Being a Buffy Fan on the Internet - 1998-2012

[shadowkat]

Supposed to have a snow-storm tonight into tomorrow, but no more than 2-4 inches in the city. Also supposed to be cold, but just below freezing. New York City is whining again about it. Seriously? Makes you want to ship them all to the Midwest, doesn't it?

Have been suffering all day with a head-ache inducingly painful cystic pimple on the bridge of my nose. Red and angry. And embarrassing. Wished I didn't have to be at work, tried everything to cover it up. Gave up. And I had to be in a meeting with 20 people. Also present at the meeting. I know, whine, whine, whine...but there it is.

Being a Buffy fan on the Internet.

A Long Rambling Muse. Inspired by Mark Watches Buffy of all things. 1998-2012. Sort of Stream of Consciousness. Lots of typos, because no time to edit, may do that later.
And includes an explanation of my posting name - how I came up with it, when I first came up with it, and why.



Been reading the Mark Watches bits here and there...and, okay, has the guy watched any serials, or soap operas? Or teen angst dramas? Did he completely miss "My So-Called Life", "Party of Five", "Eight is Enough", "Freaks & Geeks", "Square Pegs", "Popular", "Fame", or the supernatural daytime soap operas: Passions, Dark Shadows,
and Port Charles? Did he never watch 90210? Melrose Place? Skip over Dallas and Dynasty? Never see The Thorn Birds? Or watch St. Elsewhere and L A Law? Did he skip
"Dawson's Creek" which was on the WB at the same time Buffy aired and dealt with similar issues? I want to ask him this:

"Dude? Have you never seen a soap opera or an afterschool special in your life???"

(Sigh, maybe my age is showing? He may be 25 and was just too young to have seen the good adult and teen serials in the 1980s and 1990s.) I restrain myself.

But seriously if he thinks S2 is out there, just wait until he watches some of the episodes in the later seasons - S3, S4, S5, S6, and S7 had some of the most ground-breaking, controversial and envelope pushing episodes in tv history. Here's a short list:

Restless, HUSH, Conversations with Dead People (forget the plot - look at the narrative structure), Once More with Feeling, Beneath You, The Body (which I still think is the best and most honest piece of writing that Joss Whedon has done in his entire life and will never top), The Wish, Dopplegangland, Selfless, Villains, Smashed, Bargaining, Lies My Parents Told Me, Storyteller (which I hated but that's just me), The Zeppo (ditto), Superstar (ditto).

Where the writers played with narrative structure and jumped beyond the format and the rules, and bit their thumbs at network censors and tv standards. I mean once you've seen Smashed and Restless and HUSH - Innocence seems a bit...silly. So...I'm reading Mark, like everyone else, just to see...his head explode when he reaches the "really" good stuff. He's not there yet.

The best seasons are the latter ones - and I say that, after criticizing the plot of those seasons to death. Whedon's strength was never in his plotting, sorry to say. He plots like a daytime soap opera or marvel comics writer - by the seat of his pants, and centered on emotion or shock value, BUT he is quite good at character centric emotional/psychological writing. Most soap writers are. He reminds me a lot of a daytime soap writer...which I know people hate to hear because people have an odd view of soap operas they are a bit like my friend CW who..has no peripheral vision when it comes to cultural pursuits, for she likes Opera but hates musicals, not seeing the different strengths and attributes of both. But if you've watched as many daytime soaps and as for as long a period as I have - you know the secret, sometimes there's incredibly imaginative and excellent bits of writing hidden in there. Experiments with narrative form that would knock your socks off. It's like any art form, artists create a lot of crap, before they do the excellent thing. Law of averages. Marvel comics was the same way...for every bad comic or cliche story, occasionally you'd hit something that was so good, so amazing, it blew your socks off. Shakespeare's like that too...he wrote a lot of bad plays in there, or didn't you try to read Timon of Athens or Two Gentleman of Verona? And Dickens - sigh, okay I'm admittedly not a good judge of Dickens, considering I still hate the over-filmed Great Expectations. Even Austen (Northanger Abbey makes me cringe).

There used to be a meme that would go around - which episode would you rec for someone to get into Buffy? Impossible. Because Buffy was such a soap, a serial. Each episode built on the next. The plot was less important than the metaphors, the analogies, and the characters. It made no sense to pop into the middle of it. If you watched The Body, without seeing S1-4, you wouldn't understand or get the full emotional impact of that episode. It only worked in context. Soaps and Marvel Comics The X-men were like that. You had to read the whole thing, in order to appreciate that one truly marvelous episode or comic. There are tv shows that are brilliant all the way through more or less - like The Wire. I admit that. But even the Wire had its weak episodes and moments. All TV shows do.

As much as I may criticize Buffy or anything I love, I also see the contradiction in my criticism, the part of it that I do love. For example I may hate the Willow/Spike plot cliches in S6, but I also at the same time love them to pieces. It makes no sense, not even to me. There was just something there embedded deep within all of it that pulled at my gut, my heart, my emotion - screw the head. It wasn't what is appealing to Mark Watches or not the same thing at any rate - so there's a disconnect. But then I'm not male. I'm not in my 20s. I don't make money blogging. And I'm not gay or queer or lesbian. I'm straight. There was another guy who was watching the show for the first time a while back, more scholarly, less emotional, who I liked better. Never been much of a squee-er. Too frigging analytical. Sort of gets in the way. Which was why I joined the ATPO board and stayed away from Bronze Beta or the list-serves such as Yahoo.

Fandom was also different in the early 00s than it is today, in part because the internet was vastly different. We had less gadgets. Less rules. Less guidelines. It was newer. TV shows were on VHS, and we taped them. They were not on DVR or DVD, which didn't really show up until around 2004. Oh they were available, but a lot of people like myself couldn't afford them and stuck with VHS tapes - which wore out quickly. I broke the one with Innocence/Suprise that I taped way back in 1998, along with the Becoming episodes. Had to re-record them off of F/X which was re-running all the episodes on weekdays. Back then - F/X didn't have much original programming and just showed old episodes of shows like Buffy.

