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May 2020

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How sick am I of Noxon-bashing? Enough to break my rule of silence, certainly. I've had so many people rag on her for aspects of the show I developed, or praise me for things she came up with. She's been a vital part of everything people love about Buffy since she overhauled the halloween script in season two. She's as good a story-breaker as I've ever worked with. And she's a leader.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, Vmars. You are uninformed and rude. That's mine.

joss

http://whedonesque.com/comments/12711

Go Joss! I love how Vmars just carries on making rude comments about the Spike show, and whining about the majority of people hate seasons 6 and 7, when the creator of the show was there himself, and taking offense to what he was saying.

Some people have no manners. And how can you still need to rant about it anyway? I understand feeling upset when the show is still airing, but Bts has been over for years now! Get a grip, and find some tv that you do enjoy and want to talk about. Geez

Current Mood: bitchy

Tags:

buffy

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Duuuuuuuuude! *claps* I am totally snagging this for my LJ! Thanks for pointing it out!

No problem *g*

...I still don't understand why anyone disliked seasons 6 and 7! *cries*

Season 6 had a lot of good in it, season 7 totally ruined the show. All the joy and style and positiveness vanished from the show over the course of season 7. Spike got screwed over so he had to spend much of the season chained up, tied up, nuts or doing evil. Way to waste a good character. We had the awfulness of Caleb shoved down our throats, a painful stereotype played in a particularly revolting way (and not revolting in a makes-sense the-character-is-supposed-to-be-revolting-so-the-performance-should-be sort of way, no, in a type of revolting that didn't work and shouldn't have been). And the season was dominated by the lamest big bad of all time, the FE. Not to mention the incredibly lame "ubervamp" that was supposed to come off like a ferocious powerhouse but ended up coming off like a creepy little Gollum figure instead. We had Dawn, one of the best things in the show, shoved in the background and belittled. We had Faith dredged up and shoved in our face (and at the same time as Caleb -double pukage). We had endless meanningless action stuff that had zero feeling or intelligence to it. We had racism: Slayer power gets turned into three-black-guys-try-to-rape-a-blonde-white-woman blacks-raping-white-women stereotype and we get it rammed in our face that the power of these black guys was BAD, whilst the power of the old WHITE woman was good and the power of WHITE Willow was greater than the power of the three black guys. Meanwhile black guy Wood has to have an anger issue (talk about stereotypes, and that was pulled with Gunn too) and has to be humiliated and conspicuusly beaten into submission by the dyed-blonde white guy. We get glorification of Willow, who'd done so much harm with magic and should never be touching it again -instead she's glorified as a goddess for forcing slayer status on a whole ton of people without asking their permission. We get Buffy portrayed negatively as if you're supposed to hate her. We get Buffy's "friends" treating her like shit and getting totally forgiven for it without having to pay in the slightest. We get cold fish Giles being a pain all season. We get Andrew shoved down our throat non-stop, as if we're supposed to like him after he's MURDERED his best friend -and the screen time that went to Andrew could have gone to Dawn or to a Dawn-Spike reconciliation scene (oh thank you Joss for ruining one of best friendships on the show, THE best actually). For supposed female empowerment we get shown that young women are useless and hopeless unless you give them superpowers -that's the message of how the potentials are portrayed, which is a pretty odd female empowerment message. Another pretty odd female empowerment message is forcing slayer status on tons of young women and girls without them being given the slightest say in the matter. Female empowerment includes women making their own choices, not having them made for them, not having roles forced on them and decisions made for them. There's a lot more sexism in the season which I won't go into here. Too much and too painful. Painful was what so much of the season was in so many ways. There were some good bits in the first 7 eps but after that it all went to hell. The heart of the show was torn out, the soul of it was stamped in the dirt, all the joy and life and spirit and intelligence and positiveness of it was taken out. The show was destroyed and spat upon. When Caleb gloated in the end of Dirty Girls it felt to me like he was gloating over the ruining of the show that I'd loved. There were some good bits here and there up to the end, it's true, but they were totally swamped by shit all around.

Oh and we had Angel and B/A shoved down our throats. B/A was dead and gone but it had to be dragged in and resurrected to delegitimize spuffy and to pander to B/Aers. That was almost as bad as the AR. But unlike the AR it wasn't in a season that was overall worthwhile. Season 6 was very faulted but it had a lot of positive in it, season 7 had tiny bits of good here and there swimming in a massive sea of sewage. Season 7 HURT me. Maybe I gave the show too much of my heart, that I could be hurt so by it. But that's how it was. Season 7 hurt me, scarred me and I've never recovered from that. It's given me a bitterness and cynicsm in how I view all tv shows ever since. You can only be stabbed in the back like that once, ever after you expect it.

