Y2/D310...Pop Culture Stuff..mostly

[shadowkat]

Mainly because I'm bored of writing about myself, COVID, Current Events, family and work. Crazy Org did send an email about the free COVID At-Home Tests (way ahead of them courtesy of mother, who received the masks I sent her today), along with an advisory that the at-home tests weren't to be used for weekly testing, only the PCR saliva tests they offer can be used for that. They are using weekly testing to get people to get vaccinated, I think. (Since not everyone has to get a test.)

Also, Biden is now sending over a billion N95 masks to be distributed for free by health clinics and retail pharmacies. (I already have them, along with a collection of Kn95 and KF94, because I need a new mask each day for stupid work place - if we go back en mass, or for the hybrid schedule.) Apparently the State has made it possible for State Workers to work remotely permanently. So not clear what will happen.

I'm inundated by spam mail.

***

1. Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power trailer actually looks good. I liked the first trilogy of films by Jackson, I did not like the second or the Hobbit films. But I do agree that Tolkien's world building is amazingly detailed and ripe with possibilities, also he wrote a lot of short stories and novellas that take place in the world prior to the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.


2. Be wary of what you worship. Lila Shapiro's article/profile on Whedon takes a sharp and not necessarily kind look at the fandom that built up around him. I was in that fandom, albeit not necessarily to that degree. I've never met the man. I've never interacted with him. I never wanted or bought an autograph. I just read all his interviews (mainly to understand the process and how he came up with the world and his intent behind the stories he told), watched what he did and analyzed it for free on the internet. And I was often very critical of it.

I lost a lot of social media friends off and on - because of my criticism.
Some, not all, fans do not like their fav's criticized. And there was a section of the fandom - that fell into what I like to call "cult of personality" - where they worshiped the creator of the works and felt that the creator's take was the only one worth mentioning. (I was of the opinion that we never know what that take actually is - even the creator has no idea. And while the creator of a work of art or an artist can inform the art or tell us what it is about, at the end of the day - our perception of it is whatever we wish it to be. We never see the whole work - we see a portion of it. Just as we cannot see all of reality or a whole person, we see what is shown.

That's what I enjoy about discussing television shows and books with others, they see different things than I do. We focus on different characters, different lines, different details. And bring our own baggage with us or subtext. And it isn't always what the writer intended, most of the time it isn't.

In television and film, collaborative works, it rarely is - because you have actors interpreting your words. No matter how closely you direct them or push them to say the words - they still imbue them with their own experience and views. For example? Whedon didn't intend Spike to be quite that soulful or romantic, but Marsters imbued Spike with his own romantic and flirty nature, and vulnerability. Also, an actor who wanted to help his fellow actors give their best performance, this came across in the character as well. Plus, the actor was charismatic in the role and won over the audience. If Whedon had been writing a novel - it would have turned out differently, but it was a television show, with hired guns as directors, other writers, producers, editors, and actors. And each one had their take on how things should go, and their vision. David Greenwalt brought in the character of Spike, and wrote the episode in which he first appeared, and that episode was directed by someone who loved Marster's performance, and wanted to make Marsters shine - so he could use the reel to get work elsewhere, knowing Whedon would most likely fire him for doing it. All of that was out of Whedon's control. That's television - particularly network broadcast television on channels like the WB, which have low production costs and are about getting folks to watch commercials. It's not HBO, where show-runners actually have more control.

I've been listening to Michael Caine's biography, The Elephant in Hollywood on Audible, and in it Caine describes doing a film with film auteur, John Huston. Who he admired. Huston tended to understand actors, and left them alone to do what they did - he said that if you cast it right, you didn't have to tell the actors what to do. He was well-loved by actors as a result. His direction was succinct, he never yelled on his sets, and he made it clear what he wanted. Caine relates that Huston didn't tell him how to say or interpret the lines except for one instance. Caine had said the line: "We are NOT little men." Putting the emphasis on Not. Convinced it should be there. Huston interrupted him and said, it should be "We are not Little men." And Caine said it that way, and realized Huston was right.

In stark contrast, actors rarely knew what Whedon wanted. He wasn't a good communicator, and unlike Huston, he was a bit of a bully. Nick Brendon relates that Whedon would come up to him and tell him that the "the" was there for a reason. Karheiser also states in interviews post Angel, that he wasn't allowed to improvise or ad-lib. Marsters states they didn't adlib any lines - and the writing was brilliant enough, and coming from theater, he was fine with that. Claudia Black and others on the Nevers state that Whedon was often hard to hear, and it was difficult to know what he wanted.
Marsters describes him as a Mad Wizard, and that he just tried to stay on his good side and out of his way.

