#like its joss whedon but worse

[vivalasthedas]

i always get such big 'thinks a modern feminist retelling of the persephone and demeter story is one where demter is an evil bitch' feelings from the show

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024

This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.

As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.

BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.

It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.

I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.

I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.

TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......

[alexanderwales]

Art and the Artist

I generally prefer to read things without knowing much about the author. There aren't that many cases where it adds much to the work to know that they were a plumber before they got into writing, or that they immigrated from Jamaica, or that they served in World War II. To my thinking, a piece of media should stand on its own and not need the context of the author's life story. If you have to open up with "this story is about the Holocaust" then in my opinion, you've already failed as an author.

With that said, it's often inevitable. Sometimes it's just the nature of the work itself, and it would bleed into your understanding even if there weren't a little "about the author" blurb at the end. Sometimes a story is painful obvious in how personal it is, or the metaphor to the real world is so poignant that it's impossible not to make the connection. And sometimes you just get a sense of a person from their writing, particularly if you've read a lot of their writing. It can be the authorial voice you come to understand, the things they choose to show you, the way their mind works, and you think to yourself "yeah, I could get along with them".

And other times, you find yourself drawn to the author because they're the person who best knows their own work. A book leaves lingering questions, and it might be better for you to understand it by communing with other people, but the author is often right there, and you want to hear their takes on their own work, what they were thinking, what lies behind the scenes, the cut chapters and the ways the ending might have been different. You finish gobbling up what the author has prepared for you, and then you gobble up the scraps in the kitchen, and when that's not enough, you start gobbling up the author: you read interviews, you read their blog, you start as a fan of their work and become a fan of them.

Sometimes their understanding of their own work does not match your understanding, and that can be a little bit heartbreaking. Sometimes the stuff behind the curtain is awful and bad, worsening your enjoyment of the text because now it seems phony and poorly thought out. Sometimes an author turns out to be a piece of shit.

Usually, I can move past it. If I like a book or a movie, then I like it for the feelings that it produces in me, and the person who created it is irrelevant except maybe for the fact that they're getting $5 from me or whatever, which is not the level of microutilions that I generally worry about.

Sometimes it impacts my understanding of the work itself, casting a shadow over the things that I once felt, tainting the art.

I was a big fan of Louis CK. The self-deprecating humor did it for me, the introspection and irreverence, the way he was saying things that felt real and true, things that I had always noticed but never really considered. And of course I found him funny. But then there were allegations, and his mea culpa, and I stopped finding it funny. Partly that's because his comedy was autobiographical, so the taint was worse than it might have otherwise been, but part of it was the comedy itself: if the comedy rests on me recognizing myself in Louis CK's stories about himself, I'm going to be less able to do that if drawing those comparisons gives me a curdled milk feeling.

I was a fan of Buffy and Dollhouse and Firefly and Cabin in the Woods and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, and I think that these don't suffer nearly as much from being from the mind of Joss Whedon. It's easier to dissociate the stories from the man, and harder to read his personal shittery into the character arcs and setting details and elemental units of plot. Some of that is just the medium: comedy specials are the product of a singular vision, while television shows and movies are the result of team of people working together. Even then, I think shitty people can make good art, so long as they're good at separating their shiftiness from their art. Most people with a bit of awareness would do this naturally, I think: they know what's unpalatable, and present an image to the world, which also comes from the art they make.

Information about the artist informs a reading of the art, as much as we might try to have it not do that. I think some art survives revelations better than others. Someone who writes about murders being revealed as a murderer certainly seems like it would poison my enjoyment of their books. But it's the nature of art that's it's all pretend, and sometimes people don't create because they're spewing self-confession onto the page. Then, I think, you're usually safe.

I hadn't written this with Neil Gaiman in mind: it was sitting in my drafts folder, as so many posts are. But I think Gaiman's work will, for me, survive the accusations, even if the man himself is exiled. I'm certain there will be passages and plots that read differently, places where he can be seen defending himself, chapters that are now unseemly. But I think that for me, the stink of his crimes will wash off quickly, and I'm hopeful that unlike other cases, separating the art from the artist is easier for me.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like the universe actively conspired against something until I witnessed the production of The Flash.

Since 1991 there have been quite a few proposals for Flash movies, but they never really got off the ground for whatever reason. Following Barry’s debut in Justice League, a movie finally was announced before multiple delays due to rewrites, in particular to cut Ray Fisher’s Cyborg from the story after he went public about the awful shit he had to deal with under Joss Whedon. Things seemed hopeless until It director Andy Muschietti came onboard, at which point production on the film finally started to go smoothly. Sure, there were rumblings about Ezra Miller having episodes on set, but that’s just typical actor nonsense, right? Surely it couldn’t get any worse!

