Rubber ducking (Buffy ducking?)

I have a Buffy tabletop figurine that I use for rubber duck debugging. I talk to her whenever I need to debug my thoughts, which applies anywhere from programming to when I need to hype myself up before giving a presentation. Talking out loud helps me untangle the jumble of ideas nesting in my brain—I often feel like I’m chasing after a swarming mass of thoughts in a pretty strenuous attempt to pin them down and dissect them into the right words. Not unlike SpongeBob trying to catch jellyfish with his little net.

She comes from an Unmatched game set that I bought at a board game cafe in New York, back when I spent a summer there in 2022. Nowadays it functions more as room decor than a game I actively play (Unmatched works better when there are multiple sets being played together), but it looks cool sitting on my Shelf of Things.

I remember being on the fence about buying it—I came back three times before finally deciding to lay down 50 of my hard-earned dollars for it (I was making $15/hour on my internship…in NYC…), upon finding out that the set came with a Faith sidekick token. I wish it came with a Faith figurine instead, but maybe that’s a tall ask for a character that only appeared for 10% of the show (but had a long and storied impact on it and culture at large).