Where Do Vampires Go?

In the lead up to Halloween, I've also been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel again. I'm nearing the end of season six of the former and season three of the latter. I always watch the two together if I do a rewatch as they seem two halves of a whole to me. Yesterday, I was surprised to see Honest Trailers had released a new video for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I'm not fond of Honest Trailers. I find one out of fifty of their jokes funny, most of them are just regurgitations of popular opinions without any real punchline. This video is a good example, ending by calling Buffy "Quippy". Which is surely ironic coming from a quippy YouTube channel. They've also edited together a lot of shots of guys pinning girls to the ground on the show, which is a cheap shot and makes no substantial comment on the show's sexual morals. He also calls the Hellmouth a "literal plot hole" because it provides Buffy with monsters to fight. That's kind of like calling the Enterprise a plot hole because it allows the characters on Star Trek to travel in space.

Of course, Honest Trailers must feel compelled to be palatable to those who approve of Joss Whedon's cancellation. Of all cancellations, Whedon's may be the most thorough since much of his fanbase now are people who lead the charges in cancel culture. He is, to borrow a term from the Honest Trailers video, condemned for being "mean".

He did make one public appearance recently, at the wedding of J. August Richards, who played Gunn on Angel.

From left to right is Richards, Whedon, Heather Horton (Whedon's wife), and Richards' new husband. Several other Angel cast members were present as apparently the group have remained tight despite any meanness on Whedon's part.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+ in most countries. Angel is on Disney+ but in fewer countries.

X Sonnet #1785

The moon was orange, attempting rosy gold.
The second floor contains a wooden box.
With lunar dimes, the bank is growing old.
The stars are only holes in giant socks.
The only squid at home was eating men.
For trust abused was dice to waiting gods.
As Job attests beyond official sin.
The clutching claw depends on weighted odds.
For spider skulls, the clouds of web unlink.
With candied time, the fates'll snack 'til late.
Colliding bears with trains'll seldom blink.
A jagged story's writ on luckless pate.
Returning cheers were muffled blank in sport.
Condemning sneers were surely bank at court.

The Right Team at the Right Time

Obviously I think a lot of the criticism levelled at the MCU is valid, but I'd be a liar if I said I didn't think 2012's The Avengers is a great movie. Writer/director Joss Whedon so perfectly captured the tone and characters of Marvel comics and delivered them in such a perfectly paced ballet of dynamic action and dialogue it's little wonder the franchise can still run on fumes now.

I don't tend to re-watch a lot of 21st century blockbusters so when I see a new MCU movie or series I probably don't appreciate the experience a lot of people have, watching Secret Invasion, for example, with The Avengers fresh in their minds. But surely the diminishing audience for the MCU shows this juxtaposition doesn't always benefit the newest entries.

The Avengers is a film unburdened by many of the infamous issues facing big budget genre fare to-day. No writers more intent on pushing a message than on crafting a good story. No bottom of the barrel, inexperienced writers because Disney incredibly still thinks it can make profits off brand recognition alone. No sense of the intrusive tampering that gives us tonally bizarre moments like the "Boner" joke on WandaVision or the Wasp's nonsensical insertion into scenes in Quantumania. Whedon reportedly cut ties after too much interference on Age of Ultron and tiffs between the studio and Edgar Wright and others are well known. The Avengers, the culmination of that momentum that began to build with Iron-Man, was maybe the last time the studios thought they might as well let people with proven talent drive a franchise.

Whedon knows these characters and he doesn't just pop in character traits like infoboxes that pop up over the action. He knows who they are and how they would interact with each other and the environment. Of course, Thor, as a god, is not going to ask permission to extradite his brother to Asgard. Tony Stark is too arrogant to spend much time reasoning with him--though he's smart enough to spend a little, even raising his visor before two fight. Steve Rogers, who told Stanley Tucci in the previous movie that he didn't want to kill anybody, not even Nazis, is of course the guy who can mediate and make peace.

Black Widow got the short in the of the stick in most of the MCU movies. She seemed like a different person in every movie. Here, Whedon seems to be channelling Buffy, making Natasha someone whose everygirl reactions, like her shrug of acknowledgement when Tony points out to Steve he's still a pretty impressive guy when he's not wearing the metal suit, contrast and augment her hypercompetence. When she shows her hand with the interrogators in her first scene, she shows the talent and skill of someone who's spent years studying psychology and combat, and delivers casual lines with the provocative insight of a precocious teenager. Definitely Buffy, but with more psychology. It occurs to me now Whedon's Dollhouse series may have been originally conceived as a Black Widow movie.

Whedon knows we're waiting on tenterhooks for Banner to turn into the Hulk, and he teases us in almost every scene. Tony prods him, half-jokingly, trying to see if he'll change, a moment that also conveniently puts Tony in our point of view. At the same time we're being teased, it's also valuable for making us focus on Banner as a character. Is he angry? How's he holding it in? Is he holding it in?

