Two points worth making:

Whedon was still very active on Buffy in S6, even if he was spread more thinly across all his shows. Even if he didn’t write the episode, he would have had a hand in deciding (or at least approving) that plot point. He may not have written it, and it may not have been his idea, but it’s an idea he let be part of the…

Agreed, more talking about when his peers or people from a generation that would’ve say that. If you listen to comedians talk about Cosby they’re still kind of amazed by his stand-up, but then you get someone like Bill Maher who says he never thought Cosby was funny. The better analogue would be Louis CK, who everyone…

For his run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty Pryde was the main character. It took place in the main Earth 616 continuity, so she wasn’t a kid anymore. She ended up with Colossus. The only character that I think would qualify as a Whedon stand in is Emma Frost, a self-loathing reformed villain with questionable ethics, an…

He clearly put a bit of himself in Xander. I won’t deny that. I also won’t deny that that Xander’s “lie” was at least a little bit out of jealousy. People often make decision based on a number of factors, some nobles, other less. But this whole idea that somehow he (and the viewers) HAD to trust Buffy, despite Buffy…

Considering how young Kitty Pryde has been throughout most of X-Men also makes that icky.

Thank you. The same goes for his works too:

I think it’s important to remember that even though Whedon turned out to be a toxic asshole it’s still ok to appreciate and enjoy old material with his name attached to it. Lots of people did quality work with him and it’s unfair to them for their work to memory-holed because the entity they were working for was…

The work I always think of related to that is the movie Easy Rider. It was a huge success when it came out and represented a new style of filmmaking that hadn’t been used in popular cinema much prior to it. I saw it 30ish years after it came out, and I find it painfully boring and uninteresting. The only benefit I…

Xander took Buffy’s choice away at the end of season two by lying to her and telling her that Willow encouraged her to kill Angel. But through the whole series, Xander was the “good guy”.

Yep. My worst boss ever was shocked when I quit. He was even more shocked when I said in my exit interview that I was leaving because I didn’t like the office culture.

There’s also the cohort of people who were either too young to have seen his work at the time or ignored it until recently and are out in droves now to explain why his work is so unremarkable. After having likely seen tons of work in the last 25 years that mimics or perhaps even improves on the things he did that were …

The mixed reception on The Nevers makes things difficult to gauge on that front even if they had kept Whedon. By the way, for the sake transparency, I though The Nevers was a hilariously inept show when it came to basic narrative structures, so my following comment should be read with that in mind.

You’re not wrong, but at the same time, with respect to the “waif who can beat the shit out of anyone,” that WAS the whole point of Buffy. You’re looking through a 2022 lens at something that was very subversive in 1992. In the early 90s, no waif was beating the shit out of anyone (in Western entertainment, at least).…

I want to preface this by making it clear that I was a huge fan of Whedon’s and that it’s likely I will be a fan of many of his works until the day I die, even if I don’t much like him anymore. I also 100% believe his accusers.

You beat me to it. The first season where Buffy was out of Whedon’s hands was the season that went all-in on attacking the most perniciously sexist elements of nerd culture. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

It all comes back to the ability of fans to separate the work from its creator. Is Whedon a good writer? Yes, I think so, although he has some trope issues with female characters that crop up again and again. Is he also a shitty person? Yes, I think so. Can I (or anyone else) enjoy finished products with his…

See also: the first Charlie’s Angels movie with Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu. Or the Spice Girls. In the late ‘90s and well into the ‘00s, a lot of pop-feminism was big on “reclaiming” women’s sexuality from horny men, in a way that didn’t really challenge the emerging bro culture (or, if you’re British,…

I never finished the series itself and in the lead up to it I don’t remember the press positively acknowledging his presence, but the first episode did still have his name in huge font something like five times in a row on separate title cards. I remember that leaving a bad taste for some, but it’s probably the…

He also takes shots at everyone mentioned, even when being ostensibly complimentary. Carpenter fumbles her lines, Gadot doesn’t speak English well, Fisher can’t act and is evil. If people are weaponizing every little thing, well...

Ultimately, if most of the people you work with on multiple projects are independently…