Buffy premiered on the wobbly WB, and I remember wanting cable so I'd get better reception. In 2002, S6, it was on the even wobblier UPN. Which didn't come in. And you worried on a weekly basis that you wouldn't get to see the show. Unlike now - if you missed it, you were screwed and had to beg people to either send tapes or wait for it to show up on F/X or in re-runs.

Spoilers ruled. IF you could find them, and Whedon's writers had a lot of fun setting up wild goose chases. The best and most legendary mislead was Spike getting his chip removed. We were all convinced. They even took bets on why he'd do it and if he'd turn evil after it happened. Of course, it was a complete mislead. They even fooled the actor, who thought that was what they planned on doing. No one knew he was going after a soul (although I guessed it, because that made more logical sense without the arc...but the show was so much like a soap in some ways, that you couldn't be certain. You never knew.).

And the online world...was made up of hard-core geeks. You had to work at finding this stuff. Voy was always crashing. Finding fan-sites, really good fan-sites, required detective work. Often it was by recommendation.

You'd start at:

1) Spoilerslayer (a site devoted to slaying bad rumors and spoilers, confirming real ones - it also had all the transcripts to the series available, plus transcripts that hadn't aired. Fox kept trying to shut it down, but didn't succeed until the show was long over.), which took you to -
2)Buffy Cross and Stake and Angel's Soul Board, and in turn to BAPS (Bloody Awful Poet Society) (if you were a Spike fan and a sucker for redemption stories), and if you were lucky to write a really cool meta -to
3) ATPOBTVS &ATS (All Things Philosphical About Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series) - if you liked to write long meta analysis and reviews...if you had a thing for Dorothy Dunnette and the Chronicles Lymond, plus an invite, you ended up on Sunnydale U listserve, but first you had to take a test proving you had read Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and were worthy. If you wrote good or popular essays, you might find yourself rec'd on whedonesque (which didn't pop up until the Bronze Beta disappeared and sort of took its place [ETA: Apparently that's not true, Bronze Beta is still in existence, and it took the place of Metafilter.]).

There was an online radio show...that was done out of someone's basement, they'd interview the writers by phone online after episodes, and you'd listen to the podcasts. I can't remember the name of it. [Oh, The Succubus Club] People wrote transcripts for those of us who missed the cast.

If you were really scholarly inclined : You'd head over to slayage.com (a list of links) or Slayage - an online scholarly journal of nothing but Buffy essays. And of course there was Teaatheford.com for female scholarly types obsessed with Spike. You had to be invited. It was psuedo-private. Professors were teaching Buffy in colleges, and presenting papers, and getting paid for it. This blew my mind. Then Writercon popped up - a fic writing con devoted at first just to Buffy, it slowly expanded to other things. There were also sites devoted to each character, and ship. As well as actor on the series. Such as Marsters Mobsters, More than Spike, etc.

Now? It's gone. Oh there's still vestiges here and there. But..it feels a bit like looking at an old tv show that you loved as a child...and thinking, uhm. So much of the fun was due to rudimentary nature of the net. We were exploring it together.
This new territory, fanboards, vids. This was before YouTube. Where you downloaded fanvids and almost crashed your computer, but did it anyway. Sharing files on the sly.

It's hard to explain to people who weren't there. Sort of like, I suppose, trying to explain what it was like to ride in that first car or see the first cell phone, or get color tv for the first time. Now technology comes so fast and furious, people almost take it for granted.

When I first saw Innocence/Surprise back in 1998...I much like Mark Watches, went nuts, but I couldn't find the fandom boards. And blogs did not exist. You had to create a web site, which required knowledge of java code. There was no one to talk to about it and no where to discuss. I found a few sites, and spoilers. Used to go like clockwork to an Bangle fan site that I can't remember the name of and there was no way to discuss it with the person, you just read their site and the spoilers they posted, and ACIN NEWS - which at that time was the only source for tv and film spoilers, nothing else existed. There wasn't as much back then. The internet was smaller. Email listserves were more popular. As we moved forward, VOY popped up. And there was the somewhat busy chat rooms...where conversations flew by like bullets.

By the time I came back online to fandom in 2001, after I saw Once More with Feeling, Tabula Rasa and then Smashed - and once again went nuts, fanfic had exploded. I didn't know it existed until 2001. Fanfic.net and of course other character and ship related sites. There was spoilerslayer - the source for spoilers. Some guy I met at a party sent me to spoilerslayer, because he got annoyed with all the emails I kept sending to discuss the show and speculate about the spoilers. He wasn't really into discussing it by email. Buffy Cross and Stake was spoilerslayer's main source for spoilers and the board spoilerslayer sent me to because he also got sick of my long email speculations and in-depth analysis of all of the spoilers that he posted, along with the character arcs, etc. I desperately wanted to discuss the spoilers and the series. The themes. Etc. Spoilerslayer did not.

Go here - they like to discuss it. They'll love you. Leave me alone, so I can go back to watching NASCAR in peace.

So off I went to BC&S, which required a username to join the board.

You have no idea how many different usernames I tried, including my own birth name, before shadowkat finally got accepted and went through. Which was a bit of a private joke that no one quite gets...I was an X-men comics fan before Buffy took over my soul and I ended up dumping the comics in favor of it (2001). The comics featured a cyber-geek who could phase through computers, and was wickedly smart and snarky, named shadowkat. I'm no cyber-geek, but shadowkat reminded me a little of the Buffy characters and fit my online persona. Hides in the shadows, not what it seems. And I deliberately spelled it with a "k" because shadowcat was already taken by a fanfic writer on the board. Also I liked the look of the "k" spelling better - it was sharper, had more of an edge.

