Typical Obsessive Post #????

I just discovered recently that MyMusic has its own Wiki site, where one can learn about everything MyMusic (or edit it if something's wrong or extremely badly worded, as I've been doing). And it just fills me with glee because there's a random button that takes you to any random page on the site where it talks about some aspect of MyMusic or the fandom, and it just makes me laugh because it just sounds so ridiculous to anyone who's not in on it. I mean, on what other wiki page are you going to find this entry?

Honestly. If you're a fan of MyMusic check it out, because you will discover things about it that you did not know (people ship Metal and Idol?!) and if you're not a fan of MyMusic you should check it out too, if only to entertain me with your reaction to the ridiculousness of it all. Just press the random button and see what happens.

Here, I'll even help you out. :)

http://mymusic.wikia.com/wiki/MyMusic_Wiki

P.S Flowcharts and Intern 2 are like my number one pairing for life. They just understand each other. :')
http://youtu.be/G1hGAseSQXM?t=6m24s

Spike's Character Study: Part 3

I know. I'm sorry. Not really.

The thing is that Spike just has so many layers to him that it's hard to cover it all in one post. The first one was mostly focused around the fact that Spike is the only character on the show who is so perceptive and intuitive and desperately helpless when it comes to love. Which is something interesting to contemplate, since he doesn't even have a soul (I explored this in more detail in a speculative document on my laptop, and if I ever start posting those I will post that one - 'cause, y'know, we need more Spike posts on this blog). And then the second one was focused on the fact that in spite of this, it is foolish to forget that he is still evil in nature, and particularly twisted, even for vampires. So now I'm going to talk about this little interesting tidbit, which is the fact that Spike is a huge loser and that's at least partly why we're sympathetic to him.

Think about it.

Joss Whedon made Buffy the Vampire Slayer originally to tell stories about the horror that is high school (couldn't agree more, Joss). Everyone who really connects with the show is someone who... wasn't top dog at high school. Hence the main characters are Xander, the quirky loser who just isn't cool enough to ever make it higher in the heirarchy no matter what he does, Willow, the girl who cares more about learning and school than she ever will about clothes or dating, who is shy and uncertain, and Buffy, who is attractive and trendy and all-around pleasant, but is always around when something unpleasant or weird happens, spouting about more unpleasant or weird stuff, and has practically no social life outside of high school (these descriptions are all based on the high school years of the show, mostly season 1 - obviously the characters developed majorly since then).

My point is that the show is told from the perspective of people who are constantly outcasted from...... I'm just going to go ahead and say it, "normal" people. You know what I mean. That's why Buffy's a geek show. Ya think a Cordelia is going to connect to a story told from this perspective?

So when Spike gets introduced into the mixture, he starts off as something that the Scoobies are meant to overcome. See, Spike was supposed to be a disposable villain - you know, give Buffy hell for a string of episodes and then get killed off. So, because the plan was for him to be gotten rid of, they started with him being built up as the coolest cool that ever cooled. Symbolically, I think he was basically supposed to be that bullying kid who leads the rest of the people who are too afraid of him to refuse. You know, that guy? But then he'd get killed off - the struggle would symbolically be overcome - and all would be fine. So he begins his first episode by getting out of a car with kick-ass guitar grinding in the background, smoking a cigarette, and then goes on to kill The Anointed One, thus making him the new leader. At the time, there was no problem with making him this powerful, or this awesome.

But then the writers discovered that they liked the character. Wanted to keep him on.

Which meant that they had to pull Spike in a radically different direction. Because the only way to justify keeping a character on this show is to take him down a peg or six. Otherwise it kind of defeats the point. Even if no one was supposed to like Spike, you can't just have him sauntering around the show like he owns the place like he was in the first few episodes, because then you can't justify not killing him.

So then, blow by blow, they started to beat Spike down.

First he got injured and had to have the wheelchair. Then Drusilla and Angelus started getting all touchy-feely pretty much right in front of his eyes. So he escapes the slaughter by teaming up with the Slayer, who he loathes, knocking out his girlfriend and escaping to South America. Humiliating.

