[fandom] Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

[escritoireazul]

Joss /= God. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog /= The Best Thing Ever.



I've seen a lot of people saying that no one should be surprised by what happened in Dr. Horrible. For me, that's missing the point. The point isn't that it's a surprise and I'm so shocked by it and therefore upset. The point is that it's not a surprise, it's completely stereotypical of the genre and I expected more, I expected Joss to break the paradigms, subvert the genre, subvert the goddamn cliché - except it's his cliché, and he doesn't subvert that at all. He doesn't examine his own clichés, or if he does, it brings about no change.

The story does not have to end like that. Penny did not have to be characterized like that.

It's not that I didn't expect a Women in Refrigerators scenario. It's that I hoped, for once, I would be surprised. I wasn't, all I got was the same old story, the same old woman, the same old stalkery and/or asshole men.

There are parts I loved. NPH is adorablely dorky and the music was catchy. I love the phrase "thoroughbred of sin" even though I thought it was completely obvious that Bad Horse was going to be a real horse. There were ways the story could have gone which were not cliché, which did not characterize a woman as existing only to be the catalyst for Dr. Horrible, the tangible object through which the men focus their competition, as something to be won or lost to death. This could have been fantastic.

It wasn't.

Discussions, with spoilers:

The comments to kphoebe's post here.
The comments to trollprincess's post here.

I know I have more saved somewhere, but my computer is acting up, so I am going to restart it now.

Edited to Add: Also, minim_calibre's post and comments here.

Edited Again to Add:

takumashii's post here.
highandrandom's post here.

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

There seemed to be a lot of people surprised by that. I never really got that; all the suggestions that Bad Horse might be anything other than a real horse rang false to me from the beginning.