I was an unhappy college freshman. Like countless college freshmen before me, finding myself in a new place, with the space to redefine myself, and disconnected from my family and friends (in spite of having moved only 7 miles to go to college), I was having a tough time of it. The touchstones of identity I'd had in high school - being a supernerd, leader of the Latin club, supremely active in community theatre, big into showchoir - didn't quite work in college. It turns out when you're at your state's flagship public school, lots of people are supernerds. It turns out that Harvard-educated Classics professors aren't impressed by elegant translations of Latin poetry if they're not simultaneously incredibly accurate. It turns out that college drama kids are more like high school drama kids than they are like community theatre adults, and I'd always been more comfortable and successful around the latter than the former. It turns out music is serious business in college, and if you're not a music major, it can be hard to get into an ensemble. Separated from these identity-defining traits, all I had left really was that I liked fantasy novels, had a great boyfriend, and loved my family.
Being this at sea left me knowing only a few things, and one of those was that there was this guy in my dorm who I thought was funny, and who I'd maybe like to be friends with. My roommate suggested, probably jokingly and intending just to play at fun, that I had a crush on this kid. I didn't. Implicit in her suggestion that I had a crush was the notion that wanting to be friends with this guy was basically the same as cheating on my amazing boyfriend. (Let's remove any suspense for you: I married said amazing boyfriend, and I can't even remember the funny dorm kid's last name. Or maybe I can? I can remember a first name-last name pairing that might be his, but it could also be a former student of mine, or somebody else entirely.)
Since I had my first loose tooth at age 4 or 5, my body has manifested guilt and anxiety as nausea. And it internalized this idea that having friends and cheating were the same thing, and I started puking oh, just all the time. It wasn't an eating disorder, though I did forget to eat, or fail to eat because the school cafeteria closed kind of early and I didn't want to go alone and I didn't really have friends to go with me. It was a symptom of depression and anxiety (both of which, now, I consider symptoms of Hashimoto's thyroiditis).
One Tuesday night, I was at my boyfriend's house (we'll call him W from now on, because it's his first initial). Something had made me feel the need to puke - I don't recall exactly what, but I've got a few guesses that I'm not really ready to share. Anyway, what you need to know is, he and I shared a nice early evening, then I turned weird on him and puked (but not on him, in the toilet), and then, gently, lovingly, and without giving me a hard time about the puking at all, he said,
"Come watch Buffy with us. It'll make you feel better."
He and his friends/housemates watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer together every Tuesday. I had tried watching it when it first aired but just the opening credits seemed too scary for me to watch the actual show (I was a sophomore in high school when it started). Now I was a freshman in college, and so was Buffy. W had told me that he thought I would really identify with a lot of what Buffy was going through. Before this evening I'd thought, "That's nice, but that show sounds simultaneously goofy and terrifying. Probably not for me."
But I was feeling crappy, and he was so sweet, and I wanted to be with him, so I did. I sat down with him and his housemates and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. It was fall of 1999, and I think the episode was probably "Wild at Heart," though I'm not sure. I watched, and I did feel better. Over the next few months, I watched more. This was the era before DVR, and I didn't always happen to be by a TV on Tuesdays at 8, and I didn't always remember to set my VCR when I wasn't, so I missed some episodes. But by May of 2000, I was deep into it - very big into Buffy. (It was also the era before Netflix and DVD boxed sets, so catching up on old episodes was hard.)
In the wee hours of May 5, 2000, I was pulling an all-nighter on a paper about Horace's Ode 1.11. I needed a break. I thought I'd see what happened when I typed www.buffy.com into my web browser. The front of the site had a link that said "Click here to go directly to the posting board." Once I clicked the link, I was given the option of choosing a threaded posting board (sort of like how most people think of posting boards) or a linear posting board (more like a chat room or a microblogging situation, with no threads, and with new posts appearing at the top of the page). I hung out in the threaded board for a while, but it was full of "Party in here" threads, and I was looking for more substantive discussion. I made my way over to the linear board, and in there, I found my people.
The summer of 2000 was glorious. I was free of dorm living, with plans to move into an apartment in August. I was back with my family, so I had a support system beyond just W and his housemates. My dad got me a job doing tech support in the law school where he worked, and my boss happened to be a Buffy fan. Often, help desk jobs consist of frantic activity followed by lots of waiting around, and all of that waiting around time was spent in front of a computer, where I could log on to the Buffy posting board - named The Bronze after the night club on the show - and talk to my new friends, who called themselves Bronzers. My boss also had access to VHS copies of old Buffy episodes, and I got a couple Buffy VHS sets as birthday presents. It was the summer of Buffy.
