Memory lane
A fandom is a strange thing. I would have never believed I could be part of one 5 years ago...Yet here am I.
I remember it well. I got hooked on BTVS as they showed season 5 in its original language on the French cable
Until then I had only watched it from time to time (mostly because Giles first and Spike afterwards caught my interest) but I wasn't an avid fan and hadn't realized how good the writing was (it was dubbed in French ! ). I was already supporting Spuffy and hoped it would happen so I went to look for spoilers on the Internet while watching reruns of season 4 (a season I hadn't fully seen at the time!). I found the Slayer Spoiler site that led me to the Buffy Cross and Stake Spoiler Board. Season 6 was running in the States then. I started downloading episodes, and when I couldn't get one, fortunately we had Leoff's wildfeed !
So basically I came to the fandom in the middle of a 'shippers war. I lurked for a couple of month and in February 2002 I dared to post for the first time...coming out as a Love's Bitch during a bet on whether Spike was evil or not. The Spike haters thought they had won when Seeing Red aired, but Grave and Spike winning his soul back ended the bet...
Despite showing up at the worst time (a lot of posters were Spike fans so the anti-Spike were very virulent), I found that board very exciting because everyone was speculating on what would happen or parsing the previous episodes. And![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadowkat67 used to post her essays over there then. Somehow, probably because of the time zones, I managed to miss all the nasty stuff, and even became friends with people who weren't necessarily Spuffies. Then the Daily 'Shipping News thread was created and we could have fun while supporting various 'ships, without fighting each other. Those were silly days and we played a lot on Spike Mountain...
In June 2002, Jane fromthehappyblog made me read fanfictions and porn in English for the first time in my life! On her list of links, you could find Laure Alexander, sabershadowkat and nautibitz... I learnt a lot of new vocabulary during that summer! Then I became a member of a fanfic reading club and I found it was very cool...Do you remember, pjzallday, how you and I used to give the lowest marks to the fanfictions we were supposed to grade? I found herself_nyc 's stories and kantayra's "Double Spiked" then!
I can't believe it has been 4 years.!
I remember it well. I got hooked on BTVS as they showed season 5 in its original language on the French cable
Until then I had only watched it from time to time (mostly because Giles first and Spike afterwards caught my interest) but I wasn't an avid fan and hadn't realized how good the writing was (it was dubbed in French ! ). I was already supporting Spuffy and hoped it would happen so I went to look for spoilers on the Internet while watching reruns of season 4 (a season I hadn't fully seen at the time!). I found the Slayer Spoiler site that led me to the Buffy Cross and Stake Spoiler Board. Season 6 was running in the States then. I started downloading episodes, and when I couldn't get one, fortunately we had Leoff's wildfeed !
So basically I came to the fandom in the middle of a 'shippers war. I lurked for a couple of month and in February 2002 I dared to post for the first time...coming out as a Love's Bitch during a bet on whether Spike was evil or not. The Spike haters thought they had won when Seeing Red aired, but Grave and Spike winning his soul back ended the bet...
Despite showing up at the worst time (a lot of posters were Spike fans so the anti-Spike were very virulent), I found that board very exciting because everyone was speculating on what would happen or parsing the previous episodes. And
shadowkat67 used to post her essays over there then. Somehow, probably because of the time zones, I managed to miss all the nasty stuff, and even became friends with people who weren't necessarily Spuffies. Then the Daily 'Shipping News thread was created and we could have fun while supporting various 'ships, without fighting each other. Those were silly days and we played a lot on Spike Mountain...In June 2002, Jane from
thehappyblog made me read fanfictions and porn in English for the first time in my life! On her list of links, you could find Laure Alexander, sabershadowkat and nautibitz... I learnt a lot of new vocabulary during that summer! Then I became a member of a fanfic reading club and I found it was very cool...Do you remember, pjzallday, how you and I used to give the lowest marks to the fanfictions we were supposed to grade? I found herself_nyc 's stories and kantayra's "Double Spiked" then!I can't believe it has been 4 years.!
It feels like I have been sired as a Buffy fan during spring/summer 2002.
When season 7 started, I was like the others, waiting for Tuesday, bookmarking Buffy-related sites, analyzing transcripts and pictures, arguing online about Spike's soul, the new Big Bad, Principal Charming as we called Robin Wood back then...
