When did you become a fan?

[El Diablo Robotico]

I became a fan in late-2002, about a week or so before Christmas. FX had started showing the re-runs a couple of months earlier, and I was looking for something to watch that time of night (back then, they were showing back-to-back eps at, I think, 5-7 pm). I'd never bothered with it, because I figured it was probably as dumb as the title "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" implied, yet I kept hearing how good it supposedly was, so I broke down and tried it. Within 3 nights, I was totally hooked.

It took me a little longer to try "Angel", because on "Buffy" he was just brooding, handsome, block-of-wood vampire guy, and I thought, "That guy can never carry his own show." Then I got to the S2 eps where he became Angelus, and changed my mind. "Okay, maybe the guy can act, after all."

My funny story about being a new, ignorant fan: The first episode I watched was "Earshot", which, as it turned out, was a great one to start out with, because it contained pretty much all the elements that make the show so awesome, particularly the wonderful mix of comedy and drama. But there's the scene of Giles and Wesley arguing in the library, where Giles asks, "Who's going to get the demon heart?" and Wes says something smug and walks away--to which, Giles mutters "berk". Not being up on my British slang, that wasn't something I'd heard before. The next scene cuts to Angel fighting the remaining demon, and then showing up at Buffy's house with the cure. So for awhile, I was under the impression that his full name was Angel Burke.

Ah, the fun of being a dumb newbie...

[dragonweaver]

Well I can proudly say I've been a fan since the very beginning. I was in 6th grade, so about 12 or 13 years old and my parents left for the evening, can't remember why, and I had the whole house all by myself. I think I randomly came across the WB channel just as the Buffy pilot was starting. They aired Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest as kind of a TV movie, which is exactly what I thought it was, a really cool & scary movie. Then I caught the WB's encore presentation and that's when I discovered it was going to be a series.

I remember staying up past my bedtime, sneaking down to the kitchen TV set, and sitting on the floor while watching the show with the volume down. I remember being so happy in the second season when the show moved to Tuesday at 8 instead of 9, because my parents actually were willing to let me watch it so it cut down on the sneaking around aspect. As for Angel, well it felt only natural to watch that as sort of a companion to Buffy. I have to admit it took me a little longer to get into Angel. The first few episodes of Season 1 didn't grab me, as entertaining as they were. It wasn't until Wesley joined that I really started getting into the show.

I've always been, and probably always will be very attached to the Buffy series because I watched it through middle school, high school and through my freshmen year of college. It's just a part of who I am. I still remember my college roommate walking through the door of our apartment carrying the Entertainment Weekly with SMG on the cover and a headline that read, "Buffy Quits". That was tough, but I never stopped loving the show and after that I started saving so I could buy the DVDs. I've got all the season's of both Buffy & Angel and as long as Joss is willing to tell their story (in TV, comic, and hopefully a movie) I'll be there cheering him on.

[snizapman6294]

i was watching my 3rd ever buffy episode (Graduation Day (Part Two)) and when Buffy goes, "NOW!" and i see these kids take off their graduation gowns and they all have weapons and expect to fight The Mayor together... at first i smiled really big and a chill went down my spine, then i stopped and was like wait... this is high school, right, because there are definately times when every type of person in a high school come together (Sarcasm) then my eyes got all watery and then i saw Cordelia stake her first vamp and a single tear went down my face (all with a huge smile)

the credits rolled, i turned to my girlfriend and i said, "OH. MY. GOD. now this explains why 90% of our grade is in love with this show!"

[diabeticdude202]

The very first episode I saw was the one that got me hooked to the buffy series and that was "Lessons" - the seventh seasons' premiere. I remember my mum's friend loved the show and had taped it for my mum. I was only about 9 or 10 and wasn't allowed to watch it but when I looked over at the tv it was when Xander and the innocent girl with the dead puppy were being attacked by the giant worm demon. I was like THIS IS AWESOME.

The other reasons why I got hookde on that first episode was because I instantly fell in love with the Anya character and thought it was cool seeing a hot blonde bashing up a vampire (which was Spike). Oh, and I knew Alyson Hannigan from other movies and so I thought I should keep watching it.

That was the only episode I ever saw on television until they put the reruns on at midnight here in Australia about two years ago and I saw "Puppet Show" or something like that.

[randygiles]

I must add you all have beautiful banners.

Well, I was initally a skeptic. From what I had heard of the show, it looked pretty lame.

What got me into the show? Simple. I watched it.

Back in 2005, I worked at an ice cream shop. I had this cowroker there who was obsessed with the show, and she was always offering to lend me her DVDS to watch on my days off. I always politely declined, saying it didn't seem like "my kind of show". Then I got really sick and had to take like, three weeks off work. My coworker came over and brought me season 1 and insisted I give it a chance. So I watched all the episodes in like, three days and was absolutely in love. I couldn't believe I had almost not given the show a chance. So, she lent me the rest of the series, and the rest is history. Now, I own all Joss' shows on DVD and have become a total diehard fan.

I often wonder what would have happened if I had never worked at that ice cream shop... and had never let her lend me S1. I know I would have never watched it on my own.

