Fandom: A very personal case study

I was a fan. I still would be if I could, but my show, the spur that pricked the sides of my intent, ended. In the correct terminology (that I studiously remember from 'Television Cultures') I was an 'avid' fan. I never missed an episode, I owned all the videos, then the DVDs, I belonged to an online fan community, and I contributed to it regularly. Which show was it that was received so much time and attention? Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The consumption of the primary text was the most enjoyable part of fan-practise, but as new episodes only came out once a week (and not at all during summer), my energies were also directed into participating in an online community, 'Buffy Down Under'. This community mainly functioned through forums devoted to the show and other texts by the Buffy creator, Joss Whedon (eg Angel, Firefly, Serenity etc). I participated in community discussions most days, and as my confidence built up (the community had been established for years before I joined, and hence was a little intimidating at first), I began to make regular postings.

Communicating with other fans greatly enhanced my understanding of the text and my enjoyment of it. Through this media convergence we were able to extend our textual experiences by discussing and analysing episodes and extrapolating personal textual interpretations.

One thing that was interesting to me was the non-Buffy threads on the site. Lots of members (myself included) discussed completely unrelated-to-Buffy books, movies, events and music, and through our inherently understood common ground of Buffy-love, were able to have vastly different opinions and tastes but express them with mutual respect.

After the Buffy TV show ended, the online community became an even more important focus to our fan practices. Posting continued just as frequently, as now the sole form of continuing the text was through our communications.

I moved to Sydney a few years ago and we did not have internet at my house for the first month. When we finally did get it, and I went to visit my beloved forum one day, I found it gone. Instead, in the place where my online community once was, was a message from the chief administrator saying that due to financial, personal and temporal constraints, the site had closed down and the BDU community was no longer. When Buffy finished on TV, I was really upset, the text forever gone. When my online community ended, I was just as upset: the text, the interpretations and my friends were forever gone.

Now I love Scrubs.