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30 August 2010 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisiI'm feeling generally pissed off, but shall spare you the (mostly RL-related) details. Instead I bring you a couple of quotes from our own Mr Whedon, from way back when. Please can we have that Joss back?
But nowadays I’m really cranky about comics. . . . Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss ? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody’s like ‘I can reverse the polarity of your ions !’ Like in one big flash everybody’s Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don’t understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it’s true.” (Dark Horse interview)
What we don’t have, which is what some science fiction shows have, is we can’t just do a thing because it seems cool. Everything that we pitch, everything that we put out there, whether or not it works, is based on the idea of: The audience has been through this. A normal girl goes through this. A normal guy deals with this. You know, it’s issues of sexuality, popularity, jobs. Whatever it is, it’s got to be based in realism. We can’t just say, you know, `The warship’s come and, you know, they transmogrify, the-blah, blah, blah.’ We can’t do that. We can go to some pretty strange places, but at the start, we always have to be about, `How does the audience relate to having done this themselves ?’ (Fresh Air Interview)
But nowadays I’m really cranky about comics. . . . Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss ? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody’s like ‘I can reverse the polarity of your ions !’ Like in one big flash everybody’s Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don’t understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it’s true.” (Dark Horse interview)
What we don’t have, which is what some science fiction shows have, is we can’t just do a thing because it seems cool. Everything that we pitch, everything that we put out there, whether or not it works, is based on the idea of: The audience has been through this. A normal girl goes through this. A normal guy deals with this. You know, it’s issues of sexuality, popularity, jobs. Whatever it is, it’s got to be based in realism. We can’t just say, you know, `The warship’s come and, you know, they transmogrify, the-blah, blah, blah.’ We can’t do that. We can go to some pretty strange places, but at the start, we always have to be about, `How does the audience relate to having done this themselves ?’ (Fresh Air Interview)
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Date: 30 August 2010 01:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 01:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 30 August 2010 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 01:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 01:38 pm (UTC)Well that would certainly explain why he decided to bring Warren back in s8...
It's just so difficult to reconcile the man that said those things with the product he's come out with in the past few years.
Maybe Firefly/Serenity really *did* break him, and he's now a disillusioned husk of a writer, selling out so he can feed his family?
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:05 pm (UTC)Then he sold his soul to get Dollhouse on air for 2 seasons...
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Date: 30 August 2010 01:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, I want THAT Joss to write these comics. Plz?
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Date: 30 August 2010 01:50 pm (UTC)IKR? I don't whether to laugh or cry.
Yeah, I want THAT Joss to write these comics. Plz?
Maybe we can start a petition?
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Date: 30 August 2010 02:11 pm (UTC)I believe the axiom "physician heal thyself" applies to those quotes.
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Date: 30 August 2010 02:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 02:45 pm (UTC)Oh definitely not. (The Spike comics - to choose a BtVS centric example - had absolutely brilliant moments whilst still being firmly grounded in Spike.) The space frakking OTOH strikes me as all 'cool' and not at all 'human experience'.
And just yesterday I had to reassure someone who never read comics before s8 that the fault wasn't with her (or comics generally) but with that particular story. I hope she tries something else.
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Date: 30 August 2010 02:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 02:55 pm (UTC)And vice versa...
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:13 pm (UTC)I have no comics thoughts.
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:21 pm (UTC)And I don't have any comic thoughts either, except wondering why they're so rubbish. :(
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 03:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 03:22 pm (UTC)Joss is so right! Issue #34 really resonated with me becuase it helped me deal with my issues with that one time I tried fucking in space with my high school boyfriend who everyone (except a few girls with other psychotic issues) thought I was totally over, but when Buffy jumped Angel's bones it was like they had ripped it straight from my life! Joss really knows his stuff, doesn't he?
/sarcasm.
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:25 pm (UTC)*nods sagely*
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:53 pm (UTC)Hmm - 'realism' - Dawn the giant, bangel shagging in outer-space, whatever - I don't think that word means what he thinks it means...
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Date: 30 August 2010 03:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 04:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 05:17 pm (UTC)(This is one of the reasons I adore RTD. He is absolutely, 100% himself, no matter what, and the only thing that matters to him is to tell the best story he can. If people don't like it? Tough.)
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Date: 30 August 2010 05:12 pm (UTC)Joss has done a turnaround on a whole host of things since the comics.
At this point I'm left with no other option than to believe he really is just trying to destroy the characters and 'verse out of spite.
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Date: 30 August 2010 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 30 August 2010 06:20 pm (UTC)He sounds so sane there...
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Date: 31 August 2010 09:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31 August 2010 09:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 07:08 pm (UTC)As long as we're psychoanalysing Joss, I think I can see why he'd forget that in the excitement of getting to tell a brand new story with these characters. The guy's been working under network/studio/actor/etc restrictions for ages, and I think everyone here can relate to that first moment when they realised "Hey! I can write fanfic and make anything happen!" Still, a pity.
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Date: 30 August 2010 09:19 pm (UTC)*nods vigorously* And you can see it applied in the show! :)
The guy's been working under network/studio/actor/etc restrictions for ages, and I think everyone here can relate to that first moment when they realised "Hey! I can write fanfic and make anything happen!"
Yeah, it's a great temptation. V. sad that he couldn't take that step back...
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Date: 30 August 2010 08:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 August 2010 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31 August 2010 09:10 am (UTC)I've never seen any evidence that Whedon is a good comic book writer. His priorities seem to be skewered. It takes him multiple issues to get into the storyline and by that time I'm gone.
Please forgive me if I sound bitter, it's just because I am. While I admit that some of the IDW material was less than inspired, I still enjoyed it far more than the DH offerings. It seems that the more distance between them and Buffy the more I like Spike and Angel. They seem to get their testosterone back in working order.
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Date: 31 August 2010 09:59 am (UTC)I don't want to just onto the Scott Allie bashing wagon, but... *shakes head*
I've never seen any evidence that Whedon is a good comic book writer. His priorities seem to be skewered. It takes him multiple issues to get into the storyline and by that time I'm gone.
I've never read any of his other stuff, so I can't comment on those, but s8 seems to be moving at a snail's pace. If I remember correctly it took us TWO YEARS to discover why Dawn had been turned into a giant. And then another year before Buffy did something about it. And this was just a side story...
Please forgive me if I sound bitter, it's just because I am.
Welcome to the club!
While I admit that some of the IDW material was less than inspired, I still enjoyed it far more than the DH offerings.
I've enjoyed everything that Brian Lynch has written (and stopped reading after that).
It seems that the more distance between them and Buffy the more I like Spike and Angel. They seem to get their testosterone back in working order.
You're not wrong. I adore their dynamic and am still hugely disappointed that they were brought into s8 - I'm currently wondering just how much more Spike can be damaged, Angel already being a lost cause... *sigh*
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Date: 31 August 2010 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31 August 2010 03:09 pm (UTC)Yeah, can't argue with that.