Now with Disney's financial woes, do you suppose they're nearing the breaking point of hiring real talent and giving them free rein? We could quote from a DC movie here--Why do we fall? So we can rise. The marvel here is that the people in charge of these massive companies can be so stupid.

The Avengers is available on Disney+.

Ballet Ghosts

Season three of Angel has a fairly decent string of episodes before Joss Whedon suddenly steps in and knocks one out of the park with "Waiting in the Wings". This 2002 episode features the characters going to a ballet that of course turns out to be haunted.

At this point, Cordelia had already begun to slip into being a boring moral paragon. Whedon, who wrote and directed the episode, reminds us we loved the character because she was also shallow and sometimes brutally blunt. Wesley, who was also morphing into a new character, a brooding lone hunter, is in this episode also believably the awkward dweeb he was back in season three of Buffy.

This is also the introduction of Summer Glau to viewers. Here playing the doomed ghost of a ballerina, the real life ballerina Glau would then become a star of Whedon's Firefly series and then of the wonderful Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In her one scene of dialogue in "Waiting in the Wings", complaining about the sorcerer who keeps her imprisoned despite not even understanding ballet, is lovely. Whedon's catty dialogue is paired nicely with a sense of genuine torment in Glau's performance.

Angel and Cordelia making out in the haunted dressing room is really sexy and the ambiguity over how much of it is the possession talking is really nice.

Angel is available on Disney+ in many countries.

Twitter Sonnet #1707

The talking wheel of cheese has turned around.
The thoughtless world has jumped the lunar train.
With larger skulls, the heads collected sound.
So noise assumed the office held for brain.
The clouds were hair before the blue was bald.
You mention time as planks of splintered wood.
For fear of piers the waves were shortly called.
Beside the bad let's scribble something good.
A summer man is made of stacking suns.
Extempore, the songs delight the deer.
Collected dots were gobs of baby ones.
A finer bread could cut in twain the beer.
Entrancing wings concealed the spotless gloves.
With foreign cards she stacks collected loves.

Once More, Once Again

Okay, after all these years, I can finally join everyone else in admiring "Once More, with Feeling". Wait, where did everyone go?

Actually, this year they did still have the annual screening of the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Comic Con, despite Joss Whedon, the former king of what he himself dubbed "nerd prom", being now persona non grata. Watching the episode is one of those glimpses of the past that reveals some of the horror of to-day. Listening to the unabashedly erotic lyrics Tara sings about Willow in this episode watched by millions in 2001, it seems odd that to-day controversy erupts over the hint of a lesbian relationship in a genre film or TV series.

That scene, of Tara starting to levitate while singing that she's "spread beneath my Willow tree", still comes off as a little awkward, though it's kind of meant to because it abruptly cuts to Xander commenting on how Willow and Tara probably aren't actually doing research. On the whole, though, Whedon's lyrics actually seem terrific to me now. They're pleasingly clever and also genuinely serve to develop each characters' issues. The thread about Giles needing to leave Sunnydale because Buffy must stand on her own still doesn't make sense but the song isn't bad, and I like how Whedon blends it with the reprise of "Under Your Spell" as both Giles and Tara--played by the two strongest singers in the episode, Anthony Head and Amber Benson--contemplate leaving.

I've heard the relationship between Spike and Buffy was something the network demanded but Whedon was reluctant to do. Yet it's the most effective part of this episode with many effective parts. Buffy's need to feel something to make her feel genuinely alive again coupled with Spike's impossible situation provide ample fodder for clever lyrics. The episode doesn't hit Willow's season arc about addiction too hard because Alyson Hannigan didn't want to sing. But this proves a blessing since switching magic from a metaphor for lesbian love to a metaphor for drug addiction was too abrupt and never really came off in the season. Buffy finally getting with Spike works so much better as a portrayal of self-destructive behaviour.

I even like Xander and Anya's song and I generally find Anya insufferable by this point in the series. But she's as cute as she's intended to be in their musical numbers.

Whedon spent a lot of extra time working on this episode and pushing to get it made. It's an admirable example of artistic integrity.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Joss Whedon's Changing Mob

Reading the interview to-day with Joss Whedon in which he finally addressed at length the accusations against him, I couldn't help thinking of the trial of Oscar Wilde. Or the version of it dramatised with Peter Finch in the role as Wilde. Wilde cheated on his wife multiple times, too, after all. And there was a man, so used to his acerbic wit winning him praise, finding his every word sinking his ship further when he's on trial. Away from people with much to gain from understanding or pretending to understand his clever lines, in the courtroom he faced people who gleefully exacted revenge for never getting what the fuss was about this snooty playwright. So you could say of Whedon in the courtroom of public opinion.

He could think of only one way to explain Fisher's motives. “We're talking about a malevolent force,” he said. “We're talking about a bad actor in both senses.”

