Picture this…Andrew, your friend and humble narrator, reclines majestically in his velvet wing-backed chair, as he recounts the tale of the brave slayer of the vampyres. In the next instant we are whisked away to reality, as Anya bursts into the bathroom to ask Andrew "Why can’t you just masturbate like the rest of us?"

This paper considers the masturbatory reworkings of Buffy by its installed ‘Mary Sue’* characters: Andrew and Jonathon (*to paraphrase Larbelestier). In the parallel episodes Superstar and Storyteller, both Andrew and Jonathon appropriate the canonic text, either overtly as Andrew does, or subversively as Jonathon does. The paper will focus on Storyteller, in which Andrew is installed as a fan, rewriting Buffy by imposing his vision on the screen. His character decides to move on from simply being a ‘guestage’ in the Summers household, to being the documenter of the final apocalypse. This paper will examine Andrew as a parodic Mary Sue, and consider the way in which the text ultimately accepts or rejects this appropriation. What does Andrew do with the fan in Storyteller? How does this episode encapsulate, reflect or project the relationship between Buffy’s authoritative ‘authors’ – Whedon and Noxon – and their very active fans?

Equipment: VCR/TV