And then the next time we see him, it is literally a parody of his entrance in the first episode. His first entrance: car smashes into the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign, you've got guitar grinding in the background, he steps out of the car, and the camera pans up from his dark boots to his leather jacket to his vamp face. "Home sweet home," he says sardonically.

Lover's Walk, a car smashes into the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign, guitar kinda drones in the background, car door opens, bottles smash to the ground, soon followed by Spike falling bodily out of his own car. No vamp face this time. And Spike lies on the ground, looks up. "Home sweet home," he slurs drunkenly, sorta laughing like drunks do, and then collapses back onto the ground.

It was written deliberately so that it would be a parody of his first entrance. And that whole episode was just awesome and hilarious, and is definitely one of my favourites ever, but it was also part of the process of beating Spike down - what kind of badass vampire mopes around because his girlfriend broke up with him?

And then, when he returns to Sunnydale, he's with Harmony. That in itself is still bringing Spike down a peg. And then the chip gets put in his head, and he's so pathetic that he ends up asking Harmony for help and gets refused, so pathetic he goes to the Slayer for help.

And from then on out, this is when it really began to happen. This is when Spike officially became the biggest loser there. Because, the thing is, Buffy was written for the losers. Xander and Willow and Buffy represent the outcasts and the losers. But then they started writing it so that Spike couldn't be accepted ANYWHERE. He was cast out by the outcasts. He's below them on the hierarchy, which is not something that we were totally aware existed before now.

Then this whole "We're above Spike" thing became a sort of trend. It started in flashbacks. In the utterly brilliant episode "Fool for Love", it showed in a flashback that when he became a vampire he was constantly ragged on by Angelus for being too careless, and really was only tolerated at all because Angelus and Darla found Drusilla useful, and Spike was Drusilla's...... what? Mate? Kinda like that.

In the parallel episode of Angel (what's awesome about Buffy and Angel is that all their episodes run parallel, so there are a few storylines that are really only complete once you've seen both series), there were flashbacks of Angelus and Darla talking. In one of them, Darla goes "While Spike - SPIKE! - was out KILLING A SLAYER, you were saving people?!" The utter contempt in Darla's voice when she says Spike's name along with the incredulity to the fact that Spike killed a Slayer kinda makes that sentence delicious. But apparently, he's always been contemptible to everyone around him, even in his glory days with Darla, Angelus and Drusilla.

And they just kept writing it that way. In season five it got worse for him, if anything. I mean, the fact that he's below them in the hierarchy was more or less stated outright in "Fool for Love". "You're beneath me," says Buffy to Spike, who has just been pushed to the ground by her, and then tosses his money at him with disgust. Cause it's one thing if you're not accepted into the Scooby Gang and you don't want to be. He hated them in season four, so while he was still obviously below them in the hierarchy, he really didn't seem to care. But then in season five he fell in love with Buffy, and he started trying to be recognized as a not-so-bad-guy, which got him precisely nowhere. If anything, he was cast out even more, what with the un-inviting left and right, and the amount of disgust towards him increased dramatically among the Scoobies.

So, though I don't think it was quite their intention, they started writing Spike as the character who gets cast out by the outcasts. He's too much of a loser for what is more or less Sunnydale High's loser club.

That's sad.

But it's also partly what makes us so sympathetic to him. Because A) We can see the effort he puts in to being accepted, B) he has feelings for the leader of this group, and C) it is pretty darn clear that he's horribly underappreciated by everyone. I'm not saying we shouldn't be cautious around Spike, because one should be, but I am saying that when he genuinely does good, mostly he gets complained at and rejected, never mind whether or not he may have just saved their lives.

And it's at least partly because of this little dynamic that makes people love Spike. It's in our blood to root for the underdog, and Spike is the underdog. The Scoobies are supposed to be, and they still are, but at the moment Spike is kind of a level below them, making him a bigger underdog than the Scoobies. So, added to the fact that he's the funniest character on the show, followed closely by Xander (seriously, if you search up "Fun Buffyverse Moments", about seventy percent of them are Spike) OF COURSE we're going to root for the guy.

