This was the splendid idea of bitterbyrden, whom I visited today: tour Los Angeles for its Jossverse locations. We had a blast. Here's the result, in picspam, so that you, too, can share our fannish dorkness:

( From Wolfram and Hart to Sunnydale High )

This morning I woke up to reason #111143 to love Joss Whedon. Apparantly, following the news Marti Noxon became one of the executive producers of Grey's Anatomy, there was the usual round of Marti bashing. (My own take on Marti Noxon and what she brought to BTVS was one of the first things I wrote on lj, so this is something of a red button to me.)

To which our Mr. Whedon has now replied. Quoth he:

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.

More thoughts on Astonishing X-Men, which, now that the „Torn“ arc is concluded, seems to kick off a lot of meta everywhere – witness likeadeuce’s splendid essay here.

With the exception of works such as Sandman by Neil Gaiman - invented, written and concluded (as in really concluded, no more sequels) by a single writer – comics are a multiple author affair. Which makes the definition of canon and in character or out of character writing fiendishly difficult (witness Magneto, who seems to be a tragic hero or raving lunatic depending on the whim of the author in question). It also means that each time a new writer tackles previously established characters, readers, not surprisingly, will look at his or her own previous repertoire and draw conclusions about how X is going to handle this particular universe.

In the case of Joss Whedon, this meant, among other things, that throughout his run of AXM so far there has been, along with praise, distrust and/or accusation along the following lines:
1) Joss can’t handle adult women and sexually mature relationships.
2) Therefore, what he’s doing with Emma must be the vilification of an adult woman and a sexually mature relationship.
Leaving alone charge 1) (which I don’t agree with, but discussion of the Jossverse in its three incarnations would lead too far from the subject at hand) , 2) has led people to overlook how Joss has actually been writing Emma, Kitty, Scott and the rest of the gang. Because above all, and this has been clear even before #18 came out, Joss takes Emma seriously. Her backstory, spawned by multiple authors - all her backstory. Emma the villain, Emma the teacher, Emma the survivor of a horrible genocide, Emma the woman who fell in love with Scott Summers, Emma the manipulator and Emma the heroine.

( Nothing changes; everything does )

I've said it before, I'll say it again: one of the great things about fandom is when fellow fen you know from one fandom get interested in another fandom you're pimping to them also interested in. No sooner has nolivingman finished her Babylon 5 run that gentilhomme starts hers, helped by eirena. Also, artaxastra asked me whether she'd like Alias. andrastewhite, as a past victim fellow fan, you must support me here!

And then there are the professionals. Because Joss is cute when he goes all fanboy on us: Joss Whedon about the new Battlestar Galactica. Now, given that the last time he went fanboy about a current tv show, this resulted in him getting a cameo on Veronica Mars, I can't help but wonder whether Ron Moore will give him either a cameo (the Cylon God, perhaps?) or a writing gig next season. You know, because Mr. Moore doesn't torture his characters nearly enough. *nods in anticipation*

One Alias fanfic rec, which I discovered thanks to yahtzee63: Assassin's Tango, an absolutely fantastic story covering the relationship of Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane from their first meeting to the series finale, Jack pov. I squeed about that one all day.

RL-wise, I had an annoying day, but thankfully, fandom waited with goodness. kangeiko wrote a great (which means disturbing, hot and messed-up) Jack/Nadia ficlet. With a killer punchline. Having just rewatched The Box because a) I have a Sloane character post to write and b) I still feel guilty for forgetting to nominate it for best hostage episode in the poll a while ago, I promptly started to wonder again about just how Jack thinks Sloane feels about Sydney. Ah, well. That's something for another post.

Back to fannish goodness: Luminosity (aka The Best Vidder Ever) made a Life on Mars vid: Timebomb. I am a very happy barely weeks old fan indeed. If you haven't watched the show, download the vid and get a taste of why you should.

And my local comicstore handed over a couple of imports, including Astonishing X-Men #14. See, that's why they hired Joss, aside from hiring him for the dialogue. For the BadWrong. So, in X2, that scene where Mystique keeps switching into all the X-Girls to mess with Logan's mind? That's tame. Despite Joss' movieverse issues, I can just see him watching that, thinking of what his faithful minion DeKnight, bless him, did with Wes 'n Lilah in Apocalypse, Nowish, and decide to mix, stir, compete and do better than both.

( Ah, Wrongness! )

thalia_seawood last week reached Restless in her BTVS watching, and wrote some insightful reviews about it, which reminded me once more why this is my favourite BTVS episode, so I rewatched it, and am all aglow anew with the Restless love, and the BTVS love. merrymaia, who is also watching BTVS for the first time and is in early season 2, recently asked me which I prefer, BTVS or AtS, and I honestly can't say. I love both. I love them for their shared and for their differing qualities. One of the unique-to-BTVS things, imo, and a reason why I actually like the later Buffy seasons better than the early ones is that Joss really experimented with TV as a medium there in a way AtS or Firefly did not. (This is not meant as a criticism of either show - as I said, I love them dearly, and they have each unique stuff BTVS does not have.) My current theory why this is so is that BTVS was the show he got most comfortable with. Not his favourite (I think that would be Firefly). Not the one where he pushed the characters most. (AtS.) But the one he could relax and be playful with most, "playful" not meaning fluffyness but more of a Brother Grimm kind of playfulness - this is Joss, after all - and as a result we got the experimental episodes: Hush, Restless, The Body, Once More, With Feeling. I don't think they would have been possible over at AtS.

