Until S4, when I finally had an apartment with a television, I could only watch BtVS in the mod office ("mods" = "modules," I think, i.e. Where The Very Old Reel-to-Reel Linear Video Editing Went On) where the combination of very-old-tv-set and very-bad-basement-reception made everything show up pink, and the sound was much more noise than signal. So, though I technically saw a lot of S2/3 first-run, I wasn't really aware of it because I couldn't see or hear what I was watching. I finally picked up the show again with Fear, Itself.

Interesting that the two Halloween eps were good for conversion.

My conversion is weirder. Emmett's godmother was pushing the show hard, and I was open to it, but Emmett was just born and I didn't have time to watch TV.

On Salon I found the Buffy Quotable thread and once I could see the quality of the writing, knew I wanted to get into it. Started watching late S3 but randomly. Caught the whole media kerfuffle about Earshot and GDII. Watched seriously from S4 on, and went back to the Buffy episode guide (which was actually useful then) and read up on all the episodes I missed. Then I hit the internet and tracked down somebody who sold me the whole run to date on bootleg tapes for $80. I was giddy when I opened that box, I'll tell you, and went straight to The Wish and Doppelgangland.

This is cross-posted from my LJ, where I talked about Buffy and the community and all, back in May.

I spent most of 1997 living in my sister's guest room after moving across the country. I had sold most of my furniture, but kept the 13" television I'd bought a few years before (for my first ever solo household), and set it up on top of a box of books across from my bed. I remember trying desperately to keep UPN in tune with the rabbit ears, because I wanted to watch Babylon 5 and nobody else in the household did.

I have a vague memory of flipping channels one night and coming across an Englishy guy talking with a young blonde girl about a friend of hers. It's devastating. He's turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. Course, you'll have to kill him. I don't remember if I laughed. I do remember I kept the television on that channel until the end of the episode.

The following summer WB repeated Season 1 of Buffy again, so I managed to catch up. Season 2 was... a revelation. By the time Surprise/Innocence had aired I had a job of sorts, something that paid just enough to cover my loans. But it was frustrating and lonely and very uncertain financially. There was no internet access. I remember sitting in the seventh-floor office staring down at the streets below, and just pondering what would happen to Buffy and Angel. I was captured.

Never looked back. I was reading TT before the Buffistas even existed, participating in the Homicide thread among others, so it was an easy move over to the Buffy thread. Been a Buffista since before we coined the name, although there were some computer difficulties that made participation during Seasons 1 & 2 a little hard.

I started watching the summer before S3, when they were showing reruns from S1 and S2 twice a week on our affiliate. I didn't really have a lot going on at the time-- I ended seventh grade with a social life that makes Xander and Willow's, pre-Buffy, look exciting-- and I liked the show.

Starting from either Invisible Girl or Nightmares, I caught up to the end of S2, and was totally, irrevocably hooked by the end of Becoming. Came back to school in eighth grade with a Willow-instilled sense of self-confidence and a whole new kind of geeky.

Starting from either Invisible Girl or Nightmares, I caught up to the end of S2, and was totally, irrevocably hooked by the end of Becoming. Came back to school in eighth grade with a Willow-instilled sense of self-confidence and a whole new kind of geeky.

This seriously made me sniffle. I wish there'd been a BtVS when I was younger. I really needed it.

Came back to school in eighth grade with a Willow-instilled sense of self-confidence and a whole new kind of geeky.

I remember that!!

Came back to school in eighth grade with a Willow-instilled sense of self-confidence and a whole new kind of geeky.

Makes me wonder how I would've felt about the show if I'da had it back then (back then in me-time). Be fun to sneak the tapes back in time with me and show them to myself then and see what I thought. Except, you know, then I'd be spoiled for all kinds of culturally reference-y things. Although -- that could be good, too, because maybe I could have avoided things like Episode 1 (bad). And, heh -- I'd have some other key messages to give myself, too, but that's a whole 'nother thing.

eta: x-posty w/ Cindy

This seriously made me sniffle. I wish there'd been a BtVS when I was younger. I really needed it.

Awww, you turned out okay.

And I turned out warped on a fundamental level, so maybe you were better off without.

I was more enamored with Dawson's Creek for a long time, but the WB was the golden channel to me when I was a teenager (nineteen is not teenaged. it's almost drinking-aged. there's a difference) and I watched it every night religously. So, like, I knew everything that went on but I wasn't addicted. I cried like a baby at The Gift, and I'd watched steadily from Welcome to the Hellmouth to The Gift, with a short bypass in season four 'cause I thought it Buffy was acting to stupid to live. (I have since edited my opinion.) I really only got back into it with the musical episode and the Year of Boredom that was my senior year of high school. Plus, we didn't get UPN, so I had to beg off tapes from a school friend.

Then I found my friend Lee, who had her husband instal an antennae on the roof so she could get UPN, and watched with her. Sometime in fall term I'd discovered fanfiction, by January I'd discovered Herself, and she linked me to WX. Became a Buffista, never looked back.

I'm starting my relationship with Angel, though I started watching again in Season Three. I lost Angel when I shied away from Buffy, so I missed a lot of the first and second seasons.