BTVS changed my life, made me learn many things computer-wise, made me improve my poor English that I had NOT practiced since Highschool. I got to meet people who shared the same passion, I got to travel to the United States in July/August 2004 when Jane and Gadget invited me in Las Vegas...and over there I met in person other Buffy fans in Vegas, in California, in New York...among them afew LJ buddiespfeifferpack, psubrat, ladyemorgaine, scarlett2u...
Later in 2005 I metfranceslievens while she was in Paris and sister_luck and I went to see James Marsters in London.
At the beginning of 2005 a new change happened. After bitching for a while because I was sad to see so many fans leave Buffy boards for LJ , I got my own LJ in order to discuss other series and to post on movies. I never left my Internet home, the C&S, but I needed a site and LJ seemed easier than to build a website at the time. But when I look at my flist and at the archives on my LJ now, I can see it's still mostly about Buffy!
As much as I would it to be, my LJ isn't really a site on movies and tv programs, it's still part of the Buffy fandom. People who read it and leave comments are Buffy fans even though some of them rarely post about BTVS anymore. They are either writers or 'shippers (some are Spuffies, some are into 'ships I'm allergic to, but it doesn't matter) or simply Buffy watchers and Joss followers!
As for me, I have watched other series since BTVS ended, I enjoyed The Shield, Rescue Me, Carnivale's season 2, I even kept downloading episodes...first episodes of Ats of course, because Spike was on it, and then episodes of Lost, of Nip/Tuck season 3, of Battelstar Galactica...but none of them left me osbessed as BTVS used to, and still does. I don't feel the need to rewatch episodes over and over , to go back and analyze them again, to buy DVDs. And I have no desire to read fanfictions. As much as I like certain couples like Jin/Sun in Lost or Helo/Sharon in BSG, it never crossed my head to look for NC-17 stories featuring them!
I started watching Veronica Mars a couple of weeks ago on the cable, and it's intertaining indeed but it is defintely not Buffy either...Maybe I'm missing something, but the writing is far from being Buffy level IMO, and the characters don't move me the way BTVS characters used to.
Moving on isn't something I do easily. I haven't moved on from the C&S nor have I moved on from the Jossverse, and I don't want to. It works the same when it comes to 'ships. I can't imagine myself moving on from Spuffy to another OTP just to try something fresh or something different. I love Spike to bits, he's my favourite character but it's Spuffy that led me to read fanfictions, not my fantasies about Spike. I also have that Githania thing aschrissie_linnit would say, that many people don't understand but it's simply my naughty side showing...I could live without reading Githan fanfictions but I'm addicted to Spuffy stories. They brighten my days, they made everything tastier.
So thanks to all the Spuffy writers that might see this!
ETA: I posted in a hurry and left for the movies...so now I'm fixing typos....When season 7 started, I was like the others, waiting for Tuesday, bookmarking Buffy-related sites, analyzing transcripts and pictures, arguing online about Spike's soul, the new Big Bad, Principal Charming as we called Robin Wood back then...
BTVS changed my life, made me learn many things computer-wise, made me improve my poor English that I had NOT practiced since Highschool. I got to meet people who shared the same passion, I got to travel to the United States in July/August 2004 when Jane and Gadget invited me in Las Vegas...and over there I met in person other Buffy fans in Vegas, in California, in New York...among them afew LJ buddies
pfeifferpack, psubrat, ladyemorgaine, scarlett2u...Later in 2005 I met
franceslievens while she was in Paris and sister_luck and I went to see James Marsters in London.At the beginning of 2005 a new change happened. After bitching for a while because I was sad to see so many fans leave Buffy boards for LJ , I got my own LJ in order to discuss other series and to post on movies. I never left my Internet home, the C&S, but I needed a site and LJ seemed easier than to build a website at the time. But when I look at my flist and at the archives on my LJ now, I can see it's still mostly about Buffy!
As much as I would it to be, my LJ isn't really a site on movies and tv programs, it's still part of the Buffy fandom. People who read it and leave comments are Buffy fans even though some of them rarely post about BTVS anymore. They are either writers or 'shippers (some are Spuffies, some are into 'ships I'm allergic to, but it doesn't matter) or simply Buffy watchers and Joss followers!
