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food court bailiff posted:I really love how enough people lauded Joss Whedon on his STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS AND PROTAGONISTS that he actually made an entire show about women brainwashed into sex dolls without personalities of their own. You are going to have to walk me through how Joss Whedon is gross for creating Dollhouse, but you arent gross for really liking it. Like, I have no dog in this fight, I liked buffy/angel/firefly well enough in their time and hated the only episode of Dollhouse I watched, so I stopped watching it. Joss Whedon is a guy who has done some stuff I enjoyed and some stuff I hated so his name on a project doesnt guarantee anything in particular to me, I'm just really curious how someone goes "The guy who created this is gross for creating it! I will watch and enjoy all of it.". I mean, for the record I think you can watch Dollhouse without being a creep, but I also think you can write/create it without being a creep. Tiggum posted:But I thought you said you wanted something like Firefly? I'd generally agree with the spoilered part for most of his TV work to be honest. It was good at the time, but time has not been kind. Except the first couple of seasons of Angel, they were trash even when they originally aired.
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Mar 12, 2017 17:48
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Why does Joss Whedon attract so much fan worship? The only other screenwriters nerds like who I think have a similar public profile are J.J. Abrams and Steven Moffat and neither of them get the same amount of adulation that Whedon has always seemed to receive.
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Mar 12, 2017 18:01
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Wheat Loaf posted:Why does Joss Whedon attract so much fan worship? I'm surprised you've perceived that about Moffat. I've heard nothing but hate about him, at least among my friends.
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Mar 12, 2017 18:09
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Nostradingus posted:I'm surprised you've perceived that about Moffat. I've heard nothing but hate about him, at least among my friends. I don't mean that Abrams and Moffat regularly receive the same effusive praise as Whedon; I mean that they're the only current screenwriters I can think of who are big names themselves (if only in nerdy circles). Suppose there's, say, a Q&A panel at a comic convention, Moffat is the only TV writer I can think of who could be on the panel alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman and Peter Capaldi and be at least as significant a presence as the stars, if that makes any sense. (Actually, just came to me that JMS would probably be another.)
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Mar 12, 2017 18:36
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Wheat Loaf posted:Why does Joss Whedon attract so much fan worship? When his shows aired they were actually pretty unique with having Strong Female Protagonists (tm), semi complex ensemble casts, unique settings, characters dying and good character driven plots. When I was a high schooler I absolutely loved that poo poo because they were fun, had persistent plots, and didn't insult my intelligence by being too "kiddy" . As an adult I can see why I liked them as a teenager, but they definitely do not age well.
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Mar 12, 2017 18:37
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Whedon was juuust progressive enough to be slightly ahead of the curve but not enough to piss anyone off or stay ahead of it for very long.
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Mar 12, 2017 18:59
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SiKboy posted:You are going to have to walk me through how Joss Whedon is gross for creating Dollhouse, but you arent gross for really liking it. The overall idea of the tech on the show and the questions it raises are cool, the guy who plays the stoner on Cabin in the Woods is in it and is a delight to watch (same for Alan Tudyk later on, and seeing Eliza Dushku play so many different "characters" was impressive), the overarching plots are fun, the season finale miniseries thing was great, meanwhile that's all underpinned with Whedon's weird rapey fan fiction.
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Mar 12, 2017 19:09
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Bates posted:Whedon was juuust progressive enough to be slightly ahead of the curve but not enough to piss anyone off or stay ahead of it for very long. This is better than my explanation.
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Mar 12, 2017 19:16
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Jedit posted:Dollhouse, AKA "Joss Whedon's Rape Hour". I don't know how anyone could like that show. Every single character is an overt psychopath except for the dolls, and you can't sympathise with them because a) they have no personalities and b) you'd have to be a complete loving idiot to get into that situation.