Look, I’m here to review a movie so I’ll keep this brief: Miller committed crimes. Lots of crimes. So many, in fact, you’d think they were method acting for the role of Reverse-Flash. The thing is, despite all of this, Miller was basically given a slap on the wrist by the studio, being forbidden from doing promos and press tours (oh no! The horror!). And as if the situation wasn’t already a fucking mess, while Miller’s crime spree was ongoing WB canned the nearly-complete Batgirl movie that featured Michael Keaton and Academy Award-winning actor Brendan Fraser while simultaneously inflating The Flash’s budget to nearly $300 million with reshoots. It seems baffling to cancel a movie that was nearly done and that people were marginally interested in for the sake of a movie that people were losing interest in quickly due to its star’s erratic behavior, but remember: Leslie Grace isn’t white, while Ezra Miller is. WB is never beating those racism allegations at this rate.

With a normal movie, this is where the nonsense ends. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

This film was meant to smooth out the clusterfuck continuity of the “Snyderverse” with a soft reboot, with Henry Cavill filming a end-of-movie cameo alongside Miller, Gal Gadot, Keaton, and Supergirl’s actress Sasha Calle to establish the new direction of DC going forward. Unfortunately, the hierarchy of power at DC changed, and Gunn shot that down. While this meant the ending would probably not get people confused with regards to upcoming projects, it also meant the movie wasn’t going to really have any closure for the old universe. Affleck, Cavill, and who knows who else are just gone, and the future is just a big old question mark. At least Aquaman is safe, maybe?

Literally none of this news was very reassuring to fans. Nothing above is any good for a film’s perception to audiences under normal circumstances, but here we have all this news coming to a fanbase that genuinely did not want this fucking movie. The DCEU was already divisive when the film was announced, and Miller’s portrayal of Barry doubly so; the fact it was adapting Flashpoint was seen as lazy and uninspired, not to mention its not really a story that lets Flash stand on his own merits, making it seem more like this movie was just an excuse to reboot; it was a multiverse story in a day and age with an abundance of such stories, and it was releasing around the same time as Across the Spider-Verse to boot; and Gunn’s reboot plans meant this story was likely a narrative dead end. This movie had an uphill battle the likes of which haven’t been seen since Sisyphus.

But much like that mythological figure, the boulder came crashing right back down when the numbers came in. The movie would likely need to gross $500 million at minimum to break even after factoring in the reshoots and advertising, and it only managed half of that with a pitiful opening weekend followed by a massive 73% drop. It now sits alongside films like The Lone Ranger and Mortal Engines as one of the most expensive bombs in history, to the point where WB would have saved more money by cancelling it like they did with Batgirl. And despite glowing praise from the likes of Tom Cruise and Stephen King, it received middling reviews from mainstream critics.

Audiences haven’t been any less mixed, but considering most people weren’t particularly excited or invested in this film’s existence this is basically a miracle. Sure, there’s plenty of people out there saying this is the “worst comic book movie ever” like they do every time a new superhero movie drops, but even more people are saying they enjoyed the film… although even they tend to have some severe criticisms.

Even though I knew most of what was going to happen in the movie going in, I wasn’t really sure what to expect given everything surrounding the movie. But you know me, I’m willing to give almost any movie a chance, and bombs this big don’t happen every day, so even before it was voted on I was trying to make time to check it out. So sit down, microwave yourself a snack—

—and watch as I try and determine if The Flash is really that bad.

THE GOOD

The biggest shock of this film is that Ezra Miller is actually really good here.

Their Barry is still a bit of a goofball, but he’s clearly matured as a character since his precious appearances. They managed to make him much more charming and likable than he ever was, and this gets compounded when he interacts with the younger Barry and gets confronted with how annoying he was before. I think young Barry could have come off as really insufferable, but the fact he annoys everyone around him and also ends up maturing makes him a lot more endearing.

Miller really kills it with the emotional moments, particularly the ending encounter with Barry’s mom and the scene where old Barry snaps at young Barry. The film is really carried by the dramatic, emotional moments far more than any of the superheroics, and Miller manages to sell a lot of it very well. It was to the point where I started thinking, “I really wouldn’t mind if they stick around.” Then a scene where Barry says the Justice League has no real psychiatric help or where his younger self ends up repeatedly exposing himself in public by accident happens, and then I remembered, “Oh yeah, aren’t they a mentally unwell criminal?”

Unsurprisingly, Michael Keaton absolutely kills it in his role as Batman, but much more shockingly is that Ben Affleck's brief return as Bruce is pretty great as well. I always thought Affleck, much like Henry Cavill, was desperately trying to give a great performance while weighed down by bad writing; here, he gets an actual poignant scene where he talks to Barry about how dwelling on tragedies isn't the way to do things, and you should try and move forward instead. It shows he really could have been great if given better material to work with.

