(no subject)
So it's 10 years ago today that the first ever episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was aired. I can actually remember sitting down to watch it! This makes me feel old! But, more importantly, it also made me decide to write down a rambling remembrance of the 7 years of Buffy watching.
The year that Buffy premiered a friend and I had been obsessed with the Buffy movie. We'd been watching it almost weekly for months, so when I heard there was going to be a television series I had no hesitation about watching it. I found out about the show from an ad on the back of a Seventeen magazine which featured Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nicholas Brendon. My reaction: "that boy is cute... hope he's not a vampire" (clearly Joss had not yet taught me the hotness of vampires ;) )
That brought me to this very night, 10 years ago. Sitting in the attic of my parents house, vcr remote in hand because I'd fallen into the habit of recording television (and as the years went on I was SO glad to have those Buffy tapes) and ready to see what this show would be all about. I just loved it instantly. Loved the ideas there, loved the actors, loved the Joss cliffhanger ending (way to make me have to come back the next week!) and just knew this was a show I was going to be watching for quite a while.
As the first season progressed YTV (the Canadian station that was airing the show at the time) reran episodes like mad. I guess they had lots of timeslots to fill and Buffy got ratings. I wasn't complaining. Although I can distinctly remember my mom complaining by the third or fourth viewing of 'The Witch.' There was a lot of "oh you're not watching this show again!?" but yes, I was, and I wans't stopping.
By second season I was fully hooked, reading spoilers every week, rarely missing an episode (it helped to get the show on a school night, where else would I be?) and with the introduction of Spike suddenly my mother started tuning in... She maintained until the end of the second season that she wasn't really a fan, she was just watching because it gave us something to do together. I knew differently when I was housesitting during 'Becoming pt. 2' and the house had a big screen TV so I went over there to watch the finale by myself and came home to find my mom had watched it on her own. I'd created a fan :) Second season was also the year I abandoned spoilers because from the beginning through 'Innocence' I had been reading every spoiler I could get my hands on and while I still loved the show I found that as soon as I gave up spoilers I just was at the edge of my seat every week.
The summer between second and third season was the first time I went to NYC and they still had the Warner Brothers store in Times Square so my friend Ashley (another Buffy fan) and I hit it up for some merch. I got two shirts and a Buffy shot glass which I then used for drinking jolt during the show every week. Yes, shots of jolt to a high strung fan LOL so not the best plan but amusing nonetheless.
Third season, again still fabulous. I didn't really like the character of Faith the first viewing (how the hell that happened I do not know.) This was of course the infamous year where not one but two episodes were pulled due to the Columbine shootings. I completely understood the need to have 'Earshot' pulled. The decision to pull 'Graduation Day pt. 2' was just absurd. However I lived in the part of Canada where we still got the episodes on Mondays whereas the US got them on Tuesdays. 'Graduation Day pt. 2' was slotted to air on Victoria Day, a Canadian holiday, and the decision to pull it was made very last minute by the WB. So on Monday when they were calling up here to get the episode pulled, no one was around to actually get it off the air and we got our episode :) I can remember going onto The Bronze after the episode aired and having a whole bunch of people from the US asking if I'd taped the episode and fully freaking out, and then I spent much of the remainder of that summer dubbing the finale over and over and over for people (at cost, I was not one of the people who had that up on Ebay... I appreaciate the chance to make money but I coudn't rip off people for something I'd desperately want were the shoe on the other foot.) This is where I began to appreciate the character of Faith who is now one of my favourites. Oh and I also had some lovely person trade me their copy of Earshot which they'd got from some relative at the WB for a copy of the finale. That darn tape arrived the day I had an exam for my summer school course and I had to write the exam before I could allow myself to watch it!
Third season was also the year my Dad taught a television course and part of the project was to analyse a show. Someone had chose to do Buffy and so my Dad brought home their final project because he thought I'd be amused by it. It turned out I caught the person plagerising an entire section from The Cross and Stake website. They'd had to give a description of each character and this girl had just printed the entire screens. Totally cheaping out on the assignment, how hard would it have been to write a paragraph about the main characters?!