In film the set is run by the director, the director has all the power, in television it is run by the writer or head writer, the writer has all the power. On stage - it's the actor. I'm not certain a writer should have power in television, and clearly I'm not alone in that - since about 2008, more and more actors have become executive producers on their television series. Gellar insists on it, as does Kristen Bell, and various others. Why? Because as Bruce Campbell states in his biography Hail to the Chin, it gives you control. If you can fund it - you have more say in it. Actors are treated horribly by television show-runners, who often are frustrated actors themselves and lack social skills. Not all of them do, there's some good ones out there, but a writer isn't often the best person to run a collaborative project.

Fandom tends to be made up of a lot of frustrated writers, so there's a bit of worship of the writer in fandoms. It wasn't until I entered the Buffy fandom that I was even aware of the television writers. I rarely focused on them in previous film or television analysis. And worshiping a writer is a devil's game. Professional fictional writers, particularly in Hollywood, tend to have fragile egos. So too do novelists. It's a highly competitive career, and close to impossible to be successful. Whedon, as the son and grandson of situation comedy writers, had the connections. He got scripts optioned, that if he hadn't had those connections - would not have happened. Also got the gig with Parenthood and Roseanne because of those connections. For every Whedon there are millions of writers like Doris Egan, who is mildly successful, or Tracy Forbes (Something Blue and Beer Bad). It's not easy to get writing gigs in Hollywood. And when you do, you often have your script torn to pieces. Egan writes about how she wrote for Homicide: Life on the Streets, and her scripts were torn to pieces and revised, she was lucky if she got one line on the air. Various Buffy and Firefly writers state the same thing. Doug Petrie's script Fool For Love was revised and chopped to pieces, he only wrote the section about Riley, Whedon wrote the flashbacks and Spike/Buffy scenes, and Marti wrote the ending.

A Firefly writer remembered him [Whedon] belittling a colleague for writing a script that wasn’t up to par. Instead of giving her notes privately, he called a meeting with the entire writing staff. “It was basically 90 minutes of vicious mockery,” the writer said. “Joss pretended to have a slide projector, and he read her dialogue out loud and pretended he was giving a lecture on terrible writing as he went through the ‘slides’ and made funny voices — funny for him. The guys were looking down at their pages, and this woman was fighting tears the entire time. I’ve had my share of shitty showrunners, but the intent to hurt — that’s the thing that stands out for me now.”

A high-level member of the Buffy production team recalled Whedon’s habit of “writing really nasty notes,” but that wasn’t what disturbed her most about working with him. Whedon was rumored to be having affairs with two young actresses on the show. One day, he and one of the actresses came into her office while she was working. She heard a noise behind her. They were rolling around on the floor, making out. “They would bang into my chair,” she said. “How can you concentrate? It was gross.” This happened more than once, she said. “These actions proved he had no respect for me and my work.” She quit the show even though she had no other job lined up.

[As I was writing this, mother called and felt the need to tell me that my brother read the article -

Mother: So I told your brother how you felt about that Joss Whedon article? Apparently he read it to and, I thought I'd tell you that he didn't think it was that big a deal, and said that Whedon wasn't that bad. Interesting, his take was completely different than yours.
Me: He wasn't in the fandom. Also he's a tall, 6'5 strong man and isn't threatened by the same things I am. Also, what about all those people Whedon hurt - or the fact that Whedon preyed on girls his daughter's age? Or the careers' he wrecked.
Mother: He said Whedon made a lot of careers too.

It kind of went down hill from there. Mother not making it better by getting upset that she said anything and how she now needs to monitor herself better when she discusses my brother with me - she never will. We've had this discussion ad nauseam. Mother has no filter.

[Although mother and I ended on good terms at least. She has this fantasy of my brother and I becoming best friends.]

Anyhow, now I am pissed off at my brother. I am still pissed off at my brother. I know it may sound irrational, but there it is. I want to throttle him.

This happens a lot. The desire to throttle my brother. Seriously, brothers are over-rated. Although I'm not sure having a sister would be much better.

Also he's a hypocrite. He went on and on about Tom Hiddleston when I visited him and reamed me for liking the guy (when there's absolutely nothing out there about him - and it was just his friend who was harrassed and their career allegedly wrecked (and knowing my brother's friends, possibly not entirely accurate), but hand waves Whedon, which does have Whedon admitting to it, because he likes his work and thinks he's seen worse.

So, now, because of my mother, I've lost my train of thought and I am trying not to envision myself throttling my brother. I can't of course, he's bigger and stronger than I am. ]


Anyhow, Shapiro points out how being fannish about a writer or celebrity can make it difficult to accept their failings. And based on the interaction I just wrote about above, she may well have a point. After all my brother was able to hand wave Whedon's failings as if they were nothing, while they bother me.