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Mar 13, 2017 05:06
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Tiggum posted:It would be OK if the Dollhouse staff were the bad guys. But they aren't. You're clearly supposed to be on board with the whole thing and want them to succeed. It's really weird, because if you explain the premise of the show to anyone, it's really obvious that the Dollhouse is an evil organisation and the people who run it must be the bad guys, and that's how it seems at the beginning, but it very quickly becomes clear that we're actually supposed to sympathise with them and be on their side. Even the cop character who's trying to track don Eliza Dushku's character at the start comes around and starts working for them. It's Joss Whedon if he had one more season they probably would have became the bad guys. Kind of like how in Firefly Mal is just bitter for losing the war and then you find out in Serenity that he was right and they really are an Evil Government and he was right to hate them.
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Mar 13, 2017 06:08
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It's more nuanced than that, the Dollhouse organization was always straight-up evil but the local dollhouse that Echo and Alpha were from was on the verge of going/went completely rogue (it's been a while, I don't remember exactly). That's why the cop guy joined up, and they started rebelling soon after someone tried to buy out Victor's body for a personal upload. It went completely ham-handed in one of the last episodes when they reveal that the leader of the program (I think?) is Echo's former handler, who they mindwipe into holding a live grenade. I have really no idea how you'd come away with the idea that you're supposed to cheer for the dollhouse, though. I mean, wow.
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Mar 13, 2017 06:27
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food court bailiff posted:It's more nuanced than that, the Dollhouse organization was always straight-up evil but the local dollhouse that Echo and Alpha were from was on the verge of going/went completely rogue (it's been a while, I don't remember exactly). That's why the cop guy joined up, and they started rebelling soon after someone tried to buy out Victor's body for a personal upload. It went completely ham-handed in one of the last episodes when they reveal that the leader of the program (I think?) is Echo's former handler, who they mindwipe into holding a live grenade. food court bailiff posted:I have really no idea how you'd come away with the idea that you're supposed to cheer for the dollhouse, though. I mean, wow.
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Mar 13, 2017 08:01
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This clip summarises Buffy's varying power levels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U3UJwRz0w4&t=149s
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Mar 13, 2017 10:36
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We were at a friends place back in November at a party and someone insisted on putting on the Thanksgiving episode of Buffy. I have never seen an entire episode at that point, so I figured "Why not, I've been hearing about it for twenty years" So there's a Native spirit going around stealing weapons from the museum in order to kill professors, ancestors, etc. He's doing this because he's mad that they're portraying him as a savage in the historical records. Go ahead, read that again. Also, Buffy spends the entire time saying, "I know there's murder going on and all, but I really just want to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner" while apparently the blonde vampire has a half-vampire/half-human sex slave that he's in an abusive relationship with, but he's also starving to death? And everyone keeps literally asking "Is Angel evil now?" So yeah, that's my Buffy story.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:32
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Len posted:It's Joss Whedon if he had one more season they probably would have became the bad guys. To be fair, the Alliance was always shown as horribly authoritative without giving a poo poo about most of its citizens at best, and Miranda was just a logical extension of that after seeing all the Hands of Blue poo poo. And after reading the China GBS thread, I'm starting to suspect that the Alliance's status is just an extension of the Chinese Communist Party's influence instead of a natural growth and evolution of Chinese culture. (I think about the political and economic implications of the fiction I consume way too much). Bates posted:Whedon was juuust progressive enough to be slightly ahead of the curve but not enough to piss anyone off or stay ahead of it for very long. I'll agree with this. Like everyone says, he's not super-feminist or anything, but a port in the storm, so to speak.