That's a good line and probably true. But it's also easy for the gallery to seize upon. Stephen Colbert made a joke about Whedon criticising a black man on Martin Luther King Day, as though Whedon had any say about when the article was published. But regardless of how you feel about Whedon or what he did, it's undeniable there are forces arrayed against him even from the text of this article itself. The writer, Lila Shapiro, uses a number of rhetorical strategies to shore up opinion against Whedon. In the first couple paragraphs in which she establishes the breadth of Whedon's fanbase before the scandal, she makes a point of only quoting white men who praised his feminism. A lengthy portion of the article with comments from Rebecca X--formerly known as Rebecca Rand Kirshner, a writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer--Shapiro carefully massages X's conflicted but mostly positive statements to make it seem like X is a woman still just barely emerging from the tyranny of Whedon's gaslighting. Shapiro ends the section with this:

A few days later, she sent me a text. “Joss is a beautiful person,” she wrote. “But you know what,” she added dryly, “I’m actually particularly vulnerable to abusive people.”

Then the paragraph break, insuring what impression we'll be left with.

Now that people routinely cheat their way through humanities courses or rely on the greed of college administrations to hand them easy grades, it's no wonder a writer like Shapiro needn't worry about even transparent methods like this being picked up on.

Shapiro poses an argument about the folly of worshiping great artists as gods. She establishes the following Whedon had among academics by talking about a conference in 2002 in which professors from various fields cosplayed and carried cardboard cutouts of Buffy characters. She talks about three professors there who "would go on to establish the Whedon Studies Association, an organization devoted to expanding the field of Buffy scholarship." I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a lot of Whedon's work but I'd say his body of work is a ridiculous subject for such a loftily named association. If you're busy studying Joss Whedon instead of Ingmar Bergman or Terry Gilliam, you're way off track.

I say this as I'm hitting a point in my Buffy/Angel rewatch in which the shows are starting to pick up again after a lackluster stretch in season five of Buffy and two of Angel. After Buffy's "The Body", the show finally gets off the soap opera-ish relationship plots while Angel finally ends the silly arc about Angel and his supporting cast shunning each other. I used to say I didn't like "The Body" but in my recent viewing I had to admit it is pretty good. Especially coming as it did at a time when I've been contemplating the deaths of people in my life, watching Buffy deal with her mother's sudden death struck a chord. Whedon's techniques with cutting and sound didn't feel quite so obtrusive. My problem with the episode is that he used that good technique in a way that deliberately separated it from the show's usual supernatural fare. My opinion is that he should took take it all as seriously and maybe he came around to that opinion, too. The weakest part of the episode is when Anya, the thousands of years old vengeance demon turned human, breaks down in grief over Joyce's death. Really, the death of one person, even one she knew, shouldn't have hit her so hard. But that would have forced the story down a different path than Whedon wanted. I do think being a control freak can be a problem when you try to control your own muse.

This article, for as much time as it takes, still doesn't establish Whedon as being truly guilty of anything worse than cheating on his wife. Is he caustic, even rude sometimes? Yeah. Maybe I wouldn't even like being in the room with him. But this revelation doesn't justify his ostracisation from the industry. Nor does it present evidence that he shouldn't be considered a god. The fact that he's not as good a writer as J.R.R. Tolkien or as good a director as Alfred Hitchcock--those things prove he's not a god. People would know that if they actually knew what they were talking about. I mean, name one god who doesn't have worse personality problems than Whedon. Poseidon? Tiw? Jehovah? Maybe Santa Claus. Is that what we're talking about?

Gods aren't made by kindness. Gods are made by their extraordinary abilities and achievements.

I'm less bothered by this on Whedon's behalf than I am on the further implications of just how dumb and petty the general brain is getting.

Immortal Teen Drama

As I make my way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer season five and the show becomes more and more about Spike, I keep finding myself thinking about this recent interview with James Marsters:

Yeah, apparently Michael Rosenbaum, Lex Luther from Smallville, has a podcast. Anyway, I love how he and Marsters seem to be tuned into two different realities on the interview. Rosenbaum clearly wants Marsters to divulge juicy details about Joss Whedon terrorising women and Marsters either doesn't see this or quite convincingly pretends not to. He's stuck on talking about Joss the Genius and laughing about what a hardass Joss could be. This is a follow up interview, too, in which Rosenbaum is trying to get clear on Marsters' earlier statements about Joss pushing him up against a wall, angry about the fan reaction to Spike. Rosenbaum keeps trying different ways to ask, "But was it real?" and Marsters keeps laughing and saying, "Yeah!" And you can see the smoke starting to come out of Rosenbaum's ears, probably because he knows exactly the situation Marsters is talking about but is trying to decide if he's supposed to be morally outraged about it now.

