#history;;buffy

[centrally-unplanned]

IRL (In Real Life) - Buffydom Propaganda And The Internet-That-Was

It is 1997. You just got back from the latest Hot Topic run to restock on whatever the most raven-black bomb of Manic Panic they have on the shelves is, so you can do double-duty bleaching your hair in the shower while watching a CRT TV precariously mounted on the lip of your sink. On that TV is the Season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you are obsessed. Unfortunately for you, no one else in Bowling Green, Ohio, shares your passion for a CW WB show about vampire hunting teens who purposefully fumble their line deliveries. You are alone, and you have shit you gotta say about it to someone, anyone, who will understand.

Fortunately for you, the marketing team at ye old WB anticipated that their audience would be a bunch of fucking nerds, and boy do they have a solution to your problem! Welcome to the Bronze:

A while back I stumbled upon the inexplicable existence of "IRL (In Real Life)", a 2007 documentary about the community that formed around the aforementioned Buffy fan discussion forum/chatboard. Officially running from around the launch of the show until it switched over to UPN after its fifth season (with the forum dying a dramatic death in the process), The Bronze was a highly active center for the Buffy fandom, which generated several spillovers into real life. In particular, it was famous for the creatives and even actors on the show occasionally posting on the forum, which culminated in members of the community organizing a yearly party in Los Angeles where posters would fly out and be joined by said cast and crew. This documentary charts its culture & history via interviewing an array of its members.

As always, I am not here to give the blow-by-blow; instead, what is the narrative this documentary is trying to sell?

My previous documentary write-up was about nerd culture in the 2010’s; newly ascendant, growing confident in its own values and looking to justify that to itself, wealthy and with a developed enough ecosystem for crowdfunding to create professional, polished documentaries of its own heroes. None of that is true for IRL. Filmed on whatever camcorder/potato hybrid proto-Ebay would cough up from its zero-bid listings in a series of hotel rooms and people’s living rooms in 2003-2004 after the forum had died, this is the era of nerd culture at its most conflicted and insecure; mocked by the mainstream and unsure if it should be proud of that fact or deeply ashamed of it. And this documentary wears this conflict right on its sleeve; one of its opening lines is a confident assurance to the audience of “don’t worry, we aren’t like those nerds”:

Throwing Trekkies under the bus in the process, cold! Particularly given how it proceeds to barely even blink before pivoting to explaining their hobby of running “WITTs”, multi-day-long collaborative roleplays:

You are exactly those Trekkies my dudes; you weren’t just at the devil’s sacrament you were hosting it! "WITT" stands for Whedon Improvisational Theatre Troupe, you can't recover from that guys.

(I love how “dozens” is large by the way - it was for the internet in 2001, right?)

Anyway, beyond documenting the forum and its members, the conclusion this documentary wants you to hold is that the Bronze was a special place of real community, and it is a community of “normal” people, who made real relationships. And in particular, that internet relationships can be just as real as those found in meatspace, that these relationships transcended the digital and entered the physical; and that this is what fandom can be about.

I want to start with the ways that narrative was correct within the context of the time. I can actually explain that Klingon comment! I have one extant interview with the director of the film, Stephanie Tuszynski, and she put her motivation as follows: 

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary? ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me […] It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

It wasn’t a random example - the 1997 documentary Trekkies set the “standard” view of fandom as extremist oddballs, and Tuszynski specifically wanted to counter that. It was the early 2000’s after all, nerd stereotypes were strong, you had to fight them explicitly! In a society where there is strong background hostility to one’s identity, you will attempt to normalize it using known reference points; and certainly the people on these forums were more “normal” than the stereotypes admitted to because that entire binary framework is a dead end.

More importantly to the narrative is the online aspect, “making friends on the internet”. Another find I have is a blog post from a professor who used the film in a class; and in the film’s narrative of “people with no one ‘irl’ to share their hobby with finding friends online” triggered a debate around if the online relationships are “taking away” from in-person relationships that are presumed to be more valuable. A debate that still rages to this day over social media! But the contours were different back then, the internet was presumed to be niche, ancillary, and relationships made online in a completely separate box from “in person” friendships. The documentary goes to great lengths to explain that they were a real community because that idea is so contested. Ironically, they do this by emphasizing that they met up in person, hung out, attended each other's weddings, etc; as if only by meeting up in person could the relationships be validated as real? But you can’t truly fault them for meeting their implicit critics halfway in making their case.