Okay, enough being nice to Affleck, I wanna talk about Keaton again. As much as the marketing hyped him up and as much as he is obviously the most blatant fanservice possible, it's still so cool to see him in the suit again. I am not immune to nostalgia pandering, and as corny as it could have been from anyone else, the zoom into his face when he says The Line really is a highlight of the movie. Keaton has a great deal of charisma, and while there are issues with Batman they aren't his fault at all. Most impressively, he doesn't steal the show away from Miller like I thought he would; he enhances the scenes he's in without stealing the spotlight completely from their performance. I feel like this is a problem in a lot of movies like this, where the lead gets overshadowed by a hyped up character, but somehow The Flash of all things managed to avoid this.

And as bad as the cameos could get, this movie gave two of the greatest cameos ever put to film with the return of the GOAT George Clooney Batman and, best of all, Nicolas Cage Superman from the unmade Superman Lives, fighting a giant spider to the death just as God intended. I am not immune to the charms of Nicolas Cage.

Overall, this movie presents us with a solid story, plenty of fun moments, great character dynamics, and more... for the first two acts, anyway.

THE BAD

Once this movie hits the third act, it basically just loses any and all focus and becomes a big dumb video game-esque battle against Zod and his forces in a bland desert landscape. While both Barrys admittedly get some pretty cool moments sprinkled in and Keaton’s Batman’s second death is actually a well done emotional moment, Supergirl ends up being completely wasted, with her sole role being to angrily scream and then die repeatedly.

This actually highlights the problem with Kara in this movie: She’s basically nothing but a plot device and has zero personality, and a good 80% of her dialogue is just angry screaming. As hot as Sasha Calle is and how much she obviously wants to make Kara compelling, she is given so little to work with that her efforts end up being fruitless. She does nothing of consequence after helping Barry get his powers back, and could be replaced or written out of the story and it would still make perfect sense.

Zod’s inclusion is pretty baffling as well, especially since they chose to water down one of the only good things from Man of Steel into a boring, generic doomsday villain. You can really feel that poor Michael Shannon would rather be doing anything else, and his bored performance just highlights how poorly implemented Zod is in the plot. Like, the Fladh has some of the best and most colorful DC villains in his rogues gallery, one’s that are often overlooked because Batman’s villains sell more toys. Why not highlight some of them instead of taking a Superman villain and stripping him of all personality to the point the actor clearly has no passion for the role? Cutting Zod would make cutting Supergirl even easier, and then two of the biggest problems with the movie are gone!

The third act does manage to mostly rerail itself once it goes back to Barry trying to unfuck the timeline, with only a disgustingly egregious bit of fanservice that I’ll discuss in the next section hampering it. But at the end, despite the incredibly based George Clooney cameo, there’s just so many unresolved and unanswered questions, with the biggest one being who killed Barry’s mom? Considering her death is what kickstarted the whole plot, you’d think this might come up, but it never does. A lot of other things come up and get dropped too, like whatever was going on with Batman in the opening, but maybe I’m just crazy for wanting elements introduced in a plot to have significance beyond just being there to be cool.

Even beyond that, there’s the fact that Supergirl and Keaton!Batman’s final fates are never really resolved, something that apparently wasn’t a problem in early versions of the film since they showed up alive in the final scene. As much as I loved seeing Clooney, I think trading him for getting some closure for Keaton and Calle would have been more satisfying.

Everyone harps on how bad the CGI is—and it absolutely is, don’t get me wrong—but for the most part I found it endearingly bad. Like the opening with the CGI babies? That’s too goofy for me to hate. But once the movie revolves into bland grey and black CGI bad guys and creepy deepfake celebrity cameos, I stop being quite so forgiving.

Oh, and on the subject of cameos, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one as pointless and unfunny as Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman showing up out of nowhere (complete with theme music) to make Bruce and Barry look like dumb assholes. Imagine thinking this was a good idea.

THE UGLY

The biggest point of contention surrounding this movie is the CGI necromancy used in the aforementioned cameo clusterfuck from the climax, which gives us George Reeve, Christopher Reeves, and Adam West posthumously reprising their DC roles in non-speaking appearances (there’s archived audio from West, but his cameo isn't really focused on to the point you can barely tell it's him) where they just stand there before the camera swoops around like in that Saul Goodman gif.

I think this is one of the very few times where I actually think the outrage is mostly justified. To be clear, I’m not getting mad on behalf of dead celebrities I never knew, and as long as the filmmakers went through the proper channels and the estates of these stars were properly compensated, I don’t have any legal objections. All of my distaste is coming from a subjective, moral standpoint.

I have never liked this CGI necromancy ever since Rogue One popularized it. I find it really gross and distasteful, and in most cases I think finding a lookalike actor would be preferable than playing Weekend at Bernie’s with a computer generated facsimile of a dead person. In The Flash, I understand having lookalikes would diminish the wow factor of the crossover, but there was an extremely easy workaround to this: Have cameos from all the living DC stars.