If the line between scholarship and fandom was vanishingly thin, so was the line between fandom and worship. On the first morning of the conference, David Lavery, a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, stood at the podium and declared the show’s creator, Joss Whedon, the “avatar” of a new religion, the “founder of a new faith.” Lavery and two other professors would go on to establish the Whedon Studies Association, an organization devoted to expanding the field of Buffy scholarship. As Lavery would write in the introduction to a book he co-authored on the series, Whedon had not simply composed a narrative about a struggle against the “forces of darkness — vampires, demons, monsters of all varieties”; he had taken a stand against a panoply of oppressive “social forces,” most obviously the “forces of gender stereotyping.” According to the prevailing rules of Hollywood horror at the time, Whedon’s protagonist, a hot blonde with a dumb name, should have died within the opening scenes, but Whedon had flipped the genre on its head, endowing her with superhuman powers and a hero’s journey.

**

In those early days of the internet, before nerd culture swallowed the world, fans flocked to a message board set up by the WB to analyze Buffy with the obsessive zeal of Talmudic scholars. Whedon knew how to talk to these people — he was one of them. He would visit the board at all hours to complain about his grueling schedule or to argue with fans about their interpretations of his work. Back then, as he pointed out to me, the internet was “a friendly place,” and he, the quick-witted prince of nerds, “had the advantage of it.” At one point, fans became convinced Buffy and another Slayer, Faith, were romantically entwined. After Whedon shot down the theory, accusing its proponents of seeing a “lesbian subtext behind every corner,” one of the posters (Buffynerd) sent him a link to her website, where she had published a meticulous exegesis of the relationship. He returned to the message board to applaud her, sort of. “By God, I think she’s right!” he declared. Dropping the facetious tone, he conceded she had made some good points. “I say B.Y.O. Subtext,” he proclaimed, coining a phrase that fans would recite like scripture.

Occasionally, some of the Buffy stars and writers would gather at Whedon’s house to watch episodes. They’d huddle around his computer, log on to the board, and chat. Once, Alyson Hannigan, who played Buffy’s friend Willow, posted her number to the site — she was moving to a new apartment the next day but planned to keep her old landline connected to an answering machine so posters could leave her messages. One fan called so quickly he caught her before she had a chance to set up the machine.

Every year, the regular posters would hold an IRL party where Whedon would make an appearance. Bryan Bonner, one of the organizers, recalled running into him outside one of these events. Bonner suggested he use the VIP entrance, but Whedon shook his head. “He said, ‘No, I’m good. It’s fine,’” Bonner recalled. “He was always this approachable, down-to-earth guy.” Another organizer, Allyson Beatrice, who wrote a book about Buffy fandom, described the annual gathering as a sort of family reunion. Many found their closest friends through the fan community. One of the most appealing ideas in the show was that a group of social outcasts could come together to form a chosen family. When we meet Buffy, her father is absent, her mother is distracted by work, and she is isolated by the lies she has to tell to cover up her life as a Slayer. At school, she falls in with a gang of nerdy friends who know who she really is. Together, they take on evil teachers, bad boyfriends, and goat-horned demons, saving the world, and one another, again and again.

Fans believed Whedon had found his chosen family, too, behind the scenes of the show they all loved so much. But chosen families are not necessarily spared the strife that can plague any family. “I felt very conflicted with the fans,” one Buffy actress told me. “I didn’t have the same feeling about the show, but I also know sometimes people don’t want your truth.” She believed people hadn’t been ready to hear about what Whedon was really like on the set. “There was a cult of silence around that sort of behavior,” she said.

***

A sort of cult of personality formed around Whedon. Once a month, he would invite his favorite cast and crew members to his house. They would hold Shakespeare readings in the amphitheater that Cole, an architect, had built in their backyard. “It was like being part of this little family,” said an actress who was in the inner circle for a time. One Buffy writer recalled Whedon signing posters for every member of the writing staff. They stood around as he bestowed each of them with personalized words of wisdom like “a guru on the hill.” Scenes like this were not uncommon. “The standard reaction to Joss was worship,” the writer said.

Even people who didn’t worship him told me working with him could be a wonderful experience. Miracle Laurie, an actress on Whedon’s 2009 series Dollhouse, was a size 12 when she got the job. Whedon told her not to go on a diet. “He was trying to show that a size 12 woman is normal, sexy, beautiful, strong,” she said. “I still get people coming up to me saying how much it meant to them. I felt celebrated by him.” Like many I interviewed, she was surprised to hear her colleagues felt differently, but looking back, she remembered glimpsing another side of Whedon. “I saw his kindness and his good intentions,” she said, “and I also saw the snarkiness, the fickleness, where I would not want to be on the other side.”

A lot of the above - resulted in providing Whedon with power. A lot of power. And a fan following both outside the industry and within it. He was constantly being praised. He had a web site dedicated to him and run by fans. People would defend him at every turn.

But ... getting back to the above, before I lost my train of thought.
My brother did have a point, and this is echoed in the article as well, that Whedon was by no means the only difficult show-runner out there.

