gone but the text remains.
But, I was still frustrated. As much as I liked BC&S, these weren't my people.
Most of the people on the board were "shippers" only invested in the romantic relationships in the series or a specific character -- hence the obsession with spoilers. (I sought out spoilers for different reasons - I was hoping the writers would continue to color outside the box and didn't quite trust them to do so.) Few cared about the overall arc or themes, or the story as a whole. They really didn't want to dig that deep. Also most were college students who were writing porny fanfic. Which is great, but wasn't what I was looking for. There were a few likeminded folks on that board, cjl, destiney, linda delurked, but not many.
Then, I wrote an essay entitled "Dawn: Buffy's Inner Child", and someone read it, loved it, and asked if he could post it on another board, the All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series. I checked it out. Reviewed the rules, there were less rules than BC&S - the only big rule was no spoilers! Under no condition, post any spoilers. And if you do, warn people in the heading. Also, try to stay away from foul language.
Now, as you can see from the links, these posting boards were different than our current ones. They were on Voy. VOY had a tendency to crash -- if it got too many responses. There was a no character bashing or writer bashing rule on most boards, including ATPO, mainly because it tended to lead to a kerfuffle that crashed the board. You also were not permitted to bash posters, or be a troll.
These rules got hazy at times. Because all of the above occurred and frequently, resulting in Voy crashing.
Boards had moderators. BC&S' moderator was still in college and in her early 20s, while ATPO's moderators were in their 30s and post graduate school. The moderator of the ATPO board was a frustrated philosophy and psychology major, who had actually taught philosophy at one point. It had a much older group of posters. And their main interest - to discuss the metaphors, themes, character arcs, and philosophy of the series. There was a Tibetan Monk on that board, or so he claimed. A British geneticist, an attorney who defended cases in front of the Supreme Court, people working in British politics... and all frustrated writers, who had read a lot and seen alot. When I posted an essay on that board, the threads were go off on tangents about the difference between Sartre and Kant or Jung and Freud. We had one lengthy debate that almost turned into a kerfuffle over the political correctness of Joseph Campbell. Another debate was about whether women could be firemen.
At this point, I was still bit intimidated by the Board. So I posted first on BC&S spoiler board (which always liked my stuff, and then to ATPO. Careful to cut any reference to spoilers out of the post, or to reference it as spoilery. The advantage of posting to ATPO was it archived everything. So if you posted on that site and the moderator did not decide to delete you or accidentally did so, you were there for posterity. You can still find my posts on that board. Not so much on BC&S - my posts are long gone from that board - it didn't archive.
Then Seeing Red happened. And I realized I needed to leave BC&S, and spoiler boards. That board got nasty, so nasty that the moderator who'd been sexually assaulted, came out and told them that she had been assaulted and if the following posters did not behave, she would summarily ban them. All posts regarding this topic would be removed. I thought, okay, that's it, these people are crazy, I'm moving to a saner environment, less blood pressure inducing. Life is hard enough. (At that time, it was.)
ATPO board dealt with Seeing Red differently, mainly because it wasn't really a shipper board. Most of the people in the board were interested in the story as a whole, not whether Buffy rode off into the sunset with another character. Spike assault of Buffy fascinated them from a pyschological and philosophical perspective. We had great discussions on the topic. The people who wanted to bash the character or other posters were quickly and quietly shut down or ignored.
I'd found my people! YAY. The ATPO Board introduced me to livejournal, and the main posters all moved over to LJ. Through ATPO, I found and briefly posted on an academic version of the Bloody Awful Poet Society - entitled Tea at the Ford - but it didn't quite work for me. Too character centric, and far too academic. We didn't quite click. And for a bit, I had stuff referenced on Whedonesque, formerly the Bronze Beta. After a while, I left the boards completely and migrated with the rest of my friends from ATPO to Livejournal, where we've been interacting ever since.
Long story short, if it weren't for this cult television show marketed at tweens, I'd never have met any of you. We wouldn't be interacting. Doing Time on Planet Earth, the book that I self-pubished last year, would not exist. (It's not fanfic, but it was inspired by my experiences in the Buffy fandom.) Which strikes me as...really ironic in a way, considering that when I started watching Buffy way back in 1997, it was a guilty pleasure that I didn't think that highly of, and occassionally used to deal with intense boredom and frustration at work. (By surfing Buffy websites, and eventually posting on boards.)
Through Buffy, I meet people who helped me find the strength to leave a job and career that I despised. It may sound silly to say this....but the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fandom saved my life. Let me make this clear -- it wasn't the show by itself that did it, it was the people that I met through my desire to discuss it. It was you.
Writing this is oddly inspiring, because it shows how things can start to pop, when you hit something you care a lot about -- whether it be a television series, an activity, a book, anything really.
Obsessing about something...in a good and positive way can lead to wonderful things. It can also cause one to stagnate.
I've drifted away from Buffy in the last few years. And for me that's been a good thing. But I've stayed in touch through livejournal with the people who I friended during it, if only via the internet.
So Happy Birthday Buffy, and thank you for introducing me to all these cool amazing people along the way.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2016-03-13 06:24 pm (UTC)I totally forgot about the Cross and Stake. (There was another one too, Angel's Soul, linked on the Cross and Stake. Forgot that as well.) I may have posted there once or twice, but I loved ATPO so much more. And I rarely seeked out spoilers, so.
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Date: 2016-03-13 09:37 pm (UTC)Not so much BC&S though. Although that board had some serious spoiler sources. They actually got on-set pictures of Dark Willow prior to the episode airing. (I didn't consider that I spoiler, since I wanted it to happen and was pretty certain it would - so sought out spoilers to ensure it did. LOL!)
