Hey there, Mister T!
See, when I found myself falling in love with BtVS in a mighty fannish way, I felt sure that somewhere out there there had to be other adults interested in talking about the show. Not just going OMG11! Angle is so totally hot!!11!, but actually TALKING ABOUT THE SHOW. Surely? So I tentatively tried The Bronze, of which I had heard, and promptly got jumped on by resentful teenagers brandishing emoticons because I was spelling properly and using long words and generally not approaching things in the proper spirit. (This is not to say that everyone at The Bronze was like that - just that this was the impression I gained, and the reason I slunk away.)
So I ended up at The Guardian's Talk Boards, specifically the Film Unlimited section (where one also discusses telly), and spent a couple of happy years there, occasionally talking Buffy, as well as discussing other shows and movies. This also involved regular meetups to go and watch random arthouse films and Then Beer, over which to discuss said films. It was great. But then one day Salon members staged a sort of attack, and invaded the main Guardian Talk area. So Guardian Talk people grabbed their flags and ran over to plant them in Salon, and it was all quite amusing. I occasionally lurked in the main Talk area (which tends towards shoutiness and rivalry far more than the lovely FU area, or indeed the library-like tranquility of Books Unlimited), and out of curiosity I went to look at Salon.
And my eye was caught by the Buffista thread. 'Oooh!' I thought to myself.
Now, at this point I did not join said Buffista thread. But I was alerted to its existence. I think I probably came looking for you folks after JimET (who was also a regular at the Guardian) mentioned you. But I was shy. And then I found the filk, and thought that was a hilarious idea, so I wrote some. But then I learned that it had to be posted on the site, not just randomly sent in by someone you'd never heard of. So I scurried into a thread, blushing quite hard, and posted a variation on The Lady is a Tramp, all about Darla. (TLiaVamp, obviously.)
iirc, ita said "One of us! One of us!" And I decided to stay.
...'course this was back on WorldCrossing, before the culmination of The Great Buffista Migration. And in those days everyone had avatars! I remember being terribly impressed by Jilli's, and spending many happy hours crafting my own little images of Willow and Tara with a floating rose, and various other things. Although nothing could ever compete with Matt's awesome Angel/Lindsey Evil Hand icon. Superb!