All the cool kids are doing it...

[agilebrit]

And while I have no illusions about being one of the "cool kids," I might as well do it as well, even though I'm late to the party. Yes, a Buffy retrospective.

It seems only fitting that I'm late to this party, since I was late to the show and very late to the fandom. See, I'm one of those strange people who really loved the movie beyond all reason and was disappointed by "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and the subsequent three or four episodes, and stopped watching for a few years after that. It seemed to me that the show hadn't captured the flavor of the movie at all, the humor was missing, it was darker, Sarah was awkward and didn't move as well as Kristy...and there was the whole not-just-vampires thing. Even the theme song grated. It all added up to a great big "ugh" for me at the time.



Of course, at that point, I wasn't aware of all the behind-the-scenes stuff. I had no idea who that Joss guy was. I just decided that the show wasn't my cup of tea and ignored it for three years. I might have caught one or two episodes here and there, but I honestly don't remember.

And then "Angel" spun off from it.

See, Angel had always been a more interesting character to me than Buffy. The whole "fighting for redemption" thing, even though he knows he can never ever make up for the horrid things he's done, just resonated. So, I thought maybe I should watch Buffy, which led in to Angel's show, just so I wouldn't be completely clueless.

Buffy was still sort of "meh" for me. Angel, however, blew me away. Doyle! And Cordy! And "Hey, you're a vampire!" "No, I'm not." And pushing him out the window. Lindsey! It was awesome! So, yeah. Hooked from the first episode.

I continued to watch Buffy as the lead-in to Angel, still kind of "meh" about it...and then Spike showed up. And he was awesome! And hawt! With an accent! (Yes, I'm shallow. Sue me.) THERE was the snark and the funny that I'd missed! Of course, I'd missed S2, so didn't know about the history behind the character; all I knew was what I was seeing on the screen in S4.

Now, at the time, I was sort of a "closet" watcher. I didn't watch when the Hubby was home, instead relying on transcripts to get me through and keep me up. I'm fair certain that the site I used is long since gone (it was based in Germany; I'm sure lots of folks will remember it), but I noticed a link on it after awhile that said "fanfiction"...and clicked on it one night out of boredom and curiosity. The fic was "Buffy: Immortal." And it was awful! I'm not sure why I kept reading it, but I did, although I eventually abandoned it after reading about fifteen chapters or so.

But, I thought, if that's out there, then maybe there's other stuff out there too. Stuff that's better. Somehow I found bigsciencybrain's site, and her epic "Raison d'Etre"...and I was gone. THIS was what fanfic should be, and I devoured the story, along with "Gods of War." I IM'd her one day--and made a very good friend. I also found out that she lives right here in Utah, which was, like, the funniest coincidence ever.

By this time, we were in S7 of Buffy. We knew that this would be the last, and we'd heard the spoiler that Spike was going to be on "Angel." And so I started thinking about how Buffy was going to end. What if...

Yeah, that "what-if" spawned my first ever story. And it was fairly horrid. And it got royally Jossed, of course. But bigsciencybrain said "You can't leave them there!" And thus was born a (much-better) sequel...and a prequel. And a sequel to that prequel. And then stuff based in the actual "happening now" 'verse. Those plot bunnies spawned thirty-some stories and innumerable drabbles. Most of the stories were in the AngelVerse, because that was still the 'verse I loved (especially with Spike and Illyria in S5); Buffy was a distant second.

By this time, online fandom had become a big part of my life. I had discovered LJ, made friends, gone to writercon...It was this huge, shared thing. And it was really neat, although I was generally at the fringes writing genfic. I stayed well out of the Spuffy/Bangel wars, although some of the batshit insanity from both quarters made me lift my eyebrow. I mean, I just didn't get that. Couldn't we all just get along? Besides, S6 had killed my inner Spuffy good and dead, so I was over in the corner shipping Spike and Fred, and later, Spike and Illyria.

And then I found "Firefly." And wrote twenty stories in fourteen months. And I still shake my fist at Fox for killing the show before it really got a chance to get started. But I'd discovered other things as well, like crossovers... and specficmarkets. And they had a posting from The Town Drunk (which appears to be either defunct or down, alas), looking for funny SF.