Whedon was not the first boss in the history of moving pictures to make a writer cry. On his sets, the budget was tight and the hours were long. Everyone was exhausted. And by many accounts, Whedon didn’t always clearly convey what he wanted. A Buffy writer once spent a week researching Irish folklore because it was unclear that Whedon had been kidding when he said he wanted to do an episode about leprechauns. Joss “is a layered and complex communicator,” one longtime collaborator told me. “His tone is deflecting, it’s funny, it’s got wordplay, rhyme, quote marks, some mumbles, self-deprecation, a comic-book allusion, a Sondheim allusion, and some words they only use in England. This means you, the recipient, have to do some decoding. You have to decide if there was a message in there that was meant to correct you, sting you, rib you affectionately, or shyly praise you.”

I've had bosses that made me cry in just about every company that I worked for. I've been gaslit. And I have PTSD from it. So, I'm willing to admit that the article was triggering for me, while it wasn't for my brother - who has not been gaslit, works for himself, and doesn't have PTSD in regards to employment. Also he can fire his clients.

Also, I don't handle criticism or rejection well - and everything I've written has been ripped to pieces (well everything offline at any rate).
So, I can only imagine how people working under Whedon felt, if they didn't click.

“Can a person have many bad parts and yet another person they encounter only experiences the good parts?” Rebecca [Rand Kirshner, now X] mused in one of her emails. “Can we miss the bad parts of people? I know we can. Did I?”

I wonder sometimes myself. I think we show different parts of ourselves to different people. I remember talking to my niece once about her parents, how they turned on the charm for some people and others, turned it off. Were more critical and not as nice.

Or how we can all watch the same episode of a television show we love, yet see different things in it. Or how my brother can read the article and I can read it, and we can have such polar opposite reactions.

I clipped from the article the bits on fandom, not the affairs with women, or the sexual harassment or predatory behavior. So you can obviously read the article more than one way, but you could also watch Buffy more than one way.

[Buffy the Vampire Slayer] invited a multiplicity of interpretations. You could view it as a story of female empowerment or as the opposite — the titillating tale of a woman in leather pants who is brutalized by monsters. When it came out, critics mostly read it as the former. It was the late ’90s, after all.

I think this is true of how we view anything really. And there is a comfort in being a part of a fandom that is hard to explain, and an anger when that is torn from you.

The article ends much as it starts, with this odd bit, showing how popular opinion or a fandom can turn against you on a dime. And we live in a world where marketing and promotion is king. (My brother and sister-in-law have an extensive background in media marketing, and promotion. While I've little to no tolerance for it.)

Whedon once wrote a line that could have served as a warning to all of us. In Firefly, one of the crew members, Jayne, accidentally tosses the spoils of a botched robbery into the hands of the town’s poor. Jayne is not a good man, but when he returns to the town years later, he sees its residents have erected a statue in his honor. When he confides to the crew’s captain that he’s unsettled by this development, the captain just stares into the distance. “It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of ’em was one kinda sombitch or another,” he says. “Ain’t about you, Jayne. It’s about what they need.”

“Nobody ever fell from a pedestal into anything but a pit,” Whedon told me on a call one day. A few months had passed since our conversations at his house. In that time, he’d finally made peace with himself, he said. “Could I have done marriage better?” he asked. “Don’t get me started. Could I have been a better showrunner? Absolutely. Should I have been nicer?” He considered the question. Perhaps he could have been calmer, more direct. But would that not have compromised the work? Maybe the problem was he’d been too nice, he said. He’d wanted people to love him, which meant when he was direct, people thought he was harsh. In any case, he’d decided he was done worrying about all that. People had been using “every weaponizable word of the modern era to make it seem like I was an abusive monster,” he said. “I think I’m one of the nicer showrunners that’s ever been.”

The rub is in this society, he may be right. And that's frightening. Isn't it?



Oh and As a Former ‘Buffy’ Obsessive, Watching Joss Whedon’s Downfall Feels Crushing — and Inevitable (Column)


By the time New York Magazine published its thorough and extremely damning new piece on how Joss Whedon and his entertainment empire fell apart, I couldn’t summon much more than an exhausted sigh. After years of loving his work, followed by years of reconsidering everything I knew about it within the context of the serious allegations against him, Whedon’s downfall in my own world was so swift and complete that I couldn’t stomach the idea of reopening that door at all.

Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is the reason I first started thinking critically about television. I’d long been a fan of TV, but it wasn’t until I fell into Buffy’s Hellmouth that I learned what it meant to be an obsessive: someone who dissects every scene, glance, and joke to get the most of it and figure out what made it all work. Years before screenwriting websites and podcasts were easily accessible, the “Buffy” DVD special features became a makeshift school to teach me how a show came together. For a curious teenager who loved TV and existed somewhat on the fringes of her high school — neither popular enough to get invited to parties nor so reviled as to get banned from them — the snark and heart of “the Scooby Gang” felt aspirational. I didn’t know whether I wanted to write them or be them. In the meantime, I settled for absorbing them into myself, even adopting their speech patterns to feel a part of this show I treasured so much.

