When I was much younger, my sister and I really enjoyed Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The movie. I'll pause a moment for you to unleash a comedic snort, because whenever I tell that to people in person they need a moment to recover.
After all these years, I'm finally watching the series.
Willow is telling the world for me. Source.
Full disclosure: it makes me cry. I start to tear up almost every time Buffy cries about Angel, and whenever Willow cries. Also, I love Willow far too much. This show makes me insanely emotional and exhausted. I've watched through Season three and when all that nonsense with Faith and Angel happened I wanted to scream and stop watching the show.
Whedon yanks around the audience so hard that I want to write him a stern letter regarding the consequences of playing with my heart. And in the moments where I feel so fed up with all of the emotion that I want to rage-quit the show, I have to take a moment to appreciate just how brilliant the writing is.
I wouldn't be nearly so wound up if it weren't for the amazing character development and the writing. Whenever the opening credits say that Whedon wrote the story, then I know I am in for some seriously crazy happenings.
This, for example. Are you looking at it? You'd better be, because this image
was terrifying to look at during my Google image search. *shudder* Source.
As I become introduced to more of Joss Whedon's work I am faced with irrefutable proof of incredibly intelligent storytelling. Whenever I've tried to write my own stories I run into a pretty serious problem: I cannot hurt my characters. I want nothing more than for them to be happy, content imagined beings. I'm sure it's easy to realize that this makes for uninteresting characters and a non-existent story.
Whedon tortures me though. He tortures me as he tortures his characters and I want to thank him for that. He has opened my eyes to a better world of storytelling and I feel so disgusted with all of the poorly written books I've read and movies I've watched.
Once I'm finished with Buffy I'll be excitedly moving on to Dollhouse and Firefly. I incur shame from all of my Whedonite friends whenever I admit that I haven't watched Firefly, but I believe it'll make things that much more exciting when I finally watch the series and then Serenity! Gosh I'm so pumped just thinking about it. His predilection for strong female characters is a huge draw as well.
The lady on the left looks pretty strong. I hope I won't be disappointed! Source.
This world has a serious shortage of brilliant writing. What's more is that when brilliant writing comes along it is so often cut short. It makes me incredibly sad and frustrated that true creativity is stifled in the mainstream because it's not, well, mainstream enough. Damn the mainstream; creativity and boldness is important!
As a final note to this completely all over the place write-up on how fantastic Joss Whedon is, I want to say that The Avengers was -amazing-. So many comic book movies completely tank because whoever is in charge of translating them from print to screen doesn't understand how to take the hyperbole of comic books and make the movie both slightly realistic and incredibly interesting.
Aside from Whedon, does anyone out there have any writers whose work they really love?
-MJ
P.S. I want to note that although I love his writing, it can sometimes be too smart for its own good. Most people simply aren't that snappy, smart, or fast when they're talking. I continue to be amused by it though! Maybe one day I'll have an amazing back and forth with someone the way Cordelia and Xandre do.
Someday...
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