But I've been thinking about it because I've been trying to decide if Whedon's idea of the vampires as an allegory for teen problems really works. In the first couple seasons, yeah, I can see it in some moments, especially when Buffy was keeping her identity as a Slayer secret. All the dialogue she and her mother had about Buffy dealing with issues her mother couldn't help with did work a bit that way. A teenager watching who, like most teenagers, sees their individual problems to be about the size of the whole world would probably be quite ready to accept the Vampire Slayer drama as relatable. But I would say it operates most obviously in terms of Angel and Buffy's relationship, the relationship Whedon apparently only established reluctantly. It makes me wonder if he planned for Angel never to return from Hell in season three.

Frankly, if things had panned out in the way it seems Whedon originally wanted, according to Marsters, it would've been a deeply unsatisfying show, maybe even a slightly creepy one. So the world is divided between good people and soulless, irredeemable wanderers? That's pretty puritanical for someone who calls himself an atheist.

I suspect Whedon grew a lot as a writer over the course of the series, though, so maybe he abandoned the allegory idea as it made less and less sense. Allegories do, generally, have very limited utility.

Faith in Four and One

Season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was juggling quite a few ongoing plots yet still had room for great standalone episodes like "Hush" and "Superstar". Season four had Buffy's new boyfriend, Riley, the U.S. military demon hunting unit called The Initiative, former demon Anya's development as a human and Xander's love interest, a neutered Spike's evolving position among the Scooby Gang, the end of Willow's relationship with Oz and the beginning of her relationship with Tara, and the return of Faith. Plus a few bits about Giles' midlife crisis. It all flows together remarkably well, everything feels organic. And the first season of Angel was running at the same time and the plots of both shows were seamlessly interwoven, particularly when it comes to Faith.

Actually, I felt the conclusion of Faith's story, which season four Buffy and season one Angel essentially present, would have been better dragged out a bit longer. Her character was by far the most interesting thing about season three but when she wakes up from her coma more than halfway through season four there are a lot more irons in the fire. But "Who Are You?", written and directed by Joss Whedon, turns out to be one of the all time great body-swapping episodes for how perfectly it advanced Faith's story. It forces Faith to realise that if she could hit the reset button on all her bad deeds, and be seen as a good Slayer again, she'd actually like her life a whole lot better. Eliza Dushku shows she's better at playing Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar is at playing Faith but Gellar still manages to show some subtlety as she digests the fact that someone like Riley (Marc Blucas) is capable of having true affection for someone else, something Faith had lost, well, faith in.

Except she'd seemed to have a genuine, mutually affectionate relationship with the deceased mayor. That's a story that could have been fleshed out further, and maybe it was in the comics. It would be interesting to see her, after her reformation, face the one loving relationship she had during the period when she felt the mission of the Scooby Gang was a lie predicated on what she considered to be the false idea that the lives of strangers were worth saving. Her point of view on this isn't reversed until she goes to rescue the hostages in "What Are You?" It's so credible. I've known people who compulsively purge things and people out of their lives and I wonder sometimes if something could make them see that they tend to throw a few babies out with the bathwater. It might also be a good story for people to-day who are routinely taught by an electronic world that they don't need a long attention span. So often people don't understand their own hearts.

Faith's story really ends in the season one episode of Angel called "Sanctuary" when Angel (David Boreanaz) decides to take her in to rehabilitate her. But the episode becomes much more about the relationship between Angel and Buffy as they pull different aspects of their own experience to argue about why Faith is or isn't worth saving. We get some good stuff about Faith struggling with the weight of her crimes, the seeming impossibility of atoning for what she's done. It's a story that could have been drawn out much longer.

In the middle of all the Faith drama, Buffy also gives us "New Moon Rising", a tour de force episode written by Marti Noxon. Oz (Seth Green) returns to town, apparently having cured his lycanthropy, and his arrival simultaneously makes Riley confront his and the Initiative's bigotry regarding demons and also makes Willow (Alyson Hannigan) realise the nature of her affection for Tara (Amber Benson).

My friend Brian thinks Willow was in fact bisexual and this episode works much better if you assume she is. We as an audience at this point genuinely like both Oz and Tara and Willow in a relationship with either one is an appealing prospect. Sometimes I find Willow/Tara a little too gooey, there's something a little too sweet about all their stuttering and chagrin. I really don't like how the recaps constantly repeat Tara's "I am, you know--yours" line. But Amber Benson's vulnerability in this episode is great as she politely extricates herself from the Scooby meeting when Oz shows up. You can see she clearly thinks she's succeeded in being discreet when in reality it's practically like she's told everyone, "I can't be here if Willow is into someone else."

It kind of makes most of the other characters' slowness to perceive the Willow/Tara relationship a bit implausible, particularly Buffy's. But on the whole, I find the plotline more interesting than I did the last time I watched through the show.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are available on Amazon Prime.

