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As a (former) Joss Whedon fanboy this has been pretty rough to hear, and I feel bad that so many cast members have had to keep this a secret for so long.
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Feb 13, 2021 17:56
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I watched the first episode of Firefly and really liked it, everyone else I saw it with thought it was total dogshit, and (unrelatedly lol) I didn't get around to trying to watch it again until years later. Everyone else was right
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Feb 13, 2021 18:03
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Someone on a podcast long ago said Serenity was one of the best sci fi movies ever and Firefly was like if Star Wars was all about Han Solo so I checked it out and it felt more like the A-Team in space so I was saved from becoming a fan of an abuser thank god.
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Feb 13, 2021 18:28
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I think the idea behind Firefly was "every character is Han Solo" but the most devastating takedown I saw of it (though I was a fan myself) was "every character is Chandler from Friends"
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Feb 13, 2021 18:31
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Are you saying that fantasizing about getting your rear end kicked by smoking hot babes doesn't make you a feminist
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Feb 13, 2021 18:45
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There's a lot of creators who got mistaken for progressive just because they have fetishes slightly different from the boomer norms.
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Feb 13, 2021 19:01
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CelticPredator posted:I guess you haven’t been to a comic con in the last decade. You can hurl a dart in any direction and stick someone wearing a Jayne hat. I haven’t! But that still fits with my point - Firefly and nearly every other Whedon property that wasn’t already by Disney captures the adoration of nerds without translating it into box office success, like Snakes on a Plane.
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Feb 13, 2021 19:52
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Joss Wheden only knows how to write one character. And every character in every one of his shows/films is this one character.
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Feb 13, 2021 20:15
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Oasx posted:As a (former) Joss Whedon fanboy this has been pretty rough to hear, and I feel bad that so many cast members have had to keep this a secret for so long. IIRC Charisma Carpenter has been openly telling the story about Whedon's verbal abuse, firing her for getting pregnant, and deliberately bringing her back on Angel just to kill her off after explicitly promising that he wouldn't do that (because otherwise she wouldn't have agreed) for at least 5 years now? Maybe longer. I am not exactly a close follower of industry whisper network stuff and I remember hearing about it back when Whedon got tapped to do Age of Ultron. What's lovely is that no one else really cared to back her up publicly until now. It was all just chalked up to sour grapes of an aging TV actress against a genius writer/director/producer who could do no wrong. RBA Starblade posted:I watched the first episode of Firefly and really liked it, everyone else I saw it with thought it was total dogshit, and (unrelatedly lol) I didn't get around to trying to watch it again until years later. Even back in high school Firefly struck me as rubbish and I could never understand the appeal of it, especially given how many other scifiy series there are that do all the same tropes & plots but better and with something to actually say.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:12
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Hmm, one of these doesn't seem to belong?
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Feb 13, 2021 21:32
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Mat Cauthon posted:Even back in high school Firefly struck me as rubbish and I could never understand the appeal of it, especially given how many other scifiy series there are that do all the same tropes & plots but better and with something to actually say. I've been interested in the different categories of nerds for a while now. I've always loved horror, action, pro wrestling, etc. But I completely skipped things like Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith and their stuff has always seemed lame to me. I'm sure there's some sort of discussion or analysis here. Horror nerds vs theater nerds? The different subcultures are super interesting. It's all kinda moot now maybe because all of this stuff has been crawling into the mainstream.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:38
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Mat Cauthon posted:IIRC Charisma Carpenter has been openly telling the story about Whedon's verbal abuse, firing her for getting pregnant, and deliberately bringing her back on Angel just to kill her off after explicitly promising that he wouldn't do that (because otherwise she wouldn't have agreed) for at least 5 years now? Maybe longer. I am not exactly a close follower of industry whisper network stuff and I remember hearing about it back when Whedon got tapped to do Age of Ultron. I don't want it to sound like i'm defending him now that I know what he has done. But as far as I remember her complaint was more along the line of her not having much of a role in the last season, and now she is a lot more explicit about what he did. The only other cast complaint that I heard was Nicholas Brendon complaining that Xander couldn't be buff.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:57
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I remember reading the stuff that Carpenter put out about getting fired for getting pregnant and weird nerds defending Whedon with the usual “have you never had a boss before” and “I’d be upset too if someone ruined my story plans” comments.
