#whedon

Hier ein kleiner Einblick.

Die Gesichter hinter "Doctor Horribles Sing along Blog" waren meine Aufgabe. Natürlich mussten sie auf der Homepage in einem unverwechselbaren und passenden Stil präsentiert werden. Hier sind sie also. :D

The team wrote the musical during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike. Reception has been overwhelmingly positive.

"It was because of the writers’ strike that Whedon had a number of his closest friends — who just so happen to be some of the most esteemed actors — at his disposal for his weird idea, but that wasn’t the only factor working in his favor. Between the period of 2007 and 2008, Whedon also decided he wanted to toy with the idea of using the internet as a way to distribute a film. This way he could bypass having to go through a studio for money and connect directly with those who wanted to support his vision, particularly during a time of need.

The only thing stopping him from doing that at the time was that fact that he didn’t know how do go about doing it. In an interview with Dave Itzkoff last year, Whedon told the New York Times critic that it noted Felicia Day’s work on The Guild, a webseries that premiered on YouTube in July 2007, as a reason for looking to the internet as a realm of possibility in the first place."

-Polygon Article from 2017

This post, we’re exploring the advent of online fandom in the 90’s! 

Without further ado,

The X-Files

First premiering in 1993, The X-Files was in a league of its own in the television sphere as it was both a supernatural thriller and a will-they-won’t-they investigative procedural. Well, it was mostly a won’t they since show creator Chris Carter himself was very anti Scully/Mulder (NoRomo). Speaking of the main pairing in the show, The X-Philes (X-Files fans) invented the term “shipping” to describe their support for Scully/Mulder, or any relationship pairing in the show. Thus, the term was shortened to “ship” both as a verb to describe the act of shipping and as a noun to describe a particular romantic pairing. As anyone who is vaguely familiar with fandom culture is aware, the “ship” family of terms is now used across fandom.

Digital fan activity surrounding The X-Files began primarily on Usenet, with two major mailing lists (one for general fan activity and another for creative works) that spawned many others specific to certain subtopics. Over time, this expanded into mailing lists, specialized fic archives, blogs, websites, and more, all dedicated to one show about two FBI agents and the possibility of alien life. Of this fan activity, a large percentage of it was dedicated to fanfiction, and which ships (or lack thereof in the case of NoRomos) were superior. The most popular ship was obviously Mulder/Scully, but other popular pairings include Mulder/Krycek, Mulder/Skinner, and Scully/Skinner. Another unique feature of the X-Philes is that they decidedly did not embrace RPF.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Buffy TV series first premiered in 1997, and like The X-Files, it was unique due to its severe genre bending and role reversals. Buffy was the only show where you could watch horror, high school drama, and supernatural romance all in one place, complete with a tiny blonde valley girl who happened to have immense power and immense responsibility. 

In terms of fandom activity, the Buffy fandom was unique because it was one of the first TV fandoms to be active on the internet, and because of the unusually high amount of interaction between the show creators and fans. The official website for the show had an interactive comment space named after the club in Sunnydale, The Bronze, where fans could discuss the show. The thing was, the show’s creators and staff also had access to this page, so fans sharing their opinions and theories were sharing them with the people whose opinions determined the source material, most notably including Joss Whedon himself (Jamison 2013). 

At the beginning of the Buffy fandom, the show creators and FOX were fine with the fansites and other fan activities happening on the internet, but as time went on, many fanworks were lost due to the network’s crackdown on fansites in the early 2000’s.

What’s so special about these shows is how hard they work to disrupt the gender norms that are attached to our society to this day. Mulder is the touchy-feely believer, while Scully is the clinical skeptic. Buffy is a stereotypically girly valley girl who is also incredibly strong, dedicated, and competent; all things not normally associated with traditionally feminine girls and women. These traits, plus the unique things fans brought to the table, created the dominant fandoms of the 90’s that shaped fannish culture and activity forever.

Happy reading,

On this day (December 20th) in 2002, the last episode of ‘Firefly’ aired, and the show was soon after canceled.

It’s been twenty years. It’s never coming back. You can like other shows now.