All the cool kids are doing it...
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.
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.