Fan Boy/Quotes
To be fair, this is a complaint you could levy against any major geek property. Star Wars fans are the worst part of Star Wars, Trekkies ate shit for about 30 straight years and online discussions of your favorite shows are clogged with "Shippers," who disregard anything interesting and insightful about a show, and focus solely on badly-written fanfic fantasies for frantic bean-flicking, their stories swapped between shawl-wearing, cat-owning knitting enthusiasts squeeling until their lungs burst on LiveJournal.
But hardcore Whedonites? They are to Trekkies what the Nation of Islam were to the Civil Rights movement. It's like they don't even WATCH his shows anymore. I don't mean they don't tune in. I mean they don't actively watch, in the way Woody Harrelson wasn't HEARING Jimi in White Men Can't Jump. The images and sounds just wash over their angry brains, a collection of details they can clutch in a puddly fist to swing wildly at anyone proffering a "meh" in their Lord Whedon's general direction.
It's like hearing someone brag about their personal library and you find out it's filled with nothing but Star Wars novels and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. I know they're printed on pulped trees and bought at a Borders, but that doesn't make them real books. Consuming those is an exercise in stunting your ability to appreciate real storytelling. I wouldn't trust a food critic if all he ever grubbed on were hot dogs, and I don't trust Whedonites when their experience with moving pictures begins and ends with Mutant Enemy productions. Once More With Feeling shouldn't be a goddamn Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fuck, it's not even a good musical. But then, you'd have to have watched another musical to know that.
It's as if just watching the shows and enjoying them isn't enough. You have to proselytize and spring out of the corners of the Internet like the Whedon Inquisition, demanding tithings and tributes to the man's genius. It's a cult of apologism advertising itself as the face of Whedon fandom, and it's probably the single hardest thing about being a fan of the man's work - others will just assume that an apologist, argumentative asshole is what you are, too.
Aqualad: "You sound more like a fan boy than a nemesis."