Waves of Nostalgia: Buffy is Twenty Today
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| You know, slaying is a great workout Image via mugley |
Pete, John, Lenny and me were sitting in a nearly empty
theater on a July night. I had just graduated from high school and was enjoying
an easy summer job. We had heard about this amazingly silly sounding film
coming out and decided to go. Tickets bought at the box office and they handed
us promo kits since we were one of the first twenty to arrive for the show. As
it turns out everyone in the audience got one. There were less than ten of us. We
wound up popping in the plastic fangs, smacking each other with the pom-pom
from the little black cardboard casket, waiting for the film to start.
Time passed. We howled in laughter. I had no idea till years
later who Joss even was, nor how truly unhappy with the film he was. It didn’t
matter then. Truth be told, it doesn’t matter to me now. I had an amazingly
good time that night. And maybe that’s the whole point to this, the wash of
nostalgia that seems to flavor so much of our geekdom and pervades our fandom.
I was working an easy job, I had a car, I was gaming three nights a week, no
classes, not much in the way of responsibilities. It was more than the movie
itself that makes me so fond of the movie; it was the time and place and people in
which I first experienced that movie.
I didn’t watch the TV series for years. I didn’t even give
it a chance at first. Sure, the movie was a blast and funny as hell, but you
couldn’t create a sustainable series off that. It wasn’t till nearly the end of
the run that I gave any of the episodes a chance. I was impressed, but it still
wasn’t enough to get me on board. It wasn’t till the heartbreak of Firefly that
I went back, wanting to know more about Joss and what he had done. I devoured
all seven seasons of Buffy in two weeks. I forced myself through Angel (the
more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?). I had a love-hate
relationship with Dollhouse. I spread from my core fandom of gaming into the
Wheadonverse and the people I met there. I have no regrets. In part because
most of the fans I’ve met have been awesome people. But I cannot deny that part
of it is whenever I sink deep into fandom discussions and viewings and projects
that I am eighteen and laughing once more.
I just wanted to put up something short on the 20th
anniversary of Buffy, but now I’m thinking about things; always a dangerous
moment. DC Geeks is sponsoring a showing of Iron Sky in the near future. It may
be horrible. It may be camptastic. It may be amazing. But I’m going with friends. And stressed as
I am, life isn’t so bad when I’ve got them around. Maybe this is my time to
just sink into the moment, shout at space Nazis on the screen, laugh with those
I care about, and start some new waves of nostalgia to warm me in the unknown
future.
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