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Feb 13, 2021 22:14
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It's such a terrible excuse/argument. Anyone who watched Angel knows that Cordelia's disappearance from the show is one of the worst, most contrived things in it so Whedon sabotaged his own show just to punish her. People getting pregnant or getting sick is just a fact of life. A non psycho would have leant into the writing challenge and came up with a workaround. It's a fantasy show, you can do anything, have Cordelia turn into a loving cat for a season and have Carpenter do voice over until she's ready to return. It's easy.
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Feb 13, 2021 22:39
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Karloff posted:It's such a terrible excuse/argument. Anyone who watched Angel knows that Cordelia's disappearance from the show is one of the worst, most contrived things in it so Whedon sabotaged his own show just to punish her. People getting pregnant or getting sick is just a fact of life. A non psycho would have leant into the writing challenge and came up with a workaround. It's a fantasy show, you can do anything, have Cordelia turn into a loving cat for a season and have Carpenter do voice over until she's ready to return. It's easy. Or, you know, Angel and Buffy were both dark fantasy/horror/comedy series. Just write the loving pregnancies (Amber Bensen ate poo poo from Joss for reproducing as well) into the shows as demon/monster/angel/magic pregnancies or something. Leave aside the crappy way the actresses were treated for a second, how creatively bankrupt are you as a writer that you wouldn't immediately think of doing thar, given the shows' natures?
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Feb 13, 2021 22:58
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I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a case of cutting of your nose to spite your face. Sure, he could have done something interesting and cool with their pregnancies, or he could punish them.
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Feb 13, 2021 23:01
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Everyone posted:Or, you know, Angel and Buffy were both dark fantasy/horror/comedy series. Just write the loving pregnancies (Amber Bensen ate poo poo from Joss for reproducing as well) into the shows as demon/monster/angel/magic pregnancies or something. Leave aside the crappy way the actresses were treated for a second, how creatively bankrupt are you as a writer that you wouldn't immediately think of doing thar, given the shows' natures? To be "fair", Angel already had an episode in the first season where Carpenter's character got knocked up by a demon PUA. Which seems pretty gross in hindsight. "Seems pretty gross in hindsight" should be the inscription on Whedon's tombstone.
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Feb 13, 2021 23:19
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Oasx posted:I don't want it to sound like i'm defending him now that I know what he has done. She was talking about it as openly as she could without getting blacklisted even a decade ago. The relevant bits start at about 6:30 and go on for a few minutes in this video but the whole thing is worth watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_igTbXKPck Like I get what you're saying but there's no reason to give Whedon benefit of the doubt at this point. Violator posted:I've been interested in the different categories of nerds for a while now. I've always loved horror, action, pro wrestling, etc. But I completely skipped things like Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith and their stuff has always seemed lame to me. I'm sure there's some sort of discussion or analysis here. Horror nerds vs theater nerds? The different subcultures are super interesting. It's all kinda moot now maybe because all of this stuff has been crawling into the mainstream. Yeah I think there's some interesting analysis to be done there but honestly all of "nerd" culture has been collapsed into being even more overtly about consumerism than it was back in the day, so there's not really a distinction between various lanes anymore. At least as far as movies and TV shows go anyway, I'm sure if you asked the people in the MilScifi or HardScifi threads they'd have a different opinion about how people align with various flavors when it comes to literature. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 23:19
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Everyone posted:Or, you know, Angel and Buffy were both dark fantasy/horror/comedy series. Just write the loving pregnancies (Amber Bensen ate poo poo from Joss for reproducing as well) into the shows as demon/monster/angel/magic pregnancies or something. Leave aside the crappy way the actresses were treated for a second, how creatively bankrupt are you as a writer that you wouldn't immediately think of doing thar, given the shows' natures? Am I misremembering, or didn't this happen? Isn't that how we got Pete Campbell's character? e: nevermind, Connor was the father of Cordelia's baby, not her baby itself. Klungar fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 23:28
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Oasx posted:The only other cast complaint that I heard was Nicholas Brendon complaining that Xander couldn't be buff.
