Awesome pissing contest.

Discovered Buffy working on my Master's degree.

ETA: No, aviva, you would not love Twilight because you are a Buffy fan. I still contend that it has its own merits, but automatic appeal to a Buffy/Joss fan is just NOT an automatic here. How infuriating, indeed. Argh.

[ edited by WhoIsOmega? on 2009-05-31 13:45 ]

WhoIsOmega? | May 31, 13:43 CET

It's cute and kinda funny, if a little inaccurate...

House of Worship: Comic-con. (I stayed in a room for 8 hours just waiting to hear Joss speak)

Core Belief: Whedon is my master (as has been already mentioned) Or possibly: Always be yourself, unless you suck.

T-shirt: BROWNCOAT - We aim to misbehave (Purchased at comic-con if possible)

How to Infuriate Other Members: Explain to them Buffy is just a dumb show about a girl in mini-skirts and bad shoes. Although the previous suggestions involving Charmed & Twilight should work as well.

How to Escape: Watch a Buffy movie that doesn't involve Joss or Sarah.

jls730 | May 31, 14:19 CET

I never went to college but I do have a NVQ in Early Years Care and Education. Not to sure if that counts. Anyways I have to say that I have never thought of any of the Purple Dude's shows as being teen orientated. I first saw BTVS when I was nine and have been a follower ever since. I'm now twenty-one and as this thread shows there's fans of all ages and walks of life. Though I have noticed that his fans in general seem like intelligent folk regardless of age, education and degrees.

property of Mr Gordo | May 31, 14:22 CET

BierceAmbrose - Your name delights me. Mr. Bierce is one of my all time favourite writers.

QingTing | May 31, 14:27 CET

My kids have graduated and we're all still fans.

This escape plan isn't working. :)

Good thing, too.

redeem147 | May 31, 14:54 CET

"No, aviva, you would not love Twilight because you are a Buffy fan. I still contend that it has its own merits, but automatic appeal to a Buffy/Joss fan is just NOT an automatic here. How infuriating, indeed. Argh."

Twilight has its own merits? I admit haven't read/seen anything in the franchise, but pretty much every opinion I've seen that isn't "OMG edward is SOOOOOOOO HOT lol" seemed to say that it's unoriginal, badly written tripe, popular with teenage girls and bored housewives who who wouldn't know good taste if it hit them in the face with a rubber mallet, and mainly because it shamelessly panders to their immature romantic fantasies with the ridiculously, unrealistically perfect character of Edward Cullen. And a small excerpt I read about being full of butterflies was so bad I almost puked. What are the merits you speak of?

On topic, yeah, funny list, but inaccurate. I've never considered Whedonites emo (although we've probably been made cynical by all the death and misery in Joss' works), and as many of the replies here have proved, graduating college does not rid you of your Whedon-obsession (I'm in what will likely be my second-last semester).

Break_Atmo | May 31, 15:40 CET

I like the categories. Like others here, I just wish their aim was better. There is so much to make fun of in this fandom, it's too bad they did not do it right and really nail it. I actually expected folks here to be proposing their own full lists. ...Cause we love lists last time I looked. ;-) I've got to go now, but I'll try to come back with mine.

I do like a lot of the how to infuriate choices proposed...though of course the big ones are outlawed here...because they are the big ones. Wouldn't it be funny if they tried to put together this list by looking at Whedonesque, where all the craziness is kept it check by constant attention by tireless mods? :-D

newcj | May 31, 15:49 CET

WhoIsOmega? I'm sure Twilight has merits that appeal to some people, but being told I have to read it because I'm a Buffy fan, from people who've never really watched Buffy, does not in anyway encourage me to do so. Also, friend's whose literary opinions I do trust, share Break_Atmo's oppinion of Twilight, so I'm not at all tempted.


That has been my experience also. :)

Aviva | May 31, 16:18 CET

Personally I never done much with fancy book-learnin'. I just like looking at the hot babes.

zz9 | May 31, 16:32 CET

Am a Whendonite and Firefly fan and roleplayer in Second Life. It's a good bunch in there. To be fair, there is a lot of gorram sex in Second Life if you go looking, easy to avoid if you are not interested. It just has a long learning curve understanding how to navagate the system. I had a lot of help from fellow FF fans and have given my time back in turn to those new coming after me. Washtown does have a Madam, though. ;)

JohannaHunnie | May 31, 17:42 CET

Good to know that I don't have to leave the fandom after next April! lol I wonder if the person who wrote that knew about all the scholars who regularly write things about Buffy :)

As for the supersoakers filled with holy water, I read a fanfic once that used holy water balloons. Very affective indeed!

fuffybaby18 | May 31, 21:56 CET

Three outta four ain't bad; never tried Second Life... 'cause my first one takes up way too much time.

