Vampires

I was probably seven years old when I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was just sitting on the couch in my grandmother's living room, staring at her big box of a television, mindlessly just looking at the images on it. At that time, I still had a hard time reading subtitles because of how quickly they would fade and I still didn't know any English besides "hello, my name is Mari and I'm from Portugal". Still, I enjoyed that first episode so much that it became a ritual for me to tune in on Saturday afternoons to watch Buffy. I wasn't sure what was going on, but it was a bunch of cool looking teenagers wearing cute clothes and fighting those tacky 90s demons. It was cool, it was visually interesting, it was stimulating. I ate up all the seasons and grew up with that show, from a kid to a teen. I was eleven or twelve when the last episode aired. Both my subtitle reading skills and my English comprehending had improved a bit but, looking back, I still had no idea what exactly was going on in that show. All I knew was that there were monsters and vampires and that I had a big crush on Spike because he was just so attractive.

I eventually re watched the entire show later on, at seventeen or eighteen, when I was definitely old enough to understand what was going on. And it has really stuck with me. That show got me into vampires, not only as cool sexy creatures of the night, but also as a concept. I loved reading about vampires, watching vampire movies and shows. They were interesting, complex creatures. Not just vampires but all sorts of monsters and creatures, all these supernatural entities that made life seem more exciting. Growing up, I was a weird fat kid with no friends or social life and all I had were books and hopes and dreams and my emo poetry. Monsters brought excitement to my boring life. I wasn't interested in boys because my heart was taken by James Marsters (I still love him lol).

Then Twilight came around and brought a wave of vampire romance with it, very teensy and cutesy and l hated every second of it. At that time, I was also going through my I'M NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS phase (I know, cringe...) so I took it upon myself to openly hate on Twilight and on vampires altogether. I detached myself from that fantasy with such hatred that I couldn't even think about Buffy or Angel anymore without cringing.

But this quarantine, I stumbled upon something about Buffy again. I found myself rewatching both Buffy and Angel all over again, watching video analysis, reading articles about how it's been an allegory for growing up and all the monsters we face in our formative years. Even though I had already rewatched as a young adult and understood it a lot better than when I was seven, this time I truly got it. And it blew my mind. Just like that, I could really watch it and identify with these characters. And this show resonates with me now more than ever, twenty years later.

And James Marsters is still incredibly attractive.