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Feb 13, 2021 23:46
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I first heard about Carpenter getting written off for getting pregnant back in...2014? A friend of mine was (I think still is, haven't asked her now that this stuff has come to the forefront) a big fan of Buffy and kept trying to get me to at least give it a chance because it's not as bad as later Whedon stuff. I had seen bits and pieces of the show when I was a kid but I recall my mom not allowing me to watch it so it was just something that happened and as I got older none of my friends were really into it so it sort of passed me by. By the time I was an adult I had seen Firefly and Serenity and Dr. Horrible because a lot of my friends wouldn't shut up about them and I came away not very pleased with any of them. When I heard Whedon was going to be directing The Avengers that was when my enthusiasm for the MCU started to disappear because I had a vision that it would just be lovely quips and no real impactful dialogue with any actual substance, the closest being when Fury talks about Coulson's memorabilia after his death. Basically what happened was I kept ragging on Whedon's poo poo writing with my friends starting in 2011 and around the time AoU came out I was being quite vocal about how all of his works suck and that was when my friend demanded I watch Buffy so that I would at least have some reference. During our conversation I asked how much I should watch and she told me to not bother with the sequel series because she was appalled that Cordelia was written out because the actress dared get pregnant during filming. I went online to find out what that was all about because it sounded horrendous, I found some discussion boards that talked about it but people didn't have "proof" so a lot of the discourse I saw was fans dismissing it as her making stuff up because she was spiteful that her character was written out. Even at that time I figured there was a lot of truth to it because Whedon really did seem like that petty of a person. This is the same man that blames Halle Berry for that famous "toad struck by lightning" line for it going over like a lead balloon and not owning up to the fact that he wrote a terrible loving joke that could not be saved even if Meryl Streep delivered it. gently caress Joss Whedon, gently caress the pretentious, faux-witty bullshit "humour" he has managed to make standard, and gently caress anyone that gives him ANY benefit of a doubt
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Feb 14, 2021 00:20
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Also gently caress anyone who doubted Ray Fisher and/or called him an attention-seeking diva who "should have been more clear" lmao. People like that are such trash.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:40
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teagone posted:Also gently caress anyone who doubted Ray Fisher and/or called him an attention-seeking diva who "should have been more clear" lmao. People like that are such trash.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:58
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Everyone posted:Or, you know, Angel and Buffy were both dark fantasy/horror/comedy series. Just write the loving pregnancies (Amber Bensen ate poo poo from Joss for reproducing as well) into the shows as demon/monster/angel/magic pregnancies or something. Leave aside the crappy way the actresses were treated for a second, how creatively bankrupt are you as a writer that you wouldn't immediately think of doing thar, given the shows' natures? That's just it - it wasn't a lack of creativity or a purely self-destructive act for Whedon because all signs point to him being an actual sadist. His abhorrent treatment of Carpenter's pregnancy certainly reflects his contempt for women and their unique circumstances that 'get' in his way, but It's not all female employees that he has abused. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 02:11
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KVeezy3 posted:That's just it - it wasn't a lack of creativity or a purely self-destructive act for Whedon because all signs point to him being an actual sadist. His abhorrent treatment of Carpenter's pregnancy certainly reflects his contempt for women and their unique circumstances that 'get' in his way, but It's not all female employees that he has abused. One thing that people need to consider about Sarah Michelle Geller backing up her co-stars is that she came out of the soap opera, "All My Children." From 1993 to 1995 Sarah Michelle Gellar played Kendall Hart, Susan Lucci's character's bitchy, bitter daughter-by-rape. Soap opera production schedules are loving insane. Five shows a week. Every week. No reruns. No "haitus." Gellar played a 23 year old woman (with all the sex/adult situations that would entail) in one at the real life age of 16. So, this is a lady who knows and has endured some pretty amazing pressure. Joss Whedon was worse than that.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:11
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People forget's Whedon's dogshit Alien 4 script, which is also extremely misogynistic. Or at least every male character is extremely gross to the female characters.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:50
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It’s a bad and boring script. The only thing it has that really ruled was how random the alien attacks felt. Which was pretty cool. I feel like that should be how you make a monster movie.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:52
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There were lots of people defending his Wonder Woman script saying they didn’t understand the complaints and that it seemed like a funny and upbeat movie.