And then Joss went on to totally shit on the character of Spike in season 5 of Angel and to give us easily the worst season in a show that had been declining badly for many seasons. And then we got Not Fade Bloody Well Away. Joss said he wouldn't end it on a cliffhanger and then he bloody well ended it on a cliffhanger. And a horrible episode that left me wanting to puke my guts out. It was as if he was trying to top the horribleness of Chosen and BTVS season 7. And now he wants to come back to the Buffyverse and ruin it more and we're supposed to accept these comics as canon. I say screw that! And screw season 7.

People who know me in Buffy fandom know me as one of the bitterest of Buffy fans. It was season 7 that made me bitter.

Just so you know, there's nothing personal toward you in this rant, you just said you didn't understand why people would hate season 7 and all this stuff came gushing out of me.

Note to Frelling Tralk: I hope you don't mind me ranting like that on your LJ. I found it rather cathartic and I copied the rant over into my own LJ.

In case you're interested, when I put the rant into my LJ I added the following line to the racism part of it: Also note how among the potentials it's the black one and the hispanic-looking one who are portrayed negatively (Rhona and Kennedy) -and the oriental one is made into a joke.

And then he's banned for being a dumbass.

Fandom is so great sometimes.

Hee

And as a bonus, I got to read Joss calling Veronica Mars rude and uniformed! *g*

Yeah, I just hate Noxon bashing so much. Hate her decisions all you want, but critique her as a showrunner and writer. I find it so offensive when she's ragged on for using a storyline to fulfill some schoolgirl crush she has on an actor. Maybe they don't realize how sexist that comes across, but they really should.

That whole "wet panty brigade" thing is so offensive when it's aimed at the female writers. All of the writers speak admiringly of Spike! There's Joss on the Chosen commentary talking of, "The Great Marsters". Where are the nicknames for them?

Good for Joss. He is very professional by standing by Marti. I disliked her artistic choices and I disliked Joss supporting them but still, he did the right thing.

I think so :)

Oh Joss! Seriously so much love.

(I know my flist is going to be full of the bashing in the next few days... some of it from people I love...sigh)

Yeah, it's hard :/

Jesus, this one line made me LOL.

But what I'm saying is that I've formed an opinion on her from what I've read on the internet, and seen on Buffy.

Whereas, Joss, y'know, the guy who worked with her for years, knows jackshit.

vmars fails at life.

Vmars statement there has to one of the most stupid statements I have ever seen someone make and I can't actually believe someone would say it

Go, Joss! I've always hated Marti being used as a scapegoat for everything fans don't like about the show. Frankly, I think the show wouldn't have been half as good without her bringing the sex and angst.

ITA! From the first, in What's My Line, I absolutely floved her scene with Drusilla torturing Angel. Yes, she's been involved with the show for that long guys! It's not like she's some new writer that suddenly popped up in season 6. Joss has said over and over what a huge role she had in the show long before season 6, hence why he was choosing her to be showrunner.

And the Buffy being depressedd after returning from the dead theme was from Joss himself, and something he had originally wanted to do with the Alien sequel. And if you look at Joss's later episodes (Family, The Gift, OMWF, HB rewrite, Lessons, BY ending, Chosen) he's not exactly anti Spike or Spuffy himself! He and Marti were clearly on the same page.

I'm really not a fan of Series 6 either (asides from Tabula Rasa and Once More With Feeling) - however, I do also get sick of Noxton bashing. She may have had a role in what I didn't like about the later series of the show, but there was a whole writing team involved, not to mention the fact that Joss was away working on new projects. Not solely her fault that it wasn't great (IMHO, of course).

Of course, I'm biased because she wrote some great Oz episodes, in which Seth Green was often shirtless. Hurrah! :D

In the 2 Oz eps she wrote in season 4 he was made to look the bad guy when he wasn't. Everybody acted as if he was just cheating on Willow when it was the werewolf thing that forced him to and Willow's allowed to get away with a totally it's-all-about-poor-victimized-Willow attitude as if Oz's problems don't, and the ep seems ok with that. And the whole ep acts like Oz is being a bad boyfriend and Buffy treats him like shit, he's going through this massive life crisis and under the control of something and they're all allowed to get away with acting like he's in the wrong. Plus in New Moon Rising they have him start to attack Tara, it's the werewolf controlling him but they have it like he's being the overaggressive jealous boyfriend and then he's punished for it.

And he's basically punished for all this stuff -look what he's put through in New Moon Rising -it's deliberate punishment and humilation.

I hate those eps and they're part of what I hold against Marti.