Each of these episodes manages to unite both the "concept" aspect (i.e. silence, dreams, immediate post-death reaction, musical) with continuity. You couldn't take them out of their place in the show and put them in an earlier or later season. Hush and Once More, With Feeling change relationships. The Body of course is about the most brutal change of all. Restless stands a bit apart in this regard; it is a coda to the fourth season and in fact the four seasons of BTVS so far, and foreshadows some later events, but by itself, it does not change the characters or their relationships. (Except, perhaps, by awakening Buffy's interest in the Slayer origin.) It's more of a summing up, and an affectionate yet acerbic analysis of the four main characters of the show through that most indefiniable medium of all, dreams.

Now, other shows have done shows that take place inside of characters' heads and feature some imaginative visualization of dreamscapes. The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari (Babylon 5, season 5) comes to mind, and I recall a Professionals episode where that was done for Doyle. Other shows have had impressive dream sequences (most recently the new BSG). Twin Peaks set a high standard for any dream sequences in the 80s. But I can't think of a show that did dreams so perfectly, that made you feel, yes, this is exactly what a dream is like.

As kathyh said recently, the cinematography of Restless is actually better - in the sense of feeling more cinematic in parts - than the one of Serenity (which is a great film but still feels like tv transported to the big screen). Images like Buffy in the desert, or the playground sequence in Xander's dream have a lyrical beauty that stun me each time. The gorgeous music by Chris Beck aids and abets, of course, but that is part of the medium - the union of image and sound. Speaking of sound: given that razorsharp dialogue is Joss' trademark, it's all the more remarkable that he didn't ruin the atmosphere by letting the characters exchange said dialogue - you don't do that in dreams. (When Buffy gets back to using her usual sassy comebacks, she inevitably wakes up.) Instead, we get surreal dialogue and outbursts that nonetheless achieves a strange poetry and comes back to me again and again.

"I walk, I talk, I shop, I sneeze. I'm going to be a fireman if the flood rolls back."

"What was your name?" "Before Adam? Not a man among us can remember."

"It is the fable of the fox, and the less patient fox."

"You're a whipping boy raised by mongrels and set on a sacrifical stone."

"A watcher scoffs at gravity."

"Be back before Dawn."

and of course, the immortal

"I wear the cheese. It does not wear me."

The four dreams have been interpreted by many fans, and I wrote my own take years ago when I was still on an BTVS email list; but it's fun to revisit and look how my interpretations have changed or remained the same, now that the series is finished.

( Willow's Dream: )

( Xander's Dream: )

( Giles' Dream: )

( Buffy's Dream: )

Serenity: in a word, loved it. So did the rest of the audience, which wasn't huge, considering that they had put the movie on a late night schedule and had made zilch advertisment for it, but thalia_seawood and I were happy fans anyway. In that special, Jossian way. *veg*

( Can't stop the signal )

There is something incredibly endearing, to me, when people whose creations I admire show their enthusiasm for someone else’s creations. On a basic level, this is very similar to how fandom works – we get to know a fellow fan of a certain fandom, they’re also enthusiastic about something else we don’t know yet, and we decide to have a look. (That’s how I got to watch Blake’s 7, BTVS, and Farscape, among other shows. And how I got to read Harry Potter - it was recced to me by honor just a nanosecond before the hype started.)

If I already know the recommended show/book/film, it’s the fun of sharing. For example, watching Steven Spielberg go all fanboy on the Lawrence of Arabia DVD. If I don’t know, I’m at the very least curious, and stimulated by the enthusiasm. Which means I’ll probably try and watch Veronica Mars now, because who can resist Joss Whedon in fanboy mode, when he’s sounding like this after having watched Veronica Mars:

Big emotion, I mean BIG, and charsimatic actors and I was just DYING from the mystery and the relationships and PAIN, this show knows from pain and no, I don't care, laugh all you want, I had to share this. These guys know what they're doing on a level that intimidates me. It's the Harry Potter of shows. There. I said it. People should do whatever they can to check out this first season so the second won't be a spoiler fest. I'm nutty.

So, monanotlisa, kskitten, anyone, who has the Veronica Mars PAIN available? Trust Joss to get wild about this particular trait. I mean, this is the man who in another example of fannish enthusiasm, in this case about Stephen Sondheim, confessed in an interview:

"Sondheim wasn't someone you would go to if you wanted to be told that everything was perfect. Neither were my parents, for that matter — all concerned were greatly relieved when they got divorced. I told my therapist that I knew all of Follies by the age of nine; she said, 'We have our work cut out for us.'" One of Follies numbers, "The Road You Didn't Take," posed a particular challenge to young Whedon: "the notion that every choice you make means that other possibilities are eliminated forever — as a kid, I found that terrifying. As an adult, I still find it scary."

Joss Whedon getting raised on Sondheim tunes in the 70s explains a lot.*g* As andrastewhite said to me, will future therapists hear from other people “I have the sixth season of Buffy memorized”?

Meanwhile, friends’ list, share. What is your favourite example of a writer/creator/composer/whatever whose creations you like going fanboy/fangirl over something?