At some point during this summer I also made a tape of all of the Faith episodes for my friend Ava and then decided as I had the two vcrs hooked up I was going to put all of my episodes in order, without commercials. I had fun with that project. My mother thought I was insane to watch that much Buffy at once... until the Spike episodes came up and suddenly she had time to sit for a few hours and watch ;)
Into season four now where we also had Angel. Clearly I was taping Angel as well and just would switch tapes between the shows to now keep everything in order, I had a system, makes me look a little neurotic but it was a system ;)
While season four wasn't the best season for me it still brought gems such as 'Hush' which I watched the day before I had a huge French test (during which I was insanely jumpy thinking that every noise from behind me was a Gentleman floating down the aisle) and also before I had a poem due for my English class. I of course watched Buffy and Angel instead of writing the poem. Not the best plan but I figured I'd just dash something off in the morning. Which I did, and as 'Hush' was a the forefront of my mind still I used that as my inspiration (I still have the poem in my Buffy agenda) my teacher "didn't understand it" and gave me a 'F' in response I helped her to understand it by bringing in an episode summary and a picture someone online had drawn and was kind enough to scan for me. I'm fairly certain she didn't raise the grade but by that point I'd almost given up on her as a teacher anyways so I didn't much care.
The fourth season was also the year in which I made my Buffy episode guide agenda, I still have it and one day do have to disassemble the thing just to get the pages into protective pages. The poor thing is falling apart. Does everyone remember those little agendas you'd get in highschool every year? Every year mine would be decorated with magazine clippings and whatever else I could find, nothing themed before really. This year I started from the first episode and covered each page with quotes (all colour coded) and pictures and whatever else represented that episode. You can see where my parents got a colour printer and suddenly the pages got much larger, and as episodes got more and more quotable. I made the last page during the summer for the episode 'Restless' and on that little agenda page is I believe 10 computer printout pages of information and pictures plus magazine clippings, it took me almost 8 hours from start to finish of that one page making everything fit. But it worked out and is quite the memory book. I wish I'd had the time to do the last 3 seasons but as I got older there just wasn't the time anymore. My friend Ashley and I would play quote games using that thing though, she's pick a quote out and see if I could name the speaker and episode, I rocked at that game. Oh Math class, is it any wonder math was not my forte? ;)
Fourth season was also the year my Mom started watching Buffy and Angel on her own as I'd yell at the screen too much if Riley was around, that character bugged me! So my Dad and brother had to put up with both televisions in our house being occupied with Buffy and Angel, I don't think they were much amused.
I believe it was my birthday during fourth season where my Dad managed the best surprise EVER. We don't do big surprise presents in my family very often because no one saw the point in buying something expensive for somone if it wasn't what they wanted. For example my Christmas present this year was all stuff from www.buffystore.com and my Dad just let me know the price limit and had me choose what I wanted for my big present. But for my birthday this year I had this big surprise box which was puzzling. I open it up and right on top is this fantastic stake!
My reaction: "Daddy, you made me my very own stake, that's adorable"
Dad: "you should read the letter that came with that"
Me: *opens letter* "why on earth did you make Buffy stationary?!" *reads and realizes that he got me a freaking stake from the show from one of the writers (I promised I wouldn't tell which one and I'm sticking to that)* "SQUEEEEEEE"
...and then I proceeded to chase my brother with the stake :) I also got a lot of fantastic things from the show, comic, books, a Marc Blucas personalized autograph (he seems like a fantastic guy... still can't like the character of Riley), script, shooting locations (I was soooooo tempted to take a trip to LA to visit some of them... parents nixed that) But the stake is still my favourite thing. I now have it autographed by Juliet Landau and hope to maybe add some more of the cast to that if they come through TO again :)
Fifth season was the last season I was at home to watch Buffy. I still remember my reaction of watching the first episode and having the "OMGWTFSISTER!?!?!?!?!" moment at the end and then spending the next week frantically reviewing old episodes to see how in the hell I'd missed that. Oh Joss, you are brilliant! I was taking my extra semester at my ghetto school this year and since I was SO bored in classes I ended up keeping a notebook where I'd just write pages and pages of review of the episodes and my own theories. Alas, I have no idea what happened to that book.