So what can I fault them for?

*****

I was perpetually amused when watching the doc that they included two married couples in the filming, and for both one of the spouses would talk and the other would sit there, in silence, the entire time. Maybe they were members of the community and just not talkers; maybe their lines got cut in post. But what I kept thinking was that they were there selling normality to me; married couples are just inherently less oddball, less threatening, and in the era where “nerd = virgin” just less nerdy. Like with the Klingon line, there is an intentionality to the “just like you” vibe.

Which, as mentioned with the extensive forum roleplay, inevitably breaks down once the reality of forum activity is dug into. And I buried the lede here - you may have seen the title of the “longest” roleplay was “RTBS Soul Restoration Project”, but what does that mean? RTBS was a forum member’s name, and well:

Oh yeah, we are saving our friend from “a fate worse than death: worshiping Britney Spears” - welcome to 2001 baby! This is peak “nerd wars” stuff, the normies hate our shit so we hate the normie shit right back. Which is exactly how nerd culture was in the 2000's. I am not at all throwing shade at their tongue-in-cheek roleplay, resplendent in the ludicrously purple prose and asterisk-laden action descriptions as required by the early internet; but it sits in clear tension with some of the other messaging in this film. Leave Britney alone guys!

The documentary highlights a number of common practices from the forum - people doing daily greetings, the way that it being one unending massive chain of posts with no threading or topics meant people would mass-tag individual people to respond to and form “circles” that way - but there are things it leaves out. I did what any normal person would do after watching this documentary and read through over a year of archived posts on The Bronze to understand the community - but man did I not have to, as on literally the first page of my archived link I see:

And through God’s good grace that second link is archived:

Yes there are pictures at the link, and yes later on it does compare Buffy’s cleavage to the Mona Lisa. (The Giles link is not quite functional, but I was able to find it; sadly it is not nearly as thirsty)

I also found these “onboarding” sites for new members. Remember, this forum was the official forum, which meant there were no community mods or ability to “pin rules”, it was pure anarchy - so advice filled the gaps. And one of the bigger ones, in its *sighs and rubs forehead* blue font on black background, warns against “hottie posting�� aka talking about how hot say Angel is, not because it isn’t allowed, but because it is like “pointing out the sky is blue” - it is so common that it will just get washed out.

It might seem like a similarly sky-is-blue comment to note that this forum was heavily about shipping, hotness discussion, fanfiction, and the like. Of course it was, right? These website “senior members” were trying to minimize it, police it, but it broke through constantly and also simmered under the surface through discussions and RP’s from my own review of the forum. The documentary, however, spends incredibly little time on it. Brief mentions of Angel fics, and no mention (iirc) of discussion of how hot the women were at all. Because once again those details really don’t fit into the narrative it is trying to sell.

At one point in the documentary someone notes how diverse all the friends they met in this community were? Which I broke out laughing over. In one way it is not wrong, I get it! Midwest college kids meeting people from all over the country, ages 40 to 14, talking about something no one in their podunk town understands. But on the other hand, you could not come up with a more standardized slice of humanity if you tried to rig it. Everyone here is an American+ with computer access in 1998, it is a grab bag of sys admins, nerd creatives, and comp sci majors.  I did a random sampling googling the people interviewed to see what they are up to now, and literally a third of them are librarians. Even their fashion is like God played a prank on this director; not even a 2000’s anime con panel lineup is this stereotypical in the combinations of alt-goth lit girls and nerdcore computer bros.

The evolutionary process of joining this forum -> liking it enough to go to the live meetups -> liking that enough to participate in a documentary about it was a pressure cooker spitting out only a certain kind of person. Which is truly fascinating to see on display! This is the internet-that-was; and it bleeds through the grainy film despite the director’s efforts at times to the contrary.

