Whedon-verse names by SerenityValley

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Whedon-verse names

POSTED BY: SERENITYVALLEY
UPDATED: Saturday, April 17, 2004 08:38
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Friday, April 16, 2004 1:51 PM

Did you ever notice any patterns in Joss's worlds?

1) Guys have girly names and girls have guy names.
a) Jayne - nuf said.
b) Angel - as Cordy said, a girly name
c) Fred - a guy's name
d) Lorne - yes, a guy's name, but sounds like Lauren
e) Lindsey - spelled the guy's way, but more popular as a female name
f) Will/Willow - ever see the movie? guy.

2) Everyone has really cool names or abstract names at least.
I noticed this in the most recent episode of Angel. Angel walks in and says "This is Spike and Gunn". I swear, it was like they were of some cool gang or something. Maybe hitmen.
Angel, Spike, Gunn. Even Harm. And seriously, how cool is the name Drusilla? I'm going to name my first born Krevlorneswath (no not really). Actually, I'll probably name him/her Wash. hehe. How many people do you know named Xander, Willow, or Buffy?

3) So many characters DON'T go by their birth-first-name.
Spike=William, Kaylee=Kaywinnit, Wash= Washburn, Oz=Daniel, Xander=Alexander, Dru=Drusilla, Cordy=Cordelia, Giles=Rupert, Doyle=Alan, Wes=Wesley, Angel=Liam, Gunn=Charles, Fred=Winifred, Lorne=Krevlorneswath, Mal=Malcolm, etc.

You get my point. What do you notice?

ps. Gina Torres, Ron Glass, and Jonathan Woodward are all in issue three of Angel Magazine.

http://www.simple-assault.com/Firefly.htm

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Friday, April 16, 2004 2:08 PM

WILDHEAVENFARM

Where in the show is Wash's full name identified? I've wondered about the canon of that.

Mary
Always a beast, never a burden.

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Friday, April 16, 2004 2:17 PM

EMBERS

I noticed the same thing in last Wednesday's show...the introductions always sound like a joke.
And of course yesterday they were replaying 'Something Blue' on FX, when Buffy asks Spike if he wants to be 'Spike' or 'William the Bloody' on the invitations, "because either way it's going to be majorly weird"
and Spike responds, "while the name 'Buffy' adds that touch of classic elegance"...
LOL
Yeah, Joss really does come up with the wacky names, so that whenever you tell a friend the plot of an episode it always sounds extra goofy!

But of course it is one of the things I love...

In the commentary Joss was saying how he and everyone else kept getting confused between Summer/River's real and character names!

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Friday, April 16, 2004 4:11 PM

TALVIN

Unless he did the original movie (which I don't *think* he did?), Joss cannot take the blame for "Buffy". I watched that movie I dunno how many times. :P

Somebody can set me straight on the original movie credits, I don't have my copy anymore. Pity.

Hey...Peewee ever show up in Angel? And how could we fit him in Firefly? Maybe Mal can shoot him, and he can do "AH! OOO! OW! ARRGGH! (kick kick) AHHH! (beat, glance) AHHHHHHHHH! OWWWW!" until Zoe puts him out of his (our) misery.

Put that in the BDM, and I'll go see it 6 times in the theater!

"I give up. I admit it. I'm a Browncoat."

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Friday, April 16, 2004 4:25 PM

STEAMEDBAO3

Quote:
Originally posted by Talvin:
Unless he did the original movie (which I don't *think* he did?), Joss cannot take the blame for "Buffy".

He did the original movie. It was the begining of what he had hope would be come a household name. (guess it worked) However the movie was not what he wanted due to corporate exec type stuff...thus the T.V. show which he said is what he wished the movies had been.

God created Mudder's Milk so the Independence wouldn't take over the 'verse.

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Friday, April 16, 2004 5:07 PM

INVISIBLEGREEN

Joss Whedon wrote the script for the movie, which was basically ruined by an inexperienced director who wanted to do it as a comedy instead of a drama. (Personally, I *love* the movie, but for different reasons than the show.) A lot of lines that Joss really liked were taken out, and a few plot points were changed (like vampires not dusting, possibly because it's cheaper; also the climax happening at senior prom, rather than some other dance). Joss has also been very vocal about how much he hates Donald Sutherland, who had a thing for rewriting most of his lines.

So, Joss stayed on set for most of filming, but he got ticked off and just left during the last few. After the premiere, he cried in the theater.

The series was based on Joss's original script for the movie, not the movie itself. You may be interested in Dark Horse's "The Origin" comic book adaptation, which is more faithful to hid script than the movie, but it cuts out a lot, and has kind of a choppy feel. It's worth reading, though.

Joss talks about the movie a lot in his interview with The Onion, which was very much the definitive article on Joss at the time it was published.

