One of the many perks of running Whedonesque.com, is…

Hang on. There aren’t a lot of perks, really, other than the pleasure of being boss of a site that’s well respected and much quoted. Yeah, we got invited to the Serenity premiere in Los Angeles. But I live in Amsterdam. Which means I never get to go to premieres, conventions, screenings or other meetings. When the Paley Center in New York invited us for a panel discussion on television and online fandom, one of the USA based mods got to go, but I could not. And unlike many of our members, I’ve never met any of the actors, or Joss.

All of this is perfectly fine with me. Yeah, I run the site, but I also run U2log.com and a couple of other sites. I’m not the biggest fan, I don’t keep up with all the news, I don’t know episode titles by heart, I couldn’t tell you which of the writers wrote what. I like communities, but I don’t get too involved. (My pet theory is that people who like to run online communities are actually all mysanthropists deep down.) I consider this a good thing. A little distance from the subject matter is essential. It helps keep me objective. And possibly sane.

I do receive a fuckload of annoying PR in the Whedonesque inbox, all about stuff that means nothing to me, not being American, not living in America. And probably wouldn’t mean anything to me if I were American, living in America. But I digress.

Perks. I has one. A kind soul gave me access to the Dollhouse screener, which contained an unfinished version of ‘Ghost’, the first episode. In case you’ve been living in cave, Dollhouse is Joss Whedon’s new television series for Fox, starring Eliza Dushku and Battlestar Galactica’s Tahmoh Penikett. You can read a synopsis of the show on Wikipedia. It is set to premier on February 13.

I remember catching my first glimpse of Buffy on TV (it was the sixth episode of the series’ first season: ‘The Pack’) and feeling compelled to keep watching it, unable to flip to another channel. Like being drawn in by Bob Ross’s hypnotic voice.

Dollhouse didn’t do that, in fact, the first time I watched it I zoned out several minutes into the first act. I like Eliza Dushku a lot, after all she was my favourite slayer. In this first episode, I think she did ok as ‘Caroline’* and as the innocent doll ‘Echo’. She’s also fairly good as the brazen character she’s ‘imprinted’ with in the first few minutes, but I found her far less believable as the character she becomes next, when she’s hired to mediate between a kidnapper and the abductee’s father. In fact, she looked so awkward and miniscule in her skirt suit and specs, it took me right out of the story. And that’s when the supporting characters began to stand out – especially on second viewing.

Tahmoh Penikett, playing the FBI-agent Paul Ballard, is as strong as he is as Helo in Battlestar Galactica. Harry Lennix, who plays Echo’s ‘handler’, doesn’t get a lot to do in this first episode, but he could be interesting. Amy Acker – who I never liked as Fred in ‘Angel’ – does a lot with her bit part as the Dollhouse doctor and I immediately wanted to know more about her scar-faced character. The actress who stood out the most, though, is Dichen Lachman. She plays ‘Sierra’, another doll. We catch a few brief glimpses of her throughout the episode, before she makes a striking entrance right at the end of the show. Kick ass, not unlike like Jessica Alba in ‘Dark Angel’, but with more exotic features. I couldn’t help but wish she’d been cast as Echo.

Whedon’s shows are always about the ensemble, and it isn’t the first time the supporting actors do more for me than the lead. I never liked the character Buffy that much and it took a while for me to take to any of the cast of Firefly, which completely failed to grab me in the first few episodes. So while not exactly confident, I am hopeful the series will prove to be a grower and that Dushku will prove to be as big a talent as Whedon says she is.

* Huh? Yeah, she’s called Caroline in a flash back, where she is reminiscent of the more vulnerable Faith we sometimes saw in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m just going to pretend Joss named her after me. Indulge me.

