Protip: Do not give an interview about how maybe you're not so terrible after all unless you have a basic level of self-awareness about how terrible you are.
— OutOfContextQuoteHat (@Popehat) January 17, 2022
Spousal Unit and I have been re-watching Outlaw Star, a 1998 anime which gleefully chucks every adventure trope from Jules Verne and Treasure Island through Blade Runner and Mortal Kombat video games into a roux of Big Dumb Fun and Misfit Pathos. It is not, full disclosure, politically correct. It does not even feint at political correctness. But if you have the blunted sensibilities of a couple of life-long sf fans now old enough for Social Security, it’s still good entertainment.
Also, there’s an ongoing fan theory that it may have inspired another fannish favorite, Firefly.
Concerning the creator of which: Sometimes an INtaresting monster needs an INtaresting hairstyle interviewer… and Lila Shapiro, at NYMag steps up to the challenge briskly.
TL, DR: Whedon’s mother never loved him father was a ‘a second generation television writer’, so Joss had a solid background when he eventually entered the family business. But it was a charged moment at the intersection of social media and popcult fandom, when consumers were desperate for any content that could be construed as feminist (if you squinted just so), and that gave Joss Whedon more influence over more people than he was perhaps capable of handling like a grown-up. If he’d even chosen to grow up:
…Back when he was still a god, the kind that is contractually obligated to promote network-television shows at press junkets, Whedon was asked over and over to explain why he wrote stories about strong women. For years, he would answer by talking about his mother. Lee Stearns, who died in 1991, was an activist and unpublished novelist who taught history at an elite private school in the Bronx. One of her students, Jessica Neuwirth, went on to become a co-founder of Equality Now, an organization that promotes women’s rights. Neuwirth, who has cited Stearns as an inspiration, described her to me as “a visionary feminist.” In 2006, Equality Now presented Whedon with an award at an evening dedicated to honoring “men on the front lines” of feminism. In his speech, Whedon referred to his mother as “extraordinary, inspirational, tough, cool,” and “sexy.”
Sitting in his living room, he told me he sees a different side of her now. “She was a remarkable woman and an inspiring person,” he said, “but sometimes those are hard people to be raised by.”…
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…
Whedon was 31 when he began running Buffy. He had never run a show before and had never been a boss of any kind. At first, when crew members would hold the door open for him on set, he would do an awkward dance and insist he hold the door for them. “It just felt so fucking wrong,” he told me. Then, one day in the third season, a crew member neglected to hold the door and Whedon walked straight into it face-first. “Oh, I see,” Whedon recalled thinking. “You did get used to it.”
By the next year, he would be running two shows at once — Buffy and Angel. Soon, he added Firefly to the mix. He spent his days racing among the sets and the writers’ rooms, exerting control over countless aspects of the productions, from the story arcs down to the details of makeup and wardrobe. One actor described him as a “huge pulsating brain.” “There were a thousand things he was tuning in to every moment,” he said. “He could make the slightest adjustment and the scene would go from a three to a ten.”
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…
… 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.”…
On our second day of interviews, I asked Whedon about his affairs on the set of Buffy. He looked worse than he had the day before. His eyes were faintly bloodshot. He hadn’t slept well. “I feel fucking terrible about them,” he said. When I pressed him on why, he noted “it messes up the power dynamic,” but he didn’t expand on that thought. Instead, he quickly added that he had felt he “had” to sleep with them, that he was “powerless” to resist. I laughed. “I’m not actually joking,” he said. He had been surrounded by beautiful young women — the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger — and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would “always regret it.” Looking back, he feels shame and “horror,” he said. I thought of something he had told me earlier. A vampire, he’d said, is the “exalted outsider,” a creature that feels like “less than everybody else and also kind of more than everybody else. There’s this insecurity and arrogance. They do a little dance.”…
But as the culture around him continued to change, certain fans began to see Whedon’s work through a more critical lens, discerning an attitude toward women that seemed unenlightened by the standards of the female-centered shows and movies his success had in some cases helped spawn…
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.”…
The thing that gets me with Wh3don is how few careers he launched. So many iconic characters and performances but few translated to movies or prestige TV. Which tells me he actively sabotaged people to other directors/producers.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) January 17, 2022
Baud
Why is Whedon terrible now? I’m pretty ignorant of Hollywood news.
VOR
Start w/Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joss_Whedon#Accusations_of_workplace_harassment
Baud
@VOR:
Thanks for the link.
Gravenstone
Finally got around to “Outlaw Star” a couple years ago. Fun show.
As for Whedon, I’d been hearing how he wasn’t exactly what the mythology built up around him would lead one to believe (but then, who is?). In the end, he’s so very much worse. Sort of funny how so many of his contemporary auteurs (hello Bryan Singer) turned out to be absolute garbage people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Never saw any of his shows, but I gather they have devoted followings
Meh. The most successful post-Sopranos acting career is Bobby Baccala’s recurring role on Blue Bloods. Even Gandolfini never had a big hit. And cast members gush about the family-like bond they all had.
StringOnAStick
No idea about any of this since I don’t watch much TV, but seriously, are we still doing the “I am important therefore anyone underneath me must rush to open the door for me so I don’t waste my energy on it” crap? That alone makes me think this guy and Hollywood in general is full of power-addled pricks*.
*Our neighbor who did costuming in Hollywood for movies and theatre has confirmed that as an industry, it sucks for non-top moneymakers and it got much worse after the economic meltdown in 2008. For the great “honor” of getting a job on a set, you “get to” work +16 hour days with no days off until your bit is done, no matter how many weeks that is. If you can’t be on-site ready to work within 2 hours of being called out of the blue, the job goes to someone else no matter how long your relationship with the caller. She writes and edits quilting books now.
MisterDancer
It’s hard for me to express how rage-inducing this article made me.
I spent my time in the Joss Is Awesome! salt-mines, y’all. And I can talk in-depth about how I, as someone who lost my Mom in my 30’s, feel about the Buffy episode “The Body,” or how part of how me and my Life Partner’s initial connection was over FIREFLY.
But there were cracks in the Armour. Interestingly, I think the first was reading on LiveJournal an essay from a sex worker, dismantling Inara’s treatment specifically, and how FIREFLY treated sex workers in general. It was eye-opening in a lot of ways…
…and led to me reading and talking a lot more about him. And ending up a lot more critical of Joss as a creator, but not rejecting him, yet. As much as I loved AVENGERS, there are aspects of it I found in that opening night movie seat, and still find — awkward, let’s say. I know very well what Loki said to Natasha, and it was a sign of things to come.
So yeah, by the time Kai made public Joss’ infidelity, I was kind of ready to let him go as someone I respected. And I thought, honestly thought, I had made my peace with all that. My experience with rejecting DOLLHOUSE outright as “too creepy and feeling very sleazy” served me well, in that regard.
This article coming out, on MLK Day, no less? (Word has it the interview’s been in the can for nearly a year, so…)
Furious. On every level. His lack of self-reflection, blame-shifting on both the gender and racial/ethnic axis, use of childhood trauma as deflection…man, I can go on. I spent a goodly chunk of yesterday, post-finding this drifting around Twitter like a landfill of shite, just railing.
It’s hard to explain if this isn’t for you. And I get that we should be disconnected from these things, and I do really try to be. I think it’s…risky to be too connected to pop culture as identity.
But I read around the net yesterday and today the guys, like me, who used Joss’ identity and works to help dig ourselves out of the holes that masculinity straight-jackets us into. I was lucky I already, by the time I found his works, worked in Feminist/Reproductive Right circles — but even with that, the day-to-day of engaging women as complex and rich in my personal life was still uphill…and frankly, Joss’ body of work helped me be better.
Not perfect. Never prefect. But BETTER.
So yeah, it feels like a massive betrayal. The timing, the day of the article’s release, even moreso.
Today? I don’t feel like I’ll ever be OK with this arsehole in entertainment, or anything else, ever again.
NotMax
Whedon is a one-trick pony. A good trick, perhaps, but the only cartridge in the bandolier.
So old can remember Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry (alongside of the less cringey Loudmoth Lime).
;)
dm
Outlaw Star and Firefly? I thought it was fanon that Firefly was the live-action Cowboy Bebop.
Sad to hear that Whedon was an asshole, but, well, his camera had a way with lingering on Inara that came to define the term “male gaze” for me.
NotMax
The fact that Isaac Newton was reputed to be a grade-A flaming asshole as a person does not stop me from enjoying gravity.
//
Starfish
This discussion leaves off how he turned Dollhouse into garbage. Dollhouse had all this promotion around it. The concept was interesting, “What if you could put the brain and knowledge of one person into the body of another?” It did not take very long for Whedon to turn every episode about some woman being a sex doll. It was so annoying.
And they let him come back over and over.
The “strong woman” being some teeny tiny waif with ballet skills that translate to martial arts was repeated over and over during this period. There were a lot of shows and movies that did this. How about making strong women look like they have had a passing encounter with a sandwich at some point in their lives? The same nonsense happened with Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.
“Do any of these moves look effective or reasonable for the type of body this person is in?”
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: TBF, my enjoyment of gravity has its limits. Tripping and falling isn’t all that great.
MisterDancer
@dm: It’s highly unlikely Whedon would have heard of, much less seen, BEBOP before creating FIREFLY. OUTLAW maybe.
No, the issue is that FIREFLY actually is strongly based on a Civil War history book, one that I’ve heard is…a little Lost Cause-y. That’s how the bad guys in FIREFLY are, basically, The Union, so you can surmise who the good guys are a serial numbers filed-off version of…
This is part of why I did Civil War research — trying to understand how easy it was for me (and so many others) to not see those parallels.
Nicole
Thanks for posting this, Anne Laurie. I was a huge fan of Whedon’s work back in the early aughts… or, I should say, I was a fan of Buffy and the last season of Angel. I couldn’t get into Firefly; the Mal-Inara thing made me super uncomfortable, and while there were things I liked about Dollhouse, overall, it left me feeling icky. Which, at the time, I couldn’t figure out, because the media was spinning Whedon at the Uber Feminist Guy at the time. I watched the video of him accepting that award and thought he was so obnoxiously pompous in it- I remember him saying, “Everyone asks me, why do I keep writing all these strong women characters? And I say, ‘Because you keep asking me that question'” and it seemed… well, not like anything anyone would actually say. So I googled, and couldn’t find a single interview of anyone asking him, “Why do you create all these strong women characters?” I wasn’t surprised when his ex-wife put out that piece about him. He’s clearly been big on inventing his own storyline for a long time. I loved this new interview; the writer gave him just enough rope to hang himself.
I confess I liked Cabin in the Woods in the theater (probably in no small part because I was very proud of myself for recognizing the Race With the Devil homage), but in retrospect it’s also kind of cringe.
For those who, like me, really did love the Whedonverse at one point, Vice has a great article breaking down what is actually pretty weak about his writing: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7d34y/when-joss-whedon-was-our-master?fbclid=IwAR2KGz4JqMCIHfn78NQ7D0rgwXm2A-0v8KnTYg9YMKvDhauH79yub0s4tKs
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Large feet translate to my being a human Weeble.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I wear size 9.
Wapiti
Off topic: US government covid home tests now available. 4 per household.
Starfish
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought that a number of the people from The Sopranos were also on Boardwalk Empire.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Used to be 11½. Try shopping for those. (I did discover where they migrate to, though. Shoe factory outlet store in Reading, PA had shelves and shelves of them. Who knew?)
As the tempus has fugited now finding some 13s a bit on the snug side.
not_a_cylon
Yikes! Whedon, too? I was a fan of Buffy and the Dr Horrible short when they aired.
Makes me think of Warren Ellis, creator of Transmetropolitan. Another favorite creative writer of mine with a similar fanbase, but could not keep it in his pants.