Back then? You could post long, fifty page essays to fanboards. People ate them up. I don't think you can do it as easily now. Voy was nicer than the comic forums appear to be. And Whedonesque is annoyingly uninviting of posting your own stuff - you can only post someone else's stuff. Weird site, whedonesque. It took the place of Bronze Beta, but unlike Bronze Beta, was centered on a creator not the show a group of people were involved in. Very different dynamic. Bronze Beta in some respects was wilder and less censored. Never known what to make of Whedonesque, which Whedon himself...posts on occasionally - something else I'm not quite sure what to make of.
Whedon rarely posted on Bronze Beta, he left that to his minions.

The world has changed since I first came online in 2002. Mark Watches makes me aware of it. I remember fan boards without product placements. I remember people discussing whether it made sense to jump onto livejournal - was it too personal? Why would you want to post about well, yourself? While fanboards admittedly had a group therapy aspect to them...it was through the veil of a tv series. We could back away from the personal. LJ felt almost too intimate.

Yet, we got pulled in, or some of us did, one by one. Gifting each other passes. Then friending each other immediately. It did make sense - since many of our posts on the fanboards tended to jump off topic. ATPOBTVS is a good board to play around on - if you want to see how people reacted to the show as it aired. What were people's reactions to Seeing Red - when it came on the air for the first time? What was it like to post on the net and a fanboard in 2002 before DVR's and DVD's and file sharing was readily available?

Back then we didn't really have blogs. Those came about more in 2003. They were there, but not really noticeable. And there was no such thing as Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even on the net back then as far as I know. Aaron Sorkin was busy writing The West Wing. And Television Without Pity was just beginning to get up and running. There weren't as many ads or product placements. Fanboards didn't have products like Mark Watches blog does. Or most didn't. Some did. AngelFire AngelX (ETA:AngelFire was the name of the hosting agent for many of the fan sites, sort of like GeoCities - both defunct now) who ran Buffy Cross and Stake - tried to sell things, until she got worried about copyright infringement.

I find myself waxing nostalgic...tonight for some reason. It's like I want to revisit a former self that no longer exists. She's there, hidden amongst old journal posts and essays on an archived fanboard - if you want to find here. But not here, here, now in the present. I'm no longer in love with Buffy. Whedon no longer seems to entertain. And the fandom...has dispersed. Few remain. Of the ones I was online with back in the day...they merely grouse at the comics, or wax nostalgic while reading Mark Watches...hunting perhaps in Mark's blogs some remnant of themselves? Or perhaps not. Hard to know what another person thinks or feels.

I do know there were a lot of wildly brilliant and creative people on the internet who watched Buffy. And posted on those boards. Everyone from a Tibetian Monk to
scholars, geneticists, scientists, physicists, Supreme Court attorneys, actors, professional writers, agents, and people like myself - blundering fools hunting others similarly inclined.

I think tv shows like Buffy or Doctor Who or what have you...are ways to bring people together over a shared interest. A way of breaking the ice. Of finding a sort of
pseudo-intimacy through cultural work that is safe. That resonates on a level difficult to explain except to those who just get it. You either got Buffy or you didn't. You either loved it or you didn't. And for many of us who did? The internet was the only place we could discuss it - so here we fled. Discussing under fake names, but revealing multitudes that few outside of our fellow geeks would know.

I see that in Mark Watches posts...that desire to share a piece of himself, that inner self through the guise of tv analysis or tv reviews. A way to explain, that is safe but not.

Well, make of this what you will. It's late time for bed. While the snow quietly blankets the earth.

Comments

[elisi]

There were no gifs back then...

I have a hard time trying to work out how to formulate my response to this post, because mostly it's turned me into a ball of nostalgia. I only came to fandom at the tail-end of things (2003), and lurked for a long while, just looking around. I do, however, still vividly remember the first time I came across fandom *proper*, as it were - the_royal_anna's post on Chosen. It left me utterly, completely stunned, because I didn't know you could do that. Everything else I had come across had been opinion based, but this was looking deeper, asking what did the show do, and how and why.... I've never looked back, and it's still what informs my interactions with film/TV. I think it's probably because Buffy wears its metaphors on its sleeve - I don't mean that it's simplistic, but that the basic premise is a metaphor. And you can look at the top (the soap) layer, and not go further, but it seems to be a bit of a waste...

Anyway, re. Mark then I've had a bit of a look around his site. He's been around for a bit, and he's very wise to how fandom operates. Plus, he is - at the same time as watching Buffy - also reading LotR for the first time (another story he's essentially unspoiled for). And it's fascinating to see, because I think what's happening is that he's very aware of tropes etc, but both Buffy and LotR are seminal works in their field. You can see the impact of LotR all over any fantasy works since (he adores Harry Potter, f.ex, and can tell how readily JK Rowling borrowed), and since he's a Doctor Who & Torchwood fan he'll have seen the influence Joss had on RTD. But here's my point (and one he made himself): He knows where the tropes end up, but he's now watching the originals unfold and he doesn't know what to expect. It's like... these are the Fool For Love of fantasy, and it'll make him have to reconsider everything he knows. So... yeah, he's floundering.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think it's probably because Buffy wears its metaphors on its sleeve - I don't mean that it's simplistic, but that the basic premise is a metaphor. And you can look at the top (the soap) layer, and not go further, but it seems to be a bit of a waste...

I think this is very true. The metaphors call to the emotions and bypass the conscious brain directly to the subconscious. That's what really good metaphor can do - go right to the subconscious. And then you are left trying to figure out - okay, why am I insanely in love with this?

He knows where the tropes end up, but he's now watching the originals unfold and he doesn't know what to expect. It's like... these are the Fool For Love of fantasy, and it'll make him have to reconsider everything he knows. So... yeah, he's floundering.

