The Ten Cruelest Things Joss Whedon Has Done To His Characters

[thinkingcog]

There are times I question if that rape scene was even Whedon's idea

It was the season where Marti Noxon had more control and Whedon was busy with Firefly/ Angel etc. but I guess he has to sign off on everything. That scene makes me incredibly uncomfortable and almost damaged my realtionship with the show.

Dru re-vamping Darla is a great moment that was overlooked here and Book should have been referenced as well.

[Legato]

It was the season where Marti Noxon had more control and Whedon was busy with Firefly/ Angel etc. but I guess he has to sign off on everything. That scene makes me incredibly uncomfortable and almost damaged my realtionship with the show.

Dru re-vamping Darla is a great moment that was overlooked here and Book should have been referenced as well.

I liked the Darla thing due to that it helped made Darla even more tragic and with Dru doing it that wasn't a "just because" reaction. Keep in ming that Dru's that of a little kid, a psychotic vampire little kid, who wanted to reunite her family.

[musim]

I'm surprised Wesley's death didn't make it in or Connor in general or Cordelia being possessed and psycho.

I think the thing people tend to forget about Spike when he tried to rape Buffy was 1) He's a souless vampire and 2) he never would have succeeded. I don't think of it as a cruel scene to be honest with you, especially with how much Buffy evidently doesn't care about it with how quickly she takes him back into her life.

It seems to me the Angel TV show was Whedon's place to continually beat the crap out of his characters.

[warrenEBB]

There are times I question if that rape scene was even Whedon's idea

Marsters recently discussed that scene in an interview: http://whedonesque.com/comments/28208

essentially he explains it was written by a woman, to describe a painful real world moment, where she was trying to keep a relationship going by pushing sex. He notes it just didn't carry the same message when they flipped the genders.
(I still see the scene as Spike trying to initiate the violent sex they'd been enjoying for some time. not intending rape. but the point being that how people react to your actions is more important that your intent).

[Surtur]

Did Spike have a soul yet when he tried to rape her? Oh wait, IIRC the attempt was what lead him to get a soul?

I like to think he would of stopped himself before going through with it.

[warrenEBB]

In other news of painful Whedon moments, I'd have to say the moment in "Lovers Walk" when popular girl Cordelia caught nerdy little Xander cheating on her with his nerdy friend - only to immediately fall through a staircase and find herself impaled on a rebar spike - was incredibly painful for me. For a long time that was my favorite episode, because Spike gets over his problems, while simultaneously ruining the lives of everyone around him.

[thinkingcog]

His interactions with Joyce are delightful in that episode too! and his last scene sums up the character so well!

[CTpitch]

tara's death really tored me apart

[Roldan]

Wesley as a character should have been number 1. Rejected by Scooby gang, had to leave The Watcher's Council, ridiculed by everyone, tortured by Faith, couldn't express his love to Faith because she was seeing his best friend, Gunn, Betrayed Angel, got betrayed and got his throat slit, alienated from Angel Investigations, started to sleep with the enemy, shared the last moments of his loves life before she died and at last, he died.

Still not a bad list, the number 1 really is cruel but Wesley's arc should have been number 1.

[Legato]

Did Spike have a soul yet when he tried to rape her? Oh wait, IIRC the attempt was what lead him to get a soul?

I like to think he would of stopped himself before going through with it.

No. That was back when he was souless. There was an arc where he went through alot of trials to get himself a soul afterwards

[Legato]

Marsters recently discussed that scene in an interview: http://whedonesque.com/comments/28208

essentially he explains it was written by a woman, to describe a painful real world moment, where she was trying to keep a relationship going by pushing sex. He notes it just didn't carry the same message when they flipped the genders.
(I still see the scene as Spike trying to initiate the violent sex they'd been enjoying for some time. not intending rape. but the point being that how people react to your actions is more important that your intent).

Thanks. Been wondering about that ever since I first saw that scene because that was so out of left field that I felt it didn't fit Whedon's style of writing due to how out of character it was.

[SQuigley316]

I have to say I'm surprised that the Operative's ordering of the slaughter of all of the Serenity's contacts as pretty rough, especially in regards to Shepard Book and the colony at Haven didn't at least get an 'honorable' mention. Book was a great character in the Firefly series and the conscience that Mal sorely needed, with a background steeped in mystery. I would have it in the top ten myself, but at least in the runner's up.

[Legato]

What surprised me was that Giles's death got an honorable mention given the importance of the character. I suppose honorable mention is better than no mention

[thinkingcog]

Giles' death is just one tiny moment of season 8 that had already gone off the rails. so it didn't have the same effect for me

[warrenEBB]

Regarding Fred's death: Whedon talked about the massive fan reaction to having her soul completely destroyed in his acceptance speech Q&A for Harvard's Cultural Humanist award. The whole 90 minute video is pretty great for whedonites (badly shot, but full of explanations and quips).
http://www.thenewhumanism.org/author...tural-humanist
(edit: about 53 minutes in)

basically: He notes that they destroyed Fred's soul so that the audience wouldn't say "hey, just go do this" (I mean: so they wouldn't expect any quick solutions to show up, from the established bag of bringing-people-back tricks we'd already seen on both shows).
As an avowed humanist, he's not big on the religious idea of the human soul (and he seems to express some surprise that people found the destruction of a soul to be so awful). He goes on to note that their plan was to explore Illyria's confusion with Fred's identity/memories in the following season.
(which they did explore it a tiny bit in the Angel:After The Fall comics... yeah? I haven't finished reading all the Angel followup comics.)

I don't think of myself as religious. but somehow the idea that her soul had been destroyed realllllly got under my skin. I'd totally agree that it was the most brutal abuse of all the shows. (Just thinking of the way she spits blood and flops into wesley makes choke up a bit.)