Saturday, August 15 2026
1-4pm EST
zoom
Join us for an afternoon of BUFFY TRIVIA, BUFFY TAROT and a FUN(d)RAISER for accessibility love and collective care.
This is for Buffy fans who are committed to liberation, abolition, solidarity, and who want to see a global thriving village in our lifetime.
This is a spiritually grounded, grief-honouring space that is invested in protecting the work that healers, caregivers, grief-workers, spiritual guides, midwives and death workers do for many different kinds of liberation movements – especially those who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, femmes, queer and trans people, disabled people and survivors.
Come for the deep nerdery concerning all things made of the BuffyVerse. Stay for the deep, nourishing conversation on holistic, integrated approaches to the multi-layered ecocide in front of us, and on thriving village principles that protect our dreams for widescale, interspecies, intergenerational planetary liberation.
that’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo! Please note that we support a Free P/alestine and our anti-Zeye-onist Jewish friends. Do not come if you’re not in alignment with this. We also recognize creators and actors involved with Buffy have exhibited some Vampire-Without-A-Soul behaviour. And, there are a lot of problems with the show itself, including lots of racism!
Still, so many of us love this show. I do believe it has a lot to offer liberation and solidarity movements by way of cultural and critical commentary, and by engaging with what it does and doesn’t do well. This space is designed to harness the spirit and magic of Buffy into more strength, joy and power for liberation, healing and collective care.
sunnydale high
class schedule
OPENING: we begin with a brief grounding + breathing practice that honours our well and healing Ancestors, Trans-cestors, Queer + Femme Ancestors, Disabled Ancestors, and that sends love, strength, healing and recovery to the Earth as our greatest Living Ancestor and Elder, especially the places she is hurting the most.
NEXT UP, BUFFY TRIVIA: hosted by your very own queer, brown, multi-gendered, modern-day Vampire Slayer, Shaunga Tagore.
PHOTO CREDITS: HAMIDAH HEMANI, TANIA ANDERSON, JOSEPH J. ALT TEXT ON IMAGES.
HOW IT WORKS: Show up on zoom and play to win. (Or, just to hang out and have fun.) We’ll have 3 rounds of trivia with easy, medium and hard questions. You can play individually (SHE ALONE style), or get together with your friends and play on a self-formed team / scooby gang. Winners with the highest points will be tallied at the end of each round.
PRIZE WINNERS: Winners of each round will get to pick a scene from Buffy for Shaunga to act out live in front of all of us. Yes, she will be using different voices to play all the characters in the scene. (again…SHE ALONE STYLE).
BUFFY TAROT: In between trivia rounds, Shaunga will offer us phenomenal tarot readings from two specialized BUFFY TAROT DECKS.
bring your big questions and small things, currently sitting on your heart and in front of humanity.
High score winners will get to ask a tarot question for Shaunga to read. In each reading, we’ll put out the thriving village principles Buffy wants us to think about.
WING WOMAN: Shaunga brings her long-time deer friend and Wing Woman, RAVYN WNGZ to offer us spiritually grounded, political commentary emerging from each tarot reading.
Ravyn will speak to how we raise our standards of collective care, accessibility, and abolitionist relationship values, to protect our most important dreams for wide-scale liberation and thriving village co-creation.
PHOTO CREDIT: JACKIE BROWN
SPECIAL GUEST READINGS: We may sprinkle in some special guest readings and surprises (almost) as fantastic as miss kitty fantastico.
GRAND PRIZE: The highest point winner from all 3 rounds will go on an epic trivia showdown with Shaunga herself, in pursuit of the key or rather, a mystical ball of green energy aka a mystery grand prize.
give your money
to the magic box
THIS EVENT IS A FUNDRAISER
While most trivia nights (Buffy or otherwise) work well in a physical location, we are experimenting with a zoom format so we can reach and host larger numbers, for the sake of our fundraiser.