And, maybe this is just my personal preference, but if you are stuck with the idea that Spike is a cold-blooded murderer and nothing more, you're kinda missing the point. No, you're really missing the point. Spike is a fantastic character because of the amount of layers he has. Yes, he's a killer, but he's also a lover, and a warrior, and an outcast, and sometimes, even a friend. He can be quite insightful about other people and why they do the things they do. Not everything he says or does is completely evil. That doesn't erase the fact that he's definitely a killer, but it'd be stupid to say that that's all he is.

Spike is an incredibly well done character, for this reason. You don't want to like him. But you end up liking him in spite of yourself. He's a bad guy, which is made plain, but you like him anyway. That's a well done character for you.

Have I mentioned that Spike is by far the most interesting character on the show?

P.S This doesn't have that much to do with this part of Spike's character study (except it kinda does..... bear with me here), but does anyone remember in my first character study of Spike, when I mentioned that when Spike first came to Sunnydale, he was with Drusilla, and it was pretty clear that he was kinda taking advantage of her?

I was wrong about that. He wasn't taking advantage of her.

She was taking advantage of him.

Yes, our Drusilla, the crazy one, the one who talks about naming all the stars (while staring at the ceiling in the middle of daytime) and talks to her toy dolls and says cryptic things like "Little toy soldiers played with your head" or whatever. That one. She was taking advantage of him.

Which is both really sad and really really funny once you realize it.

Poor Spike. What a loser.

This is why we love him.

Favourite Thing of the Week #6

The Vitamin String Quartet.

Usually I wouldn't be able to stand stuff like this for more than two minutes, but the thing is that the Vitamin String Quartet's sort of mission statement is about "applying rock n' roll attitude to classical technique".

Which means that they are a string quartet who do covers of rock and pop songs. Like Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. And Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses (THAT one is awesome). And Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. The one that got me into them was their cover of Thrift Shop by Macklemore. Can't stand the actual song, got addicted to the Vitamin String Quartet version.

My current favourite at the moment is their cover of Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Greenday. I didn't have a lot of confidence that they could pull that off without an electric guitar, but it's actually quite pretty.

Also their version of I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! At the Disco is pretty amazing as well.

My thing is that I've been searching for good homework music for forever. The problem is that if I listen to boring music (like regular classical music) it's practically the same as not listening to music at all for me, but if I listen to my regular music I end up singing along and not focusing.

And Vitamin String Quartet solves that problem for me because it's close enough to classical music that I can focus and close enough to music that I actually enjoy for me to... well, enjoy it. So I spent one evening just finding every cover Vitamin String Quartet has ever done that interested me and now I have an hour's worth of it on my iTunes. I'm so prepared for homework now. Boo yah. Problem solved AND awesomeness discovered.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a music geek? I get the feeling other people don't find VSQ as awesome as I do.

Oh well. Music geeks for the win.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Review Thingy

I know what you're thinking and no I'm not kidding. I am dead serious.

I saw the title and immediately thought "OH MY GOD I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE".

So tonight I did.

Honestly, as far as what I expected..... I expected more of it.

See, from the trailer it was very obvious that this movie took itself super seriously, which is exactly why I was so eager to see it. It's bound to be hilarious, right? Such a stupid concept combined with such a dead serious tone is just a recipe for laughs, I think we know that by now. And there were a few times where it actually was really freakin' funny. Like, the part where they're fighting in the middle of a horse stampede (and somehow no one's getting trampled or anything like that) and then the vampire grabs a running horse by the legs, swings around and flings it at Abraham Lincoln. I will admit, I laughed for five straight minutes at that, it was just the funniest thing. And then Abraham Lincoln's silver dipped ax also conveniently converts into a gun if you pull off the blade. Seems legit, right? I laughed so hard. Not to mention all the fight scenes where for some reasons the lights turn off when the fight happens and turn back on the minute it's over, with the random guitar riffs in the background. You better believe I laughed.