Mike E
@StringOnAStick: I got hazed on a set by some assistant assistant assistant director chap from England, I was working props and set dressing when some other muckety ordered me to go relocate the director’s chairs…as if on cue, the bloke in question harangued me for stepping out of my place and promised me that “If the director should find out, he’ll have your testicles for castanets.” I thought I had stumbled upon a Monty Python routine and bit my tongue the whole time to keep from bursting out in laughter. A bit shaken, I talked about it to the prop master who said, “They’re props, they belong to us, fuggem. You take them wherever you’re told to.” Power games are such BS, and the reason I only lasted for two films in the biz!
b1narys3rf
I’m thrilled to say that I always thought Joss Whedon was a hack. What people found amazing about his work was a complete f****** mystery to me from start to finish. The only thing that I credit him for doing well was the script for The Avengers and I think that had a lot to do with the comics source material he was mining and previous works that he leaned on from the Marvel movies. On the cinematic side I look at James Cameron much the same way – periodically blows us away with technical innovations and his scripts and characters have been pretty awful since after the early 90s. You have to be blind to good storytelling to think that his framing device for the Titanic was a great idea even if you know how the story is going to basically end. Telegraphing that one of the two main characters is ultimately going to be okay is the dumbest thing I think I’ve seen in a mega-event movie that won tons of awards maybe ever.
MazeDancer
Thought the article was extremely even-handed and well done.
And it is clear Josh Whedon is an insane person in an insane business, People get away with intentional cruelty in show biz. Early and often.
Talented though he may be – and I loved Firefly, except for the Reavers, which is why I wouldn’t see the movie – Whedon needs big, big, big help.
Yes, he had a emotionally crippling childhood with lingering PTSD. (So did I, which is why I couldn’t stand the Reavers, complete nightmares.)
But you know what that means? You have extra jobs. You have to claw your way up to semi-normal, over and over and over again. And then try to make something real of your life with nothing to base reality upon.
And you can’t hurt others. The crazy has to stop with you.
Josh Whedon doesn’t seem to believe that. And it is not actually encouraged in show biz.
cain
I really loved Firefly, I didn’t really get into Buffy – but it’s quite remarkable how he made a show based off the original movie. I would never have thought it would turn into a cult classic.
My (ex) wife hated star trek or any other space shoes, but she would sit with me to watch Firefly because she said it was more down to earth and not about techy stuff. The stories were generally pretty good, but it did have a libertarian bent to it and I would think a lot of conservative would love the somewhat anti-govt thing to it plus conspiracy theory. But it’s basically a western.
Nicole
@not_a_cylon: I liked Dr. Horrible a lot, too. Then when I went back and rewatched a few years later it occurred to me that the lone woman character is basically just a plot device.
cain
@MazeDancer:
I could not work in showbiz – ugh, ugh, ugh. It’s like a place filled with nepotism, sadism and narcissism.
Ken
Say what? This makes me wonder if Whedon hired someone to make all his posts.
Eric K
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yeah from what I’ve read there is plenty of things to hold Whedon accountable for, but this isn’t one of them. Why some people become break out stars and others don’t is a hard to define thing, and there are all kinds of factors including just random luck.
cain
@b1narys3rf:
His work on Buffy and Firefly is what really gave him his street creds.
MisterDancer
@Nicole: Thank you for saying this, and you’re spot on.
Someone was saying all this reminds them of Gene Roddenberry, and I had to cringe at how right that was.
(For those unaware: Gene Roddenbery, the creator of STAR TREK, was both ground-breaking with roles in front and behind the camera for women. He also was an ego-driven serial cheater; he was sleeping with both Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and Majel Barret (Nurse Chapel) before/during production of the show, behind his then-wife’s back.
He also stole credit for everything not tied down by union/legal rules, up to and including the damned theme song! It’s why actual contributions from a lot of key writers and producers were lost for decades before more-recent scholarship clarified a lot of who actually did what on that show.
ANYWAY. I might write on this soon, as well.)
schrodingers_cat
Josh who?
@NotMax: Newton did a lot more than give us the Universal Law of gravitation.
He pretty much established the disciplines of classical mechanics which is the foundation of physics and invented calculus.
Steeplejack
* DVR Alert *
Interesting batch of films on TCM tonight (times Eastern):
10:00 p.m. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan. Directed by Peter Yates. “A low-level Boston crook decides to snitch on his friends to avoid jail time.”
12:00 a.m. Gloria (1980). Gena Rowlands (Oscar nomination), John Adames, Buck Henry. Directed by John Cassavetes. “A gangster’s tough ex-girlfriend protects an orphaned Puerto Rican boy the mob wants dead.”
2:15 a.m. Badlands (1973). Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates. Directed by Terrence Malick. “An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town joins a garbageman on a South Dakota killing spree.” (Look for Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen as “boys under lamppost.”)
Cermet
@NotMax: Sorry – you are off base here. While I’ve read a bit on Newton and his life I haven’t read he was an AO; yes, he was jealous of his achievements but they were astronomical … (no pun intended) and not wholly off base. Hook was being an AO with his ridiculous credit claiming. And Newton’s approach to generating calculus was superior to Leibniz (but his notation – Newtons’ – was vastly inferior) and he did this decades ahead of Leibniz. Newton’s running the English Mint was extraordinarily good and he set many standards that existed long after him. His invention of physics was a step that utterly change humanity. He lost his father, abandoned by his mother and lived through a plague that killed many people he knew, and followed a religion outlawed by the State – I think he had a right not to be friendly nor modest.
NotMax
Somehow suspect the doc didn’t graduate in the top of his class.
Inmates Sue Jail Doc, Alleging He Gave Them Ivermectin For COVID Without Consent
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: I have some bad news about Schrodinger
@Cermet: I am told that we have a front pager who may know some things about Newton. It would be interesting if he weighed in on the matter.
Kalakal
@NotMax: To be fair, unlike other assholes, he really was the smartest guy in the room. And he had lot of reasons to be edgy about other people.
The Moar You Know
I dated the sister of one of the main Buffy actresses, and have done some scoring for Comedy Central. All I can say is this; Hollywood produces and caters to monstrous people, and he’s not any worse than any of the rest of them.
And, if in this profile of him you find a completely appalling human being, that’s kind of my point.
Tony Jay
I’ve heard that quite a few people who get plonked on thrones of shiny gold because their talent makes big bank turn into wankers. It’s not a major surprise. Most people have the capability to be wankers, they just lack the sustained opportunity and the well-oiled support structure.
I don’t think I’ll be crying tears of shame over loving Buffy or Angel, though. They were great.
JustRuss
@MisterDancer: Much as I enjoyed the show, I thought the Civil War connection in Firefly was pretty blatant. I don’t think they ever said the phrase “Lost Cause”, but they sure telegraphed it a bunch.
VeniceRiley
Unfun fact: I was once roomates with his anti-gay loser brother.
Brachiator
And they called it Buffy Love…
Yeah, I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and admired the shit out of Angel. Never really got into Firefly. Liked the cast, but didn’t much care for the Old West neo Confederacy motif.
My love for Buffy endures beyond Joss Whedon’s shittiness as an individual. I read recently about how the showrunner of the “Hawaii 5 O” reboot was fired in part because he behaved horribly toward the cast, especially the show’s female stars. I don’t understand why you would mistreat people whose work is essential to your own success.
I thought that the best of Buffy was about more than just a “strong female character.” I don’t give two shits about how “strong” a character is if he or she is not interesting. But I remember folks who would dismiss the show precisely because it centered on a teen girl and was on the CW network. It could not possibly be any good.
I hate that Whedon mistreated any of the people who worked for him. I am not interested in any excuse he might offer or how tough his personal life might have been.
Baud
I should have been a bigger asshole.
Nicole
@MisterDancer: Yeah, I’ve been running through Whedon’s work in my brain, and actually… other than Buffy, I don’t know where the HE WRITES STRONG WOMEN comes from (and I guess I don’t know how much of Buffy was Marti Noxon and the other creatives). Angel? Main character is a guy. Firefly? Main character is a guy, who likes to slut shame his crush. Dollhouse? The whole conceit is women who don’t have control over their lives, which in other hands maybe could say something about that in real life, but in his hands it didn’t quite work. Dr. Horrible, the woman doesn’t even have a personality other than she’s pretty and volunteers with the homeless (which is not a personality trait). I kinda think he doesn’t know how to write women at. all., but in the late 1990s-early aughts we had so little for women we’d take anything we could get. And he was able to hide behind other writers who could write women on Buffy.
MazeDancer
@MisterDancer:
Please do, Was unaware Roddenberry was such a creep.
While the women’s cocktail waitress Fleet uniforms were insanely sexist, the shows made an effort to promote equality.
Yet, Roddenberry was a skunk. Sorry to hear that.
MisterDancer
@not_a_cylon: Thought of Warren, too. Fuck.
(For others: Ellis also wrote the comic series that was turned into the movie RED. The same forums he created, ran, and used to find victims, also enabled a ton of comics creators; the comics that most directly influenced the HAWKEYE and CAPTAIN MARVEL releases, for examples, were written by people who Ellis befriended there, and more-or-less mentored. [None of them knew about his abuses, though.]
So: He’s remarkably influential in comics, almost on the level of an Alan Moore or Neil Gianamn in that realm — but not much outside of it [thank fuck].
And yeah, I also was on said forums, but that’s a whole deep hole I’ll spare y’all, today.)
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I had a hard time with calculus. Years later I read that it was actually called “The Calculus.” For some reason that made me feel better.
NotMax
Suck a despicable jerkwad.
Rand Careaga
I don’t know much else about Whedon’s oeuvre, but about ten years ago he did a surprisingly good modern dress version of Much Ado About Nothing, shot in Santa Monica with a stableful of actors few if any of whom were classically trained. One reflexively expects to hear Shakespeare’s language delivered by RADA alumni, and not in the flat cadences of Southern California, but damme if it didn’t work. I was particularly charmed by the “Sigh No More” sequence.
Cermet
@Starfish: Yes, Schrodinger and his womanizing was well known but at least he wasn’t the utter low life like Feynman.
Be fun to hear from our expert on Newton – he did write a book on the man. I’d say he knows more details then even most historians of science. We’d be extremely lucky if he weighed in.
debbie
@VOR:
I particularly liked his calling a pregnant actress fat. Real classy.
Kalakal
I love it when someone whose achievements you love turns out to be decent human being who doesn’t use their talents as an excuse to be an obnoxious jerk.
I adore Bach’s music and from everything I’ve read of him he never let his genius go to his head. Ditto Rembrandt who had a really tough life.
NotMax
FYI for Mainers, especially.
Cermet
@MazeDancer: He was famous for being a womanizer and cheapskate but he did try to create a strong woman semi-lead character and did achieve the first inter-racial kiss on TV between the Captain and Communications Officer.
MisterDancer
Oh! Oh, those outfits are a whole thing — because they were the female lead’s idea, not Roddenberry or anyone else.
Grace Lee Whitley was slated to be the female lead for the show, as Yeoman Janice Rand. Per her autobio, she’s the one who came up with that design! Because originally, everyone wore the same uniform. Sometime after they shot the 2nd pilot and brought her in, she wanted to show off her legs, and thus got someone to whip up the skant design and…well, wasn’t a hard sell; I surmise Nichols said “sure,” and off it went.
[EDIT: if you need citations, the two works I took this info from are:
I’ve been reminded when discussing this that this would have been about the time miniskirts were all the rage, and what is, to us now, really off-looking was then a statement piece. Much like the well-know pic of that woman at NASA standing next to a pile of papers representing her work, while wearing a miniskirt, I understand it was a different time, and one I don’t have all the tools to interpret, fully.