It was almost just the cherry on top of my obsession that “Buffy” fancied itself a more empowered version of a familiar, typically sexist story. By making a once helpless girl the most fearsome warrior of a generation, my favorite show wasn’t just fun, but feminist fun. Characters like Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), shy witch Willow (Alyson Hannigan), queen bee with a heart of gold Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), and blunt ex-demon Anya (Emma Caufield) appeared to twist archetypes into much more interesting and complex shapes. I felt cooler for knowing “Buffy,” and smarter for loving it. It didn’t bother me that a man had created it when that man was so outspoken about “getting it,” and wanting to give as much power to his female characters as possible. The show felt like it was in safe hands, and so loving “Buffy” felt safe, too — until it didn’t.

Watching Whedon and the cult of faux-feminist personality around him collapse with every new allegation of sexual harassment and workplace abuse has felt both crushing and inevitable. The more I learn about the entertainment industry and world surrounding it, the more I know to be wary of people who spend much of their time trying to prove their progressive bonafides. The more I interact with men who insist they’re the “nice” ones — as Whedon does to accidentally devastating effect in the New York piece — the more it’s clear they’re not. The more I see people deflect blame onto everyone else’s inability to understand him — as Whedon continues to do with all things “Justice League,” including suggesting that Gal Gadot literally couldn’t understand him — the more I suspect they’re the ones to blame. (For what it’s worth, Whedon’s recent claim that Ray Fisher is “a bad actor in both senses” has a clear counterpoint in Fisher’s turn in ABC’s “Women of the Movement,” a series entirely directed by Black women in which he’s really very good.)

And in a heartbreaking turn for my high-school self, when I look back at the TV “Whedonverse” — including “Buffy,” spinoff “Angel,” “Firefly” and “Dollhouse” — the more I see worrying patterns. I see jealous boyfriends and damsels in distress that go against everything “Buffy” was supposed to be about. I see women express their sexuality before suffering terribly for it. I see countless women trying to be independent and strong on their own terms only to have needy men consume them for the thrill of it. With the benefit of some distance from the show that was briefly my entire life, it’s simply become more obvious that the “Buffy” character for which Whedon felt the most sympathy wasn’t Buffy, but Xander, the former dork desperate to prove he’s just as tough and virile as any vampire trying to suck the life out of a world Xander sees as rightfully his.




Me: My brother doesn't get it because he's male.
Mother: He's a feminist.
Me: There's no such thing - ugh. He doesn't get it. When I was molested on the Denby Moors in Wales in 1988, he didn't see it as that big a deal. Because it wouldn't happen to him. He's 6'5 and strong. When I got robbed, he hand-waved it.
Mother: He had camera equipment stolen from his house, of course he wasn't there at the time..
Me: It's different. I was there. He isn't a potential victim of rape or sexual harassment, he doesn't get belittled, or told he can't have overtime because its unsafe to walk to the train station at night.

My mother doesn't quite get it herself. Perhaps it's her age. She always favored my brother - she wanted a boy more than a girl. And caters to him, in ways she never quite did with me. Yet ironically, he rejects the family more. And up until recently barely visited. And barely called - about once month until the pandemic hit. Now, he calls once a day. And she's over the moon.

I think this is why chats about my brother with mother upset me so much. With rare exceptions. I always feel less than, somehow.

Our society's preference for the male heterosexual cisgender is killing us mentally, emotionally, and physically. I wonder sometimes if we see it?

I need to get ready for bed, and clear my head. Early wake up call for tomorrow. It occurs to me that Shapiro's article triggered my own PTSD on multiple levels, and that may well be the reason I wish to discuss it?

My writer's block right now - in regards to story-telling or writing my novels is due to a fear of having absolutely no one willing to beta them. I told this to mother who told me that she had a choir director who was eager to read my next book. And loved my writing.

Comments

[atpo_onm]

Our society's preference for the male heterosexual cisgender is killing us mentally, emotionally, and physically. I wonder sometimes if we see it?

We do now, or at least far more so. (Although I would say "harming" us rather than the harsher "killing") My take on this is that humans, with our measly 50 to 100 year lifespan have great difficulty with understanding what human life was truly like even a century ago, let alone hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The male human mind is still heaped with DNA, shaped by those thousands of years of evolution, that shape the way many, if not still most men think, and interact with the world. My father was a kind, deeply caring man who dearly loved both my sister and I. He was also a product of the time he was born, which was 1909, and the years he lived through after that, what with the depression and two world wars. He lived in a time when men were the breadwinners, and people like my mother were the homemakers and child care partners.

My sister, I only found out about two years ago, wanted very much to go to college after high school, but my dad saw no real reason why she should, and so gave her no support in that direction. After all, it was likely she would marry in the next few years, have kids, and... how would college help with that?

Keep in mind that my sister is 8 years older than I am-- she was born in 1945, I was born in 1953. She came of age in the fifties, and I... came of age in the sixties, a radically different decade than the ones before it especially in the ways it impacted traditional social minorities, including women.

