Warning: Many, many GIFs ahoy, because I started looking for just a couple for illustration, and then ended up with fifty open tabs. So, consider yourself lucky I restrained myself with a mere ten (well, eleven), I guess.
Anyway,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my very second fandom, but the first one where I went onto the internet because I desperately wanted to hear what other people thought. (
X-Men was my first fandom, but at that point the internet wasn't quite ascendant--I had to download text-file fanfiction via FTP through AOL, if that tells you anything about my creaky age.) I remember seeing commercials for it on The WB, and it was all monster-fighting. I, who have long opposed being terrified, thought it looked either too hokey or too scary, so I didn't watch it. I think I caught a glimpse of the one with the puppet, but honestly, I'm not too sure about the timeline.
What hooked me, though, I remain very clear about: I watched the episode "Angel," probably when it was rerun, and discovered the kinda boringly handsome guy was actually a vampire. And
that was
interesting.
I'll save my chatter about Angel, just in case I end up doing a post about
Angel the series, but I will say that the quirky silliness of the main cast won me over pretty quickly. Buffy was struggling to have a regular high school life, even though it was never meant to be. Willow and Xander were adorable and never quite fit in. Giles was bookish and constantly exasperated. And they sort of got thrown together, and then they were family. Then they
fit. These were characters that seemed to emerge from pieces of my soul.
The best season, I think, was season three, when we had Faith's arc. Faith, who was nothing like me and exactly like me, because being a teenager is complicated. But she didn't give a damn what anybody else thought of her, except maybe, every once in a while, someone would show a flash of thoughtless (or, incredibly intentional) affection, and then she was theirs, forever. I love Faith.
In the same vein were Cordelia and Anya: blunt, confident, and beautifully enclosed. As I've mentioned before, Joss's brand of feminism has its flaws, but the range and unapologetic importance of the women in this universe is amazing. Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Faith, Anya, Tara, Dawn. Joyce, Jenny Calendar, Kendra. Harmony, Maggie Walsh, Amy, Kennedy. Drusilla, Darla, Glory.
I love the fluidity of the show, the way it could address everyday horrors realistically, even in dreams and metaphors. "Restless" remains my favorite episode, even though it's different from pretty much every other episode of the show.
I love how it played with history, flipping characters from hero to villain, from sidekick to goddess, from unrepentant sociopath to...more enlightened sociopath?
Okay, possibly "Restless" is tied with "Fool for Love" in my heart. Spike is awful and selfish and sharply poetic (even though his poetry was not). I remember being heavily invested in relationships (ah, ships), but never in an X versus Y situation. They were just fun ways to explore and reveal. (As, hopefully, anybody who has read my fanfiction saw as evident.)
Buffy (and its subsequent sprawl of
Angel and the comics) was the first and only time I was really consumed by a single magnificent text. I love quips and banter, and I love sprawling mythology, and I love getting teary when I watch TV because everything has weight, and everything matters. Also, while Joss Whedon has certainly evolved as a storyteller, he's constant in a lot of ways, and I love most of them.
Heh.