The problem is that there just wasn't enough of that stuff for me to enjoy it as much as I'd anticipated. I mean, there aren't many times where you're going to see me dissing a movie because it wasn't stupid enough, but seriously, this movie wasn't stupid enough. The thing is, if you're doing a movie about Abraham Lincoln fighting slavery not because of, y'know, equal rights and abuse and all that stuff, but because all the Confederate slave owners were vampires, you need to go all out with it, okay? Don't be stopping short at, well, at anything. We need more vampires flinging horses around. I mean, how about instead of that cliche fighting on top of a moving train, why don't we just have a vampire throw the train at someone? THAT would have been great.

Now, my reading of the (utterly FANTASTIC) novel Dracula, along with my unhealthy obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer kinda means that I have a healthy library of knowledge about the mythology of vampires, okay? For instance, fun fact, the original vampires were probably just people with rabies or similar diseases, because rabies would A) make people bite other people, B) Make them sensitive to sunlight, and C) Make them sensitive to garlic. Wasn't that fact fun?

And this was completely not the point of the movie at all, but it irritated me because they got the mythology of the vampire TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY WRONG.

Silver does not hold off a vampire. Silver will hold off a werewolf, not a vampire. Therefore, a silver dipped ax (that converts into a rifle) will not be any more effective than an ordinary ax (that converts into a rifle). Silver bullets will kill a werewolf, not a vampire. I mean, you've got your holy water, your crosses, your garlic. Why not dip your ax in holy water? Whatever.

Also, just repeatedly chopping an ax into a vampire, as bizarre as it seems, will not kill it. The ONLY way to kill a vampire is to get them in the heart with a wooden stake, get them in sunlight long enough to burn them to death (the vampires in this movie had no problem with sunlight whatsoever though so whoops) and cut off their heads. That's it. Stop making stuff up, for god's sakes, the mythology of the vampire is already kinda out there, and there's no need to tamper with it.

Also... vampires can be good.

Now that's been a running theme in recent vampire mythology, but the thing is, even in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whose good vampire character was extremely bland and boring (at least on the original show.... his spin-off kinda made him a much easier character to watch) at least it stayed true to the original mythology, because the thing is that vampires lose their souls. They lose what makes them human. That's what makes them demons. DUH DOY. They have the skills and memories of the original person, but lose their soul, which as far as I can tell, entails their conscience and anything that makes them willing to do good, or even willing to avoid badness. Literally all vampires are inherently evil, okay?

So how is it that this vampire character in this movie can just make a snap decision to be good and hate his kind after he was turned? And why aren't other vampires the same way? And the thing is, he still kills people though. I mean, rapists and similar assholes, but he's still killing people. Apparently, since Abraham Lincoln's like his bestie and never makes a move to kill him ever, he's perfectly fine with that.

But whatever. One should probably not be questioning the logic of a movie such as this one.

The real problem with this movie is that I was looking forward to something like Rocky Horror Picture Show and ended up getting Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. If you don't know those movie references you need to start watching some movies.

Took itself way too seriously. That was the problem. And that was part of the reason the funny parts were funny, but it just tried way too hard.

Plus, it wasn't even THAT good of a story.

I feel sad because I was really expecting to like it more.

Oh well.

2.5/5 stars.

P.S This is the second movie I've seen where the guy who plays Wash on Firefly plays a racist asshat. In this movie he's a politician trying to do away with the abolition act, and also in the movie 42 (which is a really good movie that I seriously recommend you watch - it's about Jackie Robinson, who was the first black major league baseball player) he plays a baseball player who continually shouts the N word at the black player.

I'm not sure what exactly this says about the actor, it's just an observation.

Guess What? I Gots Meself a Life!

Not really though.

