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Quiara Vasquez's avatar

P.S.: It's so weird to see an essay in 2025 that just... takes for granted that Joss Whedon is a genius! Because like... he's not a great *guy,* to put it mildly, and I definitely don't like how deified he was back in the '00s. But he absolutely belongs on a Mount Rushmore of 21st century television, and his filmography is better than people give him credit for, and yes I'm including the MCU crap in this analysis. (This observation brought to you from the woman who just saw "Flight Risk," which is just "Speed" minus all the "oh, this was *definitely* co-written by Joss" tics, and predictably kind of bad!)

Ultimately what bothers people about him, I think, is that he's a talented writer on the progressive/left end of the political spectrum *and* a sleazy asshole, and a lot of people on the progressive/left end of the political spectrum would like to think that precludes them from being sleazy assholes. (Or even just, like... a good person period.) Which motivates people to claim that, actually, he's a no-talent hack whose scripts are wall-to-wall unfunny quips (blame Kevin Feige for that!), or a Weinstein-level sex predator (he's more of a Scott Rudin - not that I'm excusing him, but c'mon now), or even worse - a neoliberal!!!1 (Which is hilarious in the context of "Not Fade Away," where Angel all but turns to the camera and says "reformism is bad, let's kill some billionaires!")

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Quiara Vasquez's avatar

I've waited for this essay for months, and it did not disappoint - I got into Buffy long after the show ended and thus missed out on all this fan "lore."

I'm fascinated by the "desegregation" reading on Spuffy, mostly because around the same time that discourse was brewing on Buffy Prime, there was literally an interracial relationship on Angel - and as far as I can tell, the fans were mostly rooting *against* the Fred/Gunn pairing! I don't think it's bizarre to consider anti-vampire bigotry as a racial metaphor in the context of Angel, which invited that sort of analysis (e.g. "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," my pick for the best episode of the show, explicitly positions half-human/half-vampire Angel as a "tragic mulatto;" the Kate episodes had some pretty obvious post-Rodney King anxiety), but I... don't think fandom really partook in that kind of analysis when it wasn't backing up their ship.

On the topic of the revival and "how many Danas are there?" - this is more or less exactly the premise of "The Nevers," the show Joss Whedon created for HBO a few years ago (which was then unceremoniously dumped on Tubi for tax writeoffs, lmao). Which I thought was very good and interesting, for what it's worth - but understandably, no critic in 2021 was going to stick out their neck and say "wow, I'm so pumped for this cool new Joss Whedon show!"

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