Was Brandon Routh not available to put on the Superman tights? Would it have been so bad to let Grant Gustin pop in for a cameo? They acknowledge Helen Slater, so why not Melissa Benoist? Hell, if you want to reference bad, campy movies, have Shaq show up as Steel or Josh Brolin pop in as Jonah Hex! Or even Ryan Reynolds, I’d bet he’d be down to return if you gave him a real suit this time!

Like there’s just no excuse for ghoulishly parading around dead guys when there’s so many alive guys you could use instead. People can complain all they want about the fanservice and cameos in the past few Spider-Man films, but at least they only had returning characters played by living actors. And when this movie already has the niche, out-there Nic Cage Superman cameo, proving they were down to do things as out there and inoffensively creative as reference unmade movies, it’s really just inexcusable. It doesn’t ruin the movie for me, but it makes me lose a bit of respect for the people who okayed this over less offensive cameo ideas.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

To my surprise, this film actually turned out to be pretty good. Not “great,” not “the best superhero movie ever,” but genuinely mostly good and enjoyable.

My opinion is that the movie is good in spite of itself. The third act is truly a hot mess, the stupid desert battle against Zod is awful and boring, Supergirl is depressingly pointless, so many plot points are just dropped or otherwise forgotten, and the CGI necromancy is nothing short of ghoulish. But the rest of the movie is truly a lot of fun. Barry and his younger self have a fun dynamic, Keaton really manages to take what little he’s given and show that he’s still got it as Batman, the Clooney and Cage cameos were delightful, and most importantly the emotional moments are actually effective.

I think with a bit more polish this film could have actually lived up to the hype around it. There is a great movie in here being suffocated by fanservice and CGI but still managing to get a few gasps of air regardless. I think if they’d kept the conflict more grounded or made Reverse-Flash the primary antagonist, things might have turned out better.

I think its score is pretty fair. My friend @huyh172 described this as “the worst good DC movie,” and it’s an assessment I fully agree with. It’s not as good as Aquaman, Wonder Woman, The Suicide Squad, the Snyder Cut, or Shazam!, and it’s definitely not as bad as stuff like Wonder Woman 1984 or Josstice League. It’s also a bit too enjoyable to be mid. It’s just a really solid movie held back from true greatness by some damning flaws… and really, that makes it the perfect capstone to the "Snyderverse," a cinematic universe that had some solid movies but was held back from greatness by incredibly bad ones.

[herinsectreflection]

The Big Bad Is Back (Lovers Walk)

It’s April 2004; the sunset days of Web 1.0. A new website has just been created: a cross-media wiki known as TVTropes. It’s a site for fans of all manner to identify and record common storytelling conventions as they recur throughout different pieces of media, and it will grow to become a dominant knowledge-base for fandom over the next decade.

A little-known about TVTropes is that it was originally created to focus on one show in particular, and that that show was, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The site was born from the petri dish of Buffy fan debates. For better or worse, both this site and the works of Joss Whedon were an incredible influence on this era of nerd culture, and even two decades later, we can see their impact. The post-Avengers hegemony of superhero blockbusters and cinematic universes, as well as the increase in spoiler-phobia and efforts to subvert expectations among creatives, can all be traced back in part to this site, and this show. There may be no more succinct demonstration of what 2000s nerd culture was like than this particular intersection of media history, and if we zoom in a little further, there is one trope that is of particular interest to this episode. The page for Badass Decay has existed for over a decade, and has three separate pages of examples, but older readers may recognise it by its original title - Spikeification.

The concept of Spikeification presupposes two things. Firstly, that from the point he is introduced in the show until the point he leaves, Spike becomes less “badass”; secondly, that this is a bad thing. I am introducing TVTropes into this conversation because I think it’s demonstrative of how dominant this line of thinking was in fan culture of the time. This was a presumed fact about Spike’s character, and the only debate was whether his “badass decay” began with his chip, his soul, his love for Buffy, or some other point in the show. It became such a piece of received wisdom that it gave the trope its name, and still today, he is referenced in the page’s headline quote. This received wisdom escaped the confines of Buffy fandom to influence nerd spaces far beyond the show itself.

It’s also, of course, a load of bollocks.

Read More

[kineticpenguin]

I think that Joss Whedon’s fall from grace and disappearance from the public eye, and the MCU getting stale, have kind of allowed people to point at them as the progenitors of Bad Dialog.

I’m not really sure that’s the case, though.

“Whedonesque” dialog isn’t just quippy. It’s snappy patter. There’s a rapid sort of give and take that leads up to the punchline. And the punchline is usually reasonably clever, e.g. “well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.” It's not just the snark. But that sort of dance can wear out its welcome, especially when it doesn’t land. Which it often doesn’t, as in the first Avengers movie.

Post-Whedon MCU movies are FULL of lines the writers obviously thought were cool but were, in fact, total stinkers. But they’re often not even trying trying to be Whedonesque snappy patter. They’re just clearly meant to be Awesome, and they’re just not. MCU scripts borderline fail the Turing test.