I'm just saying that my blog posts are going to be a lot more infrequent because ME AND JACEY ARE FINALLY PUTTING A FILM PROJECT INTO ACTION!!!!!!! :D

So, due to the nature of the project (a spoofy Hunger Games, turned into a musical by using High School Musical songs [It shouldn't work as well as it does]) I'm going to be very occupied with other things. Jacey's writing the scripts, but I'm arranging all the music, which is effortful. One day a week we're going to be working on it, alternating between recording the music for the scenes one week and filming the scenes the next. So between arranging, recording, filming and holy freaking cow the editing, I'm going to be busy.

Also, I guess homework and martial arts and all that jazz. And riding my bike every day. Well, as soon as I have a functioning iPod that'll be happening again, anyways.

Hey, want a sneak preview?

That's kinda too bad. We're not starting the thing from scratch, but what we did last year is kinda useless since it's just us two now. (We figured that it was more of a chore for our other friends when we got them involved, so it was better only to involve people who are passionate about the project).

You'd think that it would be harder with only two people playing every character and doing all the filming and everything, but it's really not! Actually, I legitimately think we're MORE productive when it's only us two. Last week we managed to film three scenes with a musical number each, throughout which I had four costume changes and Jacey had two, all in less than three hours. (And keep in mind that we had to do every scene and every musical number at least twice due to the costume changes.) I am damn proud of us.

But anyways, if you want a gist of what it looks like, I'll show you the original with our friend Alexis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZw0Or7mQuI

I'm actually proud of that scene, even if we're not going to end up using it. That was my first time I really utilized the transitions in order to adjust the mood of a scene. Also the first time I tinkered with lighting to adjust the mood.

Perhaps I'm just an artsy fartsy brat, but I legitimately think I'm growing as a filmmaker. Which makes me very happy. :)

Anywho, the point is, I'm going to be busy, and I know you all wait on the edge of your seat to read my stupid opinions, but odds are, they're going to be a lot more infrequent. Sorry. Do check back once in a while, because I haven't stopped writing them completely, it's just going to be more infrequent.

Ta ta for now.

Narrow-Mindedness vs. Stupidity

Sometimes I'm not the nicest person around. There are some people in a few of my classes I can be a real know-it-all b*tch to. The thing, and I'm always telling my friends this, I simply can't stand stupid people.

Except I realized today that that actually wasn't true.

I've got nothing against people who may be kind and fun and a good person, but who may not be the brightest person around. While most of my friends can be deemed quite intelligent in one form or another, I have had less close friends who may not be the smartest people around, but were fun to talk to and nice and kind and not a bad person to be friends with. And I've got nothing against those people.

No, what I realized today was that it's not that I can't stand stupid people.

It's that I can't stand narrow-minded people.

Huge difference.

Stupid people, for the purposes of this post, are people who maybe don't think about what they say before they say it, people who don't know when they're doing anything wrong, no matter how often they do it, people who maybe don't do as well in school. None of these kinds of traits exclude actually being a nice and fun person, so for that I have nothing against them.

Narrow-minded people, on the other hand, are people who will never ever consider appreciating something that they hadn't been appreciating beforehand, people who dismiss what someone suggests as dumb before they even really learn about it, people who never try new things, either just to check it out, or for work, or whatever. These are the kinds of people that I simply cannot stand.

There's a kid in my English class. And he's an idiot. And that wouldn't bother me too much if he were a nice, well-meaning idiot. It might get irritating but I would endure. But the thing is that he is the kind of idiot who is convinced that he knows exactly what he's talking about, who is certain that everything worth doing he has already done, and if anyone disagrees with him they are wrong. Narrow-minded as hell.

Don't get me wrong, he's provided some good laughs. He once complained, "This book is so boring, god! It's like eating a sandwich full of nails!" Then he got up and walked away somewhere, so me and my fellow tablemates didn't have to hold in our laughter.

But the thing is that he complains all the time that the book is boring as hell and we're never going to use this in real life and blah blah blah. Uh, hello? It's English class. Communication is important, and believe it or not, so are the themes present in To Kill a Mockingbird.

"But I don't judge people by the colour of their skin!"

