fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3825 ]

[ SECRET POST #3825 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3825 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 61 secrets from Secret Submission Post #548.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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The haters are equally incapable of taking any positive comments about Whedon. He seems to be one of those people who you either really love or absolutely loath, and neither side is willing to admit that it is possible to have different opinions on him or that he might just be somewhat flawed and somewhat good as a creator.

I used to like Whedon's stuff, but the Firefly fans really turned me off him with their relentless drive to somehow insert Firefly into every other sci-fi property everywhere. And I also became slowly aware just how badly Buffy was aging as a show and that it really wasn't feminist but just a different brand of exploitation. Whedon's own posturing about being a feminist but not really moving on from the action chick tropes also kinda creeps me out now. I think that his time has passed, he needs to go sit down and be happy just to be part of the scene and be an ally rather than claim to be leading any part of a cause.

Some Firefly fans do bug me. It isn't a perfect show. That seems to have died off a little, though. I don't see the "inserting Firefly into everything" thing so much anymore.

And I still love Buffy. It is still my favorite Whedon thing. I wouldn't say it wasn't feminist, I would say it was 90s feminist and maybe doesn't reach where things should today. And I do think that in a lot of ways Whedon hasn't gotten past that level of feminism. So I tend to judge his current stuff more harshly than I do Buffy, which I look at in terms of its time where it was unique and very pro-women compared to what else was out there.

But I do think that for a lot of geeky fandom, Whedon is held out as perfect. And for other sides of the fandom, he is completely loathed. I'll always love Buffy and the first Avengers movie and enjoy Firefly and Angel. But a lot of his stuff does have major issues that fandom often won't knowledge.

It only died off because the Star Wars franchise was brought back to the big screen and when the Whedon fans reacted with their customary lack of subtlety (including, I remember, a petition to recast Nathan Fillion as Han Solo) they got absolutely steamrolled by the rest of the Star Wars fandom and were almost forcibly made to shut up. They tried to do their dominate and suppress thing that Firefly fans always did with their voting and commenting blocks, and it spectacularly failed in the face of the sheer size of Star Wars fandom. They didn't like being shocked into the realization that they'd just been medium fish in a small pond all along

No. Firefly fans where big fish in a *tiny* puddle. They were loud, yeah, but only in their tiny corner of the Internet. It didn't translate pop culture love outside of their chosen group.

They blamed just about everyone and everything for Firefly's failure, except for the fact that most people just didn't warm up to the show. Basically accusing FOX of sabotaging Whedon and Firefly never made any sense to me. FOX wanted a nice little cult franchise they could milk forever. Turns out Firefly just wasn't it.

Yeah, it probably wasn't going get big enough to menace Star Wars and Star Trek as a franchise. Maybe it could have gotten as big as Babylon 5 was in its heyday, but it just didn't have "it" (whatever "it" is that turns cult shows into franchises).

The thing is, I kind of liked Firefly. I wasn't a fan. I liked it for what it was. A derivative little show that pretty much unironically stole every science fiction trope that wasn't nailed down. I happily watched it like the brain candy it was and didn't think too deeply about it.

But the fandom...*yeesh.*

To be fair, around that time FOX and every other network were incredibly triggerhappy when it came to cancelling shows after sometimes even one episode was aired, so there was an issue. Firefly just got held up as being the postershow for being cut down in its prime without a fair shake because Whedon was still riding high on the success of Buffy. It probably was one of the shows that did deserve its early cancellation though, and only really got any kind of cult success because DVDs were incredibly new and relatively cheap (compared to VHS) and with a closed out series it made the perfect taster-set for people willing to buy SciFi boxsets but who were intimidated by the sheer size of Star Trek canon. If it had had more episodes then it wouldn't have been a DVD success story.

Anon You're Replying To...

You make a good point. I can see how ST and SW would be intimidating if you weren't big into genre television before then.