Oh, and the writers are somewhat clueless: the GodKing of Wikipedia is "Jimbo" Wales. Everybody knows that.

Whedonage | May 31, 23:52 CET

Break_Atmo and Aviva, by no means should any Buffy fan be considered an automatic Twilight fan. That's just wrong. In fact, it is of no surprise to me at all that the two fandoms mix like oil and water. Stephanie Meyer is an average writer at best.

I'm also quite sure much of the loathing directed toward her and her work stems from jealousy. Her product was awesomely marketed and she got very, very lucky. She wrote a simple story on a simple level and the language is accessible to readers of all ages and levels.

I originally read it because I teach, in a nutshell, low-level readers, and I'm constantly on the hunt for easy-peasy, general-audience materials. I probably liked it alright because my expectations were just...way low.

The film is one of the best adaptations I have ever seen. That's because there's just enough story in the first volume to fill up approximately 90+ minutes of film and not at all leave out anything significant. All of the casting was spot on. The director really breathed life not so much into the main characters, but into all of the minor characters, who were not developed enough in the novel. I said 'adaptations,' not to be confused with stories, films, etc. And considering it looked to be made on a low budget, then more power to the director who pulled it off.

When I heard Catherine Hardewicke, director of Thirteen (starring Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter), was the film director, I was curious and willing to give it a shot. It didn't surprise me she pulled off an excellent adaptation. It didn't surprise me, either, when she was not asked to direct the film's two sequels. She did a good job with the first, but special effects aren't her thing, you know?

I knew what I was reading before I read it, Break_Atmo. Simple reading materials are part of my daily work, so yes, the book has some merits. If it inspires a 12 year-old girl to read, that's actually fine with me. I would have loved it passionately from age 11-14 or so.

The film is better than the novel, and it's a good film because it's a fantastic adaptation.

The novel recently inspired one of my 15 year-old students to learn English. Therein lies some merit.

[ edited by WhoIsOmega? on 2009-06-01 00:31 ]

[ edited by WhoIsOmega? on 2009-06-01 00:34 ]

WhoIsOmega? | June 01, 00:21 CET

WhoIsOmega?:
"I originally read it because I teach, in a nutshell, low-level readers, and I'm constantly on the hunt for easy-peasy, general-audience materials."
Yeah, that was definitely what I noticed about 'Twilight': short sentences with small words that wouldn't challenge a second grader. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, but it is no 'Harry Potter' and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wants originality, layers, or pretty much anything interesting to happen. I'm not surprised that Buffy fans would be annoyed at anyone assuming they would enjoy 'Twilight' (which is why it really bothered me that someone gave me those Stephenie Meyers books for Christmas!).

embers | June 01, 00:45 CET

Heh, that was fun, if inaccurate.

And also: everyone here is educated a whole scary lot ;). With just the one master's degree, I feel totally left out. Thanks to everyone's comments, I'm now wondering what topics all our whedonesque members have their degrees in though. We should totally do a "quick answers to all your difficult questions by the muliple graduates of whedon fandom" rally and raise some money for charity or something ;).

As for things that would get us all worked up, I know for me it tends to happen like this:

1. "That Buffy tv show you love is just for stupid people"

2. I comment on Buffy classes, publications and our generally well-educated fanbase in reply.

3. "But that's in America, and everybody knows their educational system is worse than ours."

4. I try to point out they're being stupid (because there's more differentiation in America; our universities generally doing better than some colleges, but doing worse than the top league American universities) and all this ends up into a big row about politics, America, Europe, the quality of universities and, for some reason, books vs. plays vs. movies vs. television shows and how these different ways to tell fiction are received.

5. At this point a throwaway off-handed comparison to the way that Shakespeare was treated in his time, leads to a general discussion about the merits of the way fiction is rated and dicussed in the first place, leading to a discussion about if one can even rate fiction objectively.