My other story for the fifth season is going to visit my friend Chris in Montreal to watch 'The Body.' She had a satellite and so got the episodes on Monday (my network had moved the episodes to Tuesday, thanks in part I think to the airing of 'Graduation Day pt 2'.) We'd met in the RENT line the summer before, I was wearing my BtVS tshirt, and had the agenda with me, she was the last person in line and when I went to get her to sign the list she noticed my shirt and I happily spent the rest of my day at the end of the line fangirling away. So she'd invited me to Montreal, I'd graduated from my last semester of highschool and figured this could be my mini graduation present to myself. Away I went to Montreal, loved the whole trip which is a blur of parties, Buffy and a Wicca Shop. I was still believing that Buffy's mom could be alive... I really really did! She was so my TV mom, other people had Loreli Gilmore, I had Joyce Summers. About 10 minutes before the episode started Chris actually sat me down because she'd read the spoilers and she had to tell me to brace myself because things might not be okay... and clearly they weren't. What amazing television. It hurt to watch. I cry at everything, so my crying, not a surprise. Chris had to keep leaving the room, her Mom and Dad both were crying, I don't think her Dad ever really watched the show outside of that episode, just amazing television.
Moving out to school in the summer between season 5 and 6 was quite the ordeal, partly because it involved de-decorating my room. By this point (and oh how I wish I had pictures!) my room was floor to ceiling, and the door, bookshelves, and pretty much any surface I had) covered in BtVS magazine articles and pictures. I was told they all had to come down or they'd be ripped down while I was gone. So I spent days taking them down and putting them into protective pages and into binders, I now have 2 and a half gigantic binders full of all of these articles boxed up at my parents house. A little slice of time in there :) So it was goodbye to watching Buffy on my own, drinking a Jolt every week (as though I needed to be more hyper about this show) and on to living in residence...
But just before that, I believe this was the summer that the Much Music Video Awards had both Nicholas Brendon and Amber Benson (originally it was supposed to be David Boreanaz but he cancelled and we got Amber :) ) as guests :) This is clearly the summer that Dell was beyond awesome because she agreed to come with me to line up all day so I could meet them. On two conditions of course: 1. I would sell her my soul for 5 years, by which we meant that anything she wanted me to do, any event she wanted a friend to come to, I couldn't say no. and 2. I was not to talk to any other Buffy fans for the day - this one turned out to be a great idea because the only Buffy fan I saw that day turned out to be stalking Amber Benson so I was glad to not talk with her. So we made posters, using much glitter which ended up all over the floor of my room... then was swept under the carpet, don't think my mom found it for at least a month... anyways, we lined up for 14 and a half hours, somehow ended up on the good side of the street and I got my posters that I made autographed :) Huge thanks still go out to the boys in front of me who were there to see Shakira but who, upon seeing a screenshot of Tara kissing Willow, decided that when that girl came by they'd let me go in front of them and who then proceeded to lift me half over the baracade to get my autograph! Actually the threat for me was that if Nicholas Brendon didn't come anywhere near the autograph section I was going over the baracade. I had friends watching the red carpet pre-show who were half expecting to see that happen. But unlike people like Nickelback and Nelly Furtado and Avril Lavigne (who were the biggest snobby people I'd seen - get over yourselves already!) both Nicholas Brendon and Amber Benson signed autographs for everyone and were just wonderful.
Season six, for which I was living in a residence with 4 televisions for about 200 students. One of my bigger worries was "how am I going to get to watch Buffy!?" but by the end of the first week someone found out I liked the show (gee wonder how they figured that out?) and let me know that there was a guy who had beat up some hockey fan the previous year to get to watch Buffy instead of hockey on Saturday nights. So I just made sure I was in that lounge every Saturday and I didn't ever have to worry about fighting for the TV. Also one of my neighbours had her Mom tape Angel for her and brought the tape back with her every week so my friend Carma and I got to keep up with that show as well. LOL I just remembered Carm and I used to sing along to the BtVS musical all of the time! So fun :)
Season seven, a sad year because it was the end. Fortunately I was in a different residence this year and every room had access to cable and I brought my own TV up so as it was my TV I was able to watch Buffy every week. I gave up Angel (my parents were still taping so I could catch up in the summer) because C.S.I was on and my roommate and our friends wanted to watch that one. I also missed out on watching Firefly this year, alas, I know better now at least!
This year Buffy was even my alibi when one of the girls on my floor when absolutely crazy (she's a whole other story, just believe me when I say crazy) and insisted that myself and a friend had been outside her room yelling and disturbing her. But fortunately no one believed her because we were both Buffy fans and she insisted this was going on during a new episode which meant we were in my room with the door shut so no one would disturb the show and everyone else on my floor knew there was no way I'd have been missing a new episode just to go and make noise in the hallway.