One thing that happened at The Bronze a lot was that people started clubs. I think mostly this consisted of some Bronzer keeping a list of names, probably in a text file, on their computer. Then when you joined a club, the clubkeeper would assign you a number, and you could put that number in your signature at the end of all your posts. Alyson is a Hottie #7, or whatever. There were a ton of hottie clubs for the show's actors, but I noticed that the writers weren't getting much love. And, in particular, I thought that Joss Whedon, the show's creator, deserved some fan affection. (He had it. He just didn't have a club about it.) So I started a club - Joss is a Hottie. I built a little page for it on Homestead (better than Angelfire or Geocities, amirite?). There was a simple form people could fill out to let them join the club, and then I would manually add their names to a page that was a list of all the members. Writers and actors would occasionally post at The Bronze, and on August 6, 2000, Joss happened to drop by and somehow the Joss is a Hottie site was brought to his attention. A Bronzer emailed me to let me know that a) Joss was on and b) he was commenting about the site:
"I stopped by the site wherein I'm a hottie and, oddly enough, I approve of it wholeheartedly. What are the odds?"I quickly hopped on and tried to propose. I'd seen a Bronzer post to Joss earlier about wanting to marry him, and he'd jokingly replied something about a harem or polygamy or somesuch, and I fannishly wanted in on that action. But I made a typo. I said I wanted to be one of his many wibes. He seemed to think this was a good idea.
One day, I got a new membership form. Before I had a chance to manually update the membership page, I got an email from the submitter. The name was Kai, and Kai wanted to check in and make sure I'd received the submission. I replied with a simple note that I had, that it didn't automatically update, but that I would go ahead and add Kai to the list ASAP.
On September 2, 2000, Joss dropped by the Bronze and left me the following note:
a little holler out to KIBA RIKA: thanks for answering Kai's e-mail. I showed her the site and she had the great fun. (I had to explain about you being my wibe, but she could see how in lobe we were and said it was fine. Big of her, really). So thanks. Increase of fun caused by you. (If anybody sees Kiba, could they direct her to this post? Danke.)It hadn't even occurred to me that the Kai who emailed me and the Kai who was Joss's wife would be the same person. But here was the proof (and the Bronze had precautions in place to prevent VIP impersonation, so this was for realsies).
I went back and looked at the email from Kai. It was from an AOL email address. In a move that I would never make now, because I am, I hope, a more mature and considerate person, I added Kai to my AIM Buddy List. I didn't think a thing would come of it, but it felt cool just to do it.
On September 7, 2000, I saw Kai's username pop up. I was trying to be cool. But I just wanted to say hi. So I double-clicked, and in the chat window I typed, "Hello, Kai that is of Whedon." I didn't know, then, that Kai's last name is Cole. (I was a Baby Superfan, 'kay?)
A moment of suspense, and then a message came back:
"This is Joss."This began a weird and thrilling time for me, wherein Joss was my IM buddy and my email penpal. It probably lasted a couple of weeks, and then Kai, who had been visiting China when we first chatted, got home and he was less lonely, and oh yeah, he had a couple of TV shows to work on. And then we were out of touch for a bit.
But The Bronze was a vibrant community with a conscience, and every year they hosted a Posting Board Party (PBP) where Bronzers and VIPs alike could get together, raise some money for the Make a Wish foundation, and have some fun. So I got a job to supplement my scholarship funds (a plush help desk gig that left me plenty of time for Bronzing and reading fanfic) so that I could travel to LA in February 2001 and meet all of my internet friends, including Joss.
I did, and it was awesome. If you've never had a group of Internet friends who are the best, go get some. You won't regret it. If you want to read the sordid details of my first in-person Joss meeting, Past!Kiba wrote them up and published them here. She has the experience much fresher in her mind than I do.
Joss was a busy guy, and we weren't, you know, actual friends, so we didn't really keep in touch. But I saw him at the 2002 PBP, which was lovely (though I spent more of it holding his beer than talking to him), and again at the 2003 PBP (again, I think I held his beer until his assistant showed up and took it from me), after I had established a campaign that didn't save Firefly. And then I found my way into the ranks of fans invited to the Serenity premiere in September 2005. I don't think it ever occurred to Joss that I might be there, since I live in North Carolina. But I got there, and I was in the same theater as him, and after the credits rolled, I approached him and said hello. We didn't get to talk much, but as I was about to leave I went and said goodbye to him, and he kissed me on the top of my head (just as he had done at the 2002 and 2003 PBPs), and in spite of a migraine I left feeling pretty giddy.
And that was kind of my last personal interaction with Joss Whedon, aside from a quick exchange in the comments at Whedonesque during the writer's strike of 2007-2008, and a thrilling day in 2015 just before he left Twitter when he both retweeted and favorited a couple of my tweets.
That said, his work still speaks powerfully to me today, and I credit the Bronzers with really turning my life around, with giving me an identity when I was struggling to give myself one. It's been over 15 years, and they still are some of the most important people in my life.
I feel like I should have a tidy conclusion, but I'm afraid I don't. If you're looking for lessons to take away from this story, here's what I've got for you:
- Do great work and you'll attract passionate fans (assuming you are in the right place at the right time; being part of a TV-writing dynasty helps).
- Be nice to people's spouses and maybe they'll become your email pen pals.
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Big thanks to the Bronze VIP Posting Board Archive.
