1 week Ago By Kimberly Nordyke
Hundreds of Scoobies gathered in a sleepy suburb of Los Angeles this past weekend to attend Buffy Prom at Torrance High School — the real-life Sunnydale High — to party like it was the Class of 1999 . But these weren’t just devotees of the cult TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer . The gang was there to celebrate Buffering the Vampire Slayer, a podcast founded in 2016 by then-married couple Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs, and the release of their new book, Slayers Every One of Us (St.
Martin’s Press). The ’90s-themed Buffy Prom was held Saturday night at the school’s famous courtyard and welcomed attendees from across the U.S.
, Canada and beyond, ranging in ages from tween to septuagenarian, the majority of whom proudly represented the LGBTQ+ spectrum. While some stepped out in sparkling gowns and donned sharp suits, others embraced cosplay, leaning into formal looks worn by Buffy Summers and frenemy Cordelia Chase in “Homecoming” and the iconic leather-jacket-over-white dress “Prophecy Girl” Buffy. There were also several “Band Candy” mama Joyces, a gaggle of trench-coated Spikes, good and bad “Doppelgangland” Willows and no less than two Loan Sharks dancing the night away to tracks by the Spice Girls, Limp Bizkit and Evanescence.
Because the event was held at a fully functioning public school — albeit one where many key shots from the first three seasons of BTVS were filmed — the party was alcohol-free. Instead, guests were treated to blood-red Vampire Kiss mocktails and a hot chocolate bar to wash down ’90s-era snacks and sugar cookies emblazoned with BTVS character photos, Buffering imagery and insidery phrases like “Smash the Demon Lizard Patriarchy.” This was the fifth Buffy Prom thrown by the Buffering duo and their second turn at Torrance High, but the first that Russo, an LGBTQ+ speaker and advocate, was absent from.
While she hung back on the East Coast to recover from giving birth to her first child only weeks ago, Youngs was left (along with paper cut-outs of Russo and a few real-life friends of the pod) to entertain the masses. An accomplished songwriter and recording artist, Youngs easily fulfilled the task by performing original selections written for the podcast, plus vintage cuts like the Cranberries’ “Linger,” with her old band and DJs of the night, L.A.
Exes, harmonizing along. Fun fact: Buffering the Vampire Slayer ’s music catalog is more than 160 songs deep, each composed, written and recorded from the POV of Buffy’s characters for every episode of the podcast series, including a full-album soundtrack for the musical episode, “Once More With Feeling.” The two-night Buffering event began the evening prior inside Torrance High’s auditorium to debut the joint memoir, Slayers Every One of Us: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On, written by Russo and Youngs.
The gathering featured a Q&A with the two moderated by Joanna Robinson, Russo joining via Zoom. The discussion glossed over many of the raw (and funnier) moments featured in the book, which is written both in each author’s individual voices, as well as several co-written passages. The memoir is a chronicle of Buffering the Vampire Slayer ’s meteoric success as a BTVS rewatch podcast that found its niche discussing the show spoiler-free through a queer feminist lens, that ran from 2016 through 2022.
Along the way, it amassed millions of downloads and worldwide recognition, and created a safe space for thousands of like-minded folks to connect via social platforms. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the then-married couple was going through fertility woes, followed by a miscarriage and eventually a divorce. Yet they still continued to deliver podcast episodes, staying connected to each other — and their fans — before ultimately finding a happy ending worthy of a Buffy story arc.
There is really no such thing as a casual Buffering the Vampire Slayer fan. The Scoobies drawn to the podcast have spawned their own “miniverse” with an engrained ethos of communal respect and kinship, and an admiration for Russo and Youngs that overshadows even their love of a certain blonde protagonist. Buffering merch was ubiquitous all weekend, and the feel-good vibes of the prom extended far beyond the Torrance High courtyard to dozens of meet-ups and off-site adventures among listeners of varied backgrounds and interests.
This overarching theme, Chosen Family, is one that’s carried over from Buffy the Vampire Slayer ’s core ideology through to Buffering the Vampire Slayer ’s dynamic relationship with its audience, and is also reflected in the Slayers book.And since family sticks together, Russo and Youngs have continued to create podcasts, most recently concluding season 1 of Buffering the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Spoilers, to re-examine the series and see what they missed the first time around, taking subsequent Buffy content like the Dark Horse comic series into account. With a Hulu reboot reportedly developing “the next chapter of the Buffyverse” and BTVS’ 30th anniversary coming up in 2027, Russo has already hinted that another Torrance event could be in their future.
But if the apocalypse comes first, you know who to beep..