I also decided to stay up in Sudbury for the summer this year and the residence cut the cable for the summer months (boo urns!) so I was going to miss May sweeps. That was a fun phone call home
Me" "hi Daddy, I really need you to send me those tapes you're making by express post, every week in May"
Dad: "can't I just send them all together at the end of May?"
Me: "Not really... it's the very last year I can't wait a month!"
...and then Viv introduced me to Bit Torrent and it was still a new enough program that it had episdoes online days before they were aired. So my Dad didn't need to mail me my tapes and I was a happy camper. I ended up watching Buffy the night before it was aired and being able to call my Mom (who was still watching much to my Dad's frustration lol) and tease her because I knew who was going to die.
And then it was over, but not really. Fanfiction, fan art, fan videos, etc are still going strong. We're getting a comic book series for a canon season eight of Buffy very soon! This is a show that just touched so many people and still is gaining new fans (my roommate from second year who made fun of my love for this show got in touch with me this past Christmas to apologize for making fun of me as her boyfriend had bought all 7 seasons and had made her watch and she loves the show now!)
Buffy was a show that introduced me to so much. Joss Whedon for one. To know that this brilliant man is working on more projects is fantastic, I cannot wait to see what he gives us next! On a smaller scale fanfiction was something I had never read and I still have some favourite authors from the Buffyverse. Making icons and music videos was something I started doing because I'd seen so many great Buffy ones and wanted to be able to make my own so I taught myself Adobe Photoshop and how to edit a basic video. Even becoming comfortable with posting boards and just online in general came from posting at The Bronze.
There are just so many memories tied up in this show. This was the show that helped to pull me through my teenage years, I grew up at the same time the characters did :) I think I still have stories and stories to tell that are tied in in one way or another to BtVS but that would make this monster of a post even longer so I think I should stop now... perhaps the other stories can be told on the 10 year anniversary of the last episode.
if you made it to the end of this post you are a trooper, go nab yourself a Buffy icon from my new Season 5 post which you can find HERE (seasons 1-4 are linked at the bottom if you prefer :) )
I'm still so proud of this show and glad that I am a fan.
The year that Buffy premiered a friend and I had been obsessed with the Buffy movie. We'd been watching it almost weekly for months, so when I heard there was going to be a television series I had no hesitation about watching it. I found out about the show from an ad on the back of a Seventeen magazine which featured Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nicholas Brendon. My reaction: "that boy is cute... hope he's not a vampire" (clearly Joss had not yet taught me the hotness of vampires ;) )
That brought me to this very night, 10 years ago. Sitting in the attic of my parents house, vcr remote in hand because I'd fallen into the habit of recording television (and as the years went on I was SO glad to have those Buffy tapes) and ready to see what this show would be all about. I just loved it instantly. Loved the ideas there, loved the actors, loved the Joss cliffhanger ending (way to make me have to come back the next week!) and just knew this was a show I was going to be watching for quite a while.
As the first season progressed YTV (the Canadian station that was airing the show at the time) reran episodes like mad. I guess they had lots of timeslots to fill and Buffy got ratings. I wasn't complaining. Although I can distinctly remember my mom complaining by the third or fourth viewing of 'The Witch.' There was a lot of "oh you're not watching this show again!?" but yes, I was, and I wans't stopping.
By second season I was fully hooked, reading spoilers every week, rarely missing an episode (it helped to get the show on a school night, where else would I be?) and with the introduction of Spike suddenly my mother started tuning in... She maintained until the end of the second season that she wasn't really a fan, she was just watching because it gave us something to do together. I knew differently when I was housesitting during 'Becoming pt. 2' and the house had a big screen TV so I went over there to watch the finale by myself and came home to find my mom had watched it on her own. I'd created a fan :) Second season was also the year I abandoned spoilers because from the beginning through 'Innocence' I had been reading every spoiler I could get my hands on and while I still loved the show I found that as soon as I gave up spoilers I just was at the edge of my seat every week.
The summer between second and third season was the first time I went to NYC and they still had the Warner Brothers store in Times Square so my friend Ashley (another Buffy fan) and I hit it up for some merch. I got two shirts and a Buffy shot glass which I then used for drinking jolt during the show every week. Yes, shots of jolt to a high strung fan LOL so not the best plan but amusing nonetheless.