Buffy and Angel are such fantastic shows. I show them to everyone I know, and I even got my mother into them! Firefly, is great too of course, and

who is totally stoked for Dollhouse!?

Anyway, thats my story.

[Emmie]

Aw that's cool, Becky. I *love* hearing how people got into the shows. It always seems to be more of a big deal compared to other TV shows because Buffy almost inspires this resistance in fans til they watch it. So the stories of fans and how they came to the 'verse is always so interesting and unique compared to fans who like Lost, for instance.

"Oh my god, I love Lost 'cause I watched it on ABC. Woohoo!" just doesn't compare to stories like yours.

[Hallow Thorn]

Buffy:1997 or 1998 aged when I was like 9
Angel:2000 at like 11 ....

[randygiles]

Dec 23, 2008 18:54:02 GMT -5 Emmie said:

Aw that's cool, Becky. I *love* hearing how people got into the shows. It always seems to be more of a big deal compared to other TV shows because Buffy almost inspires this resistance in fans til they watch it. So the stories of fans and how they came to the 'verse is always so interesting and unique compared to fans who like Lost, for instance.

"Oh my god, I love Lost 'cause I watched it on ABC. Woohoo!" just doesn't compare to stories like yours.

Yay! Glad you liked my story! I just discovered this forum and so far it seems pretty cool

[Mandie]

I always watched Buffy when I was a kid. It came out when I was 7 and I remember watching it every few weeks. I never sat down and actually watched seasons 1-7, episode by episode until the beginning of this year though. Same goes for Angel.

[Without Passion]

I became a fan when I was about eight years old and "Buffy" was in its second season. My friends at the time introduced the show to me. I was intrigued by it because it sounded "scary" (and boy, did I love scary,) and generally pretty cool, so I gave the show a shot. I think the first episode I watched was "Phases" (may have been earlier, but that's one episode I remember watching at that age). I became hooked right then and there and have been obsessed ever since! My then friends eventually lost interest but I never did. I saw something in "Buffy" that I guess they couldn't. Over the years "Buffy" has become a significant part of who I am and its something friends who have never really given the show much of a chance can understand and some even have made fun of (isn't that the MOST frustrating thing ever?!) I've never been able to better relate to any characters, stories, humor of a another TV show and can honestly say that it has given me great strength in some of my hardest times in life. "Buffy" inspired me, and still does to this day, to keep on fighting, no matter how hard it may be, because somehow it's worth it.

I never really followed "Angel" closely (except for season 5,) but have watched most of the episodes. I've found that I can relate to and understand "Angel" a lot more now that I'm older and can't wait to watch all the episodes over winter break as I just got the box set last week! Yay!

Go Buffy!

-Nick

[Iceeh★]

I became a fan last year actually. On November 1st, (yes, I still remember the date, hehehe), I was at my friends house, and she was watching season 5. So I said, "Ohmygod, Buffy? That show is soooooo lame." Then she said "Have you ever even seen it?" And I was like "...noooo." After that, I half-listened to Fool For Love with her, then fully watched Triangle. I wouldn't shut up about it, asking questions like "Why is that girl so close to that other girl?" and "Is that the one chick from Ice Princess?" Then she got annoyed and said "Just rent it and watch it yourself!!!" Anyhoo, when I got back to my house, I rented season 1 and quickly became hooked.

[zoelee]

i started watching Buffy when it was on channel 2 after the Simpson's, and watched it ever since, never missed an episode. It dose seem strange to start with but then it gets better. i have them all on DVD and angel pus the best bits of each character. wouldn't be with out it.

[Renée]

I was waaaaay to young when Buffy was on TV. But I bought a DVD box and I loved it. I started to buy all of them and became a fan

[Angelsgirl]

I remember the night well, when BBC2 (in the UK) first aired the pilot way back when I was a wee 14 year old. My parents had fallen asleep on the sofa (thank goodness) so I stole the remote and watched it. I became totally hooked and religiously watched the first 2 seasons. Then due to school work, exams and part-time jobs I lost track of it, until I was 19.

I was in a car accident and whilst I was signed off work with a broken back, I bought seasons 1-4 and watched them solidly, several times, until Season 5 was aired and that was it, I was hooked all over again!

[Aud]

I am proud to say that I've been a fan since the Pilot episode! I was 11 and in the 6th grade. This was back when the WB was still cool and 7th Heaven had just started, Savannah was on its way out, and Dawson's Creek was new. Roswell, I think, would come soon after. I became hooked after The Witch because the image of Cordelia's rolled back eyeballs and that one cheerleader's mouth skinned over really creeped me out. By Season 2 I was a diehard fan and was (still am) fiercely adamant that Becoming Part Two remains the BEST season finale EVER.

I even remember going to the WB Store when they were giving away free Buffy posters as promotion for Season 2 or 3 (I forget). I had Volumes 1 and 2 Watcher's Guides and the Sunnydale Yearbook.

I didn't make a friend that loved Buffy as much as I did until Sophomore year of High School. Around Season 3 we both started recording the episodes on VHS and by Season 7 we were experts in cutting out the commercials without missing any part of the episode. I could even say that the blackouts are very much like the DVDs.

