Tag Archive: Joss Whedon


Editor’s Note: Welcome, once again, the lovely and talented Lori Janeski in another Novel Ninja guest post. This time, we present her debut fisk, as she decides to tackle the massive Social Fiction Warrior response to Avengers: Age of Ultron by targeting a particularly egregious essay.

I should add that Lori is Texan — and yes, even fisks are bigger in Texas. This one clocks in at over 13,000 words, enough for a good-sized novelette. Strap in, grab some popcorn, and warm up your mouse-using fingers, because you’ve got some scrolling ahead of you.

Enjoy!


If you ever want to learn how to make a complete and total idiot of yourself in front of the whole internet, just read this essay I found: “Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie.”  If you’re not into being an idiot, you can go ahead and read it for its entertainment potential, because it is so utterly ridiculous, and yet trying to be completely serious and intellectual and failing miserably, that it will make you either laugh your head off, or crawl under a rock and weep for humanity.  Maybe both.

Now, the author, Sady Doyle, is allowed to have any opinion she wants.  That’s part of life.  I don’t have to agree with her, and she doesn’t have to agree with me.  But when you’re being this stupid while pretending to be smart, those of us who are not stupid have to say something to make sure you aren’t successful in convincing people that you are smart.  To borrow a quote from one of my favorite TV shows, “I respect your right to free speech, but not your stupidity.”

Omar

Normally, I try very hard to disagree with the argument, not attack the person.  This article, however, is such a piece of trash that my politeness went right out the window.  Doyle is so far beyond stupid that she has reached the status of “contemptible,” and doesn’t deserve a polite, intellectual discussion about the merits, or lack thereof, of Age of Ultron.

If you don’t want to read an angry article about how stupid someone else is, complete with the occasional vulgarity, then don’t finish reading.  Go elsewhere now.  You have been warned, so there better not be any nasty comments on the blog or Facebook about how mean I am.

Oh, and if you can’t guess, there are spoilers ahead.  I know Matthew has a spoiler graphic somewhere around here . . . aha!

Spoiler Warning

There.  If you missed that, you deserve your spoilers. Continue reading

Okay, geek fans. We all know that Firefly was one of the most awesome things in the history of geekdom.

And if for some reason you disagree, then *fingers in ears* LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOUUUUUU . . .

And if for some reason you disagree, then *fingers in ears* LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOUUUUUU . . .

I could go into lots of reasons why it was a great show, but that’s not the point here. The point of this post is that there is a sort of shared community among Firefly fans that can’t ever be duplicated (well, except by Star Trek fans in the 70s . . . or Doctor Who fans in the 90s . . . never mind, you know what I mean). It’s a shared rapport over not just what it was, but what it could have been. There’s nothing more powerful than the imagination for that sort of thing.

And when you have a rapport like that, you tend to band together. And when you band together, you tend to find other fun things to share. And sometimes the people who help create those fun things show up too. And when that happens, you call it a convention.

And now Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion, with Gina Torres, Felicia Day, Seth Green, and James Gunn, are going to make a series about that experience.  Continue reading

Agents and Heroines

It’s been a while since my last Agents of SHIELD review, which could be interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm. This is true, to an extent. I haven’t been wowed. I’ve been entertained enough to give it a viewing when I need a break, but not so entertained that I feel like talking about it afterwards. I did catch up this Thanksgiving, though, so I figured I’d write a review. Spoilers ahead if you care about that, mainly for the episode “The Well.”  Continue reading

Sorry, Marvel. ALL heroes are super.

“Superpower” is a technical term used by some writers and editors, myself included. It’s awkward when used in superhero fiction, but generally speaking it’s a great term packed with a lot of information.

Your protagonist must have a superpower. Your secondary characters usually need them too. Your villain always has a superpower, but an antagonist doesn’t always need it. (Yes, there’s a difference between a villain and an antagonist. There’s also a difference between main characters, protagonists, heroes, and viewpoint characters, but that’s another blog post.) It’s advisable to have a kryptonite as well, but that’s not as important as long as you’ve practiced.

So what is this superpower thing? Flight? Super-strength? The ability to leap tall buildings faster than a speeding bullet while running alongside a train?

It can be, but it’s not necessarily supernatural. A character’s superpower is defined as anything they can do better than anyone else in the story. Similarly, a character’s kryptonite is that which forms an obstacle they cannot overcome. Continue reading

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