I might be wrong on this; I wasn’t there, and only have these accounts and anecdotal evidence to go on. But yeah, we at least know that wasn’t a Gene original (unlike the other outfits they put women guest stars into…)
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: There is still time.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
Badlands is one of my all-time favorites. The title theme by Carl Orff even more so.
TaMara (HFG)
@MisterDancer: Thanks for that, you just saved me a bunch of time trying to find the right words.
I am sad that I respected someone who was for abusing actors I enjoyed, not to mention production staff and crew. Unforgivable.
My focus going forward on the pieces I like: Dr. Horrible, Firefly, Much Ado, and Buffy – will be to focus on the talent that surrounded him. For him, I only wish a long journey through his own Hellmouth.
NotMax
@Rand Careaga
“And Brutus is one gnarly dude.”
(Different play, but works for the quip.)
:)
Cermet
@Kalakal: Max Planck (Created Quantum Mechanics) was a great supporter of woman – he felt that woman had every right to work in Physics and teach at the University (but was defeated by the system) and this was 1899 or so!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The disgusting way Firefly depicted all blacks as ether Magic Negros or Primitive Spiritualists was always the give away to me about Joss. That show was nothing more than a Neo-Confederate wet dream very thinly disguised as Sci-fi.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Been meaning to inquire if your recovery is complete.
(Shall never again shop at Sack and Save without thinking of you.)
;)
Mousebumples
I liked Buffy (binged it maybe 8 years ago when I lost my voice amidst a terrible cold), and could never get into Angel or Firefly. I like Dr. Horrible – but that’s more because of NPH in the title role than because of any Joss-related story creation admiration.
But between what Sarah Michelle Gellar and Charisma Carpenter have said about Joss, I’m okay with never seeing or supporting his future endeavors. I know he’s not the only harassing jerkoff in Hollywood, but doesn’t mean he needs my financial (or ratings) support.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: I saw it when it first came out and was enthralled, then saw it many more times. But strangely, I had it in my head that it was Carmina Burana. But in October I had the opportunity to watch it again on a long flight, and came to realize it was a different Orff composition.
TaMara (HFG)
@Steeplejack: Has TCM announced any kind of Sydney Poiter tribute – did I miss it?
Ken
Having tutored two nieces through it, I’ve decided that the problem with (high-school) calculus is that the textbooks are written by mathematicians. So they spend a lot of time on limits and infinite series and all the other foundational stuff that mathematicians came up with to persuade themselves that it really is OK to divide by zero, or to sum an infinite number of terms, if you’re careful about it.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
I also saw it several times when it came out. I love everything about the film. I even squinted at a small t.v. screen reading all of the closing credits just to get the title of the music.
NotMax
Treading extremely hazardous ground.
Old Man Shadow
Show business is one of those businesses where folks will look the other way if you are successful and making them lots of money.
Course, you’re only one underperforming project away from being rightfully shivved by all of the people you mistreated along the way. And with the internet and social media, what you’ve done in the dark will be brought into the light.
I still enjoy Firefly. Even if it has the problematic treatment of Inara and the fact that Mal kinda fought for the space Confederacy.
I haven’t revisited Buffy or Angel, but the way they treated Charisma Carpenter and her character sucked. And I hated the last few seasons of Buffy.
The basic premise of little blonde girl being the monster to the monsters is cool, but the execution was lacking after season three.
Roger Moore
What counts as “launched”? Does somebody have to have had their first acting experience on the show, or does it count if it’s their first breakout performance? It’s true that he didn’t have a lot of breakouts who had their very first experience on his shows, but on Buffy alone you have Allison Hannigan, David Boreanaz, and Eliza Dushku who had their first big success. I think you could make a solid case for Alan Tudyk and definitely Summer Glau in Firefly. That’s just with a quick bit of searching on IMDB. It’s not like his shows have been a huge launching ground of careers, but they’re not exactly nothing, either.
Cermet
@Ken: But these are the most fun subjects essential to understanding … oh, I see your point.
What I hated were the proofs they expected us to – with zero previous experience – master and re-create; now that is A-typical mathematicians doing crazy.
Tony Jay
@not_a_cylon:
It’s funny. I can easily imagine Warren Ellis writing a one scene character in, say, the original run of Planetary, that does all the same shit he (eventually, unwillingly) fessed up to, only to get unceremoniously kicked so hard in the junk by Jakita Wagner that his beard is all that’s left behind.
And when he wrote it, he would have meant that character to come across as a prick who deserved what he got. But when the temptation was there in real life, when it wasn’t exposed on a page and no one else had to know… Then there’s all kinds of excuses a person can use to justify how this is different from that. When it’s really, really not.
Now that I think about it, I recall Elijah Snow getting icily judgemental on Dracula once, so, yeah, the creations are better people than the creator.
Starfish
@Cermet: You did not look at the link at all, did you?
Mike in NC
@Steeplejack: Friends of Eddie Coyle was filmed at some locations I was highly familiar with as a high school senior (Dedham, Dorchester, and other areas in and around Boston).
Mike E
@MisterDancer: The earliest production sensibilities of Where No Man Has Gone Before and Menagerie (pts 1 and 2) reflected Roddenberry’s original vision of how the female crew members were going to be portrayed iirc… trousers and loose fitting tops. The go-go 60s kinda took that show over the top, heh.
Cermet
@Starfish: Oh wow; and your link didn’t show thanks to my ‘night setting’. That is beyond bad. He is, and I didn’t think possible, a lot worse then Feynman!
NotMax
@TaMara (HFG)
Not just one but two days of tribute.
Old Man Shadow
@Roger Moore: Nathan Fillon’s done pretty well for himself becoming a lead in two more TV shows after Firefly.
MisterDancer
Yeah, that scene sure says a lot about where Ellis’ head was, in retrospect.
Along with the creepy pseudo-sexual way he hinted at the truth around the depth of Snow and Wagner’s relationship. And the issue with the expy of one of the women he was gaslighting (to put it mildly); her recollection of his real-world interactions is horrific, and of course just one of many.
Ugh. I feel the need to shower.
Kalakal
@Cermet: Never knew that about old Max. I forgive him for all the brain aches he caused me. I believe both Bohr and Rutherford were nice guys. I’ve never heard anything bad about Paul Dirac but he was an incredibly isolated figure, hardly anybody could even talk with him.
In terms of popular perception of scientific genius I’ve often felt sorry for James Clerk Maxwell, he laid the foundations for modern physics and was probably the most important physicist since Newton yet he’s almost unknown to the public at large
ps what’s the deal with Feynman, I know his work but not much about him
MisterDancer
@Old Man Shadow: I’d add Christina Hendricks to the list.
Cermet
@MisterDancer: You need to shower? Read the link that Starfish made about Schrodinger – beyond sick and disgusting!
Ken
@Cermet: When I was tutoring, I wondered whether it might work to teach calculus “backward” — this is how you find the derivative of a function, this is how you find the integral*. Then after they know that, back up a bit and explain why it works. After all, we don’t teach addition by starting with the Peano postulates and primitive recursive functions.**
* Though if you ever figure out how to find the integral, please let the rest of us know.
** Well, except for that brief fling with the “new math”. But it was the 70s, everyone was doing a lot of drugs…
NotMax
An ongoing commitment to clearing out the dreadwood.
Old Man Shadow
@MisterDancer: Oh yeah. I can’t believe I forgot her.
Cermet
@Kalakal: Yes, Max was ‘old school Prussian’ so his enlightened attitude towards woman and this being the 1890’s was extraordinary. Bohr was certainly a smart but easy going person. But I agree, Maxwell is very overlooked – he died at a far too young age. If not, maybe his showing/proving “light” was a constant for any reference frame would have been acted on fifty years ahead of Einstein.
Emma from Miami
I often wonder what makes human beings think that “talent” is OR should be conjoined with “goodness”. The internet freakouts whenever someone is discovered to be both talented and a flaming asshole, usually accompanied by a moralistic downward revision of their work are the ultimate reflection of our inability to accept the complexities of human character or the fact that “brilliant” almost never equals “saintly.” And if you think I’m going to stop listening to that asshole Beethoven’s sonatas you got another thing coming.
schrodingers_cat
@Starfish: So? That doesn’t take away from his scientific achievements.
@Geminid: I had a far easier time with calculus than with algebra when it was first introduced.
Kalakal
@Starfish: That’s vile, what a horrible person, I so much admire his work
Baud
@Emma from Miami:
I don’t know about that. After reading this thread, I refuse to be uncertain ever again.
Cermet
@Kalakal: Feynman was a terrible womanizer – he’d slept with the married woman of his own Grad students! Worse, he treated woman as disposable and unworthy of being considered equals.
Gin & Tonic
@Ken: New math was in the 60’s.
Old Man Shadow
@Emma from Miami: I think it’s more that I don’t want to support horrible people with my money and let them continue to abuse others in a work environment that clearly does not care.
Cermet
@Ken: In many ways that makes sense; the one issue I have is that “The” calculus was hated by mathematicians for century’s because of the flimsiness of the idea of a limit (which is the heart and soul of calculus). Creating a firm yet straightforward methodology for creating a limit was one of the great breakthroughs in mathematics that wasn’t all that long ago. Not getting the chance to understand that concept causes things like infinite series, division by zero over zero, types of infinites and so on, not understandable without that firm foundation.
West of the Rockies
@MazeDancer:
Keep in mind that in ’66 very short skirts were very popular. Not saying Gene wasn’t a creep (though I’ve never heard he was). He also had a female second-in-command in the pilot, which was pretty progressive. Network didn’t like it.
schrodingers_cat
Guys you don’t have to convince me that physics is full of horrible misogynist and egotistical men. I know.
Emma from Miami
@Old Man Shadow: Your money, your moral choice. And your explanation is perfect. Just don’t start every second sentence with ” I always knew his work was…” when you were a massive fan 5 years earlier. It’s what irritates me.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s why I stick to politics.
JML
Sigh, Whedon. I’ve loved a lot of his work, even when it was a mess it was something that drew me. I liked the snappy dialogue and the smart-assery, and as a sci-fi/fantasy/super-hero geek it was my catnip. Especially because there wasn’t enough else on in those genres, and some of it was pretty bad.
It’s sad that it turns out that he’s such a shitbag. A lot of geeks defended him (even when his work was a mess *cough* Dollhouse *cough*) because he not only seemed like one of us, he treated the fans pretty well. Guess that was really only because we rewarded him with adulation.
He may have C-PTSD. (It certainly would explain some things) He may be deeply damaged from his upbringing (narcissists are really good at breeding more of their own, and so many abusers were abused themselves) but what he still doesn’t see to get is that while it might explain his behavior it still doesn’t excuse it. You don’t get to call pregnant women fat. You don’t get to harass the people that work for you, gaslight and abuse the people you date, and act like a disgusting arrogant shitbag. And after you done all of these things, you don’t get to run around and try and minimize your behavior and act like you’ve been the one who was wronged.
Hollywood is a cesspool of this kind of crapitude…kinda like Wall Street. Or a megachurch. Or anywhere that has people who have unlimited power or are considered indispensable. Turns out, someone like Joss is definitely not indispensable.
(And I enjoyed the mess that was The Nevers, and hope it continues without him)
Ken
OK, so everyone was doing a lot of drugs.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: I was surprised by this.
Brachiator
@Starfish:
Gal Gadot was fine. TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter was not muscle bound, nor was she depicted that way in the original comics. Neither, for that matter, was the original Superman in the 1930s comic. Why would a goddess have to look like a body builder?
Also, Gadot served in the Israeli military. She is probably more fit than many of the people who complain about her.
MisterDancer
@Cermet: Let’s respect that we’re all discussing people who have done horrific harm. And that, in some cases, for a variety of reasons, it can hit personally.