• 20 Classic Films Recreated in LEGO | The Toy Zone –
• Internet Archive: Details: MoJo Audio: Joss Whedon – "Listen to Sheerly Avni interview Joss Whedon at length. An abridged text version of this interview is available in the November/December 2008 print edition of Mother Jones magazine, on sale now."
• Free Site Validator | complete website validation and link checking tool –
• Breaking Video: The Simpsons Spoof The Mad Men Intro – Parodies – Videogum – Ha ha ha ha ha!
• Last.fm’s Playground – Most unwanted scrobbles, i.e. the most frequently deleted tracks by the Last.fm community
• BBC NEWS | Entertainment | David Tennant quits as Doctor Who – Bye bye to the guy who – unexpectedly – became my favourite doctor.
• Primark – Upcoming Stores – Primark is opening in Rotterdam.
• Oliver, Daily: 29 October 2008 – Awesome Oliver picture today

“It’s necessary, though. We’re talking about story-telling, the most
basic human need. Food? That’s an animal need. Shelter? That’s a luxury
item that leads to social grouping, which leads directly to fancy
scarves. But human awareness is all about story-telling. The selective
narrative of your memory. The story of why the Sky Bully throws
lightning at you. From the first, stories, even unspoken, separated us
from the other, cooler beasts. And now we’re talking about the stories
that define our nation’s popular culture – a huge part of its identity.
These are the people that think those up. Working writers.”

In the meantime, Supernatural fans have followed Whedonesque’s lead.

More Whedony quotes:

“None of the writers – or anyone – I’ve spoken to have ever heard of
fans organizing and supporting a strike the way you guys have.
Supporting our right not to entertain you. Seriously, that’s rare.”

“When I showed my wife the banner that went with the pizza scheme, she
just said, “These people are gonna be running the world.” Man, I hope
she’s right.”

• how it started
• mission accomplished

The gesture was much appreciated by Whedon-related writers and others on scene:

“Seeing you guys with your pizzas and your poster… It was very touching…”,

“It was such a touching gesture and they were hungrily gobbled up.”,

“…your pizza was well-appreciated during our picket at gate 1.”

Plans for more pizza runs and other efforts to support the writers are currently underway. Some writers expressed surprise. In general, TV shows writing staff do not have close relationships with their fandoms, but the Buffy, Angel and Firelfy communities have always been as passionate about the actors as they are about the stories and their writers.

Editable banner images are available to post on your blog. Other fandoms are encouraged to join in.

Why strike? Brian K. Vaughan, executive story editor on ‘Lost’ explains.

‘Dollhouse’ will feature Dushku as ‘Echo’ who is literally every person’s fantasy. An empty vessel who is filled with a personality and abilities to satisfy a customer in some way, then reset and formatted for a new assignment. Whedon’s old buddy Tim Minear (Angel) will be on the team too. Naturally, this all caused a bit of a storm on Whedonesque.com, with a large dollop of squee on top.

Fox have ordered seven episodes to be written and filmed. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually air, but we’re hopeful and can’t wait to have more Jossy goodness on our screen. Eager fans have already set up a website, forum, MySpace, Facebook and LiveJournal community for the series. Begrudgers are already putting money on the show’s early cancellation, seeing that once again, the network involved is Fox.

As for myself, I’m happy for those of us for whom comics don’t really cut it. I think this new series will be a kind of Dark Angel with better dialogue and better, well, everything and I am confident Whedon will once again manage to put together a wonderful supporting cast for what I hope will be another great ensemble show.

He writes: ‘It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself.’

Joss Whedon is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly,

See also:

• Joss Whedon’s speech at Equality Now
• Fans: ‘I am Dua Khalil, and you are too’
• Equality Now

Damn the consequences, I’m waiting for it to finish and then I’m watching it.
For those of you who don’t know, Studio 60 is the new TV show by Aaron Sorkin, the man who created The West Wing. He’s been away from TV since, what was it, Season 5 of TWW? I may have missed his presence on TV more than I have missed Joss Whedon’s.

3 minutes 29 to go.

Whedonesque.com was named ‘Blog of the week’ at The Times today and in the comments on the post announcing it, a number of our users ask why Whedonesque is a blog. Before I can answer, Joss Whedon himself pipes in and declares Whedonesque not a blog.

I try to explain that perhaps people’s interpretation of the world blog has changed somewhat over the last five years and that Whedonesque has all the characteristics of a weblog. Joss seems to call me pedantic, dismissing my reasoning and telling me language evolves, ergo, my blog no longer a blog. He seems to think I’m ‘nerd girl’ who needs to be taught a lesson in language.

Welcome to bizarro world.

He’d already left when I finally came up with the ‘let’s say in 10 years time, a tv series is something that has a jury and televoting, so sorry, your work is now called ‘fanfic” analogy. I am a crappy debater.