Aww...I <3 BtVS.

[VampSlayer]

I started when OMWF was aired. I caught the ending of it, and really liked it. So I continued watching it after, and watched re runs. I didn't catch all of the epis, so thats why I bought 'em.

[Léo]

I guess i became a fan of buffy two times, because I had almost forgotten i was a fan the first time I watched it. In France, it used to run on M6, a network running lots of US TV shows during the nineties (in order to lower costs). It was on saturday night, around eleven PM, which was very late for me at that time. I can't really remember the season, because they played reruns and new seasons through half of the year, but it must have been the beginning of season 2.I think I started watching it because friends of mine were watching it, mostly for the eye-candy (I don't think any of them still watch i today). I watched it until the finale and then I don't think I could watch it for a long time, because the show stopped airing even on reruns (they tried to ait it around six or seven, but it was said to be too violent for that hour).
Then, when i turned nineteen, i thought "Hey, that show was kind of cool, I used to watch it, I could buy the dvds". And then, I was a fan. I bought Angel later that year, I only had seen a few episodes because it was aired by a different channel in a strange way (like around three saturday afternoon, with no continuity).

[nalliac]

I guess I’m a relatively recent convert. It started at Christmas 2006, when someone was kind enough to give me both series of Spaced on DVD, which was something I had been wanting for a while. Now at this point I had only ever seen 2 episodes throughout my life, both before the age of 10 and both were enjoyed but soon forgotten. Those episodes I later found out to be called Killed by Death and Gingerbread, which were despite their individual merits were probably not fully representative of the quality to come. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about Buffy since I heard it was going to end in 2003, and I still remember where I was when I heard that, which is odd as I didn’t really care at the time.

Anyway, back to Spaced. I got Spaced as a gift and watched it through and of course in series 2, the character of Tim is quite in love with Buffy, which was the first I’d heard of it in quite some time. Simon Pegg is a man I respect greatly, and I looked up if he was a real life fan of the show and I found that he had said Buffy replaced the X Files for his pick of greatest show ever. I was a huge fan of the X Files, so this made me start to wonder if it wasn’t the simple Charmed like show I’d always assumed it to be. I didn’t ever really consider buying the series or anything at this point though.

So then I went on a holiday to Tasmania in Australia (I live in Adelaide, Australia) to stay with some family friends. While I was there my friend decided she wanted a new phone cover and asked if I wanted to buy one too given that it would be cheaper and I needed a new cover. So for my very outdated phone the only cover available was, you guessed it, a Buffy one. From then on every time I used my phone I thought of Buffy, which I suppose is part of the reason why I asked for some Buffy DVDs for my approaching birthday. I still thought that the show would be on about the same level as Charmed, and was not expecting much but I couldn’t think of anything else to ask for in the DVD department and I wanted something to watch. I figured Buffy would be a laugh that I could waste some time watching.

My birthday came around, and I received no Buffy DVDs, but this didn’t really disappoint me again, as I had only asked for them as a way to pass time. I sort of forgot about Buffy again for about 6 weeks, only mentioning it when I pulled out my phone and people laughed with me about that. So I was watching TV one day and happened to notice that Buffy was on and I decided to watch it. I absolutely adored what I saw, I had no idea that Buffy would be this witty, this intelligent, this amazing. My opinion of the show sky rocketed and I immediately set about buying the entire set by scraping all my money together. This was a large investment, but the episode I saw had impressed me so much I had to see more of this.

(I later found out that the episode I had seen was a little episode called Hush, not a bad example of the show to see really)

I bought the DVDs a few days after that and I eagerly awaited them to turn up on my front doorstep. During this waiting period I happened to catch another episode on TV. This time it was not so wonderful, I got a little bit worried that maybe I had seen a one off shining example and that most of the episodes were actually like the one I was currently watching. It wasn’t terrible, it was just…..not great, it was average, full of clichés. I looked it up on the internet hoping that it was an early episode and the show was still finding its footing and found it was actually Season 1, Episode 4 – Teacher’s Pet. I was relieved.

I loathe that episode to this day.

But then the DVD’s turned up and I watched season one in 3 days and enjoyed it. Then I got to season 2 and was hooked, and I haven’t really looked back since. I finished the rest of the series off in quick fire and now I own the rest of Joss’ work as well as numerous amounts of Buffy/Angel/Firefly merchandise.

Although I have a new phone, I still keep my old phone with its cover.

So this was all by about March 2007 that I had finished watching the DVDs for the first time. A few short months later I had a picture of Alyson Hannigan as my MSN display picture and a girl I had known from school for a little while came online who I’d never really spoken too much before. The first thing she said was “willow”! We dated for a year and have been best friends since we broke up.

Buffy has been good to me.

So there is my ridiculously long and overly detailed story of how I became a fan. I didn’t mean to write so much it just sort of happened.

[buffyverseforever]

Actually,I date back to the original Buffy movie. I like the TV Buffy a lot better,of course....



Best wishes,


Scott

[slayerfest]

When it first came on air on the WB. I also started watching Angel when it first aired.