Nah, I'd have to disagree there. I think a major part of Oz's story arc is the idea of where the wolf ends and where he begins. It's something which bothers him - in 'Fear, Itself'. The plot of 'Wild at Heart' and 'New Moon Rising' both play on this. The wolf stirs up some passion in him (and the nekkid, nekkid, nekkid....sorry....I was...talking about something....), but he makes some bad choices. Like Willow says, he didn't have to keep the fact the Veruca situation secret. That's certainly the case if you argue that the only reason he slept with her was the wolf (and in the first instance, I'd agree with you). I also think the "Come to my den of luuuurve" approach to entrap Veruca was kind of dumb. I think there's a definate overlap with his behaviour towards Tara - it's not unprecendented for people to get possessive of their exes, and his innability to fully get a handle on his wolfy side simply gets the better of him.

I don't really buy Buffy as being too hard on him either. Buffy's certainly mad at him at the end of 'Wild at Heart', but that's pretty understandable given that Willow was hurting so badly. When he shows up again, both her and Xander step in and make the small-talk with Oz.

Don't get me wrong, I love Oz's character but that doesn't mean I think he should behave like a saint. I think characters are actually MORE interesting if they're flawed.

Of course, I am biased because of the shirtlessness! :)

PS - Apologies for any spelling/grammatical mess-ups. I'm tired and my foot is falling asleppy.

["but he makes some bad choices. Like Willow says, he didn't have to keep the fact the Veruca situation secret. That's certainly the case if you argue that the only reason he slept with her was the wolf (and in the first instance, I'd agree with you). I also think the "Come to my den of luuuurve" approach to entrap Veruca was kind of dumb. I think there's a definate overlap with his behaviour towards Tara - it's not unprecendented for people to get possessive of their exes, and his innability to fully get a handle on his wolfy side simply gets the better of him."]

Oz screwed but the deciding factor was the wolf. If it weren't for the wolf he wouldn't have done any of that. Remember, it's stressed that the wolf can influence him when he's not in wolf form. So I think it clearly influenced his ""Come to my den of luuuurve" approach to entrap Veruca" and it may well have influenced his decision to keep the Veruca situation to himself. And the aggression in his reaction to Tara was blatantly obviously influenced by the wolf. So much of what Oz did wrong was under the influence of the wolf to one extent or another, he wouldn't done those things if it weren't for the wolf, but the eps kept acting like it was just Oz being bad. The reality is that Oz was afflicted with a disease that caused him immense pain and trouble (far more serious than anything it put Willow through) but the eps treated him like he was the problem rather than the victim.
And in New Moon Rising he was very conspicuously punished for all of it, like the writers were making a judgement on him and punshing him.

["I don't really buy Buffy as being too hard on him either. Buffy's certainly mad at him at the end of 'Wild at Heart', but that's pretty understandable given that Willow was hurting so badly."]

Not considering that Oz was in a considerably worse state than Willow with much bigger problems than her. Plus it wasn't just at the end of the ep that Buffy was treating him like he was the bad guy, that was going earlier on too. And considering the fact that HE was the real victim her behavior was out of line. But the ep seemed to side with her attitude.

["When he shows up again, both her and Xander step in and make the small-talk with Oz."]

When he showed up again Buffy gave him the cold shoulder very conspicuously. Again, like it was all just Oz being a bad boyfriend, when what really happened was he was a victim much more than Willow. And again the ep seemed ok with Buffy's attitude, as if Oz-was-bad was the ep's attitude.

["I think there's a definate overlap with his behaviour towards Tara - it's not unprecendented for people to get possessive of their exes, and his innability to fully get a handle on his wolfy side simply gets the better of him."]

Open aggression toward Tara was totally out of character and in fact he didn't get aggressive until he started wolfing out. That was very clearly the influence of the wolf. And the non-wolf side of Oz tried to save her by warning her away. So the aggression toward Tara was very clearly the wolf and not Oz being flawed.

["Don't get me wrong, I love Oz's character but that doesn't mean I think he should behave like a saint. I think characters are actually MORE interesting if they're flawed."]

The way the story laid it out, much of the "flawed" behavior Oz showed was under the influence of the wolf. It's not simply a matter of whether the character is flawed or not. Certain types of behavior were out of character for Oz and were clearly shown as being under the influence of the wolf (the urge to mate with Veruca and behavior conducive to mating with her, open aggression toward Tara (and he was wolfing out when that was coming out, the non-wolf side of Oz actually tried to save her by warning her away)). So it's not a matter of whether you want Oz to be flawed or not, it's a matter of what was actually the case in the story. But despite showing his behavior as being under the wolf influence the eps insisted on judging him as if that wasn't the case, which was massively unjust.