I think this may very well be true. He's thinking...okay I know where this is going, I read Twilight, or I read Game of Thrones or I've seen Doctor Who...but unlike those, this show often went the opposite direction, went for the ultimate pain/horror - and pushed metaphor and emotion over plot.
Logic didn't dictate. So it's pulling at his emotions, while the brain's going they can't do that.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

This is a really great post -- I tend to agree about Mark, I'm surprised not so much that he loves the show but that he is SO SURPRISED by it. And you know, I ultimately try very hard to fixate on the positive, but I quite agree with this:

For example I may hate the Willow/Spike plot cliches in S6, but I also at the same time love them to pieces. It makes no sense, not even to me.

So you know. As an example: I actually have no idea whether I think Empty Places is the worst episode of the series or one of the best -- I actually feel like both simultaneously. (I know that's an odd episode to pick as one of the best ... but I was affected by it so deeply when I watched it, and not for the same reasons as most.) And you know, the amount of effort I have spent into trying to make sense of season six (especially) (but not just season six) is incredible -- and every once in a while I'll think of something new, and feel like I have to scrap everything and start all over again. And I mean, obviously I'm/we're figuring out the show...but it's not just about the show exactly....

A way to explain, that is safe but not.

Yep.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I tend to agree about Mark, I'm surprised not so much that he loves the show but that he is SO SURPRISED by it.

This is what keeps making me pause as well. He seems so shocked that anyone would write this story and it would actually air? And I keep thinking, okay, what rock have you been hiding under? The guy is past college age, and according to his site he's watched other tv shows and is highly aware of fandom - almost too much aware. He writes like a lot of "typical" fans write on twitter, tumblr, and facebook - with lots of CAPS and OMGS. And consistently so. It's making me question his sincerity and wonder if he's being sarcastic or satirical. LOL! (I'm too analytical for my own good.)

I actually have no idea whether I think Empty Places is the worst episode of the series or one of the best -- I actually feel like both simultaneously. (I know that's an odd episode to pick as one of the best ... but I was affected by it so deeply when I watched it, and not for the same reasons as most.)

I had a similar reaction to Empty Places. I remember screaming at the tv set when it aired and the lengthy battles we had online, discussing it. We couldn't decide how we felt about it, just that we each had a visceral emotional reaction. I was so angry at the Scooby Gang in that episode. I remember loving Touched - because it was in a way - the pay-off. Spike's speech at the beginning of Touched was so spot on. It nailed all of them to the wall. Then I'd analyze it - just to figure out why the hell it caused that fierce emotional reaction. Because I saw the plot holes, I saw the manipulation, sure, but that fierce emotional reaction remains.

I sometimes think the writers were so adept at writing in metaphor, emotional metaphor, and pushing emotional/psychological/philosophical arc through metaphor - that they managed to bypass the logical/rational brain to
that part inside, which reacts and says, brain? Shut up.

[ann1962]

I've only read a few posts, but somehow I think that Mark fellow is spoiled and just isn't letting on. /cynicism

Great post. I hate to say those were the days, because they weren't, but it feels like that sometimes.

Upside, I'm glad LJ was personal, because lots of great people. I still thank Buffy for that. I was rereading old LJ posts last night, and we were all so excited to meet each other. Last night must have been for nostalgic meandering.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I've been wondering much the same thing about Mark Watches. His posts are almost too "precious" and the writing too...he's like the evil mini-me of Rob on ATPO, where Rob was genuine, savvy, and loved to explore layers of metaphor - along with acknowledging other similar series, Mark acts like he's watching in a vaccum - but, how is that possible?

Reading him makes me nostalgic...but for something he can't quite recreate for so many reasons. We had to wait a week between episodes.
Discussing them was harder somehow. And rougher. Rawer. The emotion was rawer as well...and as a result, more real.

I think in a way it says more about how the internet and communication on it has changed. Even the language has changed. OMG - didn't really exist back then. We didn't write in abbreviations nearly as much. There wasn't text-speak or text messaging or twitter or Facebook. People didn't have pictures or gif's. So as a result the emotion seemed more genuine less telegraphed. Also watching tv was different,
we didn't just rent DVD's and watch a marathon.

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is the only book I've read that seems to hit upon those early days just after 9/11...regarding the net and the discussion board culture.

[shapinglight]

What were people's reactions to Seeing Red - when it came on the air for the first time?

Worst day of my television watching life, I think. It brought me out of lurkdom because I so desperately needed to cry on the virtual shoulder of someone who would understand.

This post made me really nostalgic for those days, though I can't say I exactly enjoyed them at the time. It was like being over-caffeinated 24/7.

On the other hand, at least people were talking to each other. Nowadays they mostly just chuck gifs at each other, which I hate.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Worst day of my television watching life, I think. It brought me out of lurkdom because I so desperately needed to cry on the virtual shoulder of someone who would understand.

What I remember is the damn episode was switched with Entropy on the satellite feed - so a lot of people who were seeing the show by download - they'd download shows from the satelitte feeds before they aired onto computers - that was how they were watching the series - ended up viewing "Seeing Red" before Entropy. LOL! (I laugh now, but at the time...oh dear lord. It was a mess. The Buffy Cross and Stake spoiler board exploded. The owner of the board AngelFire who had been date-raped not that long ago, ended up telling people if they didn't stop - they'd be kicked off the board permanently. Whole threads were dumped or deleted. And there was a ban on all discussions until after EVERYONE had seen the episode. My site designer (site is now completely gone) saw it before I did and spoiled me completely on it. Although...I'd guessed that was where they were going, just was really hoping I was wrong, because I knew how people would react. And they did. One guy who adored the show, much like Mark Watches, and had been getting spoilers for the board - was so furious about what happened to Tara and Willow - that he literally stopped watching after Grave and wrote hate mail to Mutant Enemy.)

Sometimes I wish BC&S had archived...because that site was visceral in its reactions.

It was like being over-caffeinated 24/7.

