Really most sincerely dead

I spent yesterday in IT hell, with the constant disappearance of my computer programs, and even had the excitement of my PC spontaneously restarting itself. I was in the middle of work when suddenly it just went black. My foot didn't move, my fingers didn't accidently key anything, it just restarted. Arg. Then it was off to the dentist, and then meeting a friend, and so I never really had time to sit down and think about how I felt Tuesday night. Which is probably good, because I had a sense of emptiness all day, undefined wistfulness I couldn't really get a handle on.

I saw a few people on my friends list make comments similar to what I was thinking -- that for once, I could watch Gilmore Girls without having a conflict with Buffy. And that I didn't have to think about Buffy and formulate an idea for a review. And that I could watch my subsequent Tuesday night programs -- right now, MI-5 and Queer Eye -- without needing to interrupt them by running into the office and logging in to see what others were saying about Buffy.

Because it's gone. Really gone. Really most sincerely gone, and it's never, ever coming back. And I feel really bad about that. I've rarely been involved with an ongoing fandom to such a degree. I opted out of XF fandom in the middle because I couldn't stand the weather there, but continued to write, to vid, etc. And both The Professionals and Magnificent 7 were over when I got heavily into the fandoms. La Femme Nikita left with a rather ignominious end, was briefly resurrected, and though the way it went out left me sad for its loss, it had severed a great deal of my attachment by its unpleasant ending.

Buffy, though, went out for me on a relatively high note. While I had some trouble with things like pod!Giles and much of the stories of the SITs, and am still more than a little melancholy about Spike believing Buffy didn't love him, I felt it went out well. I was still every bit as in love with the show as I had been at the beginning.

And like a lot of people I've met in this community, I held Buffy fandom pretty close to my heart, the show and the fans were a Big Deal to me. I never missed an episode from the moment it debuted, and no matter where it went or happy/unhappy I felt about any given direction, I was never less than a fan about it in the truest sense of that word. Sunnydale felt as real to me as Seattle; I felt closer to the characters, and they were more real to me, than many people I loosely refer to as "friends" in real life. I've always thought this is what distinguishes true fans from people who just are really into a show or whatever -- that they are not characters to us, but exist in real time and space, even though we know they really don't. It's not a question of heart vs. head, it's that we're able to blend the two, and thus a very well-created world or characters become real to us in all the ways that count.

And even though Spike's on Angel, and Angel and Wes are in LA, and there's a possibility Buffy herself might show up on Angel, it's not the same. The environment is different, key players in my love for the show are gone, and there's a different tone on Angel. Not a bad one, just different from what I fell in love with on Buffy. I actually didn't really know what to do with myself on Tuesday night, I only half paid attention to Gilmore Girls (and it felt shrill and annoying in the first half, anyway, so it took me some time to get ramped up for it), and my attention wandered enough on MI-5 that I had to watch it again to get the twist. It was a sense of dissociation, that kind of realization that everything is changed and you don't know how to make it the way you want. My comfort food has been removed, my favorite chair is gone, people are speaking a different language. It's the end of something I cared very much for for seven years, something that's brought me friendships around the world, something that's given me creative energy and the opportunity to do something I like a lot (write reviews), and something that filled in the missing pieces in my life in a really happy way.

The worst part is that there's little else to replace it in my affections. I like GG and Alias, but not even remotely the way I like Buffy; I'm an Angel fan, but not in the way I was with Buffy; Without a Trace is fun, but not even remotely fannish. Boomtown may not last; everything else I loved last year, one of the best years I've ever had for shows I went kooky for, is gone. I'm glad I can't stand West Wing, because I think it would drive me crazy, the changes that have occurred with it.

So far, even though I TiVoed but haven't watched all of Las Vegas, it looks snazzy but empty and annoying; and Threat Matrix (I love spy shows) stank -- boring and crowded, which seem to be contradictory, but that's what it was. I'm semi-hopeful about The Handler, but... Joey Pants can either be annoyingly over the top or great, and I won't know till it airs. I'm dreading Tarzan, but I feel compelled to watch because Mitch Pileggi is in it. I'm pretty sure it'll be exactly like Adventure, Inc. -- one of my guys is in it, but damn, it stinks, and I can't watch it even for him. I wasn't motivated enough to watch Jake 2.0, though I suppose I could have set the second vcr for that. The one thing I truly hope for is Karen Sisco, because I adored Out of Sight; however, it's on ABC, and there's a reason everyone refers to it as Already Been Cancelled.

Buffy's a void that can't really be filled for those of us who loved it, anyway. I know a lot of people who've never found anything they loved as much as, say, Highlander, or Sentinel, or whatever. Sometimes, a show just clicks for you in a way that it becomes part of your life, it never lets go of you. I think Buffy will be like that for me. Long after everyone has stopped reading and writing in it, and no more vids are coming out, I'll probably still be nostalgic over it. Even though I don't want to, I have to accept that it's gone -- but I don't have to forget it.