I hold the Buffy fandom near and dear to me for many reasons, one of those being that I’ve been immersed in it since day one. I didn’t stumble onto it in reruns, it wasn’t recced to me by someone else, it wasn’t a fluke or an accident. I saw the movie, fell in love with it, and five years later, I watched the show.

As long as there’s been the Buffyverse, there’s been a foundation of internet sites that are the cornerstone of the fandom that we have today. I still have a handful of floppies that are packed with wav files from Sounds of the Slayer. I actually remember of the EARLIEST Buffy adult fic sites that was safeguarded by AdultCheck ID. I was one of maybe three fic writers who were writing Faith/Buffy slash when it was new.

I’ve seen many site and communities come and go. I was devastated to see the loss of Slayer Pride (which I co-founded with Sasha) more than a year ago. And today, I just found out that Sonia Marie’s link site… is gone.

Now, in an age where Google is a verb, it’s fairly simple to find what you need. Heck, most of us have a little G box (not to be confused with G spot) right in the toolbar. But back in the day, during the Yahoo! and AltaVista regime, you needed a hub. There had to be some place that would be willing to show you everything you needed to know about the Buffyverse. And Sonia Marie’s was that place.

I get excited when I randomly stumble over my stuff on Google. I was ECSTATIC the day I first saw one of my sites on Sonia Marie’s Links Page. I still, to this day, can’t use the word GASP without thinking of Giles.

I often get caught up in the nostalgic tidbits within this fandom. The reason is because it’s so very cohesive and tangible to me. There’s a whole world inside, and I’m not just talking about the world that’s populated by slayers, vamps, and witches. There’s us. We make up a ‘verse of our own. We’re a community. More than that, we’re family. The fact that we so often get into bickering debates over the lamest ideas only reaffirms that familial concept.

I’ve seen this fandom grow from handfuls of us on AOL message boards, to the original Official Posting Board Posters, to Yahoo! Groups, to LiveJournal communities, to a writer’s convention that might as well have taken place on the sun (or hell, depending on your level of debauchery)… we’ve grown.

But as big as we are, when part of us disappears, there’s something to be missed.

So, to you, Sonia Marie… You provided, by far, one of the most central and important elements that cultivated this group of rambunctious fankids.

Thanks for the linkage. Most of all, thanks for the memories.