Hee. Yes. Unlike the newer viewers...we had to work to see those episodes.
Some more than others. Everyone in the UK got the show several weeks after the US did. People would hunt for pirate downloads, which were harder to find back then. And recaps. Often you'd read the recap before you saw the episode. I remember UPN pre-empting the show on the West coast for a sports game, pissing off half the viewers...who didn't get to see it until the next week if that. So a lot of it was anticipation. You worried you wouldn't get to see it. You had to wait forever to see it. The time lag between Smashed and Wrecked was two frigging weeks! The time lag between Wrecked and Gone? A month! Between Hell's Bells and Entropy? Same. We wrote fic and meta to stay sane. They tortured us with the long waits. And of course after the cliff-hanger in Grave - where Spike got his soul? We had an entire summer to wait through. A lot of fanfic came from trying to imagine what the crazy writers would do next, to prepare oneself. And a lot of the disappointment came from anticipating a better story, and a lot of the thrill or adoration from liking the story that came out better than what we anticipated.

The comics...we hoped would recapture that thrill, but they didn't. They fell flat, and I think that's why so many of us got upset and frustrated with them.

[quinara]

*wanders in from Petzi*

Oh, how I miss Spoilerslayer. Obviously you could never have it without the show running, but I miss going through the likelihood ratings and the short commentary and thinking 'Brtiney Spears will never appear in S7 - will she?', and the meta they hosted breaking down the seasonal structure.

I'm with you on not being able to find much to be nostalgic about in Mark Watches, though. I like scrolling through it quickly and seeing nuggets of his impressions, but most of it is too dressed up in OMG-handwavy fluff for me. I was very much willing to take what I was given for the first few seasons - I liked US high school shows and I liked fantasy, and there wasn't much else on, and even though I thought Buffy was whiny and Angel was boring, there were brilliant one-liners and Spike was cool. S5 was the first season I started recording (to store, that is; Buffy was a show to record when you were out very quickly), and S4 (part 2?) was the first box set I bought.

I find it hard to judge whether ten-years-older!me would have enjoyed fandom as much as my younger self did, because I don't have nearly as much time these days, and I'm generally a lot more judgemental about reading material and cynical about the idea of people's interest in my thoughts. But then I remember the amount and variety of fic that was flying around, and the fact that I didn't have anything like the technique to be a part of it properly, nor the understanding of how to get into the boards and message groups. I would love to go back in time and be part of that, rather than remembering it from the edges, if only because I'm finally working on my lengthy manifesto-for-S6 Spuffy fic, years out of date...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee. I miss Spoilerslayer too sometimes. He was so snarky. I remember him making fun of Godfather Ducks - who fought with AngelFire to provide good spoilers. Angel's were the most legit - she had people who worked on the show popping up on BC&S and delivering spoilers. That's how some of us got so much inside info on that show.

I like scrolling through it quickly and seeing nuggets of his impressions, but most of it is too dressed up in OMG-handwavy fluff for me.

The OMG handwavy fluff...is what keeps bugging me. It's consistent. He does this on most of his posts. Mark reads Song of Ice and Fire was pretty much OMG all the way through. I think it would bug me less - if he didn't do it for almost everything. Starting to see a pattern emerge...here.

I was very much willing to take what I was given for the first few seasons - I liked US high school shows and I liked fantasy, and there wasn't much else on, and even though I thought Buffy was whiny and Angel was boring, there were brilliant one-liners and Spike was cool. S5 was the first season I started recording (to store, that is; Buffy was a show to record when you were out very quickly), and S4 (part 2?) was the first box set I bought.

More or less the same way. I do admit the Angel/Angelus thing surprised me initially. Up until that point the show didn't feel like much more than a sort of high school monster of the week series.

My first purchase? You'll laugh - S6 and S7. The first box set I owned? S5.
Then S4. Then S2. Then S3, then finally S1 - so I could be complete. S5 has the best production value of the seasons, also the DVDs are in the best condition. S2's DVD's were horribly constructed and not well formatted.
For years, I just used VHS tapes. And people had sent me tapes of the DVD commentaries in 2003 and 2004 - so DVDs were available back then, they just weren't affordable nor were DVD players for that matter, not like now.

Terrific post

[sophist.livejournal.com]

You should add it to your Buffy meta page.

Some random thoughts. You talk about it the way people remember their first love affair, and that seems like a good comparison. Kind of like Bangel, for that matter.

I can't decide what to think about Mark Watches. I've decided he really may be as innocent of storylines as he lets on. There's no depth of analysis there, though he's occasionally insightful about characters. I read him off and on just to see how he reacts, which is kind of your point about how it was for all of us back in the day -- what was that first reaction? I know it was intense, and that's part of what I think you're saying: it's impossible to recapture that intensity, that feeling of finding something special, and of realizing there were others who shared it.

If you're ever feeling nostalgic, try http://unpaidsophistry.blogspot.com/ and see if it brings back memories of ATPO. I hope it does.

Re: Terrific post

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The weirdest thing, I can't find your response on my comments page of the post. But I can find it in the inbox to lj. Also it's dated 3:04 pm..Jan 21. Which is odd too.

You talk about it the way people remember their first love affair, and that seems like a good comparison. Kind of like Bangel, for that matter.

Hee. That's very true. My relationship to the tv show Buffy and Whedon for that matter has a lot in common with the Bangle relationship. Never thought of that. That's a great analogy. Particularly if you include the comics.

I've decided he really may be as innocent of storylines as he lets on. There's no depth of analysis there, though he's occasionally insightful about characters.

He reminds me of buffyannatator (Rob) but without Rob's depth or sincerity. Actually he makes me miss Rob. He may very well be innocent of them - it's possible. I know a lot of people who never watched the series or heard of it.

I read him off and on just to see how he reacts, which is kind of your point about how it was for all of us back in the day -- what was that first reaction? I know it was intense, and that's part of what I think you're saying: it's impossible to recapture that intensity, that feeling of finding something special, and of realizing there were others who shared it.