Well, what if someone you know does? What do you do then? Besides, believe it or not, that's not the only thing to be learned from To Kill a Mockingbird. Shocking, I know.

Oh, and you say the book is boring? Well, that's very interesting, seeing as you've never read an entire paragraph of the damned thing. God, at least give it a chance.

Narrow-minded people. That's the thing. It's all starting to make sense to me. People who dismiss what I like as stupid just make me so mad. Hence my fairly consistent rage at my brother. Narrow-mindedness is my Berserk Button.

I just thought that was interesting to discover about myself, since I'd always attributed my irritation towards stupid people.

Anyways, just to wrap up this post, I think I'll end it with something to make you laugh.

The same kid in my english class who I'm probably going to kill by the end of the semester

once argued with me and the teacher

that Abraham Lincoln was like Hitler.

Thank you, you've been a lovely audience, goodbye.

Your Argument Is Invalid: Joss Whedon, Suckas!

I am a Whedonite. Joss Whedon is my ruler and I will watch anything with his name on it.

Some people question this. 

So I'd just like to explain why Joss Whedon is made of epic. 

My first thought off the top of my head is that his work is.... storytelling. I mean, that's it. Every show he does there is a story, and there are stakes, and it's not always predictable, and it's a story you have to pay attention to and enjoy the adventure with, and I love that. There's not a whole lot of TV like that these days. I'm not gonna lie, even shows that I like that are still currently on TV are not shows I love for the storytelling aspect. I might love them for a different reason, but I admire Whedon's work because it is pure storytelling.

But Megan, what exactly does that mean?

I mean that Whedon knows how to get an audience invested. I mean there's always a plot, a conflict, and it's always interesting in some way, if you're paying attention. People say that TV is mindless, but I don't find that Whedon television is. I mean, I read far too much into anything, but you think about Buffy or Firefly or Angel. There's symbolism (such as, for example, Angel giving Buffy a cross necklace..... and then Buffy wore it when she had to kill him. Or how about the vamp face? There's a reason that Whedon gave his vampires the vamp face, and that is because he wanted to make it clear that they were, in fact, monsters, and not to be sympathized with as people. I don't know about you, but I am for the anti sexy-hot-vampire approach) and you better believe there are important themes, and.... he's just telling a story. I guess I'm saying that all his work that I've seen is just really....... authentic, if that makes sense. It's very sincere. And you've gotta love a TV show like that.

I also love Whedon's sense of humour. I don't even know how to explain it, it's quirky and different and freakin' hilarious. Xander, Spike, Wash, they're some of the most.... ridiculously funny characters ever.

^Xander

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4biN158t5I

^Spike (forgive the consistency, Blogger's being an idiot)

^Wash

Also, have I mentioned that Giles and Mal are the best deadpanners ever?

^Mal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXo03_l84iA

^Giles

I haven't seen a whole lot of television shows that can pull off being so damn funny without dismissing the gravity of whatever situation they happen to find themselves in. Which brings me to my next point:

Joss Whedon understands badassery.

Every character on every single one of his shows is a badass in their own right. Xander, being the only one without special powers of any kind, still fights demons alongside his magical friends. Giles has the protective instinct of a mother bear, and the temper of one too, along with the fact that no one knows everything about everything the way Giles does. Buffy is totally willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good, and has, in fact, done just that a few times. Willow is an amazingly powerful witch, and is also incredibly smart. Mal and Zoe are the definition of badass, Shepherd Book is the strange preacher who isn't afraid to shoot people if he has to, Inara knows that her identity and knowledge can be a weapon, and knows precisely how to wield it, Kaylee, the sweet innocent girl who knows how to fix an engine just by listening to it, Jayne, who's got more heart than he's got smarts, Simon who would literally do anything for his sister, Wash who is definitely comic relief, also is ridiculously intuitive when it comes to ships, and River, who is insanely intuitive and smart when it comes to just about everything. She's also just plain insane, which is cool too. And don't even get me started on Spike. He is badassery personified.