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Mar 13, 2017 14:35
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mojo1701a posted:To be fair, the Alliance was always shown as horribly authoritative without giving a poo poo about most of its citizens at best, and Miranda was just a logical extension of that after seeing all the Hands of Blue poo poo. Yeah, and let's not forget the season-long arc about the young girl who went to an Alliance-run "school" where she was experimented on, forbidden from communicating with her family, turned into a living weapon, and had to be smuggled out. The Alliance was always Evil Government.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:20
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mojo1701a posted:And after reading the China GBS thread, I'm starting to suspect that the Alliance's status is just an extension of the Chinese Communist Party's influence instead of a natural growth and evolution of Chinese culture. (I think about the political and economic implications of the fiction I consume way too much). Have you thought about why there are no Chinese people in the show? This is a culture so supposedly steeped in Chinese culture that people pepper their speech with Chinese sayings and profanity, but there are like zero Chinese characters. Maybe there are some in the background in some scenes, but none that rise above the level of featureless extra. Answer: It's actually not written very well.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:25
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Also being a CRAZY VICIOUS SAVAGE REAVER makes you dangerous and terrifying even to trained military types and not, say, a dead person floating around in the husk of the spaceship you never bothered to maintain because you were too busy eating skin and cutting yourself and listening to Linkin Park.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:27
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It annoyed me in Kill Bill when the aul Chinese master guy flips off Uma's sword. I KNEW it was a homage/pastiche of old kung fu films and it's basically magic and whatever, but BOY did that annoy me.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:29
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I always thought it was strange that reavers ran around without containment on their drives, which is implied to be dangerous to your health equivalent to hanging around an unshielded nuclear reactor (or is that literally what's happening? I don't know what fuels their spaceships). How are they not a self correcting problem? That planet didn't have the largest population, and then only a fraction of a percent became reavers, but reavers are mostly just blood crazed space orcs and have no survival skills. They should have pretty much all died out before the show started, but they somehow had a fleet large enough to challenge a detachment from the Alliance.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:32
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The Reavers are probably the worst aspect of the show. In a space Western, the Reavers are the Indians, and they're portrayed the way Indians would have been in the 50s: Absolute savages who if they capture you will kill you and rape you and if you're lucky do it in that order. That'd be...troublesome if they didn't make it a *space* Western, but putting it in space renders the whole concept nonsensical. Space is a fundamentally hostile environment that will try very hard to kill you if you don't do everything right at all times, but these ravening psychopaths who have apparently even lost the power of speech can manage to keep not dying?
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Mar 13, 2017 15:40
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Phanatic posted:Have you thought about why there are no Chinese people in the show? This is a culture so supposedly steeped in Chinese culture that people pepper their speech with Chinese sayings and profanity, but there are like zero Chinese characters. Maybe there are some in the background in some scenes, but none that rise above the level of featureless extra. I know. I'm not actually being serious. I just do these for fun. Still, it's amazing how well it gels with the stories I've read in that thread.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:54
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The Reaver thing wouldn't have been so bad if most of it was just stories. Like the aforementioned, "Unshielded warp core" thing because as pointed out, they'd all just die real quick like and if they just want to murder all the time then how do they reproduce? Make it so that yeah, they're space crazy but not nearly AS mad as everyone thinks and the fear of the unknown aspect has brought about these mad rumors and you still have these crazy, horror film villains but it's not as stupid. Hell, turns out they're a mad religious sect and they kidnap and torture people until Stockholm syndrome kicks in. They're like a flesh borg colony or something. But they do literally unshield their warp core and they do just murder and... I've not seen Firefly since it was first on. Maybe this was all cleared up in the comics or something but they were just brainless kill zombie, right?
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Mar 13, 2017 18:00
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From what I vaguely remember, Reavers were made by a pathogen or something? If that's true and I'm not misremembering, that would probably be how they 'reproduce'. That still doesn't explain how they wouldn't all immediately die from their unmaintained ships though. Even if you take the assumption that their unshielded reactors would take a good long few years to actually kill them, if they're too crazy to maintain anything they wouldn't be able to repair their ships after combat or remember to fuel up or use weapons that aren't basically just scrap. Being crazy doesn't magically mean you're suddenly good at fighting either. A trained military would tear Reavers apart, by actually maintaining their equipment and just...I dunno. Shooting them. With their guns.