Then, ironically, I, who my parents automatically assumed would become a college student, shaped in large part by the many negative aspects of junior high and high school (that made me readily identify with Buffy's world on one definitive level) wanted absolutely nothing to do with the idea, which I'm sure they never truly understood.

Change happens slowly, and even then there are setbacks that are often highly disconcerting, even shocking. (*cough* Trumpers *cough*) My father was an unwitting prisoner of the society he grew up in. He loved women, he loved my mother, my sister. Did he really understand them? Evidently not. If he was still alive today, would he understand them better? I think he would. He was intelligent, a hard worker, cared for his family.

I do know that if my sister had been born in 1953, and I had been born first in 1945... in what ways would our respective lives have been almost certainly very different?

Just a few weeks ago I was chatting with my sister about her new (first) great-grandchild, a girl, whom she's pretty much over the moon about, having first met her in person just the week before that. That eventually led to a discussion of some of the things about our own history that I just alluded to above.

I pointed out that this baby girl, by the time she's old enough to become aware of the history of the times we and our parents grew up in, her reaction will all-but certainly be...

"WHAT??? Are you kidding me? What the hell was wrong with you people?"

And many others will have already agreed.

*******

BTW, I offered in the past to beta your writings, and the offer still stands. I'm pretty sure I can be objective without being cruel. Castuswatcher might be another good choice, if he's willing. I know he helped me quite a bit back when I was working on the Angel Season 6 project.

I'm sure there's likely others here among your friends that you might find trustworthy.

--OnM

:-)

[shadowkat]

The problem with sending a book to people to reivew/beta is that it has to be a story that would interest them. If it's not - or they don't like your writing, it won't be constructive. So it's a complicated process. My father believes you should only have professionals read it.

I was kind of upset with my brother last night so resorted to hyperbole. But good point about not all men.

[atpo_onm]

My father believes you should only have professionals read it.

On the one hand, your father's point may be valid, but professionals may, and I suspect often do, have their own biases, or simply not care for a certain style of writing.

As to the term "professional" itself, I worked for a fellow years back who was a fervent believer in professional opinion, and stuck to it all-but religiously. He purchased a thriving audio business and in seven years drove it into bankruptcy, all because he wouldn't listen to the "amateurs" who worked with him about what he was doing wrong to be successful in our local community.

I've read a lot of books in my earlier years, largely science fiction. You're aware of the authors I admire, so what styles I like would be evident. But in any case, as a reviewer, I always try to go with whatever the author was trying to do, I don't, or very rarely, try to impose my own ideas upon it.

Back in my 20's when I was reading a lot of SF and fantasy, there was a group of fans who were adamant that SF had to adhere strongly to hard science as it was known then, or reasonably projected in the future. If I had been a member of that group, I would have missed out on a lot of very satisfying work. I could read Asimov and enjoy his stories, or Philip Jose Farmer and enjoy his.

*******

Oh, I assumed it was hyperbole. I just wanted to counterbalance a mite, citing some personal experience. My sister and I are very fortunate in many ways, and we're well aware it's not always the norm. :-)

[shadowkat]

I don't think you'd like my writing or books very much - I have romance in them. And you would probably be disappointed?

At any rate - nothing is at that point anyhow. I need to revise two of them, finish a third (which is about a quarter of the way written and may never get finished, and get through a fourth - which only has a 100 pages. I keep getting stuck or getting another idea and leaping to that. Writing while you have a full time job is far from easy, particularly if it is a job in which you spend 85% of your time writing. I am writer - I spend 85% of my time doing nothing but writing, apparently. I love writing. I love reading. I love written communication. I really need to branch out more. ;-)

[mefisto]

I've been thinking about Whedon's self-immolating comments (would rather not, really) and have a couple of questions:

1. When did this bad behavior begin? I mean, did it start day 1 or did it develop over time as the show became a hit and he felt more powerful?

2. Whedon must have interacted with hundreds of people on his shows, at the very least. But the stories we get (other than his own self-destructive comments; worst witness ever) stem from just a few sources. What is it, do you think, that stops others from speaking up to accuse or defend him? Just a desire not to get involved?

I had at least 3 horrible bosses over my career. That's probably pretty common. In my experience, a substantial percentage of jurors in wrongful termination cases are totally unsympathetic to plaintiffs. Their view seems to be "yeah we all have that, just do your job and suck it up."

[shadowkat]

When did this bad behavior begin? I mean, did it start day 1 or did it develop over time as the show became a hit and he felt more powerful?

If I were to hazard a guess? S2 Buffy. He kind of indicates it in the interview, and various sources indicate at the time and now that this was when things began to get out of hand. Marsters reports being thrown against a wall in S2, and DB was apparently wandering about pantless in S2. S1 - everyone was on their best behavior. Also there were reports online of people dating and having affairs around that time period.