Neither of them can really be blamed, I think, for this “I DO THIS NOW” or “THEY HAVE THIS NOW” line repeated over and over in, say, Star Wars or that Forspoken game. I’m not sure where this need to beat the viewer over the head with the information clearly related on screen came from. It’s not banter, it’s just repeating the obvious in a frankly really loud and off-putting way.

Then again, maybe it's like a telephone game of bad writers, each deriving from worse iterations of a specific style going back to Whedon.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/18/22

look i originally typed "placeholder" which somehow typo'd into "placegilder" and now i'm fascinated by what that concept could possibly be

listening

Romance Without Finance, covered? by? Charlie Parker. for something by one of the founding fathers of bebop it's remarkably difficult to find info on this song.

"wait a minute kay we didn't know you knew anything about jazz" i don't! just enough to be dangerous!

it's been stuck in my head bc of the lyrics

You so great and you so fine You ain't got no money you can't be mine It ain't no joke to be stone broke Baby you know I ain't lying when I say Romance without finance is a nuisance Please please baby give me some gold

cheers i'll drink to that bro

-

reading

sat by a river and read one and a half chapters of Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, bc people keep telling me i would like Gormenghast and this is the first book in the trilogy. after which i threw it in my bag and forgot about it for the rest of the week. this is not a dunk on the book this is just how distractible i am. the style/voice/etc of Mervyn Peake could diplomatically be described as an acquired taste. not sure if i've acquired that taste yet. not that i am unfamiliar with a longwinded fantasy, i've just been reading very short things lately and am experiencing some whiplash.

god we love a font. GOD we love a series of covers that link together. these come to me courtesy of a very nice old man's moving sale, which i happened upon in august? early september? at the end of the day when everything was free. ended up dumping the milk crate of tools in my trunk into the trunk proper and carrying off an overflowing milk crate of paperbacks like this.

-

watching

three! tv shows i like are dropping on a weekly basis im in hog heaven (andor, the vampires, chainsaw man)!!!

instead we're going to talk about Werewolf By Night, which was Fine. it's a little marvel halloween special starring one of the eleventy billion comics characters you've never heard of, directed by their longtime composer Michael Giacchino.

i am going to damn it with lukewarm praise and say it's Fine! it's automatically in the top tier marvel products for me bc the fact it is so clearly filmed on a soundstage works in its favor, bc it is one big nod to classic horror. not a pastiche, not a love letter, but many many many visual references. there was only one Joss Whedon Humor Marvel Moment (TM) which i appreciated. i have spent far, far worse hours with this franchise.

excellent opening credits tho. not worth watching if you're a classic horror fan bc it will probably infuriate you, maybe worth watching if you've dropped off the marvel bandwagon and want to check and see if you still like it or not. this is up there with winter soldier for me as far as like. coherence of artistic vision and the ability to confidently tell one story, and it's still Just Okay as a whole.

-

playing

this was originally going to be a diatribe about human experimentation in fallout 4. yes yes we all know the vaults are human experiments. that's not what i'm talking about. i would like them to connect the dots between pre-war people vanishing off the street for military human experimentation and post-war vanishing off the street for...industry? experimentation a little more explicitly.

INSTEAD, i did something i never do, which was look for a game to play specifically for the tuesdaypost bc i wanted to talk about something in this slot. so off i went to the New & Noteworthy page.

i played The Looker, which is a parody of awardwinning but insufferable puzzle game The Witness. i have not played The Witness bc i find it insufferable, but i have watched roommates play through chunks of it. The Looker is insufferable in a different way, where (spoilers behind rot13)

vg vf na ubhe ybat ohvyqhc gb n pbpx naq onyyf wbxr.

some of the puzzles are genuinely clever. the laser unfolding in a long sequence that felt like a real life hour made me cackle.

i don't know who this streamer is, or if he's secretly garbage or anything, but this video does contain some of the best bits of the game

it's about an hour and a half and it's free, what more could you want? the way its mechanics unfold is a successful parody of the highbrow puzzle game genre as a whole (imo), not just The Witness, so if you play this without knowing anything about The Witness do report back in pls

-

making fallow week. lots of things simmering away in the background, not a lot of photogenic things happening, many things that are easier to explain as a whole once they're done.

[the-a-j-universe]

Ok, I’ll admit I’ve never watched Buffy. At best it’s similar to my spongebob situation, where I’ve been in the same room as an episode but never paid attention. ( wik spongebob I was actively not watching.) Is the show worth a go? Like however many years it’s been? Would it resonate you think? And um… ahem… any ideas on how to yoho it? Asking for a friend.

I would say yes. There's some rough stuff in it, stuff that's dated in the harmless way and in the shitty way, and even more of that stuff comes off as even worse when you take into account some of the stuff we know about Joss Whedon now, but it really is a brilliant show. The characters and tone might seem a little tropy now, but only because they codified so many tropes and set the standard for how entire genres operate today. The acting is strong, and the lore is deep. And it's exciting and very funny. It's as good as everyone says, in spite of its flaws.