That's pretty much why I'm reading him off and on, not consistently.
To see the first reaction. And it is impossible to recapture it or even remember it really.

Thanks for the link.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Fandom was wild and passionate in those days. It could be exhilarating and fun or devastating or infuriating. But it had a special something.

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

I haven't gotten very far in your post but I wanted to address your questions about Mark's past. From what I've gleaned he grew up gay in a fundamental religious home and wasn't allowed television as a child. Then, as I understand it correctly, when he finally left home for good he was busy trying to figure out how to live as a gay man in a culture that was more welcoming and yet still fundamentally foreign to him. He wasn't used to television so he just didn't pay much attention to it until relatively recently.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarifications, I'd wondered. It does explain a lot of it.

Read the rest of the post...though. ;-)

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post! Makes me miss old school Buffy fandom even more than I do normally, which is pretty much every day.

I'm actually having kind of a hard time over at Mark Watches. I read it every day right around the time he posts and I enjoy his reactions, but some of the comments are so angry, and they have no idea how to watch television through the lens of the time it was created. Every episode is people shrieking about slut shaming, something that today I think is abhorrent, but it wasn't even a thing back then. Not a term, not an accepted idea. Nothing. So how can they expect a television show written before a cultural movement even got legs to adhere to the mores of said cultural movement? And ghod forbid you try to point that out to the commenters. Or point out that even though a character's behavior is sketchy that it was written that way on purpose and that there is actual value in exploring said behavior. The vast majority of the people there have a hard core hate on for Xander, because in 1998 he should really have acted exactly like an acceptable teen from 2011 would act and not like teens, and even most adult men, acted in 1998.

**edited to remove whiney bits**

I have no idea why I keep going back, except that I really do miss old school Buffy fandom and so many of the comments are funny and fun to read that it seems worth it to weed through the infuriated and rude ones.

*sigh* I really miss Joss's Stakehouse and BC&S and BAPs. Thank you so much for the walk down memory lane.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The vast majority of the people there have a hard core hate on for Xander, because in 1998 he should really have acted exactly like an acceptable teen from 2011 would act and not like teens, and even most adult men, acted in 1998.

Yeah, the Xander hate sort of threw me. Clearly the character is pushing Mark's buttons. (He did state that Xander reminded him of kids who bullied him, so that may be it.) It's so weird, when I was online people adored Xander. I had friends and still do, who consider Xander their favorite character.

And you're right - that's how people reacted in 1998 to those issues. Homosexuality was an incredibly controversial topic. Race? You barely saw any minorities on tv shows. We didn't have access to information like we do now. Or the ability to share experiences with people across the globe. The social and cultural context that Buffy was written in and aired in - are important. The show sometimes is a good commentary on that time period and the information age that was beginning. It, better than most series at that time, really showed the emotional/cultural reaction to millenium, including our collective fears.

There weren't cell phones - in fact in S7 - we see cell phones appear for the first time and Buffy isn't sure how to deal with them. Same with computers in the early seasons - they are MS-DOS, not Windows, only Willow and OZ can figure them out, and Jenny Calendar who is a techno-witch - a clear commentary on the wizardery of the internet.

I'm not sure Bargaining makes sense to people who hadn't experienced 9/11 literally a month before. OR if Earshot can resonate in the same way for someone who didn't see the coverage of Columbine a month before - Earshot was not shown until a month later because of Columbine Massacre. Context sometimes is half the experience.

[caliente-uk.livejournal.com]

Fantastic post! Thanks for posting it. Makes me all nostalgic for the old days of the Buffy fandom. They were special times indeed, and even though they were difficult (and infuriating) at times, I'm so glad I was lucky enough to have been a part of them. :)

[rahirah]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. :/

I love this post

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, watching "Mark Watches" has been an... experience.

I feel so old reading the comments and shaking my head at the lens that the show is being looked through. When did I become grandpa gus?

But Mark's reactions are fun -- although I think the novelty is wearing off. Also as a internet social experiment I'm a little ill-at-ease with the sense of mob reaction I'm seeing. I'm not sure if continuing to watch the "watching" is something I need to understand or just let it go.

Your comments on the days-of-old fandom, however, are priceless.

Re: I love this post

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee, me too. And thank you.

Also as a internet social experiment I'm a little ill-at-ease with the sense of mob reaction I'm seeing. I'm not sure if continuing to watch the "watching" is something I need to understand or just let it go.

I think you nailed what bugs me. There's this mob feeling to it. Like lemmings, who aren't applying thought, just racing to squee. And that has always disturbed me on a certain level. I much preferred the reviewers who thought about it -- didn't just react.

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

The blue board is not active much but the red board still has some life. I do my weekly rewatch post today. (Angel's Watcher)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think the blue board pretty much went down sometime around 2007 or thereabouts? Surprised the red board's still active...

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Interesting post and discussion.

I'm also feeling the cynical vibes toward Mark Watches.

He's a smart guy. His audience are the fans of the show. Of course his reaction is gonna be one of squee and disbelief that anything could be so awesome. It validates the fans' love, which makes them feel good and keeps them reading.

I just get all weirded out when he expresses such immense shock and love for Some Assembly Required. No, dude. It isn't the greatest.

Is there ever a series he watches/reads that he doesn't like?

[elisi]

Twilight. And oh, he is pretty vicious and head-clutch-y and uses gifs and 'court room transcripts and all kinds of clever things. Damn that man knows his audience.

[menomegirl.livejournal.com]

Love this post; reading it was like taking a walk down memory lane. I'm really liking the Mark Watches reviews-mostly for the same reason I love this post. His reactions remind me of mine at the time the episodes aired.

But you're right-the people who are watching them (or have watched them) solely on DVDs are missing (or have missed) everything we went through. The reaction posts are different and the meta posts are too-I'm not sure how to define just how or why they're different, just that they are.