Though even then it was only a very specific slice of the internet-that-was, because this is a very special breed of Online; namely, the professionals.

*****

Something that is decidedly not typical of The Bronze as an online community is that, as mentioned before, Joss Whedon and other creatives posted on the web forum, answering questions and also just playing around, and how that led to in-person parties where both forum members and cast/crew attended - the Posting Board Parties, or PBP’s. At these they hosted fundraisers, talked about the show, and in the documentary one girl reverently describes with incredible Repressed Lesbian Energy her experience of seeing Eliza Dushku dancing next to her. The PBP had a panel of party organizers, admission systems to keep out the “undesirables”, budgets, the works.

All this the documentary shares openly; it is a peak moment where the digital becomes real in a transcendent way, opening doors analog reality never could. It is also a cold-sweat-waking nightmare story from the lens of a modern Hollywood social media manager; one person in the documentary tells the tale of how one time lead actress Allyson Hannigan posted her phone number on the forum asking people to leave her cute voicemails. The person in question immediately called, and got Hannigan herself instead of the voicemail, so they chatted for a bit (The guy telling this tale is obviously lovestruck; his wife is sitting in typical silence next to him). Today this would be a code-red, nuke your phone situation; but the circle was so cloistered, and the rules so unwritten, that no one cared in these early years.

What they share less openly is all the drama that went into this event. They wax nostalgic about how the parties brought them together, but what isn’t mentioned is the church schism it caused, as the moment cast from the show started attending the party it got mobbed by outsiders. By its ~3rd year there were approximately 400 guests but only ~50 or so were from the forum. They had a huge fight about it, the head of PFP planning committee - “Morbius the Vampire”, who was later jailed for financial fraud btw - told the dissenting faction why don’t they just throw their own party if they hate his so much, and so they did. There was more fighting about it, and eventually they held a peace summit at an LA joint called Mel’s Diner to merge the two factions together. (My source for this is a book, which I will link later)

Hilarious, for sure, but while so much of what we have discussed is “proto online nerd communities”, this part is most decidedly not. The typical web forum absolutely cannot replicate the experience of roleplay-posting your way into shaking hands with Joss Whedon and having a shitfight over party budgets in LA. But most posters never got to attend these parties, of course, this didn’t mean much to them. While for those who did, you cannot help but imagine that this played a gigantic role in making them all become a “real” community. And care enough about that circle to, well after the forum was gone, schlep to a hotel room to be interviewed for a documentary about it. Participating in a documentary is always, in some way, an exercise in selection bias; but here the pruning is turned up to 11 - this is a very elite slice of a very unique fandom experience.

*****

I have one deeper level to go on this thread, somewhat buried in time today, that further shaped the participants here: “Whedon Studies”. The 2000’s was not the birth of media studies as an academic discipline; but it was the birth of fandom-driven media studies, and Buffy was nearly unassailably the leading light of that movement. Academics hosted entire conferences (and inexplicably still do!) on Buffy, Firefly, etc; almost all from the lens of gender & media, as Buffy’s brand was deeply entrenched in that deconstructive milieu. This movement would die a fiery death during the 2010’s shift in media & gender politics, and when the controversies around the toxic working conditions on the set of Buffy/Angel led to Joss Whedon’s near-total expulsion from creative pursuits. The whole edifice is, in a deep way, “cringe” for many of its former participants today.

But what is relevant for our story is that director Stephanie Tuszynski was a full member of that movement; while composing this film she was, for example, giving talks like these at conferences devoted to the Buffyverse:

God that is a lot of talks. This film itself was her thesis project for her I believe philosophy masters, and in our scant interviews lists other fandom-academic film projects she wanted to tackle (which as best I can tell fizzled out later). And the interview subjects were often participants in the same space as well! Academic-types doing media studies with a Buffy bent, or things like culture writers for new media outlets. One of them, writer Allyson Beatrice, even published a book about the Buffy fandom that was in regular bookstores:

To quote the blurb:

A hilarious collection of true stories from Allyson's days as one of the Internet's leading cult TV fan gurus, her mind-boggling escapades include meetings with network executives in dark steakhouses to try to save doomed TV shows and one hastily arranged wedding for two committed Buffy fans. 