Shaunga needs urgent accessibility support. She is raising funds to resource her basic and badass needs, and a support team of collective care to help her with city errands, meal/nutritional support, physical healing, grief support, trauma recovery, animal elder care, and spiritual healing.
However, in resourcing her own needs, Shaunga seeks to organize a possibility model of holistic, integrated collective care. So often in times of crisis, our healers and artists step up to offer free services for fundraisers and collective organizing. However, when we ourselves are also under economic, ecological, social and spiritual stress, we need models that also prioritize our well-being and thriving, to ensure liberation efforts stay strong and resourced as a whole.
Moreover, Black and brown healers, queer femmes, trans women, disabled folks, caregivers and grief workers are still too often held to impossible standards, and pushed into situations of exploitation. After more than 20-years of community work, this dynamic has most certainly contributed to chronic health issues I am currently experiencing. If I want to truly address my accessibility needs, I want to practise a possibility model that seeks repair for this ongoing pattern – a model I am trying for the first time.
I will feed the money we raise into a thriving village prototype, that honours the principle: back in the day, the village took care of its healers, artists and essential workers for the planet.
This is part of my larger research project on a vision and design for a Village Artist Grant Ecosystem, and a movement for artists who work for the planet.
We recently published a full research report, which you can check out here.
a few things I would like to do
with money that comes into my
thriving village pot…
TKARONTO SURVIVOR MEAL SUPPORT: I would like to create a stipend for a cook to make some extra meals for me each week, so that I can rest more (especially on days with high body pain, chronic flares and exhaustion). I would like to pay them so that they have more time and resources to make extra meals for Indigenous evacuees/survivors from Northern Ontario forest fires who have recently arrived in the city I am in, and/or for others who are in need of extra meal support.
BODYWORK SUPPORT: Instead of paying a bodyworker for a single session, I would like to pay them for the entire day. This gives them more space, support and flexibility to offer free services for evacuees, or create a day of free services for the community. Or, they can use this extra support to rest more and avoid burn-out and overworking.
HOLISTIC WILDFIRE SUPPORT: As I grow the thriving village pot, I can send money directly to Indigenous communities impacted by wildfires who are asking for monetary support, as well as to Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, and Black fire keepers, water protectors, land defenders, Elders, and medicine keepers who are working on root cause solutions for escalating ecological crisis.
ANCESTOR HEALING & GRIEF-SUPPORT DROP IN: When my bases are covered by a village, we practise a model that shows how prioritizing my own care can also be shared to support others. I will also have more space and support to host open drop-in spaces for my specialty services. This can look like a regular Ancestor Healing Breathing Circle for grief support and recovery, as well as local and online Ancestor Theatre workshops to promote more fun and thriving village building.
and…there is so much more we can do with a village funding mindset.
INVOICES
to the universe
PHOTO CREDIT: MAXWELL LANDER. FROM SHAUNGA’S FIRST ENSEMBLE PLAY IN ANCESTOR THEATRE, “LETTERS TO THE UNIVERSE” 2016-2017.
The central point of my vision and design for a Village Artist Grant Ecosystem, is to transform disenfranchised labour into beloved, cherished, paid village roles, which then become the building blocks of grief-centered, earth-honouring economies.
‘Disenfranchised Labour’ is chronically unfunded labour that keeps movements, families, generations and selves alive. Yet, when we (un)learn how to exchange money for this work, we protect the kind of labour required to keep liberation movements strong, and address repeating problems and concerns.
some examples of disenfranchised labour…
click to read.
WORKING THROUGH CONFLICT
Some of the hardest work we ever do is while moving through complicated relationship conflict. Yet these moments are rarely financially supported and pushed to the realm of “personal issues” or “community drama.” We often feel shame or the need to hide that we are struggling, instead of having access to a well-resourced village that wants the best for each individual and can support a process of relationship repair and evolution.
When the process of moving through conflict isn’t supported, things can turn nasty much more quickly. And, we are much more likely to avoid personal responsibility or healing work required to be better people in our relationships, which then turns into never-ending, repeating, looping conflict that never gets released, intimately or collectively.