Oh and just fyi, the Bronze Beta didn't disappear. It's still there. People are still posting, even after all this time.

edited to add:

What were people's reactions to Seeing Red - when it came on the air for the first time?

It made me ill-physically ill. I couldn't even bring myself to post (or read) anything anywhere because SR so sickened me. I felt like I'd been emotionally manipulated and abused by the episode. I know how dramatic that sounds but it's exactly how I felt at the time. I hate that episode-Hate. It. I have not re-watched it and I never will.

[shapinglight]

It made me ill-physically ill. I couldn't even bring myself to post (or read) anything anywhere because SR so sickened me. I felt like I'd been emotionally manipulated and abused by the episode. I know how dramatic that sounds but it's exactly how I felt at the time. I hate that episode-Hate. It. I have not re-watched it and I never will.

I have rewatched it, but yes, otherwise I felt exactly the same. I dunno. I've seen worse things in tv drama obviously, but nothing has come close to upsetting me the way that did.

[nmissi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I remember when the "cross and stake" kept deleting Spike-positive posts, and so a bunch of us Spikefans kept logging in and pming each other about the newly begun BAPS list. We'd make a post, PM some folks, watch the post get deleted, make a new post, send a few more invites... good times. :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

She actually deleted Spike positive posts? LOL!

I've got a great story about Spike posts on BC&S and how I managed to get my Spike essays posted and do long threads on that board about him.

When I found BC&S in December 2001, I lurked for two months. Then someone named Linda DeLurker started writing essays. And a guy named CJL wrote a really good essay about the psychology of Willow. That's when I figured out how to interact on fanboards. Up until that point - wasn't quite sure how to jump in. Not a chatter. So I'd discuss the essay posts. Then I thought, wait, maybe I can also write and post meta. Let's try. But, I thought, reading through the posts and threads, probably best to stay away from Spike for now. And Willow. (Every thread on that board was about Willow or Spike and often with a lot of screaming at each other.) Try someone less popular and controversial. (Even though I was dying to write about both.) So I wrote first about Giles. Giles - the Reluctant Father - was my first attempt at an essay on that board. I can't find that essay anywhere - it's lost. Not a big deal, was very rough. I was using Linda Delurker and CJL as templates on how to do it. Then I chose Xander - because the Xander fans hated my favorite characters...so, I wanted to appease them. Let's build slowly. Both posts got a great response. Next up was Willow and Buffy. Did a thread on them.
About five or six in a series - sort of a complement to Linda Delurker's Willow posts. Then finally, at the beginning of Feb - I did my Spike essay.

Here's what happened - a few Xander fans got really upset and attacked me.
Stating something along the lines - "how dare you write about Spike, he's so popular, why don't you deal with Xander!"

AngleX's reponse? She deleted them and their thread, and clearly sent them a warning not to try it again. Meanwhile Spuffy and Spike fans applauded me.
But I waited to do it, until after I'd written several previous essays. And after I wrote it? I wrote several non-Spike essays again - such as a Buffy/Xander essay. Built up respect and a following. Then? I wrote the Spike and Willow essays I was dying to write.

When Seeing Red broke? I just jumped boards..and moved over to ATPO which was saner. LOL!

[simonf.livejournal.com]

"And Whedonesque is annoyingly uninviting of posting your own stuff - you can only post someone else's stuff. Weird site, whedonesque."

You're not wrong. Whedonesque was a clone of Metafilter and a lot of those rules came from that site. You could argue it's one of the first signs of the blogosphere impacting upon the fandom.
But both myself and Caroline were heavily influenced by how AngeLX ran the Buffy Cross and Stake.

I still talk to Leon who used to do the Wildfeed, I miss those days.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. It was AngelX not AngelFire. I couldn't remember. Should go back and fix it.

Did Whedonesque come out of Bronze Beta? Or did you jump off of Angel's Soul Board and BC&S? I can't exactly remember when you popped up. I think it was 2003 or 2004 - towards the end of the actual run of the series? Hence the name Whedonesque over ATS or BTVS.

While I appreciated AngelX's need to delete threads and ban posters on BC&S - she didn't archive, and at the height of the series - she got over 1000 people posting. VOY crashed. So when a kerfuffle happened? Whoa. The Seeing Red hullaboo...makes well anything over the Buffy comics look like nothing.
But...there is a problem with doing that - as nmissi comments above, you end up just getting comments from folks who agree with you. Which is great if you are doing a livejournal blog. But a fan-discussion board should be less
controlled. I think the most admirable fan discussion board platform was ATPOBTVS - run by Masq. She hated censorship. And outside of spoilers and clear trolls (ie. spam posts) - she never banned or deleted. She treated the people on her board like adults and let them manage the traffic. If we disliked someone? We ignored them. But it was admittedly a smaller and more scholarly board and spoilers were forbidden. It also contained far more interesting discussions - we had a lengthy discussion about social Darwinism at one point, another was discussion on historical economics of War.

here via elisi

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

What a fascinating post. It reminds me very much of my first fandom experience, starting in about 2001. It was totally contained on one message board, and we were there for books, which had waiting periods of about four or five months before a new one came out. It was a weird little place and it shaped me in a lot of ways, and it's never been replicated for me. I love my current fandom experience, but it's so different. Those were the days when I wouldn't even share my first name (which is a common one) or let people know where in the USA I lived. Now I've got lots of friends who know my full name and have met up with people I've met online. And back then I knew almost nothing about my fandom friends' lives, whereas now I'm in a community that lets me feel comfortable talking about everything from religion to my work environment to my mental health issues. The differences between that environment and this one are so extreme it's hard to view them as a continuation of the same thing--my fandom life.

Anyway!

The best seasons are the latter ones - and I say that, after criticizing the plot of those seasons to death. Whedon's strength was never in his plotting, sorry to say. He plots like a daytime soap opera or marvel comics writer - by the seat of his pants, and centered on emotion or shock value, BUT he is quite good at character centric emotional/psychological writing.