Third season, again still fabulous. I didn't really like the character of Faith the first viewing (how the hell that happened I do not know.) This was of course the infamous year where not one but two episodes were pulled due to the Columbine shootings. I completely understood the need to have 'Earshot' pulled. The decision to pull 'Graduation Day pt. 2' was just absurd. However I lived in the part of Canada where we still got the episodes on Mondays whereas the US got them on Tuesdays. 'Graduation Day pt. 2' was slotted to air on Victoria Day, a Canadian holiday, and the decision to pull it was made very last minute by the WB. So on Monday when they were calling up here to get the episode pulled, no one was around to actually get it off the air and we got our episode :) I can remember going onto The Bronze after the episode aired and having a whole bunch of people from the US asking if I'd taped the episode and fully freaking out, and then I spent much of the remainder of that summer dubbing the finale over and over and over for people (at cost, I was not one of the people who had that up on Ebay... I appreaciate the chance to make money but I coudn't rip off people for something I'd desperately want were the shoe on the other foot.) This is where I began to appreciate the character of Faith who is now one of my favourites. Oh and I also had some lovely person trade me their copy of Earshot which they'd got from some relative at the WB for a copy of the finale. That darn tape arrived the day I had an exam for my summer school course and I had to write the exam before I could allow myself to watch it!
Third season was also the year my Dad taught a television course and part of the project was to analyse a show. Someone had chose to do Buffy and so my Dad brought home their final project because he thought I'd be amused by it. It turned out I caught the person plagerising an entire section from The Cross and Stake website. They'd had to give a description of each character and this girl had just printed the entire screens. Totally cheaping out on the assignment, how hard would it have been to write a paragraph about the main characters?!
At some point during this summer I also made a tape of all of the Faith episodes for my friend Ava and then decided as I had the two vcrs hooked up I was going to put all of my episodes in order, without commercials. I had fun with that project. My mother thought I was insane to watch that much Buffy at once... until the Spike episodes came up and suddenly she had time to sit for a few hours and watch ;)
Into season four now where we also had Angel. Clearly I was taping Angel as well and just would switch tapes between the shows to now keep everything in order, I had a system, makes me look a little neurotic but it was a system ;)
While season four wasn't the best season for me it still brought gems such as 'Hush' which I watched the day before I had a huge French test (during which I was insanely jumpy thinking that every noise from behind me was a Gentleman floating down the aisle) and also before I had a poem due for my English class. I of course watched Buffy and Angel instead of writing the poem. Not the best plan but I figured I'd just dash something off in the morning. Which I did, and as 'Hush' was a the forefront of my mind still I used that as my inspiration (I still have the poem in my Buffy agenda) my teacher "didn't understand it" and gave me a 'F' in response I helped her to understand it by bringing in an episode summary and a picture someone online had drawn and was kind enough to scan for me. I'm fairly certain she didn't raise the grade but by that point I'd almost given up on her as a teacher anyways so I didn't much care.
The fourth season was also the year in which I made my Buffy episode guide agenda, I still have it and one day do have to disassemble the thing just to get the pages into protective pages. The poor thing is falling apart. Does everyone remember those little agendas you'd get in highschool every year? Every year mine would be decorated with magazine clippings and whatever else I could find, nothing themed before really. This year I started from the first episode and covered each page with quotes (all colour coded) and pictures and whatever else represented that episode. You can see where my parents got a colour printer and suddenly the pages got much larger, and as episodes got more and more quotable. I made the last page during the summer for the episode 'Restless' and on that little agenda page is I believe 10 computer printout pages of information and pictures plus magazine clippings, it took me almost 8 hours from start to finish of that one page making everything fit. But it worked out and is quite the memory book. I wish I'd had the time to do the last 3 seasons but as I got older there just wasn't the time anymore. My friend Ashley and I would play quote games using that thing though, she's pick a quote out and see if I could name the speaker and episode, I rocked at that game. Oh Math class, is it any wonder math was not my forte? ;)
Fourth season was also the year my Mom started watching Buffy and Angel on her own as I'd yell at the screen too much if Riley was around, that character bugged me! So my Dad and brother had to put up with both televisions in our house being occupied with Buffy and Angel, I don't think they were much amused.
