Happy Sunday everyone! And the warmest of welcomes to the first Emotional Recommendation. For anyone who missed Friday’s newsletter where I explained what this is, it is essentially this: a short n sweet rundown of whatever I’m feeling intensely about right now, coming in between each of the normal Emotional Speculations. I’m keeping it loose, so some weeks I might write about one thing, some maybe two, some maybe even more than that. Don’t say I don’t treat ya!
Click here to metaphorically buy me an oat flat white, if you’d like!
Anyway, to kick things off I’m talking about - unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me IRL - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its grown up, slightly sexier cousin, Angel. I actually can’t put into words how obsessed I’ve become with these shows (the Buffyverse, if you will). I started watching Buffy during a relatively ~difficult time~ last year, literally 20 years too late to join any discourse about it, and I’m now on season 6 of Buffy and season 3 of Angel (for anyone uninitiated, you have to start watching Angel at the beginning of Buffy Season 4. Sometimes they overlap and it’s thrilling!).
Whilst part of me is sad I missed out on it as a teenager, in a way I’m glad I waited until now to watch it so I could fully appreciate just how good this show actually is. I love Gossip Girl and The OC and all those frankly perfect teen universes, but Buffy is truly another league that I don’t think I would’ve appreciated as a youth. To start with, I just absolutely adore these characters* and the world they inhabit, and even the really quite bad demon costumes. And also, whilst obviously I love rooting for a fictional couple as much as the next person, it’s very refreshing to watch a show about Young People where the romantic relationships are secondary (and sometimes even tertiary) to the characters’ growth as actual people. I love the way the Big Bad is snuck into the narrative in tiny clues here and there; how even though there’s always a Demon of the Week you never quite know what it is Buffy and her Scooby gang are really fighting - until suddenly it’s like: oh shit it’s that guy!!! of course!!! It’s honestly masterful (not to blow too much smoke up creator J**s W**don’s arse, obviously, given what we know about him now).
I’m genuinely desperate to read as much as I can about it, but because it’s been around for 400 hundred years I have to wait until I’ve finished the whole thing in order to avoid finding out anything I don’t want to. However, I really loved this 1998 essay by everyone’s favourite anthropologist David Graeber on the smart subversiveness of this show, its approach to morality, and its stellar writing (this was brought to my attention by my friend Bennie on Instagram; thank you Bennie!).
Anyway, that’s my recommendation for the week. If you haven’t ever watched it, I really think you might enjoy it. If you have watched it, I really think you’d appreciate that Graeber essay, and also I reeeally want you to talk to me about it. Please!!! I need to gab and theorise and fangirl!
Should also mention that I haven’t been able to stop listening to my girl Maggie Rogers’ new song Don’t Forget Me since it came out earlier this week. She’s magic!! I love her so much! I simply can’t wait for this album!!
Thanks for reading! Go spend your Sunday evening with Buffy, and I’ll see you soon for ES.
xoxo
*except for Xander, who I feel mostly ambivalent about, for reasons I imagine are clear to literally anyone who’s watched the show.