That doesn’t make one situation more or less horrible, on an “objective” scale, than another.
Thanks.
Cermet
@schrodingers_cat: LOL; just glad my handle isn’t based on a pedophile’s idea … and till tonight, never knew he was – that really was beyond the pale; I can’t even … just blew me away. Well, puts Einstein in a vastly better light … through he was no good guy.
Newton died a virgin so he wasn’t a womanizer, at least.
Tony Jay
@MisterDancer:
Really? I don’t remember thinking that it was at all creepy. There was mystery about it, which I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t picked up Planetary yet because it really was one of the best things Ellis has written, but I never once felt that there was any tease of a sexual nature. The overriding sense was of a woman increasingly frustrated by a man who wouldn’t treat their mission seriously and a man desperate to keep his distance because he feared what getting involved would bring out of him.
The truth, when it came out, was satisfyingly human, for a bunch of immortal superhumans.
Starfish
@JML: The way everything everyone is experiencing right now is considered trauma makes me uncomfortable.
It means a complete lack of accountability from anyone on anything.
laura
What the fuck is so fundamentally wrong/broken with men anyway? While I’m no Joss Wheedon fan, I hate him the same way I Fucking HATE Jeff Toobin, and despite his gross meat beating in a work meeting he’s still given plenty of air time to opine on legal matters instead of actual non-mastubatory legal experts that may not be white and male and oh so entitled.
Tony Jay
@Emma from Miami:
This. I wish I was this pithy.
Zzyzx
I love Buffy, Dr. Horrible, and the first Avengers movie. I’m also fine with him not creating anything new.
I feel like I dodged a bullet of sorts. I’ve met a lot of people in the jambands world, people whose music I love, and it would be a hard time to stop seeing them. All but one (String Cheese Incident’s Michael Travis who turned out to believe in Zionist banking conspiracies) have all been incredibly nice and people who I respect outside of their musical abilities.
trollhattan
You heard it hear first. This is going to be amazing.
On the other matter, I preferred the film version of “Buffy” and thought the show had too many uninteresting moving parts to be compelling.
Mike E
@Brachiator: National military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18.
danielx
Google search “Joss Whedon terrible person”…all the dirt.
Starfish
So I am still reading the Whedon thing, and this thing where men approaching fifty feel entitled to women less than half their age gets creepier and creepier the older I get.
Baud
@trollhattan:
If Weird Al turns out to be a creep, I’ll lose my shit.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
She’s a certified badass. Anybody complaining about her has another agenda to push (not that comic hero flicks don’t attract them by the bushelfull).
Gravenstone
@Baud: There’s always tomorrow.
Cermet
@Baud: Me too; that’s just unthinkable.
CaseyL
We have this debate every time someone whose work in entertainment media is good, if not great, is outed as an asshole. I used to be as shocked and appalled as anyone when someone whose work I liked showed their ass (Roddenberry!), but am now getting kind of tired of it.
People are complicated. People who work in the arts are complicated. The movie and TV business generally rewards people more for their predatory behavior than their artistic sensibilities. People who might otherwise have had okay personalities can become monsters when faced with large piles of cash and millions of people adoring them.
We can debate about whether their creations transcend their assholishness, but …
I mean, FFS, Einstein, Carl Sagan, and Richard Feynman were all assholes to the women in their lives. Does that mean their work was bullshit? Are we going to revoke, say, the theories of general or special relativity because of it? Boycott Cosmos, Contact, Broca’s Brain? Retroactively decide there was nothing wrong with Challenger’s O-rings because Feynman was a cad? No. Because that would be utterly stupid.
Buffy was groundbreaking in so many ways, and meant the world to a great many young people who were trying to figure out what they could be: finding out Whedon is an asshole doesn’t change that or negate it.
NotMax
Will this have legs? Or mutate into a watered down and impotent cursory flick on the wrist with a wet noodle? Or end up being indefinitely shelved for “further study?”
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
I will just say that I never thought I would ever see this combination of words assembled in this order.
It’s like catching sight of a 7-dimensional Imaginosaurus-Rex swimming past my left foot. Brain can’t cope. Spasm. Medicinal… what’s the word for memory loss?
laura
@Baud: He is not a creep. Both Roadie Brothers worked for Weird Al and both have only good things to say – from his incredible musicianship, to his business sense, but most of all his kindness and decency. Also, he sawed me in half with a chain saw at the Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos! A gal doesn’t get over that kind of thing I’ll tell you.
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
I liked the film Buffy, too, although the lead (the lovely Kristi Swanson) became a rightwing jerk.
West of the Rockies
@Starfish:
I’m a weirdo. I’m 60 and still prefer older women.
frosty
@cain: Yes, basically Firefly is a Western. Hell, they even had one episode that was a train robbery!
I liked it for what it was.
Old School
I’ve known people who loved Buffy, but I never got around to watching even though I wanted to sometime. Then, after the Whedon stories came out, I was kind of glad that I hadn’t.
Although, part of me wonders if I’m unfairly snubbing the other people involved in the show.
Baud
@laura:
Oh wow. Brush with greatness.
NotMax
@Baud
Inquiring minds want to know if Radcliffe has any facility for playing the squeezebox.
;)
Subsole
@not_a_cylon: Looking back, I don’t think I would have liked Transmet half as much, if it had not been a solace during the Dubya Regime.
Just…I dunno. It had great vignettes (like the Revivals) and told them beautifully. But so much of it was just Hunter S. Thompson’s “I have vanished up my own ass” gonzo persona, in visual format.
@cain: I mean, one of the villains was named Jubal Early. Did that seem right to you?
Kalakal
I was shocked when I found out P. G. Wodehouse was actually pretty nasty as a person. His behaviour during WW2 was despicable, he was lucky not to be charged with treason. As well as that, throughout his life he seems to have combined an amiable, scatter brained surface with a ruthless discarding of others when they were no longer useful to him.
The reason it really shocked me is that he’s probably made me laugh more than anybody else. I still love his books. I guess I naively assumed his personality matched his writing
dexwood
@laura: At least your typing fingers are intact. I dreaded taking my 12 year old son and his best friend to Al’s show in Albuquerque many years ago. They begged me. I enjoyed it, wasn’t bored.
Bostondreams
@Nicole: Check out the script he wrote for a Wonder Woman movie. It is so so incredibly focused on her as an object and not a hero in her own right. https://indiegroundfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wonder-woman-aug7-07-joss-whedon.pdf
debbie
@CaseyL:
Different generations and times have changed, so not a good comparison.
Kalakal
@laura: That made me laugh. Thanks
Subsole
@Baud:
Hey, now. You still have time.
“Baud! 20!24! Less pants! More asshole!”
Old School
@trollhattan:
I wonder how Aaron Paul feels.
Gravenstone
@Starfish: C’mon. Everyone knows it’s half their age, plus 7.
West of the Rockies
Lots of revered people were jerks in some ways: Jefferson, Washington, Gandhi, Mother Teresa…
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: How?
schrodingers_cat
Go ahead cancel Schrodinger because he was a creep, but don’t forget to turn in your laptops and fancy phones and go back to sending messages with a carrier pigeon.
Without quantum mechanics especially Schrodinger’s equation which gives us a way of addressing quantum systems from the hydrogen atom onwards there is no solid state physics and without it there are no modern electronics.
So go ahead cancel him, along with Newton and go live in the age of Aristotle.
NotMax
@Kalakal
Yup, it’s unfortunately not uncommon. H.L. Mencken was a nasty piece of work as a person but his professional output is still favorably quoted to this day.
Nicole
@laura:
Our society socializes, from a very young age, that male is superior to female. Hell, plenty of women buy into that conceit as well.
And entertainment, especially, objectifies women. Compare the way the Amazons are filmed in Wonder Woman vs. Justice League. Or give a watch to Casino Royale, where Daniel Craig is filmed the way women are normally filmed. He is utterly objectified by the camera, and while it is an excellent choice for that film, which has as a theme, I think, how being 007 has dehumanized Bond, it’s a little scary to think that that’s how women are presented ALL THE TIME in movies. As not fully human.
(I also find him incredibly hot in that movie, which I did not in any of the others, so there’s something to be said for how effective it is as a filmmaking technique.)
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
Did she? That’s disappointing.
Started “The Morning Show” and holy hell, is Steve Carell ever creepy as Matt Lauer.
lowtechcyclist
I had size 11½ feet for several years on the way from 11 to 12. I recall 11½’s being somewhat harder to get, but not a major obstacle.
CaseyL
@debbie:
Sagan died in 1996.
Buffy debuted in 1997.
phdesmond
@MisterDancer:
one can imagine, even if one didn’t live there and then.
Nicole
@Bostondreams: I’ve read excerpts; you’re right, it’s TERRIBLE. Thank you for this link; I look forward to the opportunity to torture myself with the whole thing now. ;)
Emma from Miami
@Tony Jay: No, no, no. Your perfectly aimed diatribes represent one of the highest art form of political writing. Continue as is, please!
JML
@frosty: hell, I heard Firefly started out as someone’s Traveller game.
When it was good, it was delightful. (“Ariel” remains a favorite, but I’m a sucker for heists)
Geminid
@MisterDancer: Gene Roddenberry was also credited as principal writer for the Western series, Have Gun, Will Travel, with Richard Boone playing Paladin. Roddenberry recycled at least one plot element: Paladin would get beaten up by several outlaws trying to get him to betray someone; he’d give them a short soliloquy about the indomitable nature of Man, and then turn the tables on his captors. Captain Kirk would do the same thing when tormented by aliens.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: Every time men get canceled, they just get louder and more annoying. Does this mean I have to go back and try to understand those equations?
Roger Moore
@Emma from Miami:
I don’t think anyone believes that talent should necessarily be associated with goodness. It’s that people have a hard time dealing with talented bad people because they want to praise and condemn them at the same time. It’s especially hard with someone who is a talented creator but is awful to the people around them, because it’s especially difficult to disentangle the two.
Steeplejack
@TaMara (HFG):
I think they did a quick hit of a few of his movies one day within a week of his death, but, as NotMax said, they’ve got a big celebration coming.
trollhattan
@Old School: Good lord, that was quite the time jump! The old trailer is really funny.
Tony Jay
@Emma from Miami:
On this topic, your pithy is on point. You said everything I wanted to say, but better.
CliosFanBoy
When I think of Star Trek:OS and women I can’t help but think of that AWFUL episode where a woman trades places with Kirk because she wants to be a Starship captain and so has to be a man. GAG!
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I have an in-person appointment with the surgeon on Thursday, although that might get delayed, because there’s a chance we’ll get another 1-2" of snow that morning. Don’t want to drive through that across the DMV to Largo, MD, and back.
Recovery has gone well. No pain, slight tenderness if I palpate the area (which I do not). I have some questions for the doctor. It still feels like there’s more stuff in the sack than there should be, so maybe the reabsorption process just takes a long time. (The operation was on December 7, a date which will live in infamy.) Minor concerns, I trust. So I wouldn’t say recovery is complete, but it’s close.
NotMax
@CliosFanBoy
Final episode, when the cancellation finger had writ and moved on. They were barely trying at that point.
Trivia: Also the only episode which never aired during the regular season. It was pre-empted by coverage of Eisenhower’s death. Its first broadcast was as a part of the summer rerun season.
Subsole
@laura: To borrow a phrase, I would say us boys are each an unhappy family in miniature – all ‘fundamentally broken’ in our own unique ways.
As for Toobin? You answer yourself. Guy was a pig, suffered nothing for it. It is easy to be broken when no one you care about expects you to function.
eversor
Mostly lurker here. I wanted to comment on Outlaw Star. No “animes” or Japanese films in general make any attempt at any sort of correctness of any type. They are all over the top in every direction. The Japanese, and a lot of other cultures find all that stuff great fun. If you’re offended by anything at all, stay the hell away from all of it. Outlaw Star isn’t even all that shocking compared to what’s out there.