I highlight this not to say that academics cannot make documentaries, they certainly can. What I am saying is that if you point your camera at career Buffyverse writer Allyson Beatrice, and label her as a typical forum member giving you the hometown everygirl perspective on the community, you are, however unintentionally, lying to your audience. In its quest to give you the just-like-me Buffy fandom experience, what this documentary elides is that it is often giving you the lens of people who are fans of Buffy as a career. Those people are going to be bringing very different experiences to the table - of course they are concerned with sanitization, with nerd culture debates, the works. That is their bread-and-butter trade.

This dynamic bled into the forum’s day-to-day; there was a very clear hierarchy of “veterans” and “top” posters, who organize the live parties, have deep roots in the community, and even the ear of the show team...and everyone else. Particularly because as mentioned there were no rules on the forum, but since that can’t actually function in practice they self-generated community rules and thus their own leadership class. Cliques and groups were common and named, and veteran posters even had formally designated groupies:

I had also by this time become a groupie. I so enjoyed one particular Bronzer’s posts that she allowed me to become the seventh of her groupies. It was through groupie-dom that I got my first taste of firsthand WITT: several Bronzers, on the occasion of the birthday of she-to-whom-we-group, each took turns grabbing the microphone and praising the day that she was born. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we did this. But it was fun, and very funny, too, as we each took turns waxing melodramatic off the top of our heads. And from work, no less.

The source for this by the way is a 400 page ethnography of The Bronze posted by academic who did *cough* “field research” there; I am sure their membership in the “Bronzers Adoring Darla” fangroup was purely for comprehensive data collection purposes.

And to emphasize, I am not saying this is problematic or anything - the groupie things were all in good fun, best I can tell. I simply aim to showcase how the Bronze wasn’t just a baby version of online fandom forum dynamics; but also a baby version of e-celebrity mechanics. Something the documentary does not even attempt to touch on because that would be something normal people would not understand.

*****

All of the above may have come off like one big roast, and it is a little bit, but as I have mentioned before every documentary is propaganda. It is just impossible to have a tight film building a narrative out of the pieces of letting people speak to the camera without that narrative being but a slice of the truth those people want you to know. The Bronze web forum was a very special place to these highly invested fans, and this documentary is not lying to you about that.

But it is also a big part of early internet fandom! The Bronze was famous at the time, and it is right there at the beginning of so many shifts; the first generation of non-technical internet users, a new era of ‘fantasy’ media with the trappings of prestige and social critique, a boom in critique-as-community, and more. I very much want the full picture of that community; who made it up, what did they want from it and what did they get from it, and so on. No film could offer the full picture; this film’s homebrew rawness gives a valuable piece of it, and I enjoyed it for that. I just aimed here to draw out not only what the broader, more accurate dynamics of The Bronze were, but also the cultural question of why the film focuses on what it does, hides what it refuses to show, and what that says about 2000’s internet & nerd culture. Hopefully I succeeded in that.

And also to have fun looking at some incredibly dated Buffy fandom bullshit. May it have been fun for you too! {hugs you and waves goodbye}

[thevampirechr0nicler]

once and for all... settling yet another debate (REBLOG FOR SAMPLE SIZE)

(FROM A REBLOG I MADE): I also think you guys are misunderstanding the fact that without IWTV there would BE no Buffy so through that, you have to be voting for the one that changed/transformed culture the most, also the person talking about the first lesbian scene on TV is also forgetting that Anne Rice was writing bisexual/gay vampires in 1976. I'm upset to hear that so many of you are voting for things that you only like, especially the Buffy fans that are doing so without consideration.

These reasons (and more) are meant to be considered before you make a final decision, and I truly think that some of you are not looking at the bigger, overarching picture.

Take a moment to think and then decide, you cannot keep blindly voting because you "like one of them more".

Thank you.

