I’m uber thrilled that this post prompted you to enter the Buffyverse….

Very well written; it’s funny, it’s sad, and yeah, I enjoy hanging out with the Scooby Gang. A lot.

The only episode I haven’t seen (I think) is Once More, With Feeling — the musical episode, and it is hilarious and sad and well written, etc

~Chris

PS: Yeah, my friends think I’m crazy

Great thoughts and observations…I guess we all like to be different…

So who are those people who want us to be the same?

P

As a teenager, no matter how much we desire to conform to some sort of standard set by our peers or parents we also end up feeling pressured by teachers, parents, friends or enemies into trying to be something different to what we really are.

As we get older we assume that those pressures will recede, but they keep coming from bosses, girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, governments, councils, neighbours, colleagues…

To me, the great thing about ‘Buffy’ is that it tells people that it’s OK to be yourself. That you don’t have to conform. Just as long as along the way you try to help people and do your bit to make the world just a little bit better.

Plus – Alyson Hannigan. Yowzer! She’s hot.

I can say that I have been in love with Buffy Anne Summers for many many years.

I was fifteen when the show was first shoved into that old slot on BBC 2 – the one usually reserved for Star Trek, and those other American imports that were a world away from the backward halls of Grange Hill and the no good spods of Byker Grove.

The opening lupine howl and dusty organ sputter of the Buffy theme kicked you straight in the neck and demanded that you watch – that you open your eyes and take in the wonderful and rich world breaking terror of it all.

From those opening few seconds I was hooked.

I had, at fifteen, already noticed that I was different from my other friends, boys who played football and followed teams, who smoked when they could, and drank when they probably shouldn’t.

I was a reader. Of great American comics, and the greater British ones, of classic books, and shlocky science fiction magazines. I knew Captain Kirk’s middle name, and what T.A.R.D.I.S stood for (despite a long standing hatred of Doctor Who). I liked girls who never quite liked me enough, and pretending that never bothered me.

I suppose, all said and done, I was different.

Buffy was a show that told you being different was okay – damn, better than okay, near essential if you intend to save the world from a sticky apocalyptic end before dinner.

The show’s characters were not widely popular, or heart breakingly beautiful. They were a bookish Jewish nerd with huge self-esteem issues, a crack-mouthed funny kid from with a backward home life, and a former homecoming queen turned casebook problem causer with a penchant for burning down gyms.

Aside from the whole burny burny gym thing, I could relate to each of these people. And relating to them made me feel a little less different.

Buffy became about family for me, a weekly experience that gave comfort, warmth and humour (oh, and naughty tingly feelings when Buffy stopped being a rat and started being somewhat unclothed in season two’s ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ *ahem*).

I love Buffy because, as much of a godawful cliche it may well be, she and the gang have always made me feel welcome, feel part of the family, and that it was okay to be different.

But not to stab pointy wooden sticks into people. Oh no, that’s no good at all.

- A.

(To all those who may not know: Buffy continues in comic book form right now, with the official season eight being written by Joss and the gang at Dark Horse Comics!Join me in a ‘woo’ and a ‘hoo’, won’t you please)