Fan Fiction World

The wishful desire to seize creations from their creators

Looking at Joss Whedon’s credits, the only things by him that I’ve watched are Toy Story, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Alien Resurrection, all for which he has writing credits. I’ve never watched Buffy, Angel, Firefly, the first two The Avengers movies, Justice League, or any of his bigger and more signature works. Still, I was interested by this recent Slate piece, which describes an attempt by some Buffy cast members and fans of the show to “wrest the Buffyverse from Whedon’s control and make it their own” because of his recent moral fall from grace. The culmination of their efforts is Slayer, a 9-part podcast series that seeks to do “justice” to characters and actors (the distinction is blurred) that were treated unfairly by Whedon. Predictably, the creation without the prime creator is no good.

The question is, if you hate Whedon so much and you want to get back at him, why not just let go of Buffy? It’s obvious why the actors don’t want to, especially those who haven’t had much to do after the show ended. It’s an employment issue for them, to be able to continue playing these characters, as well as gain at least some emotional closure on workplace wrongdoings that they experienced back in the day.

But for fans, why not just walk away? How can a show mean that much to you? And if it does, why do you need its creator to be a hero? This Vulture piece is revealing because it details the worship that Whedon once received for embodying the correct values to his fans, many of whom apparently had a cult-like need for a benevolent father figure. The academic conferences revolving around the Buffyverse back in 2002 also portends the cursed marriage between pop culture and supposed intellectualism, where a once-admirable desire to curb excessive sneering at mass entertainment has fully spiraled into valourizing couch potato-ism. Watching TV really hard makes you an intellectual, just like how posting hard makes you an activist.

Much has been written about how we’re increasingly transferring our hopes and dreams into the make-believe. A recent Unherd piece by Katherine Dee explores the logical end of this tendency in which we find romantic, and even sexual, fulfillment in fictional characters, with its proponents likening it to a sexual orientation. Dee points out that fictosexuality isn’t that far off from celebrity or literary crushes, or falling for a Tinder match (who may very well be a bot). So when the No Josses Club says #JusticeForCordelia, it’s not that weird in our contemporary context. A lot of online activism is really just an excuse to latch onto a grander storyline (actual veracity not being fundamentally important) to hash out interpersonal issues in our personal society (e.g. gauging your social standing in a friend group by seeing who does and doesn’t post infographics in your support).

By the end, the Slate piece concedes that Whedon’s work does not work without Whedon, which should’ve been an obvious realization from the start. Despite my indifference to Whedon, I can see that he was the best at the kind of stuff he did. For better or for worse (many would say worse), he spawned an entire generation of entertainment that aped him. The idea that he and his abilities could be replaced, even improved upon, by those who really really cared enough and had better morals is child-like in its wishful yearning. 

Some of my friends and I joke about how soon enough, the concept of talent will be attacked as a malevolent construct that’s too laden with various -isms and -phobias. As I’ve written before, we resent problematic geniuses not because their work is overrated, but because they’re genuinely great. Furthermore, they stoke our insecurity that actually, people like us, despite our better humanity (or because of it), will never create anything as beautiful and beloved as they have.

All this reminds me of the angsting earlier this year over Hogwarts Legacy, which for many was dismay over how much J.K. Rowling’s creative gifts continued to enthrall them despite Rowling herself not being of their ideological tribe. As with the Buffyverse, I’ve seen Harry Potter fans attempt to rationalize how they could simultaneously adore Harry Potter while relegating Rowling to a minimal role in the world she created because Harry Potter actually now belonged to the fans:

As for me, I won’t be reading or rereading Harry Potter anytime soon. Instead, I have endless Harry Potter fanfiction and novels written by Harry Potter fans who grew up to create their own worlds. Above all, I have the Wizarding World that lives on in my heart — queer, genderqueer, deviant, diverse, and currently defunding the Aurors.

That’s the Harry Potter we all created together, without J.K. Rowling. And we all know that’s the version that matters, in the end.