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Date: 2016-03-13 06:58 pm (UTC)I took a look at the Bronze before I checked out ATPo, but it was so difficult to follow anything and the board so full of teens showing off, I pretty much gave up on it as a lost cause immediately. ATPo happened to be the first thing after the Bronze that popped up on the pre-historic search engine I was using. It sounded a little insane, but checking it out, I discovered what everyone else did. This was at least a couple years into the show. People on ATPo seemed so comfortable with each other and generally so respectful, I thought the board must have been operating from close to the very beginning. I was very surprised when I heard years later that it had only started a few months before I first saw. it.
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Date: 2016-03-13 09:40 pm (UTC)ATPO was the only board that worked for me.
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Date: 2016-03-13 10:15 pm (UTC)Same. As simple as a search and we all got each other!
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Date: 2016-03-13 10:06 pm (UTC)I got to ATPO from The Kitten Board. Someone from ATPO mentioned it in a comment, and I decided to check it out. That turned me from a strong fan of the show to obsessed. I think it would be pretty hard to re-create the quality of the posters there for any other show; indeed, for any other topic.
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Date: 2016-03-13 10:14 pm (UTC)Another shipper specific board similar to All About Spike and BAPS...which made it difficult to discuss the show as a whole. There weren't many general posting boards that weren't into spoilers available at that point in time. If I hadn't been directed there by someone who wanted to repost my essay to the board - I'd never have found ATPO, it was below the radar, because not a spoiler board. (I had a rule back then, you could repost my essays but only if you asked me first and told me where you planned on reposting it.)
Oh, speaking of...did you see Masq's post where she shared a fan letter to the ATPO board, the writer, an 18 year old, who'd recently discovered Buffy - stated that ATPO and Sophist's Blog where what helped him appreciate the show and be able to fulfill his own obsession.
The ATPO Board turned me from strong fan to obsessed...because it gave me that extra layer of discussion that I was craving.
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Date: 2016-03-13 10:19 pm (UTC)The Kitten Board was about as shippy (shipper-y?) as anyplace ever got, all the more so after Seeing Red. I got there from searching for information about Willow and Tara and was interested enough to read it semi-regularly. I stopped mostly because (a) too many spoilers; and (b) ATPO began taking up all my time.
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Date: 2016-03-13 10:24 pm (UTC)I knew about a lot of the boards by April 2002 - because people kept asking to repost a meta I wrote to them. So I'd go and check them out. There were a lot of Spike boards...I think more Spike boards that Willow boards or any other character for that matter.
At one point I was jumping between about five different posting boards, until I finally gave up and focused solely on ATPO. (I was like a kid in a candy store -- it had been so hard to find a board, then voila, there it was.)
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Date: 2016-03-13 10:29 pm (UTC)I never jumped around as much as you seem to have done. I was already spending a lot of time on a baseball site (still do), and one Buffy site was all I could handle. Especially with these weird posters who'd submit long-form essays for me to read all the time. :)
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Date: 2016-03-14 01:28 am (UTC)Makes sense. The two characters with the most unpredictable and fascinating arcs were Wesley in ATS and Spike in BTVS. Whedon tried with Willow, but that story got bogged down with various social justice issues which were a bit out of the writers' depth, and a character arc that the actress wasn't sure how to play. (Hannigan went for campy humor.)
Xander suffered due to Brendan's substance abuse issues, and Giles suffered due to Head wanting to move back to England.
Buffy suffered from being the lead, and a burned out actress.
That's why S6 and S7 were so uneven and despised by some of the fans. I can't help but wonder if I'd have loved those last two seasons as much as I did if I wasn't a Spike fan? I don't know. It's hard to tell.
Part of my obsession was due largely to what I was going through at the time and complete boredom. I had too much time on my hands...and the fanboards were a great outlet. I remember a friend and coworker informing me that the Buffy boards were my version of group therapy. Which was true to an extent.
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Date: 2016-03-14 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-14 10:01 pm (UTC)Of the seasons, my favorites were the latter ones, with the exception of S2. And I got obsessed with S7 and S6. They also have at least five-six of my top 20 episodes, between them.
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Date: 2016-03-14 01:15 pm (UTC)I'd read some ATPO, was not too recently out of grad school, and stuck in a job that provided me with no intellectual stimulation at all - so Buffy Fandom became a place to work the Theory muscles I hadn't been using since I got out of college.
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Date: 2016-03-14 09:59 pm (UTC)Was more or less in the same situation you were - trapped in a job that bored me, and the Buffy fandom on ATPO provided intellectual stimulation.
There really weren't many fanboards that did intellectual discussion to the degree we did. I actually can't think of any that were like ATPO.
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Date: 2016-03-15 10:17 am (UTC)TWOP was sometimes pretty good. Not as intellectual as ATPO, but I made some good friends there and had fun with it.
I liked that the board covered a large volume of shows - but ultimately BTVS was the show I discussed the most.
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Date: 2016-03-17 02:16 am (UTC)Like you, I see Buffy without rose-coloured glasses these days, but its flashes of brillance and innovation still shine brightly even from a distance. Chatting with others about the show's underlining themes (on ATPO mostly) and exploring what it meant to be a 'fan' changed my life and perceptions/expectations (about myself/others/fiction/the world) forever. Through Buffy, for the first time in my life, I met people whom I felt were "my people". Kindred spirits. As you mention, Buffy fandom interactions were/are mostly virtual, but that didn't mean they aren't significant.
I hope to see the return of substantive fora where in-depth discussions and connections can occur...