Joss Whedon - SF Epic for HBO -The Nevers

[Darth Richard II]

Let me ask other posters: does anyone have any idea what Zorral is talking about? I feel like he/she’s just making stuff up now and then harrssing me cause I’ve never heard of a sff term and then I guess I didn’t read 600 pages of Black Panther analysis.

[Conflicting Thought]

It seems like you are getting a little to defensive of jw. is it that hard to belive that he used feminism  to appear to be somthing he is not?. 

And you belive women or you dont, its kinda sketchy when you choose not to belive certain women because you like the person being acussed of faux feminism. 

[Ran]

I've deleted some material because, frankly, it looks like false information being spread about  -- I certainly cannot find a source for the claims. If you are someone who has had a post deleted, take it up with me in PM.

[Ran]

As to the topic at hand, Whedon has not contested he has cheated. He has not contested that his wife's quotes of stuff he wrote to her are things he wrote. That said, I feel very strongly that the only people who can really provide any illumination on the matter beyond what we already know are Whedon in his own words and directly (because, to be sure, what someone may write during a difficult and emotional period may not exactly match a perspective at greater distance from whatever turmoil one's moral failures have caused), whatever they are judged to be worth, and those of the women who have had interactions with him.

None of this makes me think he is or is not a feminist. Feminism is a movement, not an invariable moral code whose adherents are faultless or who practice their beliefs with 100% perfection. We're all fallible people.

 

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

Even if he was sleeping with some the female leads on his TV shows, it doesn't necessarily mean anything, though it could. For example, Sarah Michelle Geller was a bigger name than him in 1997, so a hypothetical affair with her doesn't have the same power imbalance/pressure situation that, for instance, Louis CK put female comics in. On the other hand, Buffy was Alyson Hannigan's first big break, so a hypothetical affair with her would be much more problematic.

Alyson Hannigan was a reasonably well-known actress at the time for her child actor roles. She was actually the second actress cast in the role, as the first actress was very nervous and fluffed her lines in the unaired pilot. That actually got some criticism, as she was also overweight (apparently an attempt to present a more realistic view of teenagers in a US school which the network then rejected in favour of a more Hollywoodised, "everyone is beautiful" approach) and was replaced by the notably not-overweight Hannigan.

The completely unsourced story was that one of the affairs was with Charisma Carpenter, which goes some way to explaining his weird behaviour towards her on Angel (when she got married and pregnant and was killed off in a very weird manner). That was also a lot less icky: Carpenter was much older than her co-stars and only six years younger than Whedon (who was only in his early thirties at the time), so the power imbalance thing wasn't really there either. But there was no evidence for that and Carpenter has had many chances over the years to speak to that (she was pretty annoyed about her treatment on the show), but she's apparently friends with Whedon again now and nothing was ever confirmed.

I think the situation was highly unfortunate and seized upon by critics of Whedon to try to tear him down, but then it never really turned into a bigger story like they thought it would and it's kind of drifted off now. But it was ammunition for those who felt that Whedon's self-declared feminism wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

Quote

 

Let me ask other posters: does anyone have any idea what Zorral is talking about? I feel like he/she’s just making stuff up now and then harrssing me cause I’ve never heard of a sff term and then I guess I didn’t read 600 pages of Black Panther analysis.

 

Afrofuturism has been a relatively well-known term since the early 1990s, and applied retroactively to earlier books. These are works of SFF which delve into Africa's role in a future society. Black Panther is one of the best-known uses, but Ian McDonald wrote an SF trilogy set in Africa in the 1990s which also popularised the idea, as did Alastair Reynolds with his recent Blue Remembered Earth and its sequels. More interesting are works by African SF authors and African-descended authors delving into the field.

It's not as well-known a term as, say, cyberpunk, but it's been around for a while and is relatively common.

[Darth Richard II]

21 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

It seems like you are getting a little to defensive of jw. is it that hard to belive that he used feminism  to appear to be somthing he is not?. 

And you belive women or you dont, its kinda sketchy when you choose not to belive certain women because you like the person being acussed of faux feminism. 

I do get too defensive, but when people start spreading false info around it gets me pissy. It caused one of my favorite sites to close down. And I don;t necessarily believe or disbelieve, there isn;t really any info to go judge it on.

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

As to the topic at hand, Whedon has not contested he has cheated. He has not contested that his wife's quotes of stuff he wrote to her are things he wrote. That said, I feel very strongly that the only people who can really provide any illumination on the matter beyond what we already know are Whedon in his own words and directly (because, to be sure, what someone may write during a difficult and emotional period may not exactly match a perspective at greater distance from whatever turmoil one's moral failures have caused), whatever they are judged to be worth, and those of the women who have had interactions with him.

None of this makes me think he is or is not a feminist. Feminism is a movement, not an invariable moral code whose adherents are faultless or who practice their beliefs with 100% perfection. We're all fallible people.