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Feb 14, 2021 04:07
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Mr. Apollo posted:There were lots of people defending his Wonder Woman script saying they didn’t understand the complaints and that it seemed like a funny and upbeat movie. My favourite defences were the 'hey, it's just a first draft' variants.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:19
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My “favorite” parts of Whedon’s WW script were Steve Trevor being a giant rear end in a top hat who’s able to verbally take Diana down a peg, and Diana doing a sexy dance in front of a couple thugs. How empowering!
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Feb 14, 2021 05:34
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The other thing is like people use the example of “it’s fantasy they could’ve done anything!” Which is true but also in a way going way past the point anyway. In countries with decent industrial relation laws you can’t just fire someone because they are pregnant. You find them a role even if it means doing something else in the business. My wife is a paramedic in Australia and when she was pregnant they trained her up on how to teach people first aid and also how to do rosters and recruitment for her time while pregnant and when she got back to work and was breastfeeding. So like yeah he could have written some crazy pregnancy story and that’s not a bad option but like even if it was a legal drama they could’ve just like, had heaps of scenes shot at her desk or next to a lot plant, just deal with it you creep joss
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Feb 14, 2021 05:40
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They found an inventive way to write around an actress's pregnancy on DS9 and that show was produced by Spermin' Rick Berman.
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Feb 14, 2021 06:27
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Brooklyn 99 managed a pregnant lead with blocking and shot selection. They also had a scene where she wore a “fake” belly. It’s not that big a deal to work around. They can make Tom Cruise look over 5”4.
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Feb 14, 2021 06:45
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Detective No. 27 posted:They found an inventive way to write around an actress's pregnancy on DS9 and that show was produced by Spermin' Rick Berman. well why not posted:Brooklyn 99 managed a pregnant lead with blocking and shot selection. They also had a scene where she wore a “fake” belly. It’s not that big a deal to work around. They can make Tom Cruise look over 5”4.
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Feb 14, 2021 06:52
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Sitcoms have been shooting around pregnancies for decades (I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus was pregnant twice during Seinfeld's run?) so it's absolutely spite to write her out because of it. Also, it's kind of gross that the storyline was, if I remember correctly, she gets pregnant with a demon child or something and ends up in a coma. Literally making the text "this kid ruined your life and got you kicked off the show".
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Feb 14, 2021 06:53
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Quick note, I am not defending Rick Berman. He was also a monster sex pest.
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Feb 14, 2021 06:56
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What is it with Ricks?
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Feb 14, 2021 09:32
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LesterGroans posted:Sitcoms have been shooting around pregnancies for decades (I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus was pregnant twice during Seinfeld's run?) so it's absolutely spite to write her out because of it. Also, it's kind of gross that the storyline was, if I remember correctly, she gets pregnant with a demon child or something and ends up in a coma. Literally making the text "this kid ruined your life and got you kicked off the show". Wow, I'd heard Seinfeld got kinda surreal in its later seasons but that's nuts.
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Feb 14, 2021 09:33
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This makes me remember the kind of really dark fact that, across Katy Segal's pregnancies while she was on Married with Children, the one time they decided not to write around it and instead embraced that she was pregnant to put a kid into the show... That was the one where she had a miscarriage For those curious, though she was all for seeing through the storyline despite the tragedy (as in, actually having a kid in the show), the creators just did a Dallas riff and undid that entire season of events.
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Feb 14, 2021 09:40
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Frasier had a joke about Daphne's actor's pregnancy, iirc.
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Feb 14, 2021 09:43
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