After three years of dating, singer-songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs finally convinced her girlfriend Kristin Russo, in 2012, to watch the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
They got married a year later — and in 2016, they started the podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer together, which grew to develop a community of more than 3,000 loyal fans around the world. But these listeners also came to support each other online and offline on everything from financial trouble to dealing with grief. They have gathered at an annual prom hosted by Youngs and Russo, and created traditions (like passing a onesie with a sushi print — a reference to one of the show's several iconic outfits — from new parent to new parent.).
"It's probably the nicest fan community I've been involved in," says longtime listener and fan Emily Osceola-Branch. "It wasn't a competition to see who was the biggest fan — that's an issue that I've run in with some other fan groups."
The hosts, Russo and Youngs, already speak candidly about their personal lives on the podcast, but go further in a new memoir, Slayers, Every One of Us. They recount, from both their perspectives, how the podcast came to be; how their marriage and relationship frayed and eventually led to divorce; and how they kept the podcast going while all that was happening, in part because of the community they had built around it.
Podcaster and cultural critic Joanna Robinson, a frequent collaborator with Russo and Youngs, says that while the book will interest fans of the podcast and the TV show, it also offers a look at how someone's emotional journey can play a role in the creative process.
"There is a comforting message there: Things can end, and it doesn't have to be the end of everything," she says. "It could be painful, but it doesn't have to be closed doors and anger. It can be pain and separation and reconnection and growth into something new."
In their book, Youngs and Russo tell the story of their relationship, the podcast, and how the two intersect, sometimes in trying ways.
For instance, they organized a prom event in Los Angeles during season three of the podcast. Buffy attends prom in an episode, and Russo and Youngs knew that many in their community either never went to prom, or were not able to go as their authentic selves. Tickets sold out in three minutes.
Russo and Youngs broke up six days before the prom. But they continued with the podcast and proceeded with the event as planned.
"At every step, we put on our public faces and were cordial until we'd completed the task at hand. Then we'd get back into the car and pick up the fight right where we'd left off," Youngs writes in Slayers.
In 2018, after announcing season four of the podcast and a live recording, they announced their divorce.
Youngs and Russo say that at the time, they were not sure if they would continue the podcast.
"It was ... very tenuous and fragile," Young says.
"We were taking it podcast by podcast, day by day, event by event," Russo adds. "And there were moments when both of us separately were like, 'I can't do any more.' "
But they kept going because of the community that had formed around them, says Youngs.
"How do we not keep making this? We feel a massive connection to our beautiful, amazing, brilliant audience who have given us so much of their time, their energy, their amazing emails," she says. "Lucky for us ... how we feel about our listenership, has outweighed the difficulty, the frustration, the fear, the sadness, the pain of continuing to be connected to each other when that was hardest."
Russo says it was "awful" to go through their joint calendar together and relive some painful moments of their lives while writing the book. "It was like pulling up things that really have no business being pulled up, and certainly if they had business being pulled up, it would have been maybe a therapy session."
But she says they decided to do it for fans of their podcast, for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but also for people who have been through any kind of separation.
Russo says they wrote the book for people who "can take either solace or inspiration or motivation from two people working really, really hard to try not to lose each other in really difficult circumstances and … how that's reflected in a television show that we love and that a lot of people love."
In the book, Youngs and Russo remark on how the plot of the TV show reflects their lives in sometimes uncanny ways. For instance, at the prom event in Los Angeles, Youngs plays the song "Wild Horses," which Buffy and her love interest Angel dance to in the corresponding episode of the TV show, knowing they would have to go their separate ways afterwards. Unbeknownst to the people attending the event, Youngs and Russo had already separated.
Russo says that if a writer on a TV show had pitched a plot point like this, other TV writers would reject it as being too on the nose.
Robinson says connections like that speak to the qualities of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a show.
"A story as rich and as good as Buffy the Vampire Slayer … will meet you wherever you are in your life," she says. "Stories wait for you and meet you where you need them, or will appear to you differently when you watch them at a different point in your life."
Since launching the Buffy podcast, Youngs and Russo have expanded their discussions to other shows like The XFiles – calling the overall programming Buffering: A Rewatch Adventure. But they are also returning to Buffy once more – this time with spoilers.
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