Also it was the 1990s, that type of behavior was kind of routine at that time on sets.

Whedon must have interacted with hundreds of people on his shows, at the very least. But the stories we get (other than his own self-destructive comments; worst witness ever) stem from just a few sources. What is it, do you think, that stops others from speaking up to accuse or defend him? Just a desire not to get involved?

Fear of being black listed or deemed hard to work with. My brother told me stories about people in Hollywood - that are not common knowledge. There's an unwritten rule - what happens on the set, stays there? Hollywood has never been kind to Whistle Blowers. Both Fisher and Carpenter have struggled since they spoke out, and Carpenter did it for Fisher, and struggled to do it. This stuff is really hard to prove, and you never know who might come after you for saying something.

Why people haven't defended him is more interesting, and his friends have distanced themselves, which most likely means there's truth to it. The affairs he had with the young actresses on Buffy - were an open secret, and a lot of folks apparently knew. Writer Nell Scovell reports on Twitter that she's known for years which actresses he had an affair with on Buffy. (She's the writer of Just the Funny Parts - about sneaking into the Hollywood Boys Club, and show runner of Lean in and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.) And supports it.

A lot of folks are wisely staying out of it. They either didn't see anything or know anything (Marsters and Head didn't really), or like Brendan (they have their own issues), or it's triggering and don't want to be pulled apart in the press - like Charisma, Ray Fisher, Gail Gadot all have been.

It's basically the same reasons I didn't file a lawsuit against the Wilson Company, or say anything about abuse I've suffered.

Or various folks came forward and the journalist chose not to use them? (I know she interviewed the scholars at Whedon Studies Association and didn't use anything from those interviews, and cited a man who died a few years back. Lavery died in 2020.)

[mefisto]

I remember the rumors of affairs on set. I assumed at the time that they involved the actors. Well, they were probably doing it too... and some of them evidently *with*.

[shadowkat]

I assumed it was just the actors, which makes sense - young cast, first roles, yaddah, yaddah.
(From some reports DB and Sara or DB and CC, or CC and Nick. ) I really really hope Whedon's was with the actresses in their late twenties and NOT with the young ones in the main cast. (ED was 16 turning 17 when she played Faith, and SMG was 18 turning 19 when she played Buffy, Hannigan was at least 22 and CC was 26.)

[mefisto]

Quick correction: ED was 17 turning 18 (December 1998). Still gross if she was one of Joss' affairs of course.

The one I heard was SMG and DB; didn't hear the other rumors. AH was likely to have been doing it with someone -- her background (former girlfriend of rock guitarist) and some stuff she said in interviews back then make me think so. No clue if it was Joss, though.

[shadowkat]

There was a lot written on various blogs and websites about SMG and DB, and how she broke up his marriage. CC mentions on one of the DVDs that everyone was dating each other - and it was kind of like high school in that respect. (I wouldn't be surprised if CC had affairs with DB and DG. I don't think she ever did with Whedon - not from what she's said about him.)

I can't imagine Gellar sleeping with Whedon - although its possible. I can however see ED doing it, and that would explain a lot.

AH, was a television and film veteran, and I think she was interested in others. Whedon isn't her type. She fell in love with AD in the 3rd season and he said firmly he wouldn't date anyone he was working with. So she waited to pursue him - once he left Buffy. AD had morals and apparently has since distanced himself from Whedon.

Marsters was dating Harmony at one point, but he didn't date anyone on the set other than Harmony. And turned down ED in S7 (per his Q&A's).

Benze wasn't that young - she was in her late 20s, early 30s. Also, she left Buffy after S1. I know she and AH did not get along.

I'm thinking it may have been someone who wasn't in the main cast.

[mefisto]

I'm pretty confident Whedon didn't sleep with any of the main Buffy cast. I have my suspicions, but they involve others. I wouldn't rule out some of the main cast on other shows.

[shadowkat]

I don't think he did either. Not only would that have been colossally stupid, but we'd have had people leave.

It's more likely one of the recurring actors on Buffy. Although I can see it being ED - since she came and went. I know it wasn't Juliette Landau. There's some speculation that maybe Julie Benze - but I don't think he did it until the second season. And they were young.

And ED had a history of having these issues on sets, with predatory men coming after her. Although she's Mormon and had a no nudity clause on Buffy, also refused to do certain types of scenes.

[mefisto]

I agree on all of those. Also, ED seems to have relaxed her standards since then. :)

[shadowkat]

I've been thinking about your comments in the back of my head, and the lawyer in me started to turn them over as well. Way back when, I chose between law school and journalism school - I wrote a lot of articles in junior high, high school, and college for various school papers. Even was a bit of a cartoonist, and art editor in junior high and went to a student newspaper seminar in Kansas City. I would have probably been good at it too - I was good at interviewing folks, and could research. But, there was something skeevy about it, or that bothered me - something seemingly unethical about exploiting others stories for my own gain. Also I'd gotten into trouble once or twice.