It's just that, even characters like Xander, who a lot of people dismiss as the typical.... "butt-monkey" (look it up on the TV Tropes and Idioms wiki, it's a thing) are still badasses in their own right, while other writers don't tend to go beyond that schtick. Come on, buttmonkeys exist in every sitcom EVER. If we go back to M*A*S*H even, Frank Burns is arguably the buttmonkey. In MyMusic it's clearly Intern 2. In Community it's clearly Britta (they use her name as a synonym for screwing up). On Big Bang Theory, sadly enough, it's Leonard. Point is, every sitcom has one, but do those characters ever really develop beyond that one schtick? Could Frank Burns or Leonard Hofstaedter sustain an episode that revolves solely around them? Xander has. I give you The Zeppo, I give you The Replacement. And not only does he get awesome moments of badassery, as well as awesome moments of hilarity:

http://youtu.be/57M4OhdsAFM?t=7m27s (you can just ignore the rest of the video after the one clip is done. Or not, it's your life).

But, ESPECIALLY in The Replacement, it is so clear that this character is more than just a buttmonkey. He's so three-dimensional, which brings me to my next point:

Joss Whedon makes three-dimensional characters. There is no character on his show that is ever just one thing. I was watching a Youtube video in which two friends sort characters from other fandoms into Hogwarts houses, Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, and they did Buffy, and neither of them could agree because the characters all have so many layers to them. "Joss Whedon probs!" they said, because none of the characters fit into one house. And that's how you know the character is layere. And in my humble opinion, a character is infinitely more interesting when they become.... like an onion ("WE'RE LIKE AN ONION BECAUSE WE HAVE LAYERS!" - yeah, I quoted Shrek, what are you going to do about it?). It's just good writing, and I dare you to argue with me on that.

Joss Whedon was constantly challenging himself, and he always pulled it off. Oh, you like my writing for the dialogue? I'll write an episode with no dialogue in it at all (thus giving us Buffy's "Hush"). You like the humour in my writing? I'll write an episode with no jokes (thus Buffy's devastating "The Body"). And the thing is? These episodes are LEGENDARY among Whedonites. They are not regarded as boring or unsatisfying at all. They are regarded as brilliant, and only someone who misunderstands the show entirely would say otherwise. Joss Whedon is not a one-trick pony, and when he fears he might become one, he stops and finds a way to challenge himself. And you've gotta admire that, especially when he consistently pulls it off.

Joss Whedon calls himself a feminist. The whole idea of Buffy was based on the idea of that blonde in those horror movies that always gets killed in a dark alley finally holding her own, instead of being a helpless bimbo. And I know that Joss's feminist claim has been declared as sort of hokey by some - it's been pointed out that while the fight scenes are good, Joss seems to thrive when Buffy (or whoever) is reduced to crying and feeling hopeless. I, personally, don't see that as anti-feminist, because he's shown male characters in just as much distress. The thing is, and this, I find is generally true of the world, is that when male characters get upset they tend to get needlessly agressive rather than sitting and letting themselves cry, as women tend to. I'm not saying that's true of every male or female - Angel,  Shepherd Book, are male characters who tend to do the latter, while Faith or Zoe are female characters, who tend to resort to the former. But saying that Joss's scenes in which his female characters are distressed are anti-feminist seems ridiculous to me, because being feminist doesn't mean that she can't be feminine. That's part of the whole point, isn't it? She can be feminine and heroic and strong all at the same time. While I will admit that some of Joss's claims of... progressiveness are a little problematic (partly just by the nature of the business he's in), I really don't think feminism is one of them. Anyway, the fact that he has such strong female characters who can hold their own in a fight and take care of themselves is always a plus in my book. Also, it's widely accepted that Buffy pretty much paved the way for strong female heroines. So make what you will of that.