[mx-loar-tev]

If I had money I would hire some thug to find the producers or whatever head honchos that got to decide that making some character or another canonically queer was a bad idea for whatever bullshit reasons and the thug would just shake them like a fruit tree until the guys in charge would admit being homophobic assholes and they would promise to let writers make same-gender characters fall in love with each other if the comedians had enough chemistry, but also to include more diverse identities. The thug would force them to write it all down and sign it.

If I could do that a few times, imagine how different TV shows would become.

If I had money I would spend it all to please the gays and queers.

[coraniaid]

Thinking about AUs in which Faith comes back to Sunnydale in Season 5. Glory definitely assumes that Faith [rather than Tara] is the Key at some point, right?

Look at the evidence: Faith is a second Vampire Slayer (when everyone knows there's only meant to be one) which conveniently means she trails around in Buffy's shadow all the time. She just came back to town recently (sure, everyone says they remember her; she just fortuitously wasn't around a lot of the time when her presence might have really prevented things from going how they actually did). She has no real roots in town (or anywhere else): no family, no home, no Watcher of her own. She doesn't seem to have any sort of relationship with anyone who doesn't have some deeper connection with Buffy herself. It isn't even clear whether she's older or younger tha Buffy, even though turning eighteen is meant to be a Big Deal for Slayers.

I mean, the monks couldn't even be bothered to give her a last name! It's like they weren't even trying to make her convincing.

[book-historia]

The most common place people encounter book history is not in the library, but through popular media. This is where Pop Bibliography – the intersection of vibes and material culture – comes in! I wrote about it on my blog: https://www.bookhistoria.com/blog/pop-bibliography

[5bi5]

Wish we could have seen a Kendra-Faith discussion on their philosophies toward slaying because like yes they're opposites in some ways but they've also both fully accepted their slayerhood as a core part of their identities in a way that takes Buffy a long time

[rayspookyhistory]

ᯓᡣ𐭩Vampiresᯓᡣ𐭩

(id just like to say i love vampires and grew up in love with g1 draculaura from monster high :3)

For centuries, vampires have fascinated the human mind, appearing in various forms across different cultures and periods. From ancient legends to modern pop culture, these mysterious beings embody themes of immortality, fear, desire, and power.

Origins and Historical Context

The idea of the vampire dates back to ancient civilizations, with early mentions in Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman mythology. These early "vampiric" figures were often demons or spirits linked to death and the underworld. For example, the Mesopotamian myth of Lilith describes a demoness who preys on infants and seduces men, echoing later vampire tales.

In Slavic folklore, the vampire was a more tangible figure—a reanimated corpse that rose from the grave to drink the blood of the living. These beliefs were often connected to unexplained deaths and diseases, and methods to prevent or eliminate a vampire included staking the body, decapitation, and burial rituals designed to keep the dead at rest. The "upir" in Russia and "vrykolakas" in Greece are examples of these regional variations.

Fear of vampires led to widespread practices aimed at preventing vampirism, such as burying bodies with objects believed to restrain the undead or placing garlic around homes to ward off these nocturnal predators.

However, these legends often arose from a misunderstanding of how bodies decompose. As a corpse’s skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer. And as internal organs break down, a dark “purge fluid” can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living. To which they would rip out hearts of the dead bodies and then feed it to their families.

Literary Vampires: Folklore and Fiction

Vampires entered the literary spotlight with John Polidori's "The Vampyre" in 1819. Inspired by a fragment written by Lord Byron, this short story introduced the aristocratic vampire, a sophisticated and charismatic predator. Polidori's work laid the foundation for later vampire literature, including James Malcolm Rymer's serialized novel "Varney the Vampire" (1845-47), which further established the vampire's place in popular culture.

The quintessential vampire novel, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897), further popularized the vampire archetype. Stoker's Count Dracula, a mysterious and menacing nobleman from Transylvania, became the model for many future depictions. "Dracula" combined elements of Gothic horror, romance, and adventure, captivating readers and securing the vampire's place in literary history. The novel also mirrored Victorian anxieties about sexuality, immigration, and the breakdown of traditional social structures.