 

Yeah as far as I can recall his response was something like "I have kids, let me be with my family". So. I dunno.

And the bolded part said it way better then I could.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, with the making stuff up part I meant the Whedon stuff that was deleted. Afro Futurism I;ve heard of, it's just Afro Fantasy I've never heard, but apparently there is a website that goes back to at least 2013, so yeah, it;s not made up. It's just not something I'd heard before.

[Werthead]

Some more info: shooting starts in June and runs through February, so the show will likely air in late 2020.

Jane Espenson, who has worked with Whedon on just about everything since Buffy, will be the co-showrunner and another writer on this project. Playwright Madhuri Shekar and journalist Laurie Penny will also be writers on the project.

[Kalbear]

On 7/17/2018 at 11:14 AM, Darth Richard II said:

I don’t even know where to start.

if you’re complaining about Dollhouse bring make gazey I think you missed the entire point of that show 

 

It was SUPER male-gazey. And it didn't do a particularly good job of noting how horrible it was. Most of the episodes were not particularly making out the doll owners to be incredibly creepy, nor did they interrogate the enslavers all that much, and the end of the show was more to do with the tech in general, and not the grossness. 

He's had problems in a lot of ways for a long time. Dollhouse was the worst, but it wasn't the only thing. 

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

It was SUPER male-gazey. And it didn't do a particularly good job of noting how horrible it was. Most of the episodes were not particularly making out the doll owners to be incredibly creepy, nor did they interrogate the enslavers all that much, and the end of the show was more to do with the tech in general, and not the grossness. 

He's had problems in a lot of ways for a long time. Dollhouse was the worst, but it wasn't the only thing. 

I disagree with everything you said there.

 

Edit: But, I think we've had this argument like, five times.

[polishgenius]

To be fair I think the truth was somewhere in the middle- Dollhouse was trying  to interrogate the idea of the male gaze and skeevy male-dominated cultural artefacts in the first place, and sometimes it did so effectively, but at points it rather leant into them at the same time, and there is some weight to the idea that the ultimate big bad thread was so different and extreme that ultimately the original Dollhouse crew became more-or-less good guys in response or at least the issue never got properly attacked. I suspect that that is largely because of the cancellation and rushed ending, but still.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Probably dodn't help thst Fox were trying to pander to the male gaze.

[The Mother of The Others]

On 7/17/2018 at 10:23 AM, dog-days said:

Eliza

^ You rang?

Uh, yeah there's no Ramsay style controversy over who wrote this pink letter, he penned it to her and publishing it was hers to do.   So it's established enough.   Discomforting.   A human failing, mixed with an institutional hollywood pattern of abuse that's a jarring contrast to what the characters were all about.  What he did for audiences spiritually remains a part of us, now with this tricky-to-navigate poop cherry atop a sundae of hitherto emotional zen.

Avengers is still THE marvel movie.   And I sympathize with the wife.  Both are true.  Similarly, I sympathize with the gay community's struggle for equal rights while also continuing to eat at Chick- fil- A.   Both at the same time.   Chicken and gays, together.   It's a wide world, and we keep trying to narrow it into either/or choices.    Feminist + Failings.   Both.

As for the show, Victorian probably means Shakespeare is an alien, so be ready for that.  (Spoiler)

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

As for the show, Victorian probably means Shakespeare is an alien, so be ready for that.  (Spoiler)

...Shakespeare? Victorian?


Also that chick-fil-a 'point' feels all kinds of scuzzy.

[Darth Richard II]

40 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

...Shakespeare? Victorian?


Also that chick-fil-a 'point' feels all kinds of scuzzy.

You beat me to it.

[Kalbear]

Guys, look. As long as you recognize something is shitty, you dont have to change any behavior! Just casually say, yep, that sucks, and continue on your merry way!

[Werthead]

Lead role cast in The Nevers.

Laura Donnelly (Outlander) will by playing Amalia True, a non-society-conforming woman in Victorian London who (inadvertently, from the sound of it) ends up in charge of a group of super-powered women.

Confirmation that Whedon is co-showrunning with Jane Espenson, and fellow Buffy vet Doug Petrie is also on board, with Laurie Penny and Madhuri Shekar as writers. Shooting runs from June to November, which seems quite long for a show that doesn't sound like it's going to be a full-on GoT style epic. Maybe they're doing more episodes than the HBO norm?

[Werthead]

Full cast list announced.

Olivia Williams and Nick Frost are the two big actors there, but there's a bunch of other people with pretty good resumes there.

[Darth Richard II]

Bets til this topic goes downhill..again?

Anyway great to see Olivia Williams

[dog-days]

Feel I should be more excited show than I am, given the acting and writing talent behind it. Will cross fingers and hope the premonition of disappointment is wiped away when I watch it.