more joy: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
For More Joy day, here's a celebration of the show that's given me more joy than any other. Come share your stories of Buffy joy with me!
In the last couple of weeks I've started rewatching Buffy from the beginning. I'm doing this partly because I need to prep for some long-delayed vid projects; I'm also doing it simply because it's been several years since I watched the show all the way through in order, and I miss it.
X-Files is the show that introduced me to the concept of fandom, but Buffy is the show that brought me into fandom, that made me want to seek out other people to talk to, that sent me stumbling out into the internet not just to observe but to engage. It's the show that inspired me to vid, and thus that introduced me either directly or indirectly to virtually (and possibly literally) all the people I've come to know and love in fandom. It's the show that introduced me to LJ: episode recaps and analysis by boniblithe and coffeeandink and vonnie_k were my first exposure to the site, and I'd start hitting refresh on their pages late every Tuesday night after talking on the phone with renenet for a while.
Firefly would, I think, have been my favorite show of all time if it had had a chance to continue and develop, but as it is I think Buffy still takes the prize, simply because there's so much more of it - we get to see the characters grow, we get to see stories spin out over seasons and years.
I finished rewatching S1 last night. S1 is without question my least favorite season; it's the least complex season, the season in which action is most dictated by external forces; in later seasons so much of what happens happens because of who the characters are, and even the external forces that prompt or shape storylines are important as much because they symbolize or catalyze or parallel internal developments as because they provide The Plot or The Conflict for a particular episode or season. And, you know, I could go on and on about the ways in which S1 is less interesting than the later seasons.
But instead I'm going to talk about why I love this season, because I do love it.
S1 is where all the later complexity comes from; it's what we're measuring the characters against when we look back seasons later and see how far they've come. By the end of S1, they've come a long way already: Giles has begun to care about his Slayer more than he knows how to express, to the point that he's willing to try to face The Master in her place; Xander's grown up enough to have a serious talk with Buffy about wanting to date her; Willow's decided that she's not willing to be Xander's second choice; Cordy's begun to appreciate what Buffy & co. do for the school, and for her, on a daily basis; even Joyce is more supportive and less flaky than she is in the first few episodes.
And Buffy - oh, Buffy. "Prophecy Girl" had me weeping uncontrollably in that scene - you know the one I'm talking about - in which Buffy quits; she overhears Giles and Angel talking ("Buffy will face The Master, and she will die"), and, god, SMG just knocks it out of the park in this scene, doesn't she? Buffy's sixteen. She doesn't want to die.
But she goes to her death anyway, eyes open.
And yeah, they save her. (Still, her death has real and lasting consquences that reverberate down through the seasons, which is another of the many things I love about the show.) But the point is that Buffy can't know that. She listens to Willow telling her about the vampires at the school, the world that's no longer theirs, and suddenly a world with an open Hellmouth is real to her in the same way that her death became real to her mere hours before, and she makes her choice, because the world isn't abstract anymore: it's people, people she loves - and here's where I start crying again. She picks up her crossbow and walks out, in her pretty white dress, to face her fate.
But she doesn't face it alone; Buffy's special, Buffy survives, because from the very first episode of the show she is not, or not only, "one girl in all the world"; she has friends, a community, ultimately a family. In "Prophecy Girl," Buffy's the only one who can do what she does, but the people she loves, the people who love her, are already the ones who make sure that she is able to do those things.
Knowing what lies ahead adds so much resonance to so many scenes in the first season: Buffy trapped in the coffin in "Nightmares" offers a terrifying preview of "Bargaining"; her pleading with her mother to take her away for a weekend in "Prophecy Girl" is revised in her insistence that Joyce leave town for "Graduation Day"; her decision to face The Master, scared but hopeful ("maybe - maybe I'll take him with me"), is a heartbreaking contrast to her exhaustion and despair in "The Gift." Watching this season, now, means watching with the rest of the show overlaid on it, knowing what's to come: all the battles, all the banter, all the broken hearts.
We know that, in the years that follow, this girl who marches out to defy prophecy will not stand up alone. And that's fandom for me, too; each of us faces her life alone, but we gather here, together, for the strength and support and perspective that can only come from sharing those lives, sharing our frustrations and enthusiasms and expertise. Slaying brought the Scoobies together, but it's love that keeps them - and us - together. It's love that saves the world - not some abstract love for the world, but the affections that make the world real to us, that make it a place worth saving.
I am so grateful to renenet for introducing me to this show, to all the longtime fans who made it easy and joyful for a latecomer to jump in with both feet, and to the show itself for giving me some of the best experiences, both emotional and intellectual and creative, in my fannish history.