Vampires in Modern Culture

The 20th and 21st centuries have seen a surge of vampire-themed media, reflecting society's changing fears and interests. Early film adaptations, such as F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) and Tod Browning's "Dracula" (1931), brought vampires to the big screen, creating lasting images. "Nosferatu," with its depiction of Count Orlok, emphasized the monstrous and terrifying aspects of the vampire, while Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Count Dracula in Browning's film brought a suave and sophisticated allure to the character.

In the latter half of the 20th century, Anne Rice's "The Vampire Chronicles" series redefined the genre, presenting vampires as deeply introspective and morally complex beings. Rice's portrayal emphasized the emotional and existential dilemmas faced by immortals, resonating with modern audiences. Her characters, like Lestat and Louis, grapple with themes of identity, guilt, and the search for meaning in an eternal existence.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries witnessed a rise in vampire popularity, particularly in television and film. Series like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "The Vampire Diaries," along with the "Twilight" saga, reimagined vampires as youthful, attractive figures entangled in romantic and often tragic narratives. These works expanded the vampire mythos, appealing to a broader and younger demographic. "Buffy," for instance, juxtaposed the supernatural with everyday high school struggles, using vampires as metaphors for personal and societal issues.

(id also like to recommend a show im loving atm called what we do in the shadows its so good)

Themes and Symbolism

Vampires serve as versatile symbols in literature and media, embodying various themes and societal anxieties.

Vampires, as undead beings, blur the line between life and death, exploring humanity's fear of mortality and the desire for eternal life. This theme is evident in works like "Interview with the Vampire," where characters wrestle with the implications of living forever.

Vampires often represent the outsider, reflecting societal fears of the unknown and the marginalised. The vampire's need to hide their true nature parallels the experience of those who feel alienated or persecuted in society.

The act of vampirism, often depicted as a form of seduction, symbolises taboo desires and the complexities of human sexuality. This is evident in the sensual imagery associated with vampire bites and the intimate connection between predator and prey.

Vampires, with their supernatural abilities, frequently serve as metaphors for power, control, and the corrupting influence of absolute power. Dracula's control over his victims and his manipulation of others reflect the dangers of unchecked authority.

Vampires remain a potent and adaptable myth, continually evolving to reflect contemporary cultural and psychological landscapes. Whether as monstrous villains or tragic anti-heroes, vampires captivate audiences by embodying timeless human fears and desires. Their enduring appeal lies in their ability to mirror our deepest anxieties while offering a glimpse into the tantalizing possibility of life beyond death. The vampire's journey from ancient myth to modern icon underscores their significance in our collective imagination, ensuring that they will continue to haunt our stories and dreams for generations to come.

[juniestar]

I’m curious

[protagonistpolling]

The winner(s) will move onto the four-way finale

[juanabaloo]

HC for Faith in 3x14 Bad Girls: i don't have any real quibbles with Faith's spiral / reaction to accidentally killing Finch the Mayor's aide. i think it is logical. but i think it adds a delicious layer (JUICY ANGST) to her reaction if it reminds her of a previous death.

pre Sunnydale back in Boston maybe she doesn't know her own strength, esp if she recently got her powers. maybe she accidentally kills some guy she just means to shove, bc Slayer strength and all that. like she meant for him to take a step back and instead he goes back like 20 feet and gets accidentally impaled. later she figures it out (maybe Diana helps, maybe not) - and she says "i didn't know."

or perhaps it's a truly similar situation, Diana (her watcher) is keeping an eye as she patrols but these vamps come out of a club into the alley and there's vamps and regular people running around and she accidentally stakes a human.

Diana assures her it was just an accident and calms down a very upset Faith. Diana disposes of the body, telling Faith after how she did it. they talk about it at length afterwards, back in the safety of Diana's place (where Faith is living). says all the same stuff Giles does about how this has happened before. "how many people do you think a Slayer saves? it is terrible and regrettable but sometimes there are casualties" etc.

"you should not pretend it didn't happen but you cannot think about it while you are out on patrol. you have to move past it Faith. a moment's hesitation is all a vampire needs to kill you. you have to stay focused, this is your work, it is not meant to be carefree fun."

