24 Feb 2024
Me, Myself & Buffy - Episode 1 - Welcome to the Hellmouth
Welcome to my second attempt at making the podcast of my dreams a reality.
A first teaser of that dream:
My name is Yaele Simkovitch, I’m a French, 43 year old, life long Buffyologist. That’s what we call it when the love for the TV show Buffy, the Vampire Slayer spills over from a classic fandom into a full blown subject of study.
I’ve come at Buffy from a lot of different angles in my life.
First I was a fan, then a super fan, than I became a student of its text with the army of amateur Buffyologist online but also in the more strict environment of a Master in English. Then I started studying how it was made, got into the creative, and industrial aspect of things. I co-hosted fan conventions, met other Buffy people. I wrote about it, talked about it, lectured about it. I wrote a 200 pages Master thesis in Contemporary History about the 7th season’s reflexion on the modern American wars (In which I disproved that the show became pro-Bush in the end). I used it as a tool for teaching TV writing. I used it as a source of mirth, and comfort and inspiration watching and re-watching it for my own personal pleasure. I also watched it with others, showing it to all the people who would let me, to try and explain why it mattered so much for me, to try and give them the gift of Buffy.
When the show turned twenty I felt the need to say more or rather to gather all I had to say in one comprehensive place. I had a book proposal but got distracted and though I still have that book in me what I was longing for was something else. A format that would allow me to express all of my passion on top of my knowledge and analysis.
And one fine day came the obvious answer: A rewatch podcast!
It seemed ideal. I wanted something that would welcome people who never watched the show as well as the die-hards like me. This would be the perfect format for that, people could watch or re-watch along with me if I was careful not to spoil, or rather spoil responsibly (at the end of the episode so people could jump off). I also thought that I knew the show so well it would be a breeze to make. Especially since I had been making my own podcasts since 2015.
I had underestimated a number of hang ups:
* Doing it in English was way more nerve racking than I thought. I knew I wanted it to be in the language of Buffy and that I wanted to reach all the other english speaking Buffy Maniacs of the world, but man oh man, no matter how good my language skills were, recording myself in that tongue felt super cringe.
* Talking about Buffy is tentaculaire as we say in French. The best translation I’ve found is sprawling. There is so much to say, I have so much to say, there are so many ways to approach it…. Just the idea of wrestling all this content to the ground and make it palatable felt insurmountable each time I was about to start.
* This is a deeply vulnerable exercise. I am intellectually very sure of my opinions but I’m also exposing my heart. This is a cultural love affair I’ve been having since I was seventeen, this is much more intimate and personal than I realized.
To make a long story short it took me 17 months to dare to publish this first episode . Another 19 to make episode 2 … and that was in October 2021. And recently the website I had created to host it simply stopped working…
But my desire for it has not waned… it’s grown… and the website giving up on it felt like the last domino that needed to fall to get me out of this idling gear.
I’m tired of waiting to talk about Buffy, especially cause I don’t know what the hell I’m waiting for. I guess I needed a little more courage, a bit more bravery to really do the thing I wanna do which is an all out Geekfest about my favorite thing.
Seemed like the right spot for another teaser:
I also have to embrace the fact that I want to do this alone and that I’m betting on the fact that Me, Myself and I will be enough to sustain your attention, your interest, to spark your desire to hear more.
I may be taking a risk in deciding to start this new phase of Me Myself & Buffy by re-publishing the original Episode 1. But to be honest I really like what I did with it. And the parts that aren’t what I want them to be … well if I’m going to be real and vulnerable here, the least I can do is expose the learning curve.
So here we are Me Myself & Buffy - Episode 1 - Welcome to the Hellmouth.
Click on the next post to get Episode 2.
I’m going to start working on Episode 3 right after that.
Please subscribe to this Substack to support this adventure. I’m creating a special section for this podcast but I’m going to have some English content on the main feed as well so don’t be shy ;-)
And please send your own thoughts and feelings my way … I' can’t wait to hear them!!!!
One last teaser to remind you of why this show deserves such attention:
(Graphics: original art by Marine Legrand)
(Music credit: Distant Memory composed by Tomasz Chrostowski from HookSounds.com)
Get full access to Le Substack de Yaëlka at yaelesimkovitch.substack.com/subscribe (https://yaelesimkovitch.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