— Harry Potter and the Author Who Failed Us | Vox

It’s fine to cut Harry Potter out of your life for any reason, including if you think Rowling is a rotten person. People refuse to consume things under much pettier logic. But there’s something pathetic about clinging onto the work of singularly influential figures, then childishly deluding yourself into denying that figure their credit and respect, however begrudging it may be, in having done something no one else could’ve done. Making fun of Harry Potter fans has become too easy now, so if those books and movies were so crucial to your childhood and even adulthood, then who’s to judge? But at least acknowledge the sobering truth that in life, we’ll sometimes have to be grateful to people we don’t like or admire. It’s infantile to believe that we can only like things by people we like. But at least abiding by that principle takes some moral resolve. It’s cravenly infantile to not even be able to wean yourself off the creation of someone you hate, and then fan-fictioning reality by pretending that the loathed creator had little to do with his or her own work.

The defrocking of Whedon’s feminist credentials due to his marital infidelity has also always struck me as curious. Cheating on one’s romantic partner is undoubtedly a low thing to do (though according to a lot of rom coms, it’s perfectly all right if you’re the protagonist, which once again confirms Trump to be our Oscar Wilde: “When you’re a star, you can do anything.”), encompassing all the vices of betrayal, selfishness, and cowardice in an inability to keep a big promise. But if cheating on a woman makes you a misogynist, does cheating on a man make you a misandrist? I doubt there are many who’d say yes to both, with both genders looking out for their own self-interest and using moralistic arguments to justify it. Many of us would dismiss claims that a woman who cheats on a man is a man-hater as the grubby opinions of guys who unironically read Myron Gaines books. But the claims that Whedon cannot have been a feminist because he cheated on his wife are not relegated to such smelly basements. Underlying such an assertion would have to rely on some fundamental belief that women are more damaged by cheating by men than vice versa. That implies that women are extremely dependent on romantic relationships with men, and that a man who is sexually unfaithful to a woman causes a uniquely gendered wound. This seems like a deeply unfeminist stance to take, unless of course, the guiding moral star becomes happiness.

On some level, Whedon does deserve such blowback because he courted the praise. Had he not presented himself as the man who understands, his fans wouldn’t have had as much to be disappointed about. But of course, he probably wouldn’t have had as many fans in the first place. The male feminist is a much maligned and distrusted figure now, for good reason. Both men and women are better off acknowledging that though we have many commonalities, we also have some fundamentally divergent interests and almost all of the time, attempts to “start a dialogue” are really just gentler ways to try browbeating the other side to giving you what you want.

So what if Whedon isn’t the one good man in Hollywood, or if Rowling isn’t the progressive children’s book author, that you’ve always dreamed of? Is that such a deal-breaker if you love their creations? To some, absolutely yes.  “Theatre kid” is a common insult thrown around today, from actors themselves to politicians to wannabe social media influencers to CEOs. Anybody in the public eye or desperately seeking to be in it is liable to get tagged with this label. But it’s not so much a pejorative as it is a projection, because we are all theatre kids. We’re just mad we didn’t get cast. And if we ourselves don’t get to be in the coveted spotlight, then it better be someone like us. And Whedon and Rowling aren’t like us, so why do they and their works get to be adored?

I can’t help but think of the completely irrational hatred Anne Hathaway received in the early 2010s for little more than being too much of a theatre kid (full disclosure: back in college, pre-dating Hathahate, I wrote a short play which referenced her as my supreme Hollywood celebrity crush). The tweets and articles written at that time—many of which appear now to have been scrubbed, including an oft-cited one from Crushable—that tried to justify this vendetta gave the impression that much of that intense dislike was driven by those who saw in her the girl who, either literally or figuratively, got all the roles that they’d auditioned for. This seemed particularly true for her peer-aged women. Except for me, I think mainly gay guys cared about Anne Hathaway back then. Some versions of “She tries too hard” and “she seems fake” and “she thinks it’s all about her” were the common rationales.

Of course now, everybody loves Anne. Many are astounded at how amazing she still looks, which I like to believe is a cosmic reward for having so graciously endured that bullshit from a decade ago. A large part of those changed feelings is undoubtedly because she is indeed older, and by Hollywood standards, she is a grande dame of the stage. Most importantly, she is no longer competing with her former haters for those coveted roles from when she was younger. 

Like the Stone Roses sang, I wanna be adored. And if reality won’t provide it, we’ll fanfic it into being.