If nothing else, I'd try and give it through season 3. That's when the characters graduate high school, and it feels like it was, at one point, planned to be the end of the show. Try it out, get a feel for it, and if you get to the end of season 3 and think you'd enjoy more, keep going from there.

You can also look up a list of plot relevant episodes in season 1 and skip the rest (or probably just skip season 1 entirely if you want, honestly). Season 1 was really uneven, as the show was still finding its footing.

And to answer your "friend's" question, I'd try here.

[mothman-rewatches]

Rewatch: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "The Puppet Show" (S1Ep9)

Summary: The school talent show proves to be more than the gang bargained for when dead bodies start turning up. Buffy finds herself racing against the clock to stop the killer before someone else winds up dead.

Written by: Joss Whedon, Dean Batali, Rob DesHotel

Directed by: Ellen S. Pressman 

Aired: May 5th, 1997

WARNING: This post contains spoilers.

This episode has it all. Living dummies, demons, and shitty talent shows with Giles as the producer. Let’s jump in.

Recap: Giles is overseeing auditions for the talent show. Buffy, Xander, and Willow come and poke fun at it, but Principal Snyder overhears and forces them to join as punishment. One of the acts is a student named Morgan and his dummy Sid. Morgan is seemingly terrible at ventriloquism, until Sid starts cracking jokes on his own. The next day, one of the students is found dead in the locker room with her heart cut out. The gang discusses whether the culprit is human or demonic. Upon investigation, everyone concludes that there is something weird about Morgan, and when Buffy confronts him, she notices he’s really weird about the dummy. Xander takes the dummy, and while Giles and Willow do research and Buffy goes to investigate, it goes missing. Buffy finds Morgan dead, missing his brain, and is confronted by Sid. They put together that they are working on finding the same person. As it turns out, Sid was a demon slayer who was cursed to live in a dummy’s body until he defeats a brotherhood of demons that need a heart and brain every seven years to appear human. They try to figure out if there is any missing talent show participants, and Buffy finds Morgan’s brain, leading her to suspect Sid again. It is revealed that Morgan had brain cancer, and the demon needs a healthy brain. The demon turns out to be Marc, a magician in the show, who tries to kill Giles and take his brain. The gang and Sid stop him, killing the demon and freeing Sid. 

Overall Thoughts: I was actually disappointed by this episode. It’s one of the episodes I remember watching when I was a kid, but watching it now, it doesn’t live up to its reputation. 

Before we cover why I didn’t like this episode, I have to mention that this is Principal Snyder’s first appearance. I hate him, he’s an amazing character, but I hate him and that’s the point. Literally, I think Snyder’s creation can be summed up into the idea of having a human antagonist, other than Cordelia.

But this episode…god, I wish I could like this episode. I mean, the reference to Goosebumps, another show I grew up watching, should be enough. My problem with this episode is it’s reliance on “fake outs.” I’ve brought up that the show has relied on that trope a lot this season, but it’s somehow worse in this episode. 

This episode has not one, but two separate fake outs. The first being the identity of the demon, which has three different twists. Initially, we are led to believe Morgan is the demon, and then we suspect it’s Sid not once but twice, before the identity is revealed. The second is minor, in which the writers try to make it seem like the demon will definitely go after Willow next, but it goes after Giles instead. It’s not interesting to watch all the different twists, and especially on past use of the trope, it’s old and boring. I wish they had gone about the storyline differently. 

Fashion Corner/Costuming: No major comments for this episode, but I liked Giles’s cardigan towards the beginning of the episode.

Facts: Sid the Dummy is a reference to a ventriloquist dummy named Slappy in the Goosebumps franchise, with the two even looking similar. 

This is the fourth episode of the season to not have vampires in it. 

Quotes: ”My predecessor Mr. Flutie may have gone in for all that touchy/feely relating nonsense…but he was eaten.” -Principal Snyder 

”Once again I’m banished to the demon section of the card catalog.” - Willow Rosenberg

Apocalypse Count: 1

Final Notes: Feel free to leave any comments, suggestions, or questions in the ask box!

[megaman2]

While there's been a lot of digital ink spilled about Joss Whedon's... unique style of writing dialogue in recent years, especially with how omnipresent it is and it's no longer novel or quirky anymore, I do think it works pretty well in Buffy because the show is about teens/young adults and the whole show is basically a comedic satire of horror movies (obviously with a strong dramatic element but the comedy/horror balance is pretty key to its tone imo), so the meta dialogue and one liners feel fitting. Having watched both Buffy and Scream for the first time recently, I can really see how Scream's impact led to stuff like Buffy.

When literally every other Whedon project has characters talking like that, irrespective of setting, tone, characters, etc. you really notice more how he uses it like a crutch, and it starts to undercut the drama more. While a lot of elements of Buffy have definitely fallen more under scrutiny with time, I have to say I'm on the last season and I've enjoyed the show a lot despite its flaws. I can see why it was such a huge gamechanger, for better or worse.

