During my master’s degree, during the pandemic, I ordered myself a 32-inch Phillips television and an Apple TV. Once everything was delivered and set up, I sat in my bed for hours on a mission: watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer from beginning to end. It took me six months and a couple of boxes of tissues, especially for the later seasons, but I got there.
I can’t even begin to explain what Buffy means to me. There’s a familiarity to it all: the group of high school students wanting desperately to lead normal lives, but their alter-egos get in the way (read family, relationships, mental health issues, etc.), every Big Bad being an allegory for adolescence, but maybe most importantly in this case, the presence of a father figure to watch over them.
In the Powerpuff Girls, it was Professor Plutonium, in Totally Spies, it was Jerry, in the Gallagher Girls, it was Mr. Solomon, in Charlie’s Angels, it was Bosley, and in Buffy, it was her watcher Giles.
These figures are always there to supply their girls with the gadgets they need, the pep talk before, and the atta-girls after. Giles always had a book to reference, he remembered important and frivolous things alike off the top of his head. He stayed in that library! He also trained Buffy, taught her how to think and fend for herself.
My aim, without sounding too arrogant is to do that for my newsletter; it’s part of the reason I created Tangie Dreamz in the first place. Of course, there are already links to sources in all of the essays I write, but I’m going to share dedicated posts with resources, books, tv shows, movies, TikToks, tweets (what, am I supposed to call them X-posts??? Get a grip.) and anything else I think is relevant to an essay I wrote. It’s called The Watcher because most of the resources will likely be videos, either shortform or video essays on YouTube. There are so many ways to learn new information that aren’t spending thousands of dollars a year on news publications or trying to keep your university login to JSTOR for as long as you can, and I’d like to create a centralized place to find those resources.
There won’t be a Watcher for every post, and they may come out later than the post they’re related to, so don’t be surprised if you find a Watcher related to an essay I wrote three months before. It takes time to compile sources! I like to let ideas and statements marinate before I push it out into the world and it feels like The Watcher series would be the definitive bookend to the pieces I write, so I want to curate everything very carefully.
If you read an essay or post of mine and you find something interesting related to it like an article or a TikTok or a tweet, please never hesitate to send it over; Tangie Dreamz is a communal space to share thoughts and ideas. And you will get full credit I promise!
That’s it for this dispatch; as Giles would say “I think the subtext is rapidly becoming um... text.”