Huh, sez I, eyeing "Black Market Beagles." I could scrape the serial numbers off that. And I did. I even added aliens, because I could! It was neat! They rejected it, of course, as did three other places I sent it to. Then I met my Writing Buddy (snarking_boojum) at MountainCon and gave the story to him. He made some suggestions for upping the tension, and now it's at Writers of the Future. Not only that, but I've got two other stories submitted to two other places, a fourth that needs to be edited into something readable, and a fifth in the works.

If it hadn't been for Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Joss, I might have never taken that step. They say your first million words is practice, and I wrote a quarter of that in the 'verses he generously gave us permission to play in.


Therefore, THANK YOU, JOSS. If it wasn't for you, this online community of fans wouldn't exist, I wouldn't have made the wonderful friends I have, and I probably wouldn't have started writing again--or, if I had, it would have taken me much longer to get to where I am.

Comments

[crayonbreakygal.livejournal.com]

I too got into the game very late. Season three of Angel late. Angel was what made me fall in love with the whole universe though. I loved Buffy, but it was indeed second place to Angel. I did go back and buy all the DVDs, loving every minute of each show. I too discovered fanfiction on a whim, just one night looking on the internet, bored out of my skull. I needed new stories that the shows weren't providing. This was how I fell in love with Wesley. And here I thought that Angel was my favorite.

Joss sure has made it wonderful for each and every one of us to read some great stories. Thanks for sharing.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

I'm tickled to read this. Ol' Joss might be too. You ought to find a fan-club site that can actually communicate with him, or at least tell you the name of his agent.

Me, well, as I mentioned, I tried to watch the show, and skated right off it. The self-conscious atmosphere of "Aren't we Cool? Couldn't you just squee at our coolness? As you're told to?" didn't help: It was like a bad combination of Trekkies and 21 Jump Street, with a heaping spoonful of Young Pioneers politically-correct group-think.

We define the good. Absorb. Conform. I think I'll just sit back and outlive that, thank you. (And indeed, has anyone seen Sarah Michelle Whatsername around lately? Dyed her hair, last paparazzi shot I saw of her - or was that C Diaz? These days both are on track to "Hollywood Squares"...)

On the other hand, so it spurs your own efforts, it could be Car 54 Where Are You? - what you do, is what matters.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Well, I think the general consensus is that the first season kind of sucked a little. It was still finding its feet, and it was a mid-season replacement, so they didn't even know if it was going to be picked up for another. However, IMO, S2 is made of awesome (because of Spike and Drusilla, naturally), S3 was pretty cool, and S4 and S5 ROCKED. Then S6 and S7 kind of sucked again.

And for me, Angel is still the shining show that died too soon. We needed a S6, dammit. Buffy would have been fine had it ended with S5, but Angel? Nonono. And Angel is the more "adult" show, which is probably why I like it better--it resonates more with me. Buffy was about kids growing up and all that entails, and Angel was more about people who were already grown-up that still had some personal growth issues to deal with.

YMMV, of course.

And I'm fairly certain that Joss is aware (at least on the periphery) of the outpouring of posts from yesterday (which was the tenth anniversary of the first airing of "Welcome to the Hellmouth"). He keeps his ear fairly low to the ground, and he really loves (most of) his fans.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Thank heavens for Internet search engines. They let me round off the corners of my squareness.

[palmaceae.livejournal.com]

I've always loved Angel more than Buffy. My friend got me started on Buffy in S6 and I watched and caught up on reruns, but Angel (S4) captured my heart. I attribute it to the fact that I don't enjoy watching high school based shows, and Angel was definitely more in the adult range. I remember how I first got into fanfiction, desperately searching for buffy/spike, and then getting into lilah/wesley and my motivation for writing fanfic was just to get a story into Notorious, the Lilah archive lol.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

I didn't start watching anything Whedon until the end of 2004, so I came really late. I didn't realize Firefly was his project, but I watched and told my husband he needed to see this "western in space" but the show jumped around, was pre-empted, and cancelled before he had a chance.

I still haven't seen all of Buffy yet, only a few seasons of Angel, and practically none of Firefly. I am so lucky!

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

I came late to Buffy myself. I started with s3. I'm the opposite of you in that Buffy (particularly Xander) is my first love and Angel a second. Firefly blows them both away. Partly because the hubby likes it as much as I do. :)

I'm grateful to Joss for being the impetus for me meeting so many wonderful online friends such as yourself. :)