My Our show.
In the last couple of weeks I've started rewatching Buffy from the beginning. I'm doing this partly because I need to prep for some long-delayed vid projects; I'm also doing it simply because it's been several years since I watched the show all the way through in order, and I miss it.
X-Files is the show that introduced me to the concept of fandom, but Buffy is the show that brought me into fandom, that made me want to seek out other people to talk to, that sent me stumbling out into the internet not just to observe but to engage. It's the show that inspired me to vid, and thus that introduced me either directly or indirectly to virtually (and possibly literally) all the people I've come to know and love in fandom. It's the show that introduced me to LJ: episode recaps and analysis by boniblithe and coffeeandink and vonnie_k were my first exposure to the site, and I'd start hitting refresh on their pages late every Tuesday night after talking on the phone with renenet for a while.
Firefly would, I think, have been my favorite show of all time if it had had a chance to continue and develop, but as it is I think Buffy still takes the prize, simply because there's so much more of it - we get to see the characters grow, we get to see stories spin out over seasons and years.
I finished rewatching S1 last night. S1 is without question my least favorite season; it's the least complex season, the season in which action is most dictated by external forces; in later seasons so much of what happens happens because of who the characters are, and even the external forces that prompt or shape storylines are important as much because they symbolize or catalyze or parallel internal developments as because they provide The Plot or The Conflict for a particular episode or season. And, you know, I could go on and on about the ways in which S1 is less interesting than the later seasons.
But instead I'm going to talk about why I love this season, because I do love it.
S1 is where all the later complexity comes from; it's what we're measuring the characters against when we look back seasons later and see how far they've come. By the end of S1, they've come a long way already: Giles has begun to care about his Slayer more than he knows how to express, to the point that he's willing to try to face The Master in her place; Xander's grown up enough to have a serious talk with Buffy about wanting to date her; Willow's decided that she's not willing to be Xander's second choice; Cordy's begun to appreciate what Buffy & co. do for the school, and for her, on a daily basis; even Joyce is more supportive and less flaky than she is in the first few episodes.
And Buffy - oh, Buffy. "Prophecy Girl" had me weeping uncontrollably in that scene - you know the one I'm talking about - in which Buffy quits; she overhears Giles and Angel talking ("Buffy will face The Master, and she will die"), and, god, SMG just knocks it out of the park in this scene, doesn't she? Buffy's sixteen. She doesn't want to die.
But she goes to her death anyway, eyes open.
And yeah, they save her. (Still, her death has real and lasting consquences that reverberate down through the seasons, which is another of the many things I love about the show.) But the point is that Buffy can't know that. She listens to Willow telling her about the vampires at the school, the world that's no longer theirs, and suddenly a world with an open Hellmouth is real to her in the same way that her death became real to her mere hours before, and she makes her choice, because the world isn't abstract anymore: it's people, people she loves - and here's where I start crying again. She picks up her crossbow and walks out, in her pretty white dress, to face her fate.
But she doesn't face it alone; Buffy's special, Buffy survives, because from the very first episode of the show she is not, or not only, "one girl in all the world"; she has friends, a community, ultimately a family. In "Prophecy Girl," Buffy's the only one who can do what she does, but the people she loves, the people who love her, are already the ones who make sure that she is able to do those things.
Knowing what lies ahead adds so much resonance to so many scenes in the first season: Buffy trapped in the coffin in "Nightmares" offers a terrifying preview of "Bargaining"; her pleading with her mother to take her away for a weekend in "Prophecy Girl" is revised in her insistence that Joyce leave town for "Graduation Day"; her decision to face The Master, scared but hopeful ("maybe - maybe I'll take him with me"), is a heartbreaking contrast to her exhaustion and despair in "The Gift." Watching this season, now, means watching with the rest of the show overlaid on it, knowing what's to come: all the battles, all the banter, all the broken hearts.
We know that, in the years that follow, this girl who marches out to defy prophecy will not stand up alone. And that's fandom for me, too; each of us faces her life alone, but we gather here, together, for the strength and support and perspective that can only come from sharing those lives, sharing our frustrations and enthusiasms and expertise. Slaying brought the Scoobies together, but it's love that keeps them - and us - together. It's love that saves the world - not some abstract love for the world, but the affections that make the world real to us, that make it a place worth saving.
I am so grateful to renenet for introducing me to this show, to all the longtime fans who made it easy and joyful for a latecomer to jump in with both feet, and to the show itself for giving me some of the best experiences, both emotional and intellectual and creative, in my fannish history.
My Our show.