How to Live Without a Soul

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Two ends a lot stronger than Season One. A two part episode called "The Becoming", written and directed by Joss Whedon, has two interesting thematic threads--what it means to be a Slayer and what it means to have no soul.

Buffy's mother (Kristine Sutherland) finally finds out Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a vampire slayer ironically when she's in the middle of negotiating a truce with a vampire, Spike (James Marsters).

There are a few of the usual coming out allegory lines from Buffy's mother--"Have tried not being a vampire slayer?"--but fortunately the teleplay doesn't go full tilt on it. To do so would mean losing the moment when Joyce is relieved to learn Buffy didn't kill Kendra (Bianca Lawson). Can Buffy really be surprised her mother partly suspected her, especially since, as we're reminded moments later when Buffy notes her clothes were routinely blood stained, there are often hints of extreme violence around Buffy?

By the way, the police make one of their rare, useless appearances in this episode--apparently failing to notice the duffel bag of medieval weapons right in the middle of the room.

It makes sense that being a Slayer would isolate Buffy--the responsibility she carries isn't just about risking life and limb, or leaving her mother in the dark, it also means being the only person in a position to make decisions no-one else will ever be in a position to understand. Sacrificing Angel (David Boreanaz) at the end, just as he gets his soul back, is a perfect example. It's amazing Buffy can maintain her sanity. As it is, she ends the season kicked out of her house and expelled from school.

But what is the difference, exactly, between people who do and don't have souls? It seems like the writers generally played it by ear. Angel, without his soul, seems to be motivated entirely by sadism and bloodlust. But that's not true for Spike and Drusilla (Juliet Landau).

Spike tells Buffy that he's not as keen as Angel is on destroying the world--in fact, he tells Buffy that vampires, when they talk about destroying the world, are generally all talk--why would they want to obliterate their food supply, for one thing? So Angel's behaviour isn't really enough to use to define someone without a soul. If we're to look at it like Thomas Hobbes for a moment, then the vampires being motivated by self-interest doesn't really separate them from humans at all, where self-interest inevitably urges them to cooperate, as Spike does with Buffy in this episode. Certainly, it's always much safer not to give powerful people, like a Slayer, or authorities, like the police, reason to hunt you. In this case, the deciding factor for vampires would be the entirely physical thirst for blood and/or low intelligence.

I always thought it interesting that Joss Whedon, an atheist, would have created two shows where souls are so important, where a race of demonic beings are physically damaged by the presence of a crucifix. I always suspected there was tension behind the scenes between some of the atheist writing staff and religious members of the crew like, of course, Charisma Carpenter. As a Catholic, her faith in icons would likely be especially weirded out by Whedon's apparent independently operating two minds on the topic.

As days pass since Carpenter made allegations against Whedon, statements from other actors--and the absence of statements from some--make hers and Michelle Trachtenberg seem less and less substantial. If there was an on set rule about not leaving Trachtenberg alone with Whedon, why do so many of the other actors say they never saw any hint of the behaviour Carpenter and Trachtenberg are talking about? The statement from Amy Acker of Angel is particularly curious:

I will always be proud of the work we all did on Angel. While I personally had a good and professional experience, it is heartbreaking to hear that not everyone did. I do not condone any actions that made anyone feel hurt or uncomfortable, and I offer love and support to everyone who is speaking out to tell their truths.

That's a very carefully crafted statement. Again, like so many others, it's a statement that clearly says she saw none of the wrongdoing being alleged--which is surprising given the claim that Whedon made the whole working environment "toxic". Most of the statements have just enough supportive words to avoid the threat of being cancelled. Acker's is the most reticent. In addition to not even naming Whedon, she ends with the strikingly evasive "their truths". Once again, I can't say for sure Whedon's not a private scumbag but it looks to me a whole lot less likely that he is.

Twitter Sonnet #1443

To load the page a second browser grew.
Addresses filled the empty bar above.
To think of all the code we ever knew.
There's some electric sign for plastic love.
Elastic cables held the printer down.
A wire spilled across the cooling fan.
A fibre optic rumour razed the town.
The speakers spoke across a string and can.
The mother board would boast of dated RAM.
In graphics rich in coloured dots we walked.
Bathsheba's mouse has clicked the wayward lamb.
In ancient disks the data's fully stocked.
The saucer shape was holding facts and dreams.
Electric stars dispense their rays and beams.

JK Rowling, Joss Whedon, and Gina Carano: Controversy Roundup

A lot of kids have been calling me "Harry Potter" since the weather became cold enough for me to wear my big Inverness coat. I guess the Harry Potter movies are generally where most kids in Japan see Victorian clothes. Harry Potter is very popular at the schools where I've worked and it's easy to guess why; it's about children in a school with uniforms. There are plenty of Japanese films, TV shows, and manga that do the same thing, placing their stories of magic, romance, or horror in the context of junior high or high school. I don't mind being called Harry Potter though I've never read the books and haven't seen all the movies. I am thankful for the one kid who called me Sherlock Holmes.