He's loyal to his friends. I mean, if you needed any proof that half of show business is who you know, it's Whedon. First of all, Nathan Fillion has been in every single Whedon thing ever (save for Angel, but Whedon wasn't actually all that involved in Angel in the first place, that was more the brain-child of Buffy co-creator David Greenwalt). Think about it. He played Mal on Firefly, then when that was cancelled he played Caleb on Buffy, he played Captain Hammer on Dr Horrible, and now he's in Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing (which I geek out about on a regular basis, Shakespeare and Whedon together, my dream is coming true).

Not only that, but other characters from Firefly mysteriously started appearing in the Buffyverse after Firefly was cancelled. Like I said, Fillion was in Buffy,  but I also know that Alan Tudyk (Wash), Gina Torres (Zoe), and Adam Baldwin (Jayne) all began playing characters on Angel thereafter as well. (Fun fact: Whedon was uncertain of this course of action, having all these actors introduced into the Buffyverse. He said it seemed incestuous. The others told him not to worry, no one would notice since no one watched Firefly anyways.) Also, I know Eliza Dushku, who played Faith, became the main character on a project of his called Dollhouse, which I have yet to watch.

And if we return to Much Ado About Nothing, every actor who I've seen an interview with has been a character in a different Whedon project. Fillion, the girl who played Fred on Angel, the guy who played Wesley on Buffy/Angel, a dude from Dollhouse (which, again, I have yet to watch). Point is, if you've got a connection with Whedon and he, y'know, likes ya, you're pretty much set for life.

And there was one other thing.... what was it? Oh, right!

He's completely insane.

I really admire insane people. It's always the crazies that turn out to be brilliant somehow. I think that's because you have to be thinking and acting and living outside of the norm in order to discover something remarkable (yes I've spent time contemplating this) but anyways.

In every interview with him ever he just comes off like he's in his own world, which he probably is, and that's cool. So here's a bunch of Whedon quotes from interviews, panels, and other things of that nature just to illustrate my point. It's basically all his quirky sense of humour, but he pulls it off the way I do (meaning it leaves the average watcher going "....wait, is he serious?")

"When Firefly was cancelled, I felt so great.... no, wait, the other thing."

Fan: "Was Spike trying to get the chip out of his head?"
Whedon: "No. You were supposed to think he was, but he wasn't. It's this thing I invented called a 'plot twist'." (The way he says this one is just hysterical, like he's still trying to wrap his mouth around these words that are so new to his vocabulary.)

"The episode Family, with the two of them dancing in the air could be the closest to my heart, I mean, it is, just... y'know, breaks me up enormously. I mean, not in a laughing way. More with the crying."

That's all off the top of my head, but I also know that before Firefly was cancelled, he was working hard on that while simultaneously running season six of Buffy. So he'd told his writers for Buffy that he'd be less involved as the show continued, but they kept needing help to the point where he printed out a little line graph illustrating the deceleration of his involvement in Buffy, laminated it and kept it in his wallet so that he could physically show them how (un)involved he was supposed to be in a week, or two weeks, or whatever. Which is awesome. And also insane.

He also killed Buffy off in season five, and when people (including Spike actor James Marsters) told him that he couldn't kill off the main character, at least not permanently, he told them "I run this show! I can do whatever I want!"

While on that subject, James Marsters likes to tell a story where after Spike reappeared for the fourth season of Buffy he developed a massive fanbase because the character was just so freakin' hilarious. Joss didn't like that Spike had a fanbase, because Spike was a vampire, and vampires (and demons) represent struggles and badness and things to be overcome, so from that perspective it was wrong for him to have a fanbase, especially one as large as the one Spike had. So one day he cornered James Marsters and basically said "I don't care how popular you are, I don't care how big your fanbase is, I will kill you off. You are only here so that we aren't reduced to Scooby Doo, and the moment you outlive your purpose you are getting killed."

Which again, makes him come off as completely insane.

And I've already showed you the excerpts from the scripts. If you needed any more proof that Joss Whedon is kinda crazy, I think this is it.

So, if after this entire post you are still unimpressed with Whedon, you probably don't have a soul. Try to acquire one, and then get back to me. Okay?

Okay.