Here is the article:
http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3731/avfeature_3731.html

And here are 4000 more words which were cut for the printed edition, but included as a bonus online:
http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3731/avfeature_3731b.html

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Friday, April 16, 2004 7:15 PM

DELIA

I agree that there are some very cool names floating around the Joss-verse, though I can't say that I ever gave most of the shortened form nicknames (like Wes for Wesley, Mal for Malcolm, or Dru for Drusilla) much thought. That's just something that seems to happen in real life.

I like the way names on the shows play with expectations, Jayne is a big scary guy, while Fred is a beautiful delicate woman (and I love Andrew telling Willow that Fred has called and commenting on how the guy "sounds kind of effeminate").

And while I've never known a Xander, I did go to high school with an Alexander who went by Xan, which isn't too far off.

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Friday, April 16, 2004 8:38 PM

RUXTON

I noted that Buffy & the scoobies always called Rupert Giles by his last name, using it as his first. It seemed odd when he was called "Mr. Giles" by Buffy's mom, etc.

It would be like talking with Joss and calling him Whedon all the time. This would perhaps sound normal, or at least less alarming, for someone of his age to call him Whedon, but for a kid to call him that seems disrespectful, or somehow wrong. Yet Rupert Giles took it all as the normal course of events, and it always seemed...well, normal. Far as I recall, none of the scoobies called him Rupert. Not ever. That always seemed odd to me.

If his name had been Rupert Smith, would they have called him Smith?

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Friday, April 16, 2004 9:22 PM

WREN

I have always thought of Willow as a female name. The only time I have heard it used for a male is in that awful film.

Heres some useless information - in 2002 Willow was the 245th most popular girls name in the UK. I wonder if that was down to Buffy.

I also know of people called Willow, infact my eldest daughter has Willow as her second name. We were going to use it as her first name, but then she would have had the initals W.C.

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Friday, April 16, 2004 9:35 PM

MACBAKER

The name thing seems to be a Joss staple. He did the gender bending thing in Aliens Resurrection (he wrote the script). The Captian of the Betty's right hand man was named Christie!

BTW, anyone notice that the crew of rouges in "Out Of Gas" resembled the crew of the Betty, and that the Betty has some similarities with Serenity (VTOL-Vector thrust engines for one)? Or is it just me?

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, April 16, 2004 9:52 PM

MACBAKER

Just read something at the "Official Alien Resurrection" site that made me ponder something.

The bio of the Captain of the Betty sounds a lot like a certain Captian we all know and love:
Elgyn (Played by Micheal Wincott) Is the leader of the Betty. Smart, resourceful and charismatic, he is probably a former military man who discovered more challenge and profit in the murky world of space smuggling. Mal????

There are other common threads that lead me to wonder if the crew of the Betty was Joss' inspiration for the crew of Serenity.

1. The obvious Mal/Elgyn similarities.

2. The ship's mechanic is a beautiful young woman (or at lest seems to be) who is described as "generous and humanist". Kaylee is certainly generous and humanist, though she's not a cyborg (OR IS SHE......LOL)!

3. Ron Pearlman's Merc character is described as "thick and mean, but his coarseness occasionally provides paradoxical humor." Hmmm, sounds like Jayne to me.

4. The ship's first officer Christie's description could fit Zoe easily. "Christie (Zoe) is the powerful, enigmatic "terminator" of the group. Supremely self-assured, he (She) never loses his (Her) cool, even in the deadliest of situations.

The big difference of course is that the crew of the Betty are much darker characters than our beloved Firefly crew.

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Saturday, April 17, 2004 8:34 AM

SPOOKYJESUS

I think Joss' name thing comes from trying to make each character unique and more memoable to a "now and then" TV audience.

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Saturday, April 17, 2004 8:38 AM

CYBERSNARK

Quote:
Originally posted by Ruxton:
It would be like talking with Joss and calling him Whedon all the time. This would perhaps sound normal, or at least less alarming, for someone of his age to call him Whedon, but for a kid to call him that seems disrespectful, or somehow wrong. Yet Rupert Giles took it all as the normal course of events, and it always seemed...well, normal. Far as I recall, none of the scoobies called him Rupert. Not ever. That always seemed odd to me.

Actually, I remember doing things like that all the time in high school.

Using someone's first name conveys a level of familiarity (in hs we used to irritate the principal (Mr. McCuew) by calling him "Jack") that the (initially high school-aged) Scoobs wouldn't have been comfortable with. At the same time, adding "Mr." every time you talk to someone rapidly becomes a mouthful.

Also, for Giles in particular, Rupert is a symbol of his misspent youth (not so much as "Ripper," but still). Only people who call him that are other Watchers (irritating gits, one and all), and a few other adult friends who may or may not be in on the whole supernatural thing. "Rupert" just isn't who he is to the Scoobies.

After a while, "Giles" just becomes a sort of nickname (with direct ties to his real name).

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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