Anyways, there’s something I noticed about the whole thing. Back when I grew up (80’s child here) you couldn’t really find it. It was hidden in the video stores and the area was as odd as the porn area. You could buy it in comic shops or book stores that stocked it. Or you had to have a Japanese friend. My D&D and Warhammer 40k playing group included a broad mix of international students due to where I grew up. And one night in elementary school we watched some of his videos. The sheer amount of blood, gore, rape, violence, sexism, racism, sexy Nazis, openly gay and gender bending characters was shocking. Some of them were pure horror, others action, and others comedy but I’d never seen anything remotely like that before. But it was still the domain of geeks. Like comics, D&D, Warhammer.
Now it’s all over the place. Some of it is toned down, but a lot of them still go THERE and do so with glee. The thing is it’s what spawned 4chan, and thus QANON. It became mainstream among the right wing. It’s heavy on the alt-right and incel types for all the wrong reasons. It’s also interesting because Warhammer and D&D also got popular and ran into issues with Nazis showing up at events.
A lot of people will which the crazy stuff and enjoy it. Outlaw Star is a good ride, Ninja Scroll is utterly insane and over the top but it’s well done. Movies like Battle Royal could never get made here and the Hunger Games is a cheap imitation. But a whole lot of people now only want Japanese media and specifically because of the crazy parts of it.
I think this side was always in geek/nerd culture. There was always “that dude” (more like those dudes) in the group and at the events but it was largely harmless. But when I saw QANON, 4chan, when I see a lot of this alt-right stuff going in, it’s become obvious that geek culture was all these people found each other once the internet kicked off and they are all networked.
It’s odd because being all grown up there’s still a lot of it I like. I still play some Warhammer, and I’ll still watch the odd anime (Castlevania on Netflix is outstanding), and I still play Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. So do all my friends. But it’s also an instant alarm for me when someone mentions they are into these things. I, and people I know, instantly assume they are some right wing crazy. “Let me show you my manga collection” kicks off as much of a freak out as “let me show you my gun collection”.
I don’t know how to fix this and I don’t think it can be. And I’m also not shocked that “one of the good ones” turned out to be an utter monster.
Subsole
@Starfish:
Desperation is seldom fun to watch.
Tony Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
Saying someone was an utter shitbag who shouldn’t be lauded means we have to performatively purge our lives of everything good their professional lives ever accomplished*? Or, what? We’re all hypocrites who shouldn’t be given time of day? Hysterical, maybe?
I’ve got a nagging feeling that I’ve heard all this before. Maybe in a diatribe about this ‘cancel culture’ thing you seem to be referencing. I can’t be more exact because I think I done gone and cancelled whoever wrote it, so there goes all memory of what they wrote. How inconvenient.
Autobahns, eh? Those Germans are such hypocrites.
*Assuming you’re not joking. I hope you’re joking. I’ll wake up in a few hours and find out.
NeenerNeener
@cain: Whedon did the series to fix the hash the Kazuis made of the movie version. He sold the script and the rights to Fran and Kaz Kazui because they were the only ones interested at the time, and Fran thought it need to be dumbed down and made less scary for children. Selling the rights to the Kazuis may be the biggest regret of his life; they’ve been getting a cut of any Buffy profits ever since.
Yeah, I used to hang out at TWoP on the Buffy and Angel forums…
phdesmond
@Kalakal:
as a tax preparer, i did taxes for a few years for historian Howard Zinn, back in the early ’90s. he was polite and considerate and cared deeply for his grandkids!
PJ
@Brachiator: Cole served in the US military, and his fitness is not in doubt.
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: I have seen recent pictures of both Ms Gadot and Mr Cole. Just saying.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Maybe you should go back and take a look at Buffy again with all this about Whedon. I never saw Buffy, but sure as hell saw Firefly and I am shocked that everyone else is oblivious to all the reactionary bullshit Whedon got away with “because Rivers is a strong woman”. It look to me Whendon makes a big deal about some strong female character while pushing the most reactionary drek possible in background.
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, wait til you hear the dirt on Aristotle.
Gravenstone
@eversor: I’ve gotten more into anime in the last couple of years, since I started subscribing to the major screening services. But I’m making a concerted effort to stay away from manga as I know that way madness lies.
Subsole
@JML: Ahhhhh….Traveller.
I always loved that game. You could build some genuine hard-bastard characters, if you got lucky on your gen rolls.
Or, you know, die in the middle of your second tour in the scout service before you even played a game. Fun times.
schrodingers_cat
@Tony Jay: Starfish picked on me because of my nym. And you are calling me a Nazi apologist based on fucking what?
MisterDancer
The bit where he’s playing with her hair, to clarify — yeah, I remember thinking “that’s…uncomfortable,” and I think even The Drummer kind of says something, too.
It’s one of those “someone violating someone else’s personal space” things that twig me, even if it’s consensual — and I don’t think it really was, given the context.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: Cue Simpsons clip: That’s the joke.
Geoduck
@West of the Rockies: There was also the fact that the actress playing said second-in-command, Majel Barret, was Roddenberry’s mistress, and everyone involved knew it. And when the show actually went into production he “snuck” her back in front of the camera by slapping a blonde wig on her.
Getting back to the article, another Fun Fact it mentions is that something happened between Whedon and actress Michelle Trachtenberg, reportedly leading to a rule that the two of them weren’t allowed to be alone in a room together. She was a minor at the time.
Subsole
@Roger Moore:
Orwell’s opinion on Dali has served me well:
“One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that he is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being.”
Chetan Murthy
@Starfish: Oh god, Dollhouse. Eeew indeed.
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: He was a bugger for the bottle?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
A couple years ago there was a Buffy marathon during a holiday week and it didn’t hold up.
Which makes me think I only liked it because I was young and didn’t know better – kinda like Guns N’ Roses music.
Kalakal
@Emma from Miami:
This. In someways the outliers are the “brilliant” who if not “saintly” at least remain decent(ish) individuals such as Bach. Condemn the individual but not their achievements. I was shocked by what I read tonight about Schrodinger but I’m profoundly grateful for his intellectual achievements. Newton’s detractors in his lifetime accused him of pimping out his neice for political influence and he certainly wasn’t the most congenial of personalities. As far as brilliance goes he was off the scale and his contributions to science are probably unmatched. Watching the JWST lauch I was struck by the fact that the orbtal mechanics involved and the reflecting telescope itself come from Newton’s work i
Emma from Miami
@Roger Moore: I agree with the second part of the thesis but not the first. At least in the case of those that rush to the nearest megaphone to tell everyone that will listen how they always knew… something.
See, I don’t struggle at all because I’ve never assumed that someone’s genius was linked to someone’s morality. It gives me the ability to separate the author from the work, so to speak.
The question is, would I give of my small pot of entertainment money to support a living author whose behavior is morally abhorrent to me? No, since there are so many other options out there. But I will not stand there and belittle the work either.
Omnes Omnibus
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Patience still holds up alright.
Kalakal
@Steeplejack: glad to hear it’s going well
Omnes Omnibus
@Emma from Miami: Well said.
ETA: Tangentially related: I wonder how much this has in common with the urge to elect a politician the one would want to have a beer with.
West of the Rockies
@Geoduck:
Nonetheless, she was the second-in-command, not a bartender or hair dresser.
frosty
@PJ: Aristotle, Aristotle, was a lover of the bottle and a bugger when he’s pissed!
@Omnes Omnibus: Eh, I should’ve figured I wouldn’t be the first with that line!
Kalakal
@phdesmond: Thanks, that’s good to hear I admire his work
debbie
@CaseyL:
Oh FFS. Sagan was born in 1934.
NotMax
@Subsole
Goes back decades but there was one time when out of curiosity I wandered into a gaming store in Manhattan which as it turned out sold nothing but Traveller. More supplements and paraphernalia than you can shake a stick at (if that’s your idea of a good time).
;)
Tony Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
Dear God, it didn’t take long.
“Nazi apologist”? Really? That’s so over-extended it’s almost comical.
You wrote something really daft and got pushback. Then you wrote something even dafter, which I simply can’t be arsed to deal with. I’m sure everyone can make up their own minds.
Another Scott
@CaseyL: Repost – Rachael at SocialJusticeLeague.net – How to be a fan of problematic things.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
I appreciate that.
Although, maybe what’s really getting under everyone’s skin is that such separation isn’t something women geniuses have been entitled to historically, or too often currently.
Roger Moore
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Some things are of their time and place and don’t play well when removed from it. With Buffy, I think a lot of its good reputation was earned in the early seasons, when they made episodes in which the various ways people hated high school were turned into supernatural horror. That really resonated, but I think it loses a lot when it’s taken away from the specific view of high school it was reacting to.
Steeplejack
@Kalakal:
Thanks.
eversor
@Gravenstone:
The major screening services actually avoid the crazier anime as well. At least in the US, in Asia it’s still all over the place. Which is why even in the US most people aren’t aware of what’s really going on with it and why it became the cult of 4chan.
Geoduck
@West of the Rockies: Yeah, the man was complicated. I mean, he put his other mistress on the show as well, and she was a black woman on the bridge of a spaceship. He even positioned her on the set so she was sitting right there behind Kirk’s command chair in her miniskirt where she couldn’t be ignored.
jnfr
I’ve been a big fan of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. Not to a degree that I wouldn’t critique them in lots of ways. But I’ve had to divorce all that from Joss himself. There are a lot of creators who have influenced my life who turned out to be problematic (Marion Zimmer Bradley, case in point). Life is difficult.
Tony Jay
@MisterDancer:
I’ll go back and check that scene out again, but the vibe I always got from the Jakita/Snow relationship was pretty much what it turned out to be. And I think the Drummer, who knew the truth, was giving a hint as to why Snow being triggered into finding out might be a major problem.
For a start their boss would be potentially very unhappy.
Starboard Tack
No gods.
No masters
No heros.
No monsters
Chris
I have a theory, which is mine, that Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin are sort of the two extreme failure modes of liberal politics, the left-anarchist-antiestablishment side of it for Whedon and the centrist establishment side of it for Sorkin (or to put it another way, the Glenn Greenwalds and the Joe Manchins). They both felt fresh and different in the nineties, but looking back from twenty years later, you see all the warts in their work… with, in both cases, the race and gender stuff being especially glaring.
(Interestingly, they have one more thing in common that has nothing to do with any of that: they both live and die on their dialogue. When you first watch something by Whedon or Sorkin, the dialogue is great, and one of the reasons you keep watching. By the time you’re on your third or fourth show, though, it becomes impossible to ignore that 1) everybody sounds the same, and 2) nobody actually talks like that).
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: I take issue with the use of Greenwald there.
eversor
@Emma from Miami:
As someone from the dreaded millennial generation there’s sort of three views I see. The first is the group who seeks to right all past wrongs and if that means tearing down everything than let it burn and they’ll get it right. The second is the group who realized that anyone you ever admired who did anything great was actually a monster in some way and that’s just who people are so move the fuck on and learn from it. There’s sort of a remote third who are watching the first and just howling with laughter at them and enjoying the chaos, to own the libs. Or more, to watch the libs own themselves.
cliosfanboy
@NotMax: interesting. Thanks
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
Unfair to Whedon, or unfair to Greenwald?
West of the Rockies
Fine. Roddenberry was a gigantic flaming asshole. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of people liked his show, despite its horrible, unforgivable flaws. Morons.
But no Roddenberry means no Picard, no Michael Burnham, etc.
debbie
@Baud:
Thank you.