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Mar 13, 2017 18:12
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Drunken Baker posted:. Hell, turns out they're a mad religious sect and they kidnap and torture people until Stockholm syndrome kicks in. They're like a flesh borg colony or something. That's something that happens in one episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacked_(Firefly)
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Mar 13, 2017 18:12
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food court bailiff posted:
There's an entire B-plot based on how one of the job perks for the autistic Mengele who does the mind programming gets to program a doll to be his perfect nerd girlfriend on his birthday. The audience is clearly meant to go "awww".
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Mar 13, 2017 18:15
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Jedit posted:Dollhouse, AKA "Joss Whedon's Rape Hour". I don't know how anyone could like that show. Every single character is an overt psychopath except for the dolls, and you can't sympathise with them because a) they have no personalities and b) you'd have to be a complete loving idiot to get into that situation. Echo's "job interview" basically goes like this:
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Mar 13, 2017 18:16
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The last season of Angel is some of the best TV ever and no one will ever convince me otherwise. 
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Mar 13, 2017 19:55
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CubanMissile posted:The last season of Angel is some of the best TV ever and no one will ever convince me otherwise. The last episode is perfection.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:02
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CubanMissile posted:The last season of Angel is some of the best TV ever and no one will ever convince me otherwise. I don't remember exactly but is that the one where they had to leave Gun in the nightmare-torture-loop dimension forever?
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Mar 13, 2017 20:02
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Jedit posted:There's an entire B-plot based on how one of the job perks for the autistic Mengele who does the mind programming gets to program a doll to be his perfect nerd girlfriend on his birthday. The audience is clearly meant to go "awww". He programs her to be his best buddy on his birthday, and you're supposed to think it's hosed up. You're supposed to think the whole situation is hosed up and the people doing it are evil. It's baked into the whole concept.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:12
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marshmallow creep posted:I don't remember exactly but is that the one where they had to leave Gun in the nightmare-torture-loop dimension forever? To be left in the nightmare-torture-loop dimension forever was actually his plan along because he believed that he deserved it.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:13
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Alhazred posted:The last episode is perfection. I've never seen Angel but I think the "perfect last episode" award still belongs to The Shield. Anyway, my irrationally irritating thing is characters developing romantic or close friends relationships with people instantly for basically no reason. The most recent movie to do this and irritate my was Fantastic Beasts. Why exactly did Newt consider Jacob such a good friend aside from him just kind of going along with all the crazy poo poo and liking the animals? I guess that could earn someone's respect, but close enough friends to not want to obliviate him? And the love interest thing - I get that the lady wizard was a legillimens or however you spell it so a lot of the attraction is probably unspoken but it seemed out of nowhere and was just put in to make the movie more "cute".
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Mar 13, 2017 20:14
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The reavers had enough presence of mind to paint and modify their ships so I'm thinking the 40k space orcs comparison is a pretty good one.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:36
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I think Firefly should've gone all in on the whole Space Confederates thing and had the Alliance be totally justified.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:55
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The biggest problem with Dollhouse as a show is that Eliza Dushku is the worst actor on the show and everyone else acts circles around her. Which is an issue when everyone constantly fawns over how great her character is.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:06
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Amy Acker is starring in the new X-men show on Fox. She was the only good thing about Dollhouse.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:25
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CubanMissile posted:The last season of Angel is some of the best TV ever and no one will ever convince me otherwise. Alhazred posted:The last episode is perfection. So good. Lorne just out of the blue killing Lindsay, blue demon lady pretending to be Fred one last time for dying Wesley... And yeah I spoiled an old show in case someone wants to go and watch it, why not?
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Mar 13, 2017 21:33
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I'm only like halfway through Angel so I appreciate that. You're a Good PosterTM
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Mar 13, 2017 21:39
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muscles like this! posted:The biggest problem with Dollhouse as a show is that Eliza Dushku is the worst actor on the show and everyone else acts circles around her. Which is an issue when everyone constantly fawns over how great her character is. Yeah this is the biggest issue by a long shot. Fran Kranz is a loving revelation and I'm so glad he's going to be in the upcoming Dark Tower movie.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:07
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