And I wanted to help people and contribute - and change things - which felt more likely via law school for some reason or other. (I'd thoroughly researched it first, of course.)

Anyhow, I've been thinking about how she wrote that article. I found out today that she had interviewed the scholars in the Whedon Studies Association - but clearly ignored her notes and didn't use any of their interviews, and instead took one quote completely out of context because it fit how she wanted to construct the article.

And I have been thinking about those anonymous sources. The article is an oddly constructed one. She quotes a lot of people - but many of them are anonymous, and some of the anonymous sources don't really say anything that would harm them - if it were known who they are, there are others who have said more that would be harmed, and others who say things that are really unsettling, who are left anonymous.

If Joss didn't incriminate himself - it would be easy to dismiss a lot of the allegations due to the anonymity.

I find how she wrote and constructed the article to be rather self-serving and somewhat unethical. Granted there's nothing there that arises to the level of defamation or libel, but...it skirts close in regards to people other than Whedon. I just wish she had a better editor and someone vet this, and push her a bit on the sources, removing some of the anonymous ones. Also provide a time line for when the abuse is alleged to have happened. But that's my lawyer brain sinking its teeth into this, and that may well be why the article bothered me on a certain level.

[mefisto]

Those are some really good points which hadn't occurred to me.

I find the whole use of anonymous sources to be very problematic. Sure there are times when it's justified -- people who fear significant retaliation (and no, someone getting mad at you doesn't count) or might risk criminal prosecution to expose a more significant crime. But laundering gossip through anonymity seems pretty skeevy.

[shadowkat]

I agree. I just had a discussion with someone on WSA FB about this - he was arguing that anonymity and hearsay was excusable in this instance. And how hard to prove this stuff was - which made it okay based on the potential of retaliation. (He uses the example of Deep Throat in Watergate - which sure was legitimate because he did risk retaliation. But unlike Shapiro's sources, Deep Throat provided evidence and backed up his claims. Shapiro's are kind of random.)

I disagreed, mainly because like you state above - it falls under gossip, and in this case malicious gossip. Also, if we go down that slippery slope - I can say whatever I damn well please about you and blacken your name, and we do not want that. There's a reason folks are innocent before proven guilty. And hanging them in the court of public opinion with anonymous sources...

Also, there are people who came forward, bravely, and they should be acknowledged.

Add to this - most of the anonymous sources she lists - don't say anything that would signify retaliation. And some of it is hard to prove. The producer who said he was rolling around on the floor with a young actress? I'd have deleted that comment, and not included his response either - without backup. It's gossip.

[mefisto]

Agreed. Also, Deep Throat was exposing crimes much more significant than his own leaking. Whistleblowers get legal protection (now, not back then) but they don't get anonymity.

[shadowkat]

Exactly. My difficulty with this article and the responses is it underlines various problems with the Social Media Platforms and our current media since roughly 2016 if not before. When you have "news as entertainment" such as Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc - and social platforms working as "marketing platforms or promotional platforms" - gossip disguised as news. As a result of this phenomena, it's no longer possible sometimes to determine fact from fiction. Everybody and their horse, possibly their horse's mother feels the need to post their opinion often their opinion as fact on social media about everything. It's why we have so much misinformation out there about the Corona Virus. We got idiots who have a degree in nursing, nutrition, podiatry, etc posting their opinions on whether the vaccine works based on their research, which is sketchy at best. Most of them don't know how to research outside of looking up something in Google.

Here, the journalist of this article makes some of the same mistakes as many others have made in regards to reporting on far more important issues. I mean at the end of the day? Who cares about Joss Whedon. And all of that happened many years ago. It's over. I'm more concerned about the journalists reporting on things like the January 6th riots, the vaccines, the Corona Virus, real world events.
And unfortunately some of those journalists are making some of the same amateurish errors.

We both know that there are things about this article that could give rise to a potential law suit, although I doubt anyone will do so. The reactions are kind of all over the place.

[mefisto]

Yep.

[yourlibrarian]

when I look back at the TV “Whedonverse” — including “Buffy,” spinoff “Angel,” “Firefly” and “Dollhouse” — the more I see worrying patterns

Yes, the more content he made the clearer his issues became. But I would add to "he made a lot of careers" that he "made a lot of fans." I remember that back in the mid-2000s on LJ there were quite a few people who had never been fannish about anything else before, but some of them went on to other fandoms later. Maybe something would have flipped the switch anyway, but perhaps not.

[shadowkat]

This is true. I certainly wasn't in fandom prior to Whedon. I didn't really know it existed and was kind of oblivious to it. And because of it, I've dipped my toe into other fandoms, and written meta about other shows that I wouldn't have done otherwise.

People are more than one thing. And the series he created weren't all bad. Buffy had some amazing episodes, as did Angel. I can't say I was a huge Dollhouse or Firefly fan.