No one’s saying not to like the series, movie, etc. But ffs, don’t defend the misbehavior.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Touché, but it’s the association of the Greenwald with the left.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: I don’t think anyone was defending the misbehavior. Or even, offering the excuse that their genius somehow justified it. OTOH, we will put up with a lot more shit from someone we love for whatever reason than someone we don’t.
Hoppie
Is it bad of me that I don’t know bugger all what you guys are talking about, media wise?
eversor
@Hoppie:
No. TLDR it turns out a bunch of geek stuff was always full of horrible characters and bad people but nobody knew till it went main stream. Peoples fond memories are dashed.
Geminid
@Mike E: National military service is mandatory for most Israeli citizens over age 18, but not all. Many of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, are given draft exemptions. Arab citizens, approximately 20% of the population, are not subject to the draft but can still enlist.
Subsole
@eversor:
I have been playing 40k since 1st edition and oh, lord, all of this. I LOVED that Rogue Trader book from the moment I picked it up. It was dark and strange and just…it made you think. It was old school, hardcore danse-macabre Goth. It deepened and broadened my love of history. It was a refuge for a shy weirdo, and also a way out of that shyness.
And a lot of it was just silly. I remember we had to sneak games b/c our parents thought that stuff was devil worship. When really, it was just a way for bored kids to spend a few hours entertaining themselves because the tv and the sportsball and the lesson plan damn sure weren’t.
I cannot explain how…disturbing…it was to encounter people who read “Blessed is the mind too small for doubt” as anything but satire.
It’s awful. You miss the game, but you don’t even bring it up because schooling Wehraboos on their historical misconceptions isn’t even fun anymore and the last guy had a “totes ironic, bro” SS-Themed Imperial Guard regiment, and just…no, dude. No.
What force do you run? I’m guessing Imperium, from the ‘nym? I always liked Eldar. Or ‘Nids. Also love the Tau, just because no one seems to realize that that’s how GW brought back the Squats.
Subsole
@Omnes Omnibus:
Then rejoice for your eyes are doubly blessed.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
I think what a lot of people are struggling with is the feeling that they’re implicitly endorsing the creator’s misbehavior by endorsing their work. I think this is especially true with creators who got a reputation for supporting liberal beliefs but who were later discovered not to be as liberal as supposed. I suspect there are a couple of things that feed into this:
The net result is that people have these wildly overinflated ideas about how great the creator is. They must support this thing that’s really important because anyone who thinks it’s important can read support for it into their work. When it turns out the creator never intended that and actually disagrees, the fans feel betrayed.
A great example of this is JK Rowling’s being a TERF. A lot of trans readers saw werewolves in her stories, Remis Lupin specifically, as being a metaphor for being trans and in the closet. When it turned out that she is strongly anti-trans, the fans who had assumed she was on their side felt incredibly betrayed. Even though one can still read the same pro-trans message in her novels- the words haven’t changed- knowing authorial intent has caused people to reject her.
Subsole
@Omnes Omnibus:
Lovely little thinker.
Just a bugger when he was pissed.
Hoppie
@eversor: Thanks for the response.
BTW, I was treasurer of the World Science Fiction Society for 26 years, so used to keep up. Lately, not so much.
Never paid much attention to the visual stuff, though.
Subsole
@NotMax:
It truly is. But I also liked Battletech, so take my opinion with an entire salt-mine.
eversor
@Subsole:
I started at the tail end of RT and really got into it in 2E. Back when we still had exploding assault cannons and polymorphing assassins with terminator armor on bikes popping out guardians.
I ran two armies at the time. Blood Angels mad rush. Jump pack death company, jump pack veteran assault, jump pack assault, teleporting assault terminators. Fun, not typical marines, but sort of goofy to play. You either table them or you don’t win. Also Siam Hann Eldar, all jetbikes, all the time. Also fun. I played into 3E and then went off to the military and then 9/11 happend and oh well.
I got back in years later and was so happy with all the updated figures and showed up to an event in like 6E with Dark Eldar and started going on on Warhammer forums and was really shocked at the people.
Also the OG Chaos Books, like The Lost and the Damned were amazing.
Subsole
@NotMax:
I am, on reflection, kind of amazed. Not even a token copy of the old D&D? Wow.
Hope you found it entertaining. For all my gripes about fandum, this hobby really has its wonderful side, too.
Subsole
@Omnes Omnibus:
Which, I think, with hindsight, had a lot more to do with how desperate people were for SOMEone with a platform to tell them they weren’t the only people who saw how godawful Dubya was, and very little at all to do with who Glemm Verdewaldo turned out to actually be.
eversor
@Subsole:
I wasn’t all that into battletech, I do like mechwarrior though. I played the SP campaigns on PC back and the day and those were amazing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Subsole: No disagreement here.
Emma from Miami
@Baud: Agreed. But that does deserve pushback. Now that I’m retired I’m considering a blog about all the amazing women that changed our world and we know so little about.
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah yes, I see, although I think “failure mode” covers that.
eversor
@Subsole:
I wouldn’t be. A lot of gaming stores were/are fucking seedy as hell places. Drug use has always been rampant as well as drinking. Even in highschool there was always the group that knew the owner and stayed later after smoking and getting shit faced while playing till the next day and nobody gave a damn.
Omnes Omnibus
Okay, this has gone down a nerd path that I don’t understand.
NotMax
@Subsole
No nuthin’ but Traveller, Traveller and more Traveller.
No Tunnels & Trolls, no Bunnies & Burrows, no Car Wars, no whatever that game about railroads was either.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
Same here. And sure, I recognized the ‘Lost Cause’ motif, but I didn’t regard it as saying the Confederacy really was any sort of romantic Lost Cause (by 2002, the Web had enabled me to see too many of the founding documents of the Confederacy where the founders themselves said it was all about preservation of slavery), just that the idea of a romantic Lost Cause was a cool one, if separated from, y’know, owning other human beings.
FWIW, I never thought Whedon was portraying River as a strong woman, as someone upthread suggested. She was a messed-up kid with some bizarre talents. Now Zoë, OTOH…
Anyhow, I hear Dylan was a real shit to the women in his life. I still love his songs.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
It occurs to me that the WB network had a lot of good women’s shows: Felicity, Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven, Charmed, Jack & Jill
Chris
@Roger Moore:
In cases like that you have the specific experience of being a very marginalized community making it much worse than just “I thought this person was a liberal.” There wasn’t all that much media out there in the late nineties/early 2000s that was supportive of gay people, and pretty much none that was supportive of trans people. If you were in one of those groups, and you latched onto the “werewolves as metaphor for me” idea, then Harry Potter was one of the only things in the world telling you that you weren’t a disgusting pervert.
It’s got to hit incredibly hard to realize that the author or something like that thinks you are, in fact, a disgusting pervert.
Emma from Miami
@Roger Moore: Why would anyone look at Lupin and see a metaphor for trans people? Harry Potter is one of literature’s great coming-of-age stories, even with plot holes that would swallow a semi. And it’s aimed directly at its market. Nothing about those books is philosophical or political in the adult sense.
Sometimes I feel too baffled for words.
Please understand I’m not talking about the author; I am talking about the books.
Answered by Chris at 227. That does make sense.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lowtechcyclist:
I’ve never delved too deeply into it, but didn’t John Lennon treat his first wife, and his elder son, pretty badly?
Emma from Miami
@Starboard Tack: No stories. No dreams. No causes. No thank you.
Gravenstone
@Subsole; @eversor: Once upon a life I played so much table top BattleTech (started playing in college like the year it launched) that I could recite the hit charts and to hit modifiers from memory. From the computer side of things, enjoyed all the MechWarrior PC games through MW4. Unfortunately, the control scheme for MW5 proved too much for me to surmount, so there it sits with only a couple hours played. In 2018, Piranha Games and Hare Brained Schemes brought out a PC based BT game that is tantalizingly close to the table top experience. I have literally hundreds of hours played in that since launch. Did either of you try the Mech Commander game for PC?
Subsole
@eversor:
I’m noticing a “gotta go fast” theme to your armies. Those Blood Angels sound ferocious. Would have enjoyed throwing some ‘stealers at ’em. Even if you get steamrolled, it’s a fun time.
Loved the old, super granular rules. Nothing like having your cyclone termie eat a haywire grenade then fire his ENTIRE payload into your Chaplain because lol, scatter dice and random tables. Also, hallucinogen grenades making your captain think he’s a bird and go flapping around the table for like, three turns, without getting a scratch.
Hard agree on the old books. Lost and the Damned was amazing, just for some of the artwork alone.
eversor
@Emma from Miami:
See the IRON LAW OF THE INTERNET RULE 44: Rule 44: If it exists, there is a version of it for your fandom
Also there will be porn of it. Fandom is really weird. People read themselves and their group into all sorts of things that just aren’t there and project onto them. Hence you have all sorts of straight relationships that have mountains of gay fandom and porn for them. In addition they will have a furry version of them, and furry porn. Or one the characters will be turned into a woman version of a man, or the other way, and there will be more.
It’s just how things are.
See also how Trump was turned into the God Emperor of Mankind from 40k. The God Emperor is an immortal all powerful psyker who’s stuck almost dead on his throne performing strategic and tests of wills against the dark gods of eternity. He’s the smartest, greatest, strongest human ever. He is literally god. He’s also a-sexual despite being the most gorgeous man ever. But because he leads a fascist space empire for “humanity, fuck YEAH!” xenociding and genociding it’s way through the stars and has a golden throne and armor Trump is totally him, and he was based off Trump. And there is fanfic and there is porn.
Chris
@lowtechcyclist:
What makes the Lost Cause motif really hard to ignore is that Firefly is so blatantly a space western sticking to a futuristic version of the post-Civil-War U.S. (or at least a certain narrative of that).
I’ve heard a lot of fan analogies for the Alliance-Independent War as something other than the American Civil War that are pretty cool. I’ve heard “the Alliance is England, the outer planets are Scotland.” I’ve heard “the Alliance is the neocon-run United States, the outer planets are its enemies in the Third World” (especially resonant given the era it came out in). A really random one I’ve heard is “the Alliance is nineteenth century era Austria-Hungary, the outer planets are the collapsing states around it that it keeps expanding into.”
All of that’s just fans projecting their own thoughts into his world, though. IRL, Whedon didn’t base his universe on any of these things, he based it on the American Civil War and its aftermath, and he made the universe adhere to that one so closely (horses and longcoats and six-shooters and all) that it’s really hard to ignore.
Steeplejack
@eversor:
Thanks for your perspective. Interesting.
NotMax
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Speaking of WarnerMedia,
Subsole
@eversor:
Battletech was GREAT if you had a lance per side, with maybe a couple vees or ASF for spice. Past that, it started to bloat. I really enjoyed the lore, too.
Kalakal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah he did.
in his own words “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically – any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit”
Chris
@eversor:
In fandom’s defense, sometimes, it’s not that they’re projecting ideas into a story that just aren’t there. Sometimes, the author just writes something without realizing or thinking through what its implications are.
JML
@NotMax: No Car Wars? Car Wars was hilarious. Still have it. Uncle Al’s!
eversor
@Subsole:
For the stealers the angels have a few tricks. First the vets and DC have WS 5 vs the stealers 7. Second corbulo gives a +1 WS bubble around him. That brings them up to 6. Third you will get the charge bringing them up to 7, and with jump packs you will. The vets can carry chain sword + power sword for dual parry. So now you are WS 7 dual parry A 3 vs WS 7 4 A, the angels can do it in close combat. Also with charge you can double up and be sure of kills.
Like I said, it’s a crusher army. It either stomps faces or it gets blown to pieces before it charges. And nids and Khrone were the funniest to play against. Everything always ends in this giant CC ball in the middle
And yeah I was a hard “da red ones go faster” type back then.
