Bye, Bye, Buffy


That wet clacking sound you hear is the thousands of online Buffy fans typing their little bereft hearts out.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer has left the building . I was something of a fan come lately. I joined the Buffy train in the fourth season. My first episode was I believe, The Freshman.

I felt her pain, I too, suffered the heartbreak of a soul sucking demon roommate. Buffy got off easy in comparison as she got to send the soul sucker back to hell, I had to share space with the wack job for the whole semester.

Buffy got to live with her best friend. I got the seven draws. The soul sucker was my second roommate that semester. I lived through in the three years I was dorm bound with

Greeky – Moved out with out telling me one week into the semester and left me with SSD.

Soulsucky – Acutely mentally ill. Paranoid, OCD, stalker, and PMS related mood swings that would put Peter Banner to shame. Her suicide atempt was an opera staged by a daycare class. Did you know that if you hold your breath under the covers that while you may eventually pass out, you would not die? She got mad at me because I didn’t realize that she tried to kill herself. I thought putting her in the shower, washing her sheets and putting her back in bed was sufficient attention to her drama. Eventually she got into cleanliness to the point that she caused herself a nasty infection. I won’t go into the whole unplugging the phone because I got more phone calls then she did, rolling up the carpet because it touched the door, carving a line on our shared desk so my stuff wouldn’t touch hers or waking me up at 2 am with her radio because she came back to the room and found me watching TV while her favorite radio show was on. She also locked me out of the room 16 times. One could never tell of she had gone down the hall to the bathroom or had left town for the weekend. I hope she ended up puffy.

Smelly - Enough curry in your diet and you are your own scented candle.

The next few went very fast. I had moved to a new dorm and right before the semester started they discovered Asbestos.

At the holding dorm I had the best roommate ever. She spoke no English and worked all the time. I was in heaven. I never had to see her or make small talk. Good Times.

New Dorm.

Tempy – Out so fast I never knew her name.

Slutty – Dated a rugby team.

Thiefy – “Borrowed” my stuff while I wasn’t in the room, Stole. Potato, Patato.

Cindy – The only room mate the last an entire school year. The only room mate that I knew both her first and last name, the only roommate who went to bed in full make up and hair spray every night.

The fans are not just keening and wailing over the loss of an icon. They are mourning something that has provided them with an outlet for their creativity, their opinions and their capacity for rationilization.

They are losing their community, their friends, cyber or otherwise. They are worried they are going to lose an aspect of themselves. You can be the most unpopular kid at school but still be Scooby1 online and have a whole world of friends, who want to talk to you, respect your opinions and knowledge base and think you are funny/smart/clever. There are huge communities out there dedicated to aspects of the minutia of the Buffyverse. There isn’t a character too small not to have a least one web page or mailing list dedicated to it. No episode so wretched that it hasn’t been ret coned or fanwanked into sensibility.

We know all The Scoobys, these “people”. We know where they live, where they work, where they play and who they sleep with. Every event minor or earth shaking in their lives is celebrated or mourned with passion. We love them.

The web sites will stop updating, the mailing lists will get fewer and fewer posts to them…

Life sucked for Buffy. She not only had the weight of the safety of the world on her shoulders, she also carried weight of the banner of Girl Power and it’s attendant demons.She made Dark Angel, Alias, and all the other size 2, 98 pound, 19 year old crime fighters possible and probable and profitable, with no Buffy there never would have been a Syd.

Not only did she have to kill demons and stereotypes, she had to do it in halter-tops and leather jeans while dancing backwards in strappy sandles.


WaaaaaaaaahhSpike!!!wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!Tapsnifftapsniftashiffwhimper What are we going to do now?