Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2008-08-01 04:46 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2008-08-01 04:46 pm
[ SECRET POST #574 ]
⌈ Secret Post #574 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
FS Layout Contest. Contest entries close August 10th!
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #082.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 4 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ], [ 1 - naming the secret "bait" is a little obvious you know ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
101, 141
Plus, if it was a happy ending with Penny and Billy riding off into the sunset on Bad Horse, where would you go from there? Have the next potential episode of them keeping house? Oh, yeah, that would be so interesting.
With the given ending you can continue the story. Billy can have a redemption plot.
Or not. But there is always that option.
141. You are actually going to go there? Really? You want to take that path?
O-Kay, because we all know that every girl out there was sitting by and twiddling her thumbs before Twilight came out.
They weren't reading Harry Potter. Because girls never, ever read Harry Potter. All those young people that you've seen reading HP and who also look like girls? Cross dressers. A whole army of cross dressers.
And the fact that Louise Rennison, Meg Cabot and Ann Branshares have all been on the best selling authors list with books aimed at young women? Well, girls never read that rubbish. Only men read those books. Big, hairy men in flannel.
Jane Austen? Completely ignored by young women.
No, it was until Twilight that young women discovered the printed word.
All hail, Twilight.
Christ, what an insulting secret.
Re: 141
Thank you!
Re: 141
141
Re: 101, 141
Also, there's sad ending, and there's sucker-punch-to-the-gut, and I'm learning more about which Whedon tends to do.
I hope the story continues though. The ending wasn't just sad...it was flat. There needs to be more.
Main reason for the response, though:
All those young people that you've seen reading HP and who also look like girls? Cross dressers. A whole army of cross dressers.
I lost it. You win teh internets.
Re: 101
There's a difference between pandering to cliches to set up an expectation so you can subvert it, and pandering to cliches, setting up an expectation and then disappointing it, opting instead for cheap tragedy.
A subversion of an expectation has merit in a literary sense because it naturally involves looking at the cliche and examining why it doesn't stand up to scruitiny, whereas disappointing the expectation requires no thought at all.
This would be fine, had Dr Horrible not had pretentions to profundity or satire, but since it is obviously a satire on the superhero genre instead of just a fun romp as evidenced by the "Oh So Original" device of having the "hero" be a jerk and the "Villain be sympathetic (What century is Joss living in if he thinks that's clever and new?) and the balls-kickingly terrible ending, it needs something a bit more literary than "The Hammer is my penis" knob jokes to carry it.
To be effective satire it needs to actually point out the flaws in the genre, such as the constant fridging of the female characters and making them sickeningly sweet, personality-less plot-devices that exist to be killed off to give the main character motivation. (And seriously, if you're going to call yourself a 'feminist' you need to do better than pandering to THOSE cliches, Joss. I mean Tara, Jenny Calander, and now Penny?).
Instead of the satire it obviously strived to be, it subverted the pointless small things, like the villian's laugh, ridiculous animal-themed names and what happens to super heroes/villains with useless powers while still playing straight some of the most inexcusable cliches of modern storytelling.
That's, on reflection, why I really like Steven Moffat's "Everybody lives" schtick in Doctor Who, because it takes the cliche of "Sad Ending" and examines the fact that there are better ways around the problem than simple tragedy. Any schmuck can be poingant with cheap tragedy, it's the mark of a great writer that you can keep that poignancy with a happy ending.
So no, not so much "I didn't like it because it had a sad ending" so much as "I didn't like the lazy storytelling"
Re: 101
Actually, the truth is, I agree with about half of what you said. Mostly the stuff about storytelling and expectation. I always learned that good writing meant giving the readers what they expect, but not in a way they expect it, and that from the beginning you were supposed to be whispering "expect a tragedy" "expect a happy ending" "expect silliness" etc with the overall tone. The first episode is just brimming with "expect fun and silliness" and the second promises a hint of darkness, but still not the, well...the fridge.
I'm sick of hearing people say "It's Joss Whedon; what did you expect, loser?" Sorry, but due to this and that, I haven't actually seen a lot of Buffy, so my Joss-experience comes mostly from Firefly, which I thought was 100% awesome, and Serenity, which kicked me in the gut, but which I still believe would've been awesome if it had been told over the course of another two seasons or so instead of rushed into the ending.
I don't have any problem whatsoever with the overall storytelling in Dr. Horrible--I like the evil laugh thing, the useless powers. I even like Penny, because as someone else pointed out, I think she's meant to be less of a person than a sort of representation of Billy's soul, or a part of it (and she has just as much character as Captain Hammer). Plus, I'm a sucker for old-school comics, and Penny seems more like an hommage to the girlfriends of that era.
Basically, I liked everything about it until the final episode, partially because hey, what happened to all the fun, catchy songs that I was humming the next day at work, but mostly because, as you put it, tragedy=/=art.
I think it is weak to pull a tragic ending just for the sake of making people sad. I still froth about Wash's death in Serenity because the primary reason of it was to show "anyone can die" which only works on the first viewing. The sad ending upset me, which evokes an emotional response and all, but you're exactly right--it just feels lazy.
Ah. "Everybody lives." I love Moffat for doing that. Tad Williams, surprisingly, does a pretty good variant half the time. Unexpected happy without losing the poignancy.
Re: 141