The rules were more complex but yeah, more hilarious. The way vehicles worked with catastrophic explosions was funny. Ramming into terrain at full speed to blow your self up taking out a horde with a giant fireball only to have your captain come bounding out unharmed charging into something like a nutter was great fun. Flame throwers setting things on fire and having them run about screaming. The thudgun. There was so much crazy that some people, me and it sounds like you as well, really leaned into that just left jaws on the floor. Or the RT demon sword where if you killed the bastard he turned into a blood thirster.
And yeah also agree on the art, it was better than and really had it’s own style. I’d buy prints of that if they sold it.
Every now and then a few of my friends and I get a hair up our collective asses to just buy a bunch of old 2E stuff off ebay and do it again. I miss the old models as well. I know the newer ones are vastly better and more impressive but the older ones just have that character
Also the GW stuff I have now is Space Hulk (need to paint that) and blood bowl (skaven and dark elves). Blood bowl is great, but it is a friendship killer. If you want to watch someone break down and flip a table blood bowl is the way.
Subsole
@eversor:
True. I was usually pretty lucky in my groups. But there was always that one dude who was either:
-Off their meds.
-Skeevy as all fuck.
-Bigoted enough to melt your damned teeth.
Or
-Some hellish melange of all three of the above.
But they had money to burn and the owner liked ’em, so…meh. And we wondered why more girls didn’t enjoy this stuff…
Poe Larity
@Baud: You shoulda known when Cole was a hugely Buffy fan.
Subsole
@NotMax:
Huh.
Wild.
eversor
@Gravenstone:
I’ve played mech commander and some friends still play MWO, I join them off and on.
Subsole
@Chris:
I never actually made that connection, wrt the werewolves as metaphor.
That…that is brutal. I cannot imagine.
Subsole
@Gravenstone:
Not yet, though I need to.
Wasn’t the new BTech game by the same people who did the Shadowrun games? Those looked like FUN.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and it seems like every three years Eric Clapton says something obnoxious and people rediscover his racist comments that started in the mid-70s if not earlier.
I don’t know if Van Morrison got political pre-Covid, but it was no secret he’s kind of an asshole. I first heard that from a DJ– on the air– a good twenty years ago
eversor
@Subsole:
BT is fine like that yeah, my friend has his copy and we should break it out. But spare time!
Also there is stuff like this now https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/11/games-workshop-responds-to-nazi-player-problem-in-warhammer.html
While I agree on the “types of problem guys” TBH there were always the “types of problem girls”. Which were largely the same with the added issue of cosplay. Granted, always less girls than guys but let’s not pretend the issues were one sided.
In addition now there is the issue of hyper competitive downloaded meta lists, which ugh. Not that I was above that sort of thing at times but I more liked the crazy side. Which is why I avoid going to the local comic/gaming stores (the official stores have their own issues) other than to support them by buying there. I’ll play with people I know or who they knoat home on the table. And we will have food and beer.
Subsole
@eversor:
I mean…that whole interpretation just reduced me to sputtering incoherence when I encountered it. The entire POINT of the Imperium is that our hidebound dogmatism has doomed us before the game even began. Emps was IMPRISONED in the Golden Throne. The blind, cruel devotion of the Adeptus was a prison made all the more tragic because the poor fools administering it actually thought it was the road to salvation.
I mean, everything conservatism gets wrong is just skewered mercilessly in all the lore and…ugh.
EDIT: and I’m not even getting into the bitter irony of an immortal gestalt demigod born in Anatolia being venerated by the people posting Serbian genocide apologia…
eversor
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1611910/Warhammer_40000_Chaos_Gate__Daemonhunters/ also this
Subsole
@Chris:
I really, really am intrigued by that Austro-Hungarian take.
Subsole
@JML: Steve Jackson makes some damn good games.
I still have my Ogre Mk V stored, somewhere. Need to dig it out.
eversor
@Subsole:
It’s also stated openly more recently. When Guileman wakes up, because they actually worked with the Eldar, he takes one look at how things are and is basically like “what have you done, you’re all fucking idiots, this isn’t what we wanted, this isn’t what he wanted, you did it all wrong you bloody nitwits” and their response is thinking about offing their resurected demigod who could actually fix things because he shat on their their religion, dogma, and scientific stagnation. Then they realize that they can’t take him on cause, only primarchs have killed primarchs, and well it would send the entire astartes after them if they tried.
It’s pretty direct about it.
Also old school noise marines, back when it was sex and drugs and they had guitars.
NotMax
Hmmm. I see where Netflix is advertising another series (upcoming) of Young Wallander.
One would like to think they’d have learned a valuable lesson from the first try. But no-o-o.
Chris
@Subsole:
Neither did I until it started popping up on Internet conversations and I was like “oh, duh.”
Like I said, that’s the thing: it’s really easy for authors to write things without thinking through how it’s going to read to people who aren’t like them. On a certain level, you have to do it: you can’t just look at your work through the eyes of every last possible reader’s perspective, you’d go crazy. Just… be prepared to own it when you inadvertently step on people’s feelings, and have something other than Rowling’s TERFiness to offer them.
The really fun thing? Just to take this another level deeper, this kind of thing can be incredibly infuriating to writers from marginalized communities. A few weeks ago one of the blogs I like to read reposted something by a Latino writer venting about the flak they got for their stories perpetuating stereotypes about Latinos being criminals. Her response: my characters are Latinos because that’s what I am, and they’re criminals because I fucking love heist stories, so that’s what I write! I’m not an avatar for the entire Latino community, why is it my job to clean up and censor everything I write to step around society’s prejudices? I just want to write stories!
Subsole
@eversor:
Oh yeah. As soon as you said Death Company, I knew. I loved those guys even when they stomped me. Like, your squad just ate 30 dice worth of attacks, waded into my line, and won. Awesome stuff.
I also loved the eldar, with the warp cannon that could teleport your opponents landraider into the air and let it drop right onto his devastators. Or your Avatar. As may be. I will see your thudd gun, and raise you mole mortars.
Also, the scenarios in the back of the old RT book are still damned entertaining. I miss those smaller, story-driven games.
Blood Bowl is one I missed out on. I also dearly wanted to get a game of Epic going, but alas…
eversor
@Subsole: And then there was the Sanguinary Guard, or the classic Death Company dreadnought. Which, when you think about what is going on with a DC Dread is just a horrible fucked up fate. The DC dreads have exploding dice so the old one would just wade into things and keep exploding dice until things were gone. I’ve heard the new DC 9E primaris marines can crash out something like 6+ dice a guy on the charge, which is well, it’s what I expected. Also genestealers can infiltrate now? It’s all cool, but I liked the old fat genestealer on the chair. Back when you used batman toys to make the pimp mobile and white dwarf gave instructions for making landspeeders out of deoderant.
I miss exploding plasma weapons (what is this just kills your man stuff). The old eldar warp spiders and old eldar harliquins kiss on the solitare were comedy gold as well. The old eversor (and yes that’s the nym source) with his berserker charge, halving your stats on a hit (hello abbadon, hello sargent, hello, grot, splat) and then blowing up in a giant ball of puss and acid when you killed him!
Epic is back… as Titan Legions and the models are amazing. The sinster titan which drains psychers souls is really cool.
Dunno if you’ve seen this but it’s hilarious from a 40k perspective and lampoons it relentlessly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcYrTCGKyrU
Subsole
@eversor:
Yeah. I made a decision early on I was not in this to break people upon the barbed and fiery wheel of my strategic mastery (helped by the fact said wheel was not extant). I was here to have a crazy laugh, as the Great Harlequin demands.
I like the fluidity and speed of the new rules. Great for a pickup game. But it is very, very clearly geared towards tournament play, and that ain’t me at all.
Deffo agree on the beer and food and friends.
Kalakal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Jim, Foolish Literalist: Eric Clapton really gets me. I absolutely love his recorded music up until about 1975 and can leave most of what he’s done since alone. (have seen some pretty good gigs though). His disintegration as a person through the 70s was horrible to watch. When you kick heroin and then go on to two bottles of brandy a day and are playing concerts flat on your back because you’re too drunk to stand up you’re pretty fucked. Then all the racist bullshit and it was appalling. That and Bowie doing Nazi salutes and coming up with England needing a fascist dictatorship and Hitler being a rock star led to the Rock against Racism movement and I really thought we’d kicked that shit in the head.
About 4 years ago I heard an interview with Clapton about Brexit and he was really good. He was totally against it and condemned the racism driving a lot of its supporters. Given that and the way he’d always given songwriting credits and royalties to the black blues players who’d inspired him unlike most white rock stars of his generation I thought, hmm maybe it really was the drugs and booze and fucked up childhood ( he’s illegitimate and only found out his big ‘sister’ was his mother when he was 8, she emigrated 2 years later with his younger half siblings leaving him behind) and he’s finally grown up.
Then he reverts to being a total ass about Covid.
Oh well, I’ll always love Cream
Subsole
@eversor: I actually do like the way Gee Dubs seems to be playing this.
eversor
@Subsole:
For the story driven stuff. Back in the day it was funny how famous characters came out of WD battle reports like Captain Tycho.
Subsole
@Chris: Interesting. There’s a lot to think about there regarding the nature of allyship and performativeness…
The Castle
@Steeplejack:
The Friends of Eddie Coyle is hands down the best Boston movie ever; nothing else is even close. And it has Robert Mitchum in his prime, a funky jazz soundtrack, and underrated director Peter Yates. Its depiction of tired dirty old Boston of the 1970s is dead on in tone. It’s also a good book, if you are so inclined, although the language is as hard to understand as that of The Wire.
Ella in New Mexico
Josh Whedon is a gifted but flawed human being.
Gosh, maybe really creative humans are not perfect humans I’m soo surprised guess I’ll have to hate all the great shows he helped create now…nah.
I can actually hold two oppsing thoughts in my head without it exploding.
Am I banned now?
Subsole
@eversor:
I have indeed seen that.
“I’m sorry. I’m just COMPLETELY DISGUSTED right now.”
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: With Rowling in particular, there’s the point that anything that puts money in her pocket–which would include any sort of licensed Harry Potter material, from tchotchkes to amusement parks–is actually funding anti-trans activism.
Brachiator
@The Castle:
Boston movies.
I would also recommend The Verdict, Mystic River, Spotlight and Manchester By the Sea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kalakal:
that surprises me, I thought I had read about him ranting about foreigners– Eastern Europeans– fairly recently.
John Cleese is another one I’m a long time fan of whose recent rhetoric has disappointed me. He was pro-Brexit, and spends a lot of time whining about how you can’t do funny accents anymore.
Subsole
@eversor:
Ah, yes. The dude who got his brain wiped on some ridiculous, one in a hundred shot.
Also, old school assassins with polymorph and combat drugs were INsane.
eversor
@Subsole:
The model of the ninja with the combi weapon. That everyone turned into a terminator on a bike who leaped out of a guardian and lobbed a vortex grenade. It might take out a quarter of their stuff, or yours, where it goes and when it goes nobody knows
And speaking of EPIC, the old squat land train or the damn imperator titan. I keep glancing at forge world and man oh man I should not be doing that.
Subsole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agree on Cleese.
That seems to be the go-to, anymore. Some sad variation of “you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today because boohoo woke.”
Sure you could. But why would you? The whole point of that movie was the application of Twain’s observation that mockery will punch holes in evil faster than even righteous anger. You could make Blazing Saddles, but it would fall flat b/c what you are mocking is expressed differently today, which requires an update to the mockery.
And, also, I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of the folks complaining would be making it purely as a thinly-veiled excuse to spell “black” with two g’s on camera – and that just ain’t funny.