I absolutely could not agree more.

Because Buffy was such a soap, a serial. Each episode built on the next. The plot was less important than the metaphors, the analogies, and the characters. It made no sense to pop into the middle of it. If you watched The Body, without seeing S1-4, you wouldn't understand or get the full emotional impact of that episode. It only worked in context.

YES YES YES.

I remember fan boards without product placements. I remember people discussing whether it made sense to jump onto livejournal - was it too personal? Why would you want to post about well, yourself?

I remember this in a completely different fandom. Livejournal confused the hell out of me back then (probably aroumd 2002/2003).

I think tv shows like Buffy or Doctor Who or what have you...are ways to bring people together over a shared interest. A way of breaking the ice. Of finding a sort of
pseudo-intimacy through cultural work that is safe. That resonates on a level difficult to explain except to those who just get it. You either got Buffy or you didn't. You either loved it or you didn't. And for many of us who did? The internet was the only place we could discuss it - so here we fled. Discussing under fake names, but revealing multitudes that few outside of our fellow geeks would know.

Absolutely true.

Thanks for sharing your very specific experience. I'm simultaneously jealous and incredibly glad I wasn't around for it. The rawness of that time comes through brilliantly in this post. Thanks for it.

[gillo]

I've been following Mark and I do feel slightly cynical about the sheer amount of squee, though it's clearly part of his persona. I enjoy some of the coded comments, though I'm really not happy with the attempts to judge the show by the cultural standards of fifteen years down the line. The comments for BB&B are particularly vicious to Xander - and as we are going to see further use of the love spell trope I do wonder how ugly it's going to get.

I hate even admitting that you have to approach Buffy as a historical text, just as you would Cagney and Lacey or The Dick Van Dyke Show, but in some ways you do. In vast areas of society still "slut-shaming" is still not a thing, and it is perfectly valid to criticise behaviour in that way. Arguably one of the things the show explored was the extent to which it is permissible to do that - Tara's reaction to Willow's spell in OMWF is pretty revolutionary for the period.

I really enjoyed reading this post. As a Dunnet fan my way into Buffy fandom was via SunnydaleU, which is still going, though no longer exclusively Jossverse. Through it I encountered Whedonesque and the concept of spoiler sites - and then, that there was a thing called Live Journal. I owe Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sévigny a lot! I wish there were as many people still active in the fandom, though I still find new fics and inspiration daily. And the friends I've made via the fandom? Priceless.

[lakrids404.livejournal.com]

Good post, and I can relate. BtVS was my first fandom (and only?), and it is still is in many ways, as I have not feelt the same desire, to locate material and discussions about other shows.

I live outside US (someone has to really), BtVS was airing here a couple of season behind US, and I quickly found out that there were an interesting discussion on analysis on US based boards. But to read them and few time participate in them. I had to download the new episodes, and it was so slow sometimes it took days and / or the quality was bad. And I too have also stumbled over Mark posts, find them fun/nostalgic/fluffy, but I don't think I keep reading them, if there don't come some analytic meat on them.

You probably don't remember, but I wrote post at the voy Atops board, I think it was something, about not understanding some Spike fans views on some of Spikes actions. Which resulted in a post, where you asked, for the my post to be deleted, which came as little shock for, as I hadn't found it so strong my self. But I wrote an under post, that Masq was welcome to delete it. Passion,
good times

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Did I? I don't remember? I think I probably wanted my response to it to be deleted. That I remember doing.

Can you point it out to me? It's in the ATPO archives.

If I did, my apologies. What a rude thing to do. Of course now, I get to delete whatever posts I damn well please. Because my journal, my rules. Lovely thing that. ;-)

The only thing I remember is you sending me that really horrible article about " how Spike ruined Buffy like Fonzie ruined Happy Days". And I wanted to kick you for it. And the writer for writing it. Ugh. Nasty article. So I think I wrote a really nasty email in response. But..what a lot of people don't realize when interacting with each other on the net - is we are going through crap, unrelated crap. (At the time I was posting on ATPO and BC&S - I was unemployed, depressed, and suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. So a lot of that crap infected my posts at the time. )

[tigerpetals.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of things to address, so let me start with one thing and hopefully the fact that I have to go to bed soon won't distract me too much from returning tomorrow.

I've been in fandom since 1998, although with very different experiences from yours, namely because I was eight, I was only following one show, and it was an import -Sailor Moon- that had already aired in it's entirety in Japan so it was a matter of waiting for them to show up in the US, hoping they'd be there, and getting spoilers for all the uncut stuff and future episodes, some of which never got released. I wasn't active on boards though; I was never big on boards until a small book fandom with all the books published in the mid-2000s, and the TWOP board around the same time, which is when I started Buffy. So while some of what you say is familiar, especially the fansites you had to dig for, and how when I started Buffy I went to old fansites first for almost everything, it's very different from you.

Yet I relate to so much of what you're saying, about raw, genuine reactions and how, well, ritualized things feel now. Much of fandom, even outside Buffy, is like that. Photo manips and gifs - I don't even want to talk about Tumblr, which seems like the big fandom thing now, but it's so hard to read and enjoy unless I just want to look at pretty pictures and not even keep track of them.

The last fandom I was pretty active in, that wasn't Buffy, was this small fandom board, and people thought six paragraphs was a very long post. Six paragraphs.

Even coming in late, I think Buffy fandom spoiled me completely. This new world of instant chat, gifs, and the like - it's too much like a virtual simulation of real life social chat - there's an impersonality to it, and social norms to it (not that there aren't/weren't norms in other kinds of sites) that are very alienating to me, to someone who wants to use these fandoms to connect with people, to really connect -because it's not pseudointimacy to me-, think and explore ourselves with the things we love to read and watch, and I can't find that anywhere now except in old old posts and a shadow of a first time in Mark's reviews.