Probably another reason why it probably seemed like a good nibble is that it ended before Whedeon *really* got to put his ideas in play. A little bit after the cancellation I remember those plans got loose on the Internet. I don't remember a whole lot, but I do remember the whole "Inara gets gang raped" thing which...WAT?

It seems to me FOX cancelled Firefly just in time for it to be this big nostalgic thing rather than turning into a pile of drek.

Basically accusing FOX of sabotaging Whedon and Firefly never made any sense to me.

Um, they didn't air the first episode. Like, it doesn't get much more sabotage-y than that! It was a show with a huge cast, and a complex universe, all of which needed to be properly introduced in order for the show to gain any kind of narrative traction with viewers. And all of it was introduced, quite well...in the first fucking episode. Which the network took a pass on, in favor of starting with the second episode.

There are very few shows out there that would manage to survive being undercut in such a way right off the top.

That was completely commonplace in the era before tightly serialized shows, and Firefly was not tightly serialized at all-it was even more loosely serialized than Buffy was, to put a later filmed episode on first so that the cast would have better chemistry to give it a stronger start. FOX was actually helping it by airing another episode first. If Joss didn't know that then he had no business being in the production game. To try and claim that it was sabotaged by being subject to common practice is disingenuous to say the least.

No horse in this race but...

it's pretty common for editors to trim out as much exposition as possible while still remaining coherent. If a show has to take an hour to explain every little thing, then there's something wrong with the writing, or the world design. Things should speak for themselves as much as possible without someone having to handhold the viewer through it. Every decent sci-fi series manages this just fine.

I'm not sure Babylon 5 would have survived long as a network show, either. Maybe Firefly would have been on longer if it had been in first-run syndication instead.

I remember the first season of B5 being a stinker, honestly. And You're right. I don't think either B5 or The Next Generation (the only Trek series to have been released directly into syndication) would have survived as network shows. The only reason Deep Space Nine and Voyager lasted as long as they did was because they were on a network that was literally created around them by the parent company that owned their rights (UPN).

That being said, I tried to Netflix Firefly because so many good friends love this show. I thought it was unwatchable because it was boring. And just when I thought there couldn't be a shittier opening song than Enterprise's opening, but Firefly even managed to fuck an opening up.

Actually, DS9 was never on UPN. It was syndicated from the beginning to the end of its run.

Voyager was the flagship show for the old UPN.

*DS9 fan who remains bitter that DS9 is the red-headed stepchild of the Trek universe*

DS9 is the BEST TREK SERIES. PERIOD. Other opinions can fuck right off.

I thought I was the only person in the world who didn't like Firefly. Hello fellow traveler.

I watched it live on-air and while I don't think FOX was looking to sabotage it, the network did make a few missteps when it came to Firefly. First, they didn't seem to know how to market it, though I'm not sure I can blame them for that. Second, they showed the episodes out of order, which was kind of confusing - it wasn't heavily serialized, but the narrative and world-building was predicated on previous episodes (it aired eps in this order: 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 1, with 11, 12, and 13 not airing in the original run). Plus it was pre-empted a couple of times.

All that aside, if it had gotten anywhere near X-Files' ratings (Firefly averaged 4.7 million while X-Files' season 9 was 9.1 million), it wouldn't have been cancelled.

FOX did kinda screw over Firefly though. One of the problems with writing for networks is some networks will not respect the proposed order episodes should air, and FOX did this in spades with Firefly (rendering the arc-based narrative around Simon and River rather disjointed), and has continued to do it to other shows to fuck them over as well.

yeah i wouldn't say that buffy was without flaws, but it definitely hit a lot of feminist points without blinking an eye, points that we only slowly manage to crawl back towards nowadays.
i absolutely love the first few seasons! and i don't even have nostalgia goggles

Well, that's because most of the rest of us are bored and have better things to talk about. Try this on for size:

He's a fair director and a fair writer who still gets too many cookies for Buffy and 20-year-old interviews.

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[ SECRET POST #3825 ]

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