As for me, I have watched other series since BTVS ended, I enjoyed The Shield, Rescue Me, Carnivale's season 2, I even kept downloading episodes...first episodes of Ats of course, because Spike was on it, and then episodes of Lost, of Nip/Tuck season 3, of Battelstar Galactica...but none of them left me osbessed as BTVS used to, and still does. I don't feel the need to rewatch episodes over and over , to go back and analyze them again, to buy DVDs. And I have no desire to read fanfictions. As much as I like certain couples like Jin/Sun in Lost or Helo/Sharon in BSG, it never crossed my head to look for NC-17 stories featuring them!
I started watching Veronica Mars a couple of weeks ago on the cable, and it's intertaining indeed but it is defintely not Buffy either...Maybe I'm missing something, but the writing is far from being Buffy level IMO, and the characters don't move me the way BTVS characters used to.
Moving on isn't something I do easily. I haven't moved on from the C&S nor have I moved on from the Jossverse, and I don't want to. It works the same when it comes to 'ships. I can't imagine myself moving on from Spuffy to another OTP just to try something fresh or something different. I love Spike to bits, he's my favourite character but it's Spuffy that led me to read fanfictions, not my fantasies about Spike. I also have that Githania thing as
chrissie_linnit would say, that many people don't understand but it's simply my naughty side showing...I could live without reading Githan fanfictions but I'm addicted to Spuffy stories. They brighten my days, they made everything tastier.So thanks to all the Spuffy writers that might see this!
no subject
Peut-être en suivant un lien à partir d'un site français.. Et je sais que je m'étais dit aussitôt :'Fan fiction? Qu'est-ce que c'est que ce principe? Pourquoi écrire des histoires imaginaires à partir de la série? La seule et unique histoire valable, c'est Joss qui l'écrit!!! '
Et puis je suis allée voir de quoi il s'agissait, et j'ai lu "Chains" , une ré-écriture époustouflante de la fin de la saison 2, par un auteur allemand ( qui écrivait en anglais ) et qui écrivait Spike/Buffy ! Donc totalement en avance par rapport aux spuffy fics qui sont vraiment apparues à la fin de la saison 5 je pense.
C'était trés bien écrit , avec des scènes d'un érotisme sulfureux.. et je suis irrémédiablement tombée dnas une attirance profonde pour les fanfictions, dévorant tout ce que je trouvais. Peu de temps aprés j'ai découvert Sabershadowkitten..
J'allais lire les analyses et spoilers de Leoff's wildfeed!
Je n'arrive pas à m'interesser à une nouvelle série, et ne le cherche pas vraiment. Mais si j'entendais beaucoup de bien sur une , j'essaierais.
Spuffy lead me to fanfiction : I started to fantasize about them as a couple as soon as season 5 began on M6 , and you can imagine how thrilled I was when we had the famous Spike's dream.
no subject
La première fois que j'ai vu BTVS c'était donc sur M6 et en fait je suis tombée sur la deuxième partie de Becoming. J'ai regardé car un ami à moi (Lieutenant de police!) m'avait dit que c'était bien, ce que j'avais beaucoup de mal à croire alors, pensant que c'était une série kitch pour ados avec des monstres à trois balles!
Ensuite j'ai regardé de temps en temps la saison 3, sans être plus que ça fascinée ( il manquait un ingrédient important dans cette saison!)et c'est quand j'ai eu le cable que tout a changé. J'ai découvert BTVS en V.O et j'ai commencé à regarder plus régulièrement. Entre les reprises de la saison 4 (dont Something Blue évidemment que j'ai quand même vu!)et la saison 5 sur Série Club, je suis vraiment devenue fan et pro-Spuffy.
J'ai vraiment tout vu dans le désordre en fait car la saison 2, je ne l'ai vue qu'en rediffusion. Quant à la saison 1, je l'ai vue beaucoup plus tard, en rediffusion aussi alors que je téléchargeais déjà la saison 6!
Enfin c'est vraiment grâce aux Dvds que j'ai pu avoir une vue d'ensemble un peu plus cohérente. J'ai d'abord acheté la saison 4 à l'été 2002, puis la saison 5 et dès que ceux de la saison 6 sont sortis en France je me suis jetée dessus!
J'aime beaucoup les séries, j'ai toujours aimé ça, et elles sont plutôt de grande qualité aux US (tous les bons scénaristes sont à la télé en fait!), mais Buffy c'était vraiment spécial.