The eps vilify Oz and treat him as the bad guy when he's the victim, treating Willow as the number one victim when she's only the secondary victim. Let's not forget, Oz, a guy to whome self control was very important, was finding that a supernatural savage animal thing in him could influence him while he was in human form, throwing out the window all his self-control, his whole sense of self and who he was and challenging his very humanity. He was forced to leave his girlfriend (Willow makes a big show of how she's bothered by Oz leaving and it's like nobody pays attention to the fact that Oz would be hurting because of that too) and he has to separate himself off from people (with a possibilty that that would last indefinitely). This is a major life crisis. He suffers the breakup same as Willow suffers it, he has his whole humanity put at risk, something Willow doesn't go through in the slightest. Oz is the major victim in this but the ep acts like the number one victim is Willow. And then Oz gets punished like it's all just a story of Oz doing wrong.

There we have it. Oz is put through hell and blamed for it. The sympathy goes to Willow who's selfishly acting like she's only one with a problem. Oz gets judged and punished. Those aren't Oz eps, they're anti-Oz eps. I hate them, I find it very hard to watch them. The shitty way Oz is handeled has a lot in common with the awful way Spike was treated (spefically the AR) and that was Noxon too. I Don't like Marti Noxon.

While I have my issues with Marti and Joss, I have that generally it pisses me off when any poster behaves as though they are a spokesperson for the fandom at large. Hello. I have a big mouth and do too much posting. I can post for myself and I may not agree with you!

Really we can only ever speak about ourselves and perhaps a faction of the fandom. We never, ever speak for a fandom as a whole, especially a fandom as fractured and polarized as the Whedonverse, so VMars needs to shut the hell up. She/he/it isn't talking for me. I'm perfectly capable of talking for myself.

So true

Go Joss!! Everyone has a right to their opinion, but be nice about it ...

I loved seasons 6 and 7, there are some great stand out episodes!

I did too :)

How cool would it be to say you got into a fight with Joss Whedon on the internet? Haha.

Honestly though, yeah, the person was rude considering they were aware that writers (especially Joss) read that forum. But at the same time I almost admire the balls to just get into a typical fandom argument with the guy who created the show. It was very amusing. Kinda overkill to ban the poster though, just because Joss posts there. Can you say asskissing? Heh.

I'm not a Marti fan, obviously. I think she was a brilliant writer and wrote some of my fave episodes but I also think she was majorly responsible for what *I* feel went downhill in the last two seasons. But of course I blame Joss as well. I'm an equal-opportunity blamer. *G*

I almost admire the balls to just get into a typical fandom argument with the guy who created the show.

Hee. I bet it must frustrate Joss to hear comments on Buffy's depression or Spike's soul, when he was the one that came up with those ideas. I'm not sure which of them thought up the magic crack, but Marti writing Wrecked made everyone assume it was her anyway lol

Speaking as a cartoonist, the point is that once you have written something, it exists by itself. YOu can practically read it as though it had been written by someone else. I mean, it imposes its own imaginative rules on you. Joss is a great artist because he knows what works and does not work with his character; there is internal consistency. But other people can achieve it, because a character once created has a life of his or her own.

Oy, this makes my head hurt even worse.

Good on Joss, good on Joss.

Seconded :)

Aye! ;)

Hear hear with a cherry on top! I hate people who fasten on shows or books and end up acting like they know better than their creators. When I think what idiot fans did to Jack Kirby twenty or thirty years ago, I still feel murderous.

And it's become worse since so many people have started reading fanfiction, and talk like it's better than the source material

Mind you, sometimes it is.

kennahijja is a greater writer than JK Rowling, much though I love Rowling's world. But she is an exceptional case.

Vmars" is the name of a poster?

As for Noxon, from what I've heard about her I think she very much deserves the bashing. Not that I respect Joss or anything he says any more than I respect Noxon. God how I HATE him!

The only thing I dislike about Noxon-bashing is that people use it to avoid having to blame Joss for bad stuff in the show. I don't want people to avoid blaming Joss. I've got plenty negative feeling toward Noxon but Joss is my great hate.

And season 7 still HURTS me to this day, 4 years later. I wish that season never existed and I'll never forgive it. For me BTVS ends with the end of season 6.

you're such a moron

["And how can you still need to rant about it anyway? I understand feeling upset when the show is still airing, but Bts has been over for years now! Get a grip, and find some tv that you do enjoy and want to talk about. Geez"]

I think it's perfectly valid to still need to rant about what happened with BTVS. Some people made a strong connection with that show and when that happens a show getting totally fucked around can hurt deeply. If people can still be fans of Buffy four years after it ended then it's perfectly reasonable that they can still be bitter about it and still need to rant about it. I think there's a lot to be bitter about and I'm certainly still bitter about it. What happened with BTVS influenced how I've viewed all tv ever since. Made me a more cynical bitter tv fan. Heck, made me a more cynical bitter person. And no that's not too much for a tv show. Good tv is art, art is something you're meant to have feelings about. Sometimes some piece of art can end up meaning a lot. If somebody fucks that around it can end up hurting deep. It's no crime to feel deeply.

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