In general, I love Joss Whedon. Angel is probably in my top five tv series of all time; Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t quite as wonderful, but still superior to 97% every other tV show ever made. The Avengers needed more horses, but it had Gwyneth Paltrow in short shorts so I give it thumbs up. I can’t think of a Whedon-helmed production I’ve ever seriously disliked.
That said, I also hate Joss Whedon. Why? Because he hates happiness. Specifically, he hates happy couples and likeable supporting. Being merrily in love with your wife is a ticket to Hades in the Whedonverse; being beloved by the fans is a guarantee of authorially-mandated suffering. Fred Burkle. Hoban Wash. Shepherd Book. Fred. Phil Coulson. FRED!
:: sobs ::
But that’s just me. What writer or director do you love and hate at the same time, and why?
Why? Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer was perfect, just as it was. A single movie about an unusually-talented high school cheerleader, the mysterious stranger who trains her, the slacker/drifter who loves her, and the Master Vampire whom she has hunted through the ages.
There was no need to screw it up with a freakin’ TV show that went on for so many years that it wasn’t even plausible to have her remain a high school cheerleader.
In my mind, PeeWee Herman is still not finished with his death throes, twenty years later.
Robin Hobb. When I read her books I generally put all of my own writing aside. She moves me so much, and her writing moves me so much that I look at my own writing and know it to be mediocre at best. She is so good it hurts to read.
But man, she likes to grind her protagonist down. My favorite series of books by her is the Assassin trilogy, and I love Fitz up and down and sideways but my god, by the end of the trilogy, he has been through so goddamn much.
Fool of a Vampire! Buffy wasn’t a cheerleader in the series, with the exception of one episode. She also was in highschool for less than half the series.
On the other hand, BtVS the series is in large part responsible for Twilight, so Whedon has much to answer for.
Mercedes Lackey has written a series of novels set in the fantasy world of Valdemar. She’s done a great job of filling out the history and culture of the world, but she has, unfortunately, gone to the Anne McCaffrey Well of Bad Romance Plots a few too many times:
Male lead: She must never find out how much I love her.
Female lead: He must never find out how much I live him.
Angst ensues.
They find out.
Just had to say I agree with you here, Skald. A few of my RL friends have a bad case of Whedon-worship. I have to remind them from time to time that he’s not perfect, which generally brings us to the brink of serious argument. They hold The Avengers up as an example of his greatness; er, the only reason it was so good was because they weren’t his characters, so there were limits as to how much he could screw them up. I swear, he gets some sort of sick enjoyment out of it. It would be disturbing if–Hell yes, it’s disturbing! :eek:
Neil Gaiman, for almost all of the same reasons. I adored Sandman, understand. But the last anthology of his I simply gave up on, because every single short story finished on a nihilistic down note.
I feel that way about Charles Dickens sometimes. In general, I love his books - his writing, characters, plots, etc. But sometimes his style is so unneccessarily wordy that it bothers me a little.
Heinlein. The “Dean” of science fiction writers. Good science, abundant ideas, fascinatingly self-assured. But, damn, that same self-assurance made him an asshole, most regrettably in the incest fantasies of his old age.
He doesn’t qualify as much anymore, but pretend I wrote this in 2008:
I love and hate MC Lars, the nerdcore rapper of “Download This Song”
I love him because his songs are catchy and nerdy and fun. But I hate him because he posts on his Facebook page everyday calling other nerdcore rappers idiots, saying his fans are delusional if they think they can become a nerdcore rapper like him, and how hard it is to be a semi-famous performer when you have to perform semi-famously at least once a week.
He’s since calmed down, but he was an insufferable prick in 2008 and I think it tainted how I feel about all his subsequent albums.
Joss killing off his characters doesn’t bother me. I actually like it, even though most of the characters he has killed have been some of my favorites. They’re warriors. Warriors should occasionally die.
At least with Wash, it was less than 30 seconds of being dragged around thinking “There must be some mistake” before finally accepting he was gone.
With Winifred Burkle, it took every second of the two-part episode. Joss strung us along for an hour and a half, thinking the good guys were SO GODDAMN CLOSE to curing her. She dies slowly, in pain, terrified, and most of the crew doesn’t even make it back in time to see her one last time. Whedon pulled every manipulative trick he could think of, to make her death hurt as much as possible. May his feet be nibbled by swarms of hungry gnats for all eternity.
Ephemera, you’re not wrong, in that warriors should occasionally die. However, the way Joss kills his characters feels like a cheat and a copout to me. “Let’s see, we need to kill someone now.” Feels like he picks out of a hat! I don’t mind angst or drama or sadness, if it’s properly justified. For example, if Mal had died, fighting the Operative, I feel it would have made more sense to the story. Instead he just does it for cheap tears. And it makes me resent him all the more.
You may already know this (and this might be apocryphal) but I believe the reason he is so wordy is that his novels originally appeared in serial form weekly (monthly?) where he was paid by the word.
Exactly. Plus, once you know that he has no qualms about killing off popular & loved main characters then it ups the anxiety because you feel that no one is safe. That’s a plus!
I appreciate it when creators are willing to do hard things to beloved characters. It makes for good drama. And sometimes good people die for lousy reasons. That’s life.