[really this works either way, the "don't know my own strength" version or the "vamps and people running around" version. bc Diana can help her process and learn from both.]

and Diana's reaction - calm and reasonable and supportive - really shakes Faith. she is NOT used to this. Diana did not assume the worst of her, didn't ignore her mistake but also assumed Faith would be better next time. Diana trusts her, doesn't limit her patrolling at all, and Faith gloms onto Diana even harder than before. (until ofc Diana dies, when Faith couldn't save her from Kakistos)

and then she and Buffy are in the groove and it's so much fun and then Bad Girls Finch happens and it immediately guts Faith. it reminds her of how alone she is, bc Diana is not there to help her, even just talking to her. it reminds her what a failure she is bc this is now THE SECOND time it happened. that she should have learned from before and she did not. it reminds her how she will never be as good of a Slayer as Buffy, bc ofc Faith doesn't know about how Buffy killed humans* before bc the show pretends it never happened and oh yeah CEO of repression Buffy never talks about it.

( * ) for the fact checkers: i believe the list is Ted (before she knew he was a robot), the zookeeper in The Pack, the coach in Go Fish, the germans in Homecoming, and a Knight of Byzantium. sure some of these are more passive and all IMO deserved but Ted is the biggest one for me.

Faith still blames herself for Diana dying bc she couldn't stop Kakistos. AND NOW it doesn't even matter that her and Buffy killed Kakistos and she "avenged" Diana (her words, not Diana's). bc the best things that Faith learned from Diana don't matter anymore. they aren't true anymore. Diana believed in Faith, believed Faith could become a better Slayer, that Faith could learn from her mistakes. Faith let Diana down (again) when she accidentally kills Finch. Faith now believes Diana was wrong to believe in her, and Faith loses all faith in herself. (sorry there really isn't a better word)

[emslodge13]

Can't decide whether I want a pumpkin spice/red Taylor's Version autumn, or a twin peaks/the secret history one hmmm 🤔

Either way it's gonna be a witchy season. Xoxo

[officialrapunzelfitzherbert]

in the graveyard, straight up "going through it." and by "it," haha, well. let's justr say. The motions

[sandymybeloved]

other shows musical episodes have nothing on doctor who's. one very repetitive song, existing almost entirely in the narration, a part from when two of the main characters a forced to give a performance of it at gunpoint. peak television or borderline unwatchable, who's to say

[conditionalclause]

a list of things in the dead boy detectives tv show, in order of most to least plausible:

3. Ghosts

2. Talking cats

1. A teenager being able to program a random vcr from 1994 purely based on her knowledge of old movies

[hersterical]

[bakanokiwami]

TOP 10 FANDOMS ON FANFICTION.NET BASED ON NUMBER OF FANFICTION (2002-2022)

To make this bar chart race, all series titles in the each Section on the same date nearest or on November 29 of every year were copy-pasted from Wayback Machine to Google Sheets, rearranged according to number of fanworks, and then inputted to Flourish to turn into a bar chart race.

FFN used to allow Real Person Fics up until October 12th, 2002, which is why NSYNC immediately plummets off the chart at the start of the video.

The Books, TV and Play sections did not have an archived page on January 13, 2013, so I used the January 12 data.

The Play section also did not have an archived page on October 27, 2010, so I used the October 26 data.

The Games, Music & Misc. sections did not have an archived page on June 1, so I used their June 2 data.

In 2000-2001, I couldn't find a date that had all the sections archived, so the bar charts starts at 2002.

By November 2013, FFN started abbreviating numbers above 1,000 to K, so exact numbers aren't available for series with more than 1,000 fanfiction.

This bar chart was made with the assumption that the numbers listed in the each section are correct. I can't seem to get the same numbers for some of these categories when I go to the specific categories' page and toggle ratings, other filters, and language to All though... I'm not sure where the discrepancy is coming from. (And it’s not the crossover fic numbers that need to be added to serie’s total fics from what I’ve observed.)

Please refer to this post for more bar chart races.

Thanks for understanding and hopefully I didn’t mess up anywhere! 🙏