6 Someone decides to turn an argument on its nose and before we know it, we're having a discussion on music (popular music vs. the obscure singer/songwriters I like), movies, arthouse movies and wether it is worse if a movie strives for substance but fails, or just lacks substance to begin with, which then redoubles into the discussion on comic books versus "real" books, movies verses television, etcetera.

7 At this point, for some reason, someone decides to argue the point that anime is a medium in which art gets put forward, while others argue it's a genre, because certainly anime movies are movies and tv-series are television. Obviously, as things go, someone points out that because anime covers all kinds of genres, it can't possibly be one itself, which then leads into a discussion on what a "genre" is anyway.

8. This goes on for a while, goes through further mutations, until after about, oh, let's say, four hours, we're arguing about any and everything, decide it was pretty useless in the first place and go out for a drink ;).

Luckily above only happens once or twice a year.

GVH | June 01, 01:07 CET

Hee hee hee, GVH.

Pointy | June 01, 03:52 CET

Clothing should read "Joss Whedon is my master now." T-sirt.

Rusty626 | June 01, 03:53 CET

Septimus: thank you for the clarification, and congratulations on your achievements.

[ edited by Peanut Noir on 2009-06-01 05:25 ]

Peanut Noir | June 01, 05:24 CET

Hmm, that really is damning with awfully faint praise. To be candid, I haven't read the Twilight series myself - because the theme doesn't seem to be my cup of tea, - but I have several friends, with storied credentials (if we have to continue this counting of medals game), excellent minds, and great taste, who hugely enjoy Meyer's books. I can't say whether it's the writing style, subject matter, or what that especially appeals. (But this piece in The Atlantic suggests that there's more at play in Twilight than small easy words. Small easy words, of course, can generate rich and deep stories, in the case of, say this man or this one, or perhaps this one . . .). It's clear to me, however, that for those who are minded, Meyer writes wonderful stories.

SoddingNancyTribe | June 01, 05:41 CET

Somehow, I'd tend to think that not even Twilight's greatest champions would use Hemingway or Chekhov in the same sentence. ;)

The One True b!X | June 01, 05:46 CET

Gratuitous appeal to authority. I can sling names with the best of 'em. :-)

SoddingNancyTribe | June 01, 05:47 CET

I meant to give some praise as opposed to faint, SNT. My post was already too long, but in short, I enjoyed all four volumes of the story, having read them over about a week and a half. The end of each leaves you wanting that next volume. There's a story there, for sure, and I enjoyed it (as opposed to being knocked off my socks). On the other hand, it's not a story that will be pored over by academics from a variety of fields for years to come. Good story, no deep layers.

I was just a little more impressed by Hardwicke's ability to produce such a good adaptation, as opposed to Meyer's writing ability. Like some others in the industry, she's a better storyteller than writer. Another example: Jacob is a great character in the novel, but he was even better in the film version.

I liked the stories, and the film a bit more. Isn't it usually the other way around? Hence part of the pleasant surprise.

Given the thread is about cults, hope I'm not straying too far. I think my expectations were low because of online negativity generated at Meyer's cult, which, btw, doesn't seem as nearly established as the ones in the original list.

WhoIsOmega? | June 01, 11:51 CET

I started one of the Twilight books that my niece had, quickly got bored and started just flipping through it. When I hit a passage that referred to some vamp guy as a "carved Adonis", I decided it was either give it back or yack all over it...

Rowan Hawthorn | June 01, 13:03 CET

Please pardon the belated replies. Life intervenes.

zz9, the side that does not involve celibacy is the one that I'm on. Your side, however ... See, we can't start a good fight without taking away something the other guys care about. Since I'm fresh out of redemption, it'll have to be something a bit more secular.

QingTing, I apologize for so tardy a reply. Thank you for the kind words. Mr. Bierce - the real one - is quite the hero of mine, also. Ought to be required reading for everyone in these too artfully contrived times. I'm also a huge fan of dear, sweet Mr. Twain's more obscure works - essays, short stories and unpublished works of similar piercing vitriol and humor.

Pleased to meet you. You can join our side in the coming schism. Such fun shall be had ...

BierceAmbrose | June 03, 05:58 CET

I was shocked to learn that Twilight was not a lost Edgar Allen Poe story.

Peanut Noir | June 07, 01:23 CET