Often when I hear Harry Potter mentioned, I think of the recent transphobia scandals around J.K. Rowling. I wonder when or if that'll ever filter down to Japan. I've been reading articles and watching YouTube videos discussing the issue from both sides, one side hailing Rowling as a sudden heroine for free speech and the battle against social engineering and the other side lambasting her for propagating transphobic conceptions. I suppose it's long been a problem for the Left--to qualify as progressive, one must have all the right opinions. She is, for many now, irredeemably tainted and anything she might have to say about feminism or human nature generally is either somehow bigoted or totally worthless. I heard there's already a shift in how she's discussed in classrooms.

Recently, the YouTuber ContraPoints released a video essay on J.K. Rowling and, like a lot of ContraPoints' videos, I find myself wanting to like it more than I actually do. Natalie Wynn--ContraPoints--has great style and humour. I like the shot of her typing on a keyboard with a xylophone mallet. And I think she's right in pointing out some of the many problems with Rowlings' argument, particularly the strikingly vitriolic, transphobic public posts from some people Rowling lists among her allies. Wynn doesn't mention any of Rowling's transgender allies. Which is not to say I think, "She has trans-friends" is a valid argument to prove Rowling isn't transphobic though, on the same token, having transphobic friends doesn't make one a transphobe. Still, Wynn successfully shows how Rowling's fixation on false transwomen invading female spaces is irrational.

ContraPoints has a reputation for considering the conservative perspective which is what makes it all the more frustrating when she does not. Her discussion of Rowling's judgement being affected by trauma is a useful bit of perspective. At the same time, she pretends that there is absolutely no validity to any of Rowling's concerns. What about the issue of children being given treatment that permanently alters their development? Is it more important to honour a child's current self-perception or is it irresponsible to trust the notoriously fickle and changeable goals of a young teenager? To pretend there's no debate to be had here is intellectually dishonest at the least. The issue of whether or not children should be given the right to choose to undergo life changing procedures seems separate from the issue of whether or not you consider gender dysphoria a valid experience.

Also unfortunate is how ContraPoints addresses the issue of whether or not the word "bigot" is a slur. She attacks the issue in a thoroughly pedantic way, essentially arguing that "bigot" can't be a slur because it's a verifiable aspect of personality--you can prove someone really is a bigot whereas a slur is generally a rude, alternate term for race or sexual orientation. She might successfully have shown bigot can't be a slur but she misses the point by even making this argument. The word "fat" isn't a slur but it's usually insulting to call someone fat. The point isn't whether "bigot" is a slur, it's that it's being used to dismiss people or arguments wholesale, much as insults are generally intended to, on the basis of feeling rather than contemplation.

Yesterday came word that Disney fired Gina Carano from her role as Cara Dune on The Mandalorian, essentially on the grounds that she's a bigot. A Lucasfilm spokesperson released this statement:

"Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable."

The irony here is that the tweets that landed Carano in hot water were tweets that decried the current political climate and what seemed to her an exhibition of bigotry from the Left.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

I'm an old fashioned internet denizen who still thinks we should avoid comparing our opponents to Nazis (though it's as natural as breathing to many on the Left now). But here we have a clear case of a charge of bigotry being treated as an insult--the idea that the Left can be bigoted is so beyond the conception of the people at Disney that their response is to call Carano a bigot for calling the Left bigots. So much for everyone coexisting.

I didn't think Carano gave a very good performance--though I thought she was a little better in the second season, I don't mind the prospect of her absence. But I find the reason given for her firing a little disturbing. It occurs to me that Disney probably couldn't fire her for giving a bad performance, a thing which, unlike her political views, does directly affect the job they'd hired her for.

Yesterday also came the news a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast members have come forward with allegations of "toxic" behaviour from Joss Whedon. At the head of these allegations are those from Charisma Carpenter who played Cordelia on Buffy and Angel. Her two anecdotes to establish Whedon's toxicity were an incident where he became angry at her for getting a tattoo of a rosary and an incident where he asked her if she was going to allow her pregnancy to come to full term. Frankly, I can see his point of view in both cases--both are things that drastically altered the actress' appearance and therefore affected the project Whedon was in charge of. For various reasons, he'd be powerless to fire her over them. He was out of line asking Carpenter if she was considering an abortion, especially since he likely knew she was Catholic. But both cases show she had chosen her personal life ahead of her art without any apparent qualms. I don't think Whedon is an especially good director and his talents as a writer are somewhat uneven and don't age well--Xander's jokes are particularly annoying and lead me to suspect they're the kind of caustic things Whedon would say in real life. But I do respect a commitment to one's art. Getting a tattoo seems a particularly selfish action on Carpenter's part and makes me wonder what else she may have done.