It seems most of our users have no idea the site is a weblog. I guess they’ve never gone near our About page.

I’m quite baffled.

4 comments

Caroline, you were the first person to link to my first weblog back in 1999, so I’ll always have your back. But even if I didn’t, I’d still think that you know what you’re talking about. You make great points all around.

I think maybe Joss is partially right, in that words do evolve and “blog” is being used in ways it wasn’t being used five years ago. But I wouldn’t call the word “evolving” so much as “being beaten around so much people don’t even know what it means anymore.” The linguistic examples he gave didn’t have to undergo the machinations of mass media. “Blog” seems to have a certain magic that marketers and product people latch on to and slap on their product to give it some extra oomph. There’s a radio station here in SF that has a woman reading entertainment gossip on their morning show, and they call that her “entertainment blog.” What the hell?

But then again, I’ve been around this scene almost as long as you, so I’m going to have a similar viewpoint and amount of emotional investment.

The one question I didn’t see anyone ask Joss was, “Okay, so if Whedonesque is not a blog, what is it?”
Jason (link) – 04 March 2006 – 23:13

‘I think maybe Joss is partially right, in that words do evolve and “blog” is being used in ways it wasn’t being used five years ago.’

I agree with that, but that doesn’t mean that what it meant before is no longer valid. How about this one: ‘Your child is no longer a child, but an adult. You should stop calling it your child.’ It makes no sense at all.
Caroline (link) – 04 March 2006 – 23:27

Indeed, agreed.
Jason (link) – 05 March 2006 – 03:06

This is crying out for a good pun but I can’t think of one.

When is a blog, not a blog? When it’s ajar… nope… rubbish.

Anyway, there are two thoughts on this – 1. aside from the award do you care whether it’s seen as a blog, or not? 2. As Jason asks “If it’s not a blog, what is it?! A content-rich, frequently updated website?

Spade and all that.
Gordon (link) – 06 March 2006 – 18:34

Serenity is the Joss Whedon film based on the shortlived Firefly TV series. Last Saturday, I joined the fans at browncoats.nl, for a very special screening at the UIP office here in Amsterdam. It was the perfect way to see it. The film hadn’t been subtitled yet, there was no intermission and the audience didn’t talk or cough or kick my chair or munch popcorn or neck. So that was fab. There weren’t any cast members, like at many of the USA screenings, but that’s ok, I wouldn’t know what to say anyway.

I’ll post my non-spoilery thoughts here and then spoilers after the break and I’ll probably invisitext them too, so you’ll have to highlight them with the cursor.

First of all, for those reading this that do not know, I was a big Buffy & Angel fan and I run Whedonesque.com, a website dedicated to all things Joss Whedon, the writer / creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel. Having said that, the people that post on my site are the real fans. I can name some episode titles, but not all and I have no idea which writer wrote which episode. Basically, I was heavily invested in the whole watcher/slayer thing and Scooby friends/family vibe. That spoke to me.

Unfortunately the Buffy series didn’t explore that enough and became more about ‘who is doing the Slayer today’ and ‘female empowerment’ (barf), so I really didn’t care much for the final two seasons. Secondly, I liked Firefly, but didn’t love it like I loved BtVS and Angel. So yeah, I’m a fan, I run the website, but it isn’t life or death to me, you know what I mean? (Those with no experience in any fandom at all will have NO idea what I’m on about.)

When Firefly first aired on TV, I had a hard time connecting with the characters. There were so many, I didn’t have an immediate favourite and I didn’t fancy any of them either. Since then, I’ve watched the series a few times and I’ve grown quite fond of it. But still not in a ‘oh god, I adore these people and they’re telling my story’ kind of way.

Shortly after seeing the film on Saturday, I posted to Whedonesque about it and the minute I posted, the site and most of my other sites went offline. Which completely sucked for all the obvious reasons, but also because it meant I couldn’t talk about the film when I was still completely pumped up about it. So here is what I wrote:

Well, let’s put it this way. I went in with a lot of real life stuff on my mind and a pretty low mood.

I forgot all about it when the film started and I didn’t think of it for one second during, and for about 30 minutes after it ended I was still blissfully forgetful of said real life stuff. I was in a different world for the entire film.

That Joss. He brings the funny. And the scary. And the sad. And the poignant. And the relevant. All in one ‘big damn movie’!