Kalakal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I wish I could say I was surprised at that, he went on a rant about
as part of his anti covid drivel not too long ago
John Clees didn’ t actually surprise me. I saw him on a tour about 10 years ago and he was pretty awful. Most of it consisted of him whining that he didn’t want to be doing it, it was all the fault of his ex-wifes costing him so much in alimony and that he rather be doing something else.
Subsole
@eversor: Yep. Plastic crack. I do NOT need to be looking that stuff right now, either.
Also, I agree the old models just had this strange charm. Like, the new stuff is amazing, but the old Guard, Orks and Marines (especially the metal ones) just had all sorts of detail and character packed into them. I really liked the old Tzeentch marines with NO head – just a giant face in their chest like some bizarre grimdark Modok.
And yes, the Patriarch on his throne was an amazing model.
Citizen Alan
@MisterDancer:
I was deeply disturbed by the first episode of Firefly and the extent to which it seemed to be Confederate apologia. Basically, what if the Rebels were the good guys and slavery had nothing whatsoever to do with the War, oh, and the female lead was a decorated soldier in the Confederate Army.
I have very complicated feelings about Joss Whedon for selfish personal reasons right now. You see, the female protagonist of my second urban fantasy novel (which is set in 2010 before everyone knew how gross Whedon was) grew up watching Buffy and used magic to create a supernaturally enhanced “Action Girl” identify for herself. At the climax (if I ever finish it), she will defeat the immortal bad guy because he, by complete happenstance, quotes a line of dialogue from the S2 Buffy finale and she’s able to use that to rewrite the narrative of the situation so that she can actually kill him. Becoming Pt 2 is one of my favorite episodes of any tv show, and it pains me to think that Joss Whedon’s conduct over the 20 years since it aired has despoiled it to the extent that I might have to rework the entire ending of my novel rather than even indirectly evoke his name.
Subsole
@Kalakal: Oooof. That is…disappointing.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I haven’t seen that, but I had the same reaction to Young Montalbano on MHz. No, just no.
My local PBS station has been rerunning Branagh Wallander, and it reminds me how much better the Swedish original is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kalakal: oh yeah, when he gets going on his divorce/s….
Citizen Alan
@JustRuss:
In their defense, the original pilot was so much better at setting up the nature of the Redcoats/Alliance conflict, and had it aired first, I might have been more forgiving of The Train Job. But, well, it was on Fox, so stupidity happened.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Yup. The original Swedish series is a multi-faceted gem.
The trouble with Kenneth B. productions boils down to “too much Branagh.”
Steeplejack
@The Castle:
I’m old enough that I read the book before the movie came out. It was good. Probably still holds up.
eversor
@Subsole: Back when you could use fantasy beastmen and chaos in 40k.
I want a Horus Hersey army. Of course my BA all kitted out for nothing but assault as they should (what is this shooting phase you talk of, never used it). That said I’m also massively partial to the Night Lords because god damn if they aren’t actually the funniest, most self aware, and realize how stupid it all is groups in the universe even if they are jerks.
Alpha Legion would be cool, but I hear they don’t exist.
Citizen Alan
@Nicole: Honestly, I always kinda blamed Marti Noxon for the decline of Buffy in its last few seasons. The episodes she wrote or directed were the ones most inclined to devolve into boring soap operas with turgid romantic complications, and (weirdly) she wrote some of the least feminist episodes. (IMO, YMMV.)
Kalakal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s kind of sad with some of the surviving Pythons. Cleese has become a bitter old man blaming all his woes on the world for changing while he hasn’t and Terry Gilliam came up with some bizarre stuff about metoo for God knows what reason. On the bright side (ahem) Eric Idle seems to be very happy doing music and Michael Palin is happy being the world’s nicest traveller. Also Neil Innes remained wonderful to the end
eversor
@Kalakal:
A lot of comedy only works in it’s time. It’s got a shelf life and it’s going to go bad.
Citizen Alan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Um, what? Book was a monk seeking redemption after walking away from a prior career as a government agent. And I don’t recall anything remotely “spiritual” about Zoe Washburne, let alone supporting a “magical Negro” reading. I am genuinely curious as to what you saw that I missed to have that reaction.
Kalakal
@eversor: So very true, except for Young Frankenstein which is timeless.
And Rowan Atkinson pulling silly faces
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kalakal:
I missed that, happily. I listened to Eric Ide’s memoir a while ago. That guy knew everybody, and he manages to tell the stories without ever sounding like he’s name-dropping. I’ve been tempted to go back and watch the first (or fourth, or whatever) Star Wars movie to see if I can spot the scene where Carrie Fischer, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford are all hungover from partying all night with the Stones at Idle’s house.
Citizen Alan
@Roger Moore:
I’ve often thought that Buffy should have ended after 3 seasons. I knew they were in trouble with the S4 premiere which was set during Buffy’s first week in college and it was abundantly clear that no one involved had been to college at any point in the last twenty years. High school, as they say, might be hell. But college was fucking awesome, to the point that, were the Devil to offer it, I might well trade my immortal soul to be a college junior forever (old enough to buy beer but no where near ready to graduate).
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Just wait till you get a few years on and gravity starts getting stronger and stronger. It’s either that or my ability to always stand when I think I’m supposed to be standing is retiring at a faster pace than I think I am.
Citizen Alan
@Emma from Miami:
Honestly, I always saw HP werewolves as metaphors for HIV patients. Horrible, ill-conceived metaphors, but that’s what I thought they were. (Horrible b/c of the only two named werewolves, one is utterly consumed by self-loathing over his condition and the other is a deranged psychopath who deliberately infects children.)
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Hard for the world to be the place it often is without shitty people. If more of them would make even a tiny attempt to not be that way it might possibly change. But then I remember my sister and find it hard to believe that more people aren’t (more) shitty more often. (Every family usually has one in every generation or two. There are of course families that pride themselves in being all shitty, all the time, making up for those who feel shitty goes too far.)
Ivan X
@Emma from Miami: thank you for this.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Brachiator:
Boston movies:
Ted
The Last Hurrah
14 Back
Ruckus
@laura:
Many men were raised in a manor that builds the exact person you describe. We start out with no preconceived notions or ideas. We see things around us, we read, we see that not everything is positive for everyone. We are told that the world is competitive, and it is very often set up that way. We learn crap if crap is all we see and hear. It can take generations for change because in the past we rarely saw. heard a lot very far away from us. We now live in a world where people that 100 yrs ago would have zero power see what the wider world is like, where women get far more opportunity, when 100 yrs ago they got almost none. The world has changed rather dramatically in my 7 decades, even if isn’t anywhere near what it should be. In my opinion conservatives most negative trait is their rather strong concept that the world should revert to what it was 200 yrs ago, at a minimum, possibly far more, because otherwise they will be shown to be the shitheads they really are.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Ha! Ain’t that the truth. I do know a few families in which everyone seems to revel in being the worst possible human being.
Anne Laurie
‘Plum’ Wodehouse was, AFAICT, extremely self-protective — not without reason, if you know his biography. He seems to have read the infamous WWII ‘pro-Hitler’ broadcasts over the radio because it was easier to read them than to resist his German captors. I don’t think he thought beyond surviving the immediate threats to his personal safety/comfort. He had an enormous circle of fans & supporters, but doesn’t seem to have let many beings (maybe just his wife, and their beloved pekinese dogs) into his heart.
Which is, well… not uncommon, with great humorists (not least great British humorists). If you build a psychological shell as strong as a hermit crab’s, you might be protected, but there will not be much room for companionship.
Anne Laurie
@eversor: Yah — Spousal Unit & I got hooked on anime / manga watching Card Captor Sakura, and we’ve mostly adventured along the shojo (female-oriented) axis over the last 25 years, rather than the shonen (male) content. Which is why we both enjoyed Outlaw Star, but still haven’t watched past the first episode of Cowboy Bebop. Or for that matter, Clamp’s X/1999, even though we really enjoy the rest of the collective’s output.
(And the S.U. is much more invested in the genre than I am… not only has he accumulated some 1500 & counting manga, he’s been studying conversational Japanese. Done well enough to pass the first-level official Japanese proficiency exam, even!)
Chris
@Subsole:
The reason I have so little patience for these people is that South Park is currently on the cusp of its twenty-fifth season, and any one of its episodes has more “political incorrectness” crammed into it than all of Monty Python’s work put together.
It’s far from clear that this is a good thing, but yes, you could totally make Blazing Saddles today, and far more besides. Getting away with humor that offends people is easier today than it ever has been. If you can’t make anything the audience likes anymore, that’s not because you’re being censored. It’s because you’re bad at your job.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Something that was actually pointed out to me by another Balloon Juice commenter, years and years ago:
One of the few redeeming things about Firefly‘s worldbuilding is that on the TV show, it’s never really explained what the Alliance is doing in the outer worlds that’s so horrible and oppressive. The war is usually described in the vaguest possible terms, and apart from the Hands of Blue, the impression you get from the Alliance personnel you actually see is decidedly mixed. You see Alliance types who are corrupt, or incompetent, or indifferent, but you also see Alliance types trying to look out for spacers in trouble, or bringing medicine to a community in need. Meanwhile, life on the outer planets is horrible – and clearly has been that way since long before the Alliance moved in – and it’s obvious that the petty tyrants the heroes keep running into, like Magistrate Higgins, Rance Burgess, Atherton Wing, or even Patience, Badger, and Niska, are the ones who would have been leading and/or financing the Independent cause. They’re what the local elites look like, and they’re the ones who’d have the most to lose from a bigger fish like the Alliance moving into their pond.
In other words, it’s far from clear that the Alliance winning the war was in fact a bad thing. The universe as portrayed is just gray enough that it’s not hard to imagine that, Mal’s libertarian ideology to the contrary, the outer planets aren’t really doing any worse under the Alliance and might even be doing better.
… Of course, the key word in all that was “on the TV show.” Once the movie shows up, all of that gets simplified into “good freedom fighters versus evil empire,” and the Alliance gets saddled with such a comically awful war crime that it’s basically impossible to see things any other way.
Bupalos
Everytime I catch myself using the term “politically correct” I straight up marvel at the simple-but-effective political engineering of the right.
Miss Bianca
I wish I had known this discussion was going on last night! I read that article and the Vice article with all the horrified gusto that one usually reserves for the downfall of one’s personal or professional enemies. And yet…I still love the work, despite Whedon’s being revealed as a massive creep. And yeah, I can see the flaws in it, but I still love it. Don’t know what i’m going to do with that. Probably try to find that article that Mnemosyne (sigh – miss her!) pointed us to a while back, about how to still appreciate problematic art (and artists).
Since it seems like most of my favorite artists were assholes in one form or another…why should this one be different?
Uncle Cosmo
@StringOnAStick: IOW it’s a winners-take-all** business – like more and more of late-stage capitalism.
** Actually more “top-dogs-take-nearly-all” as the underdogs scramble for the remaining crumbs. The archetypes are acting and pro sports – a few get filthy rich, the rest squander their youth and abilities hoping for that one big break to catapult them into the empyrean…
Just One More Canuck
@Miss Bianca: Is anyone in touch with Mnem? I hope she’s just enjoying life offline
Uncle Cosmo
If you want to see a Far Wrong effort to weaponize that idea for its own end, look up Intellectuals by Paul Johnson (still alive at age 94 apparently). The author labors mightily to persuade his readers that any significant thinker to the left of Loyola** was an utter shit – which is arguable, if a good ways over the top – and for that reason that thinker’s ideas can and should be rejected without a second glance – which is utter bullshit.
Johnson is an eminently readable but reactionary Anglo-
Fascist-Catholic. Anything he ever wrote should be taken with a Wieliczka-salt-mine-cathedral-sized grain of salt, the more so the closer the period of his subject approaches (what was then) present-day.** The saint, not the bevy of Jesuit colleges in the US named after him.