Watching Whedon’s Dollhouse

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.

Continued after the jump, contains spoilers

I’d like to thank everybody I’ve ever met

Entertainment Weekly has compiled a list of the 100 Greatest Websites. Our very own Whedonesque.com is on it, in the ‘POP-POURRI: EVERYTHING ELSE THAT DIDN’T FIT BUT IS STILL AWESOME’ section, alongside YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, The Onion, and NPR and MySpace. Check it out.

They’d listed us among the 25 essential fansites not too long ago.

Thank you, I can retire now.

I hope they like frogs

Checking my Amazon Associate reports, I notice that four people ordered Cuisinarts through the links on my sites this Quarter.

I repeat, four U2log/Whedonesque readers ordered 30 dollar Cuisinarts.

Why?

Update: I had a closer look and it appears they are all parts for a Cuisinart, so it is probably just one user expanding. Ah well, it was funny while it lasted.

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When is a blog not a blog

Well, in any case, not when Joss Whedon decides it isn’t, dammit.

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.

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Progress

Ten years ago, when I built one of my first websites, it got mentioned first in the Irish Times, then in The Guardian. It was featured on the BBC, as well as appearing in most Internet magazines and books on the shelves at the time.

I’ve come a long way since then. Everybody I knew online back then has gone on to bigger, better, greater things. But none of them can boast this, I’m sure:

Whedonesque appeared in The Sun today.

Whedonesque #70 in USA Today Top 100 People of 2004

I’m always away when the good stuff happens at Whedonesque. Joss is posting left right and centre and USA Today ranks the Whedonesque community #70 in the top 100 people of 2004.

70. The Whedonesque gang. It’s hard for some people to understand my diehard affection for Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer— which is why it’s so comforting to visit Whedonesque.com each day, where piles of links are posted by my fellow Joss Whedon obsessives. If you secretly care about the new Spike action figure or Joyce Summers’ Advil commercial, I’ll see you there.

And here’s the thread that goes with it.