the hate train

[ironymaiden]

migraine today, only able too look at a screen for the last hour or so.

in that time an internet rabbit trail led to this: "Do you hate Xander Harris? This is the post for you."*


*and it's totally for me, even though i disagree with the passing comment about Oz.

Comments

[sinthrex.livejournal.com]

I don't even disagree with the writer and I'm still...impressed at the amount of bile one can generate at a television character, and yet have still made the decision to watch the whole series.

Just, wow.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

That's the part I don't get, really. She's totally right about both Xander and Joss being faux-feminist "nice guy" asshats, but really... Why keep watching a show created by said asshat?

I get that a lot of people watched it first-run when they were young and hadn't yet had their lightbulb moments, so maybe that's it. Me, I was a couple of years too old to be into it at the time, so I skipped over it. Never got the appeal, and thus never got the appeal of anything else Joss did later on.

If he didn't keep insisting he's a feminist because he gives weapons to cute young things, I probably wouldn't mind so much. As-is, I think he's a complete douche.

[ironymaiden]

i'm over Joss - i was shaken by Serenity and then fully turned off by Dollhouse. but he knows structure - planning an arc, delivering revelations at correct intervals, when and how to tie up loose ends - and he knows how to put together a stable of talented writers and keep them pretty happy.

what Buffy did really well was "growing up is hell". there was a lot of great television there. there's a lot i dislike about the show, but it's pretty rare that i have an unconditional love for something on television. i think the most hateful thing about Xander is that most of us know someone like him.

[joyful-storm.livejournal.com]

I actually liked Dollhouse; I'm not at a mental place to rigorously defend that point of view at the moment, but I am glad I watched it.

I came to Whedon's body of work as a skeptic, all of it after it was off the air, so I didn't have any real emotional investment in the Joss-as-brilliant-creator trope many folks I know have fallen from in disillusion.

[joyful-storm.livejournal.com]

I have now totally spent the day surreptitiously reading the rest of 30 days of Buffy.

Excellent observations on the evolving comprehension of humanity on the part of Anya, the wide-ranging narrative impacts of the death of Jenny Calendar, Willow's beautifully-framed-but-ultimately frustrated arc as villain, Faith as Ereshkigal figure to Buffy's Inanna, and how white feminists sometimes blind themselves to the race privilege they may enjoy whilst fighting their battles and so not win universal suffrage after all really.

(All of which may well answer the "Why keep watching?" question.)

[ironymaiden]

i instapapered them for reading on the bus later (and friended eleusis_walks)