Really, though, I don't know Whedon or Carpenter and can't truly judge their characters. But Carpenter has said she voiced her support for Whedon in the past and even said she'd work with him again. Now she says she's changing her stance because of Ray Fisher and the Time's Up movement. Who's to say three years from now she won't say something similar about her current stance? If she firmly believed something a few years ago she considers false now, who's to say she won't make a complete 180 again when the influence of different political winds are in the air? Which, of course, is the fundamental problem with so many of the allegations that come years after the fact. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who also released a statement yesterday, has a little more cred because her hatred for Whedon is well known and has been for decades, though I've only heard of it as being related to creative differences.

Again, I don't know Whedon and can't really judge him but my impression is he's a bit of a dick. That said, I've yet to hear anything that makes me think his life and career should be ruined.

I've seen people wonder how Whedon can be such an ardent feminist publicly and abusive to women privately. Whedon himself wrote the response to this in the second season Buffy episode "Ted" in which guest star Jon Ritter plays a perfect father figure until he's alone with Buffy, at which point he turns abusive. That Whedon wrote such an episode, and that he so vociferously expressed feminist views publicly, suggests to me that he genuinely considered himself a feminist.

What if his feminism was the kind that believed he should be as tough on women as he is on men? His fantasy is, after all, about a super strong woman who turns on her attacker in the blind alley. Now that I work in junior high schools and see how differently boys and girls typically behave, I'm shown evidence on a daily basis that girls really do need to be treated more gently than boys. There are exceptions and I believe in the validity of the transgender experience but I'm inclined now to believe gender is not merely a construct.

Anthony Stewart Head says he doesn't remember any bad behaviour from Whedon but that he's willing to believe his female costars. For me, the last thing any of this makes me want to do is take a leap of faith.

The Past TV Dictates the Future TV

And I'm still watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I gather the younger generations aren't really impressed by the series. Who'd have thought Friends would retain more pop cultural currency? I guess a lot of people, it was always more mainstream. The special effects on Buffy certainly haven't aged well.

There's also the lack of a proper HD release and Joss Whedon's name mysteriously being mud in Hollywood because he cheated on his wife. How can that sink someone's career in this day and age? Then there's the mysterious behind the scenes drama with his Justice League reshoots. I feel like no-one's taking Ray Fisher's allegations seriously anymore, he seems pretty clearly to be trying to make PR hay. The vague rumour about Whedon locking Gal Gadot in a room seems to be holding more water. When Warners said they were taking "remedial action" following the investigation prompted by Fisher's allegations, I assumed it was kicking Whedon off the new series about Victorian crime fighting women he created for HBO Max. Now I'm starting to wonder if he left that show for different reasons because iO9 just published a new positive review of Firefly, Whedon's popular, prematurely cancelled series from a couple decades ago. Since iO9 seems to be completely a corporate shill at this point, I assume very few articles get written by them unless a studio asked or paid for it. Which makes me wonder if a Firefly relaunch is on the horizon. We are in the age of relaunches and reboots, and, Whedon's phony controversies aside, there are few properties more deserving.

Another of those few is obviously Twin Peaks. Are any of you still watching David Lynch's weather reports? In the past couple he's referred to douglas firs and cherry pie.

That stuff about the ice cream and the cherry pie having been refrigerated makes me wonder if his new Wisteria series is a spin-off of Twin Peaks. Obviously that would be much more exciting than a Firefly continuation but I'd be very happy to see both. In any case, the massive influence Twin Peaks and Buffy continue to have on new television and film ensures they'll have at least one kind of immortality.

The Appeal of Simpler Fiction

I'm still watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'm now seven episodes into season 2. "Lie to Me", which first aired in November 1997, was written and directed by Joss Whedon and is the first really interesting episode from him so far, not counting the pilot. There's more to it than jokes and pulp, you start to get a bigger sense of emotional stakes largely thanks to a one-off character, an old classmate of Buffy's called Ford (Billy Fordham).

He shows up at Sunnydale High at the beginning of the episode much to Buffy's (Sarah Michelle Gellar) surprise. She's surprisingly candid in explaining to Xander (Nicolas Brendon) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) that she'd had a massive crush on Ford in fifth grade. She even mentions listening to know "When I Think About You I Touch Myself", lamely adding that she didn't originally understand what the song meant. Could a fifth grader in L.A. really have been that innocent in the 90s? It seems implausible--though not as implausible as Willow just at that moment figuring out the song's meaning. It comes off more like coy burlesque humour, which I can kind of appreciate.

I found it a little more difficult accepting the fact that, when Ford reveals he knew Buffy was the Slayer, no-one asks how he came by that information, not even Giles (Anthony Stewart Head). But I can forgive the episode its faults when its plot about a vampire worshipping cult naively bargaining with vampires pays off so tragically.