[chainsawcorazon]

habeas corpses is like we have a big beastie not even a hand grenade can take out. zombies are on every floor. an ancient evil pretending to be a little girl is getting its ass beat by the big beastie. angel’s anger and resentment is boiling to the top bc his dearest friend had sex with his emotionally and socially stunted son whose diaper she changed and who grew up in a hell dimension. gunn and wesley are uselessly going at it over a character who will be soon destroyed bc joss whedon hates women. gunn will also be sacrificed as a character to push forward dark’ness fresley. lilah almost got her tummy ripped out. wesley rescued her even tho he just broke up with her. angel snapped at cordy for sleeping with his son. cordy is not really cordy but we won’t learn that until later, so until then, it will seem like cordelia slept with her beloved’s son whom she took care of maternally, creating an oedipus situation from hell. lorne is unable to finish his margarita.

we can shit on seasons four and five for having the worse angel characterization out of all the ats seasons, but it’s not like he had a choice. who comes back from “my bestie and the woman i’ve grown to fall in love with is also sleeping with my son.” even WHEN we find out she was being destroyed from the inside out, you can’t blame angel for being the biggest bitch in the series when everything happening to him was honestly so bad. it is a miracle he didn’t kill himself in season five after real!cordy finally ascended for good.

[layaboutace]

Season 2 Episode 10: Love & Monsters

this episode starts off so good and has some really likeable characters, but its villain is so bad it ruins literally everything after the Jackie scene. but also like LINDA is so likeable for only being on screen for like 15 minutes???? and seeing jackie without rose, being a lonely middle aged mom is great, shes great, all the individual characters are great, that scooby doo chase scene was great, its just that the villain brings the whole episode fownDavies is really great at character writing and dialogue, in a way that other prolific writter and my nemesis steven moffat just can't compete, yeah moffat is snippy and witty, but hes like the joss whedon of britain (but worse and misogynistic) quippy banter thats fun to watch, likely due to his past sitcom work, but nothing beats the heart Davies gives the characters. Yeah i used this episode to beat down steven moffat what about it. and it least its not boring like the idiots latern yeah thats right your catching strays too mark gatiss

3/5

[fiovske]

i don't think the beaujes thing is that deep. does cr's story feel incomplete and rushed? Absolutely. did it feel like they force fed ships? also yes. your criticisms are absolutely valid but having it focused on a singular ship is more telling about your where your strife with the show lies. i also feel it lacks nuance and feels very you vs the crew

bestie if u think my criticism of cr is only limited to 'beaujes' and not the overarching frustration I've had w them as liberals trying to handle an arc of political intrigue and systematic corruption and as white liberals are wont to do, FAILING SPECTACULARLY bc they don't even think to challenge the norm bc it accomodates them just fine so why would they? these are a bunch of privileged middle-aged white ppl playing a board game. the system suits them just fine and that's only the tip of the iceberg bc the narrative construct of the campaign is all over the place (if it exists at all), and if u haven't read or cared to read any of my arguments and just decided to come at me w this ask of "it's not that deep get over it"....... then u haven't been paying attention at all 💖

[mummer]

dear god nothing makes me more existentially depressed than the snyder cut

[buffysummers]

Do you think that the complicated experiences of the Buffy cast are common for TV shows of its caliber?

It's hard to say. I think back then, it was a LOT easier to get away with shit like that. But I do think that there was a very sick, twisted and specific kind of cruelty concerning Joss Whedon's sets. He basically tried to turn all the actors against each other and get them to compete for his approval and attention. And there was always this looming, "Will he kill me off if he doesn't like me?" threat hanging over their heads. And a lot of them... desperately needed the job. So, not only was he making people anxious and uncomfortable, he was also isolating them. You know, as abusers do. It was worse with others, like Charisma, Michelle and Amber. And Sarah. I don't think we will ever completely know what happened between the two of them. But if it's so bad that Sarah didn't even want his name spoken around her...? You can only imagine.

The only actors safe from the threat of getting killed off were Sarah and later, David. So, Joss took out his issues with Sarah in other ways (ie: the last two seasons of the show.)

I think with BtVS specifically, it was like this cultural phenomenon, even back then. The critics loved it. The fans loved it. It was literally changing television. So, I feel like the actors were so grateful, and they felt like they were a part of something truly important and special. Which they very clearly were. But I also think that made it easier for them to be mistreated. They were terrified of speaking out.

I just read a chapter in this new Buffy book about how there were all these rumors circulating about Sarah being a diva, and a bitch, and difficult to work with. Not a single person she worked with could corroborate that rumor. In fact, they said the exact opposite. That she had the most scenes to shoot but she was always prepared and considerate. That she knew every aspect of filming so that she could be more prepared and make everyone's job easier. That she said hello and good-bye to every crew member. That the show would not have even worked without her level of dedication and professionalism.