When I grow my thriving village pot, you can send me an invoice to the universe, for the many hours you spent on the labour of working through relationship conflict, or even inner conflict – and actually get paid.
RETROACTIVE PAY
What about all the times women of colour educated white women on their racism for free? Every time femmes educated men? Every time employees educated their employers on creating safe working environments? Every time Black women educate everyone on everything? We are so deeply trained to expect free education, which sometimes turns into endless mentoring and mothering, and we never get those hours back.
Yes, we’ve all seen funny memes about how we ‘should’ charge for this labour. But I don’t actually think it’s a joke when you recognize how much time and energy this labour has asked from you, without any ecosystem available for reciprocity.
WRITERS AND READERS FOR A LIVING
This one acknowledges that “writing” and “reading” is indeed labour, and when you perform this labour, you deserve to be paid for it. Not because you taught a class about writing. Not because you went viral on substack. Not because you landed a book deal or temporary job. Simply for the labour of writing and reading.
I can’t wait to put money toward mini-grants for good listeners to read, listen, write, and study stories with me.
This fund can then extend further to visual artists, musicians, craftspeople, service workers and practitioners of all kinds. Imagine getting paid just for the labour of what you create, regardless of outcome?
GET PAID TO REST AND PLAY
My goal this summer is to gather a few weirdo queer and trans adults to run through sprinklers at children’s parks with me – and get paid for the labour of learning how to play, have fun, and be restful.
So many of us did not get to play enough as kids – we had to take adult responsibilities early in life, our families were living in great economic stress or poverty, and many have grown up in situations of domestic violence. It takes WORK to learn how to rest, play, and be at ease.
And yet, when we are well rested, relaxed, and have spaces to express ourselves, laugh, be in joy, and have fun, we are much more equipped to create and invent our best offerings toward a liberated world.
GRIEVING AND DYING FOR A LIVING
So many of our repeating collective problems can be boiled down to the fact that we live in death-denying societies. We have no economic/cultural models that exchange money for the inherent labour of moving through an end-of-life + transition + afterlife phase.
For us to truly be available to truly transform our relationship to white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, patriarchy, ableism, homophobia/transphobia and the ways capitalism has been internalized in all of us – we need time, support and resources to fall apart. To listen, be still, grieve, and dismantle out-worn generational relationship cycles, enough to be present and re-member an earth-honouring way of living each day.
This is what everyone on this journey needs to be available for. It is essential to co-creating conditions of genuine liberation, ancestral recovery and communal repair. And yet, we sidestep and turn away from this work by design.
Here, we offer financial protection to those who are going through transitional, grief-filled experiences. We experience and share what becomes possible when we are held by an ecosystem designed to protect this labour.
We will allocate the first $25,000 to fundraising for accessibility support, collective care, and wildfire support.
Once we hit that number, I will dedicate the next $5000 to sending 10 small gifts of $500 to folks in the community who want a monetary offering for essential labour you’ve done and never got paid for. Once we hit our goal, I’ll send you instructions on how to send me an invoice to the universe and get a little cash reward.
If we raise more than $30,000, we’ll continue growing the pot so that we continue this prototype for the rest of 2026 (and beyond).
reserve your spot
and contribute
SLAYERS, WATCHERS,
WITCHES AND POTENTIALS
OF THE WORLD…UNITE!!!
Come and get your trivia on, and help us meet our goal. To reserve your seat, make a contribution of any amount to our fundraiser. No amount is too small or too large. We want to see if we can hit 300 x $100 by August 15. We imagine some will give less, and some will give more. But if we hit this average, we’ll be able to raise $30,000 and do some incredible things with this money.
Shaunga’s work on a Village Artist Grant Ecosystem is a multi-year, ongoing project, and there will be many more opportunities to get involved, give and receive. To stay updated, follow along my free newsletter on substack.
If you’d like to attend, but can’t afford a ticket, we got you. Just fill out this form. (link coming soon.)