It's the first moment of moral ambiguity on the show--suddenly Ford seems to have a point when he wants to live forever, and the vampire being a demon concept suddenly seems especially cruel. And it adds an intriguing shade to the subplot about Angel (David Boreanaz) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) advanced in this episode.

It feels like, with this episode, Whedon finally caught up with reading Anne Rice as the layers of tragedy in Drusilla's past have that kind of operatic despair. She's almost Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. There's an interesting juxtaposition, now that I think about it, between Angel recalling how he obsessed with the exceptionally pure innocence of the human Drusilla and the innocence Buffy exhibits chatting about her crush on Ford. Adding another layer of intrigue is the fact that we've not yet been told that Angel has regained his soul in the years since he turned Drusilla into a vampire.

The episode also continues a satisfying development for Willow from throughout the season. I love the scene where she invites Angel into her room--he walks in all in satin and leather while she's wearing a big shirt and bunny slippers.

What a fun way to break the Anne Rice vibe (and I say that as someone who likes Rice's early books). Yet it's not so ironic as to break the fourth wall. Willow's personality always comes off as authentic, that's part of her charm.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available in a lousy cropped format on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1431

The wrinkled cup supports an even tea.
Confirming flights, the narrow phones report.
Advancing trays collapsed to feed the bee.
A group of feathered men with grace contort.
A punching card was holes away from rock.
Approval spoke in scattered sounds and blips.
Galactic dough retreats beneath the sock.
She takes her drink and time and slowly sips.
Mistaken skulls were floating out the mall.
We traded hats between the empty racks.
Decision sports create a choosy ball.
The heavy shirts condemn the brittle backs.
The even rooms distort misshapen lights.
A metal rod disturbs the wooden fights.

Comic Con Report, volume 2: Exhibit Hall Edition

Here's a genuine Golden Ticket from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This was at a booth at Comic Con auctioning off authentic Hollywood props.

Artefacts from yesterday's future, via Back to the Future: Part II.

Part of the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. You might notice, by the way, that the Ark in the first Indiana Jones film looks almost identical to how it looks in biblical epic films of the 50s like David and Bathsheba and Solomon and Sheba. This might be one of Spielberg's nods to the films that influenced him but it also might be because the Ark of the Covenant is described with amazingly precise detail in the bible.

A genuine production used lightsabre from A New Hope.

Glenda the Good Witch's broach from The Wizard of Oz. If the "witch" part hadn't already enraged the Puritan viewer the immodest display of opulence would certainly be the last straw.

Friday, the day most of these photos are from, I spent almost entirely wandering the Exhibit Hall. I didn't think there were panels I wanted to see though I wish I'd gone to the Amazon panel. My eyes passed right over the title "Amazon Prime" in the schedule and only later did I read the fine print and see it was in fact a panel for Good Omens and The Expanse. Oh, well.

Joss Whedon along with Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion signing for the anniversary of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

"That's a beautiful gown," I said to this woman who made her costume herself. "But it looks warm."

"It is warm," she acknowledged gravely. The temperatures got to over 100 Fahrenheit this year. I felt bad for a lot of cosplayers, particularly the Wookiees.

Artist Joe Phillips who, as in previous years, always wore an amazing, completely different costume each day of the Con. "You're an endless fount of creativity," I told him.

A female Predator and her friend Domino from Deadpool 2. The Deadpool booth had a hilarious animatronic Chuck E. Cheese homage this year.

I saw this Seventh Doctor on Sunday. After Thursday I saw a couple women dressed as Four and a few more just wearing Thirteen's coat.

The only Slave Leia I saw this year. "There used to be legions of you!" I said to her.

"I was hoping to see more," she said.

When I asked if I could take a picture she asked if I minded her cigarette. "Not at all, that's great!" I said.

The ghost of Mozart's father from the movie Amadeus.

On the trolley on the way to Comic Con on Friday I read the new Sirenia Digest which included the second and final part of THE ELDRITCH ALPHABET written by Caitlin R. Kiernan in tribute to HP Lovecraft. It features vignettes for letters in the alphabet from "N is for Nyarlathotep" to "Z is for Zoog". I particularly liked "R is for R'lyeh" which features a cool, fresh perspective on Cthulhu worship through the eyes of one of Caitlin's own characters, the Signalman, who should be familiar to fans of her excellent book Black Helicopters.

I'll have more on this year's Comic Con in to-morrow's entry.

Twitter Sonnet #1137

The absent plastic made a space for text.
A million heads'll not replace a rock.
A boarding school became forgotten next.
A hundred words replaced the single sock.
Required phones dictate the normal hand.
A fan without a ceiling held the roof.
No guessing tells where heavy horses land.
No mane or tail connects before the hoof.
A ship constructed well rewards the rum.
A tiny sheet aligns the card for sail.
Along the dock the ants begin to hum.
Below the waves the fish began to wail.
The same hotel appeared accross the street.
The avenue assembled extra feet.