I believe that Joss planted these rumors just like I believe he blackballed her career. She was punished for simply taking charge and being confident in herself. Joss felt threatened by her talent, her star power, how much she was respected and valued. He hated that she had a say in things. He hated that he had to take her feelings into consideration. Above all, he hated that she was the only actor he could not completely control. But, I digress.

So, to answer your question, no. I don't think all sets were like this. I think toxicity and mistreatment is commonplace sadly, especially back then, but I think Joss Whedon's sets - The Buffy and Angel sets - were very specific in their cruelty.

[weclassybouquetfun]

S3 of THE BOYS is here and it is still as unhinged, unapologetically depraved and unyielding in its humor and depravity.

Joining the cast this season is Jensen Ackles, late of CW's SUPERNATURAL, which was created by THE BOYS' creator/showrunner Eric Kripke.

Sadly Ackles won't let the show die. He's a producer on the prequel series for THE CW focusing on the parents of Sam and Dean Winchester.

This season Tomer Capone is being credited with his actual surname Capone, whereas in previous years he's worked as either Tomer Kapon or Tomer Capon (S1 and S2 of THE BOYS).

He follows with other actors who have gone back to their roots like Thandie Newton who now goes by her real name Thandiwe, A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES Greg Chilling who now acts under his real surname Chillingrian and A MILLION LITTLE THING and PSYCHE's James Roday who added his real surname Rodriguez to his stage name.

I'm just waiting for THE VAMPIRE DIARIES Paul Wesley to see the light and return to acting as Paul Wasilewski.

The first three episodes have dropped and what nonsense did THE BOYS bring to the yard?

SPOILERS

-While we have to wait until episode six to get the fabled "Herogasm" episode, episode 1 was likely a teaser of the insanity that will unfold in that episode. The first episode finds Frenchie and Kimiko after an Atom/Ant-Man-esque Supe named Termite who, in uses his body as a sounding device to give pleasure to his hook-up. Nostrils smarting from the lines he was snorting he sneezes while inside his partner effectively exploding him.

The Ant-Man v. Thanos fans got their wish.

There were other things that were cribbed from fan culture like -

-The Bourke Cut with DAWN OF THE SEVEN director Adam Bourke having fans hashtagging his crap, which is a direct nod to JUSTICE LEAGUE's SnyderCut fan campaign. Which was so annoying, but I do doff my cap to the SynderCut zealots who rigged the Oscars' Favorite Moment campaign and got a Flash scene from JUSTICE LEAGUE to best SPIDERMAN: NO WAY HOME. Not all heroes wear capes. Literally. Barry doesn't wear a cape.

-The line from Allison telling Bourke that Tony Gilroy's reshoots saved his film is a nod to Tony Gilroy having to step in to save Star Wars' ROGUE ONE. It could be a nod to Joss Whedon having to step in to finish JL, but c'mon, he didn't save that film.

-Jensen Ackles being cast as the show's version of Captain America is, to me, a nod to how Ackles (and his fans) swears up and down that he was up for Captain America but couldn't do the film because of his SUPERNATURAL schedule.

-Sean Patrick Flanery playing Gunpower when Flanery played the titular character Powder in the 1995 film.

-Homelander with the suicidal girl is a popular panel from a Superman comic. Of course, it ends waaaaaay differently.

Other things I liked about the first three episodes:

- The brief return of Simon Pegg as Hughie's dad.

-The before and after of Hughie's life when he realized the truth about Victoria Neuman. One day he's making smoothies, fixing the perfect breakfast; the next smoothie's splattered in the sink, food's rubbish.

-Characters letting their freak flag fly. The Deep drawing an octopus (the ill-fated Timothy??) into his sex life. Confirmation from what fans gathered from S2 that Frenchie is not just for people sexually open but he is, as well. Vincent Cassel as a safe word is a sexy choice.

-I love when a Nazi decides to k-word themselves but it's funny that Stormfront put up with giving Homelander handy js because she still had hopes that he was on the same Aryan wave she was but when she realized that he's only focused on himself that's what pushed her over the edge.

-Just when I thought Homelander couldn't be any worse of a person he does something nastier and meaner and cruel beyond comprehension. Antony Starr is remarkable because Homelander is truly frightening and almost stomach turning but I can't look away because Starr is so incredible as this character.

-If Hughie and Starlight break up it will be for the best. I'm not 100% convinced that her ex Supersonic is truly there to have her back, but if they got back together that would make perfect sense. She and Hughie are on different paths and as much as she was down for vengeance last season she's easing off it because - while she knows the inherent risks of trying to tangle with Homelander - she's not willing to lose her soul for the cause. Hughie is, though.

-What I didn't like is that Nate Mitchell who plays Black Noir didn't play the young Black Noir. We will never see this poor man onscreen.

Nate next to Karl Urban.