I believe it was my birthday during fourth season where my Dad managed the best surprise EVER. We don't do big surprise presents in my family very often because no one saw the point in buying something expensive for somone if it wasn't what they wanted. For example my Christmas present this year was all stuff from www.buffystore.com and my Dad just let me know the price limit and had me choose what I wanted for my big present. But for my birthday this year I had this big surprise box which was puzzling. I open it up and right on top is this fantastic stake!
My reaction: "Daddy, you made me my very own stake, that's adorable"
Dad: "you should read the letter that came with that"
Me: *opens letter* "why on earth did you make Buffy stationary?!" *reads and realizes that he got me a freaking stake from the show from one of the writers (I promised I wouldn't tell which one and I'm sticking to that)* "SQUEEEEEEE"
...and then I proceeded to chase my brother with the stake :) I also got a lot of fantastic things from the show, comic, books, a Marc Blucas personalized autograph (he seems like a fantastic guy... still can't like the character of Riley), script, shooting locations (I was soooooo tempted to take a trip to LA to visit some of them... parents nixed that) But the stake is still my favourite thing. I now have it autographed by Juliet Landau and hope to maybe add some more of the cast to that if they come through TO again :)
Fifth season was the last season I was at home to watch Buffy. I still remember my reaction of watching the first episode and having the "OMGWTFSISTER!?!?!?!?!" moment at the end and then spending the next week frantically reviewing old episodes to see how in the hell I'd missed that. Oh Joss, you are brilliant! I was taking my extra semester at my ghetto school this year and since I was SO bored in classes I ended up keeping a notebook where I'd just write pages and pages of review of the episodes and my own theories. Alas, I have no idea what happened to that book.
My other story for the fifth season is going to visit my friend Chris in Montreal to watch 'The Body.' She had a satellite and so got the episodes on Monday (my network had moved the episodes to Tuesday, thanks in part I think to the airing of 'Graduation Day pt 2'.) We'd met in the RENT line the summer before, I was wearing my BtVS tshirt, and had the agenda with me, she was the last person in line and when I went to get her to sign the list she noticed my shirt and I happily spent the rest of my day at the end of the line fangirling away. So she'd invited me to Montreal, I'd graduated from my last semester of highschool and figured this could be my mini graduation present to myself. Away I went to Montreal, loved the whole trip which is a blur of parties, Buffy and a Wicca Shop. I was still believing that Buffy's mom could be alive... I really really did! She was so my TV mom, other people had Loreli Gilmore, I had Joyce Summers. About 10 minutes before the episode started Chris actually sat me down because she'd read the spoilers and she had to tell me to brace myself because things might not be okay... and clearly they weren't. What amazing television. It hurt to watch. I cry at everything, so my crying, not a surprise. Chris had to keep leaving the room, her Mom and Dad both were crying, I don't think her Dad ever really watched the show outside of that episode, just amazing television.
Moving out to school in the summer between season 5 and 6 was quite the ordeal, partly because it involved de-decorating my room. By this point (and oh how I wish I had pictures!) my room was floor to ceiling, and the door, bookshelves, and pretty much any surface I had) covered in BtVS magazine articles and pictures. I was told they all had to come down or they'd be ripped down while I was gone. So I spent days taking them down and putting them into protective pages and into binders, I now have 2 and a half gigantic binders full of all of these articles boxed up at my parents house. A little slice of time in there :) So it was goodbye to watching Buffy on my own, drinking a Jolt every week (as though I needed to be more hyper about this show) and on to living in residence...
But just before that, I believe this was the summer that the Much Music Video Awards had both Nicholas Brendon and Amber Benson (originally it was supposed to be David Boreanaz but he cancelled and we got Amber :) ) as guests :) This is clearly the summer that Dell was beyond awesome because she agreed to come with me to line up all day so I could meet them. On two conditions of course: 1. I would sell her my soul for 5 years, by which we meant that anything she wanted me to do, any event she wanted a friend to come to, I couldn't say no. and 2. I was not to talk to any other Buffy fans for the day - this one turned out to be a great idea because the only Buffy fan I saw that day turned out to be stalking Amber Benson so I was glad to not talk with her. So we made posters, using much glitter which ended up all over the floor of my room... then was swept under the carpet, don't think my mom found it for at least a month... anyways, we lined up for 14 and a half hours, somehow ended up on the good side of the street and I got my posters that I made autographed :) Huge thanks still go out to the boys in front of me who were there to see Shakira but who, upon seeing a screenshot of Tara kissing Willow, decided that when that girl came by they'd let me go in front of them and who then proceeded to lift me half over the baracade to get my autograph! Actually the threat for me was that if Nicholas Brendon didn't come anywhere near the autograph section I was going over the baracade. I had friends watching the red carpet pre-show who were half expecting to see that happen. But unlike people like Nickelback and Nelly Furtado and Avril Lavigne (who were the biggest snobby people I'd seen - get over yourselves already!) both Nicholas Brendon and Amber Benson signed autographs for everyone and were just wonderful.