So if you liked scifi, Star Wars, etc… you’ll be surprised, because this film has real acting, real dialogue, real emotions. If you don’t like scifi, you can still go see Serenity, because this film has real acting, real dialogue, real… you catch my drift. Go see it on opening week. Take your friends. Because when enough people show up for opening week… we’ll get sequels. God knows, we may even get a ‘cancelled’ TV series back on the (not so) idiot box.

Continue if you don’t mind spoilers… (highlight to make the text visible)

I want to see it again. There was so much stuff in there that looked
lush and detailed and went by too quickly, I want to get the DVD right.
this. moment. and freeze frame through all the scenes.

I was spoiled for what for those invested in the Firefly crew is
probably the major ‘event’ in the film: Wash’s death. But I didn’t know
anything else
and had no idea of the film’s plot. I had heard there were problems
with the schedules of two actors (Ron Glass, Morena Boccarin) in the
original cast, so their role in the film was going to be a minor one. I
didn’t know just how minor and I certainly didn’t know there was a
second death. Or that it was going to be Ron Glass (who plays ‘Book’,
the Preacher), who happened to have become my favourite character on
the show. Older guy with mysterious past… hey, I ADORED Giles.

So when Book buys it, I’m stunned (OMG, OMG, they killed BOOK!) and
annoyed. Because here I am thinking I’m ‘safe’ since I knew Wash was
going to die and, yeah, sad, but you know, not invested, so no biggie.
But Book…

There’s a scene in the film where he tells Mal (The Captain) ‘I wasn’t
always a preacher, you know.’ and Mal says: ‘One day you’re going to
have to tell me about that.’ And Book says: ‘No, I don’t.’ Yeah,
foreshadowing, I suppose.

I was one of those people who couldn’t give a rat’sarse about whether
Mal gets Inara (The Companion = prostitute), or whether Kayleigh (Ship
mechanic, and my least favourite character) shags Simon (The Doctor) or
what the hell is up with River (The Crazy Fugitive and psychic,
empowered (barf) girl-woman, i.e. Joss’s unhealthy fixation). I wanted
to know Book’s story. I still do. Now we only get to learn it posthumously,
if ever.

So that bothered me a bit, as did the itty bitty part Morena Boccarin
got to play. I doubt the mainstream audience is going to ‘get’ what she
is about and they’ll just see her as Mal’s love interest. But she too
has a secret and I wanna know. I hope that’ll be part of the sequel. Or
‘a’ sequel. We don’t know if there is going to be one yet. I really
missed her input and Book’s, throughout the film.
 
The film is about River and what’s in her head. I have to say,
the character wasn’t half as bloody annoying as she was in the series.
Before I found out Wash was going to die, I had so hoped the ‘big’
spoiler would be about
River being slaughtered by Reavers, the movie’s ‘monsters’, humans who
have become flesh eating murderers. (Why? Well, that’s part of the
film’s story! I’m not going to spoil everything.) Wishful thinking.

For one second there, it looked like her brother Simon was going to
perish at a point in the movie (just after Wash gets killed in a
typically Whedonesque ‘random’ way) when you (the audience) are busy
gripping your seat in anguish and fear because you start to think ‘oh
god, oh god, they’re ALL going to die…’ That’s Joss’s great strength.
He makes you care. When the cast is in dire straits (think the Mines of
Moria, think Butch and Sundance in Bolivia) you are right there with
them.

What else can I say about the film? It looks beautiful. The opening
scene is great even if I thought ‘um, am I at the wrong screening, is
this the new Star Trek movie?’ He introduces the history of the
Serenity ‘universe’ in a flashback scene where a young River is
attending a history lesson at her primary school.

Serenity is less listerally ‘western’ than the TV series, but more or
less faithful to the canon. The only thing that grates is Simon’s
character, totally out of whack with who he’d become in the series.
Like he’d regressed to his former prissy self.

There’s a line in the film about heroes. ‘A hero is someone who gets
people killed.’ Mal, who, having lost his faith in the war preceding
the Firefly/Serenity story, finds something to believe in, namely
letting the world(s) know what’s inside River’s head, and decides to
risk his life and that of his crew to do it.

Mal gets the job done and people die because of it. He’s a hero, and he’s got to live with that. And with crossdressing…

… no, I’m not going to spoil everything!