Season six, for which I was living in a residence with 4 televisions for about 200 students. One of my bigger worries was "how am I going to get to watch Buffy!?" but by the end of the first week someone found out I liked the show (gee wonder how they figured that out?) and let me know that there was a guy who had beat up some hockey fan the previous year to get to watch Buffy instead of hockey on Saturday nights. So I just made sure I was in that lounge every Saturday and I didn't ever have to worry about fighting for the TV. Also one of my neighbours had her Mom tape Angel for her and brought the tape back with her every week so my friend Carma and I got to keep up with that show as well. LOL I just remembered Carm and I used to sing along to the BtVS musical all of the time! So fun :)
Season seven, a sad year because it was the end. Fortunately I was in a different residence this year and every room had access to cable and I brought my own TV up so as it was my TV I was able to watch Buffy every week. I gave up Angel (my parents were still taping so I could catch up in the summer) because C.S.I was on and my roommate and our friends wanted to watch that one. I also missed out on watching Firefly this year, alas, I know better now at least!
This year Buffy was even my alibi when one of the girls on my floor when absolutely crazy (she's a whole other story, just believe me when I say crazy) and insisted that myself and a friend had been outside her room yelling and disturbing her. But fortunately no one believed her because we were both Buffy fans and she insisted this was going on during a new episode which meant we were in my room with the door shut so no one would disturb the show and everyone else on my floor knew there was no way I'd have been missing a new episode just to go and make noise in the hallway.
I also decided to stay up in Sudbury for the summer this year and the residence cut the cable for the summer months (boo urns!) so I was going to miss May sweeps. That was a fun phone call home
Me" "hi Daddy, I really need you to send me those tapes you're making by express post, every week in May"
Dad: "can't I just send them all together at the end of May?"
Me: "Not really... it's the very last year I can't wait a month!"
...and then Viv introduced me to Bit Torrent and it was still a new enough program that it had episdoes online days before they were aired. So my Dad didn't need to mail me my tapes and I was a happy camper. I ended up watching Buffy the night before it was aired and being able to call my Mom (who was still watching much to my Dad's frustration lol) and tease her because I knew who was going to die.
And then it was over, but not really. Fanfiction, fan art, fan videos, etc are still going strong. We're getting a comic book series for a canon season eight of Buffy very soon! This is a show that just touched so many people and still is gaining new fans (my roommate from second year who made fun of my love for this show got in touch with me this past Christmas to apologize for making fun of me as her boyfriend had bought all 7 seasons and had made her watch and she loves the show now!)
Buffy was a show that introduced me to so much. Joss Whedon for one. To know that this brilliant man is working on more projects is fantastic, I cannot wait to see what he gives us next! On a smaller scale fanfiction was something I had never read and I still have some favourite authors from the Buffyverse. Making icons and music videos was something I started doing because I'd seen so many great Buffy ones and wanted to be able to make my own so I taught myself Adobe Photoshop and how to edit a basic video. Even becoming comfortable with posting boards and just online in general came from posting at The Bronze.
There are just so many memories tied up in this show. This was the show that helped to pull me through my teenage years, I grew up at the same time the characters did :) I think I still have stories and stories to tell that are tied in in one way or another to BtVS but that would make this monster of a post even longer so I think I should stop now... perhaps the other stories can be told on the 10 year anniversary of the last episode.
if you made it to the end of this post you are a trooper, go nab yourself a Buffy icon from my new Season 5 post which you can find HERE (seasons 1-4 are linked at the bottom if you prefer :) )
I'm still so proud of this show and glad that I am a fan.