It's okay if I fisk this, right? If I did the making the text all smaller and quoted wrong, I trust Ita will fix it for me. I'm useless with this stuff. Though not with the fisking.

I might be on slightly safer ground when it comes to surmising the identity of the actress the creator of Fox's The Inside had in his head when he was piecing together the character traits of the winsome blonde with the all-access pass into the mind of the serial killer.

Uh, considering you made two references to "Silence of The Lambs" in the previous, unquoted paragraph, you mean Clarice Starling, right?

The team of writers mentored by Joss Whedon on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and other parts of the Buffyverse have more distinctive voices, higher profiles and more vocal cult followings than any other writers on any other shows. What they also have is a nasty case of Sarah Michelle Gellar damage."

Oh. You mean Buffy. Um. Er. Not so much. Now, Sarah is a blonde. And so is Rachel Nichols. I do not do their hair. I'll admit I thought she had a little Jodi Foster thing going on. Still do. Never did she recall to me Sarah Michele Gellar.

But Rebecca Locke is not Clarice Starling. She's my fictionalized version of Elizabeth Smart.

And Buffy is brilliant. But I have to be honest here -- I've really only seen a handful of Buffys. Sometime I plan to watch them all on DVD. Haven't had time yet. So I'm frankly not all that familiar with it. (Bet ya'll never considered that, didja? But it's the truth.)

Long-time Whedon right-hand man Tim Minear has ventured down the same road for The Inside. Rachel Nichols, the actress playing Rebecca Locke, the investigator who was abducted as a child and, as a result, can see into the abyss and beyond, is another poreless, porcelain blonde striding with perfect posture into a world of darkness and gore and, again, she's no Sarah Michelle Gellar."

She's also not very much like Ethel Merman. In fact, I can think of a few other actresses she's unlike. But admit it -- she does have a little young Jodi Foster thing happening? And a dash of Bridget Fonda.

Tim Minear's vocal cult following are up in arms at Fox's impending cancellation of his series but they ought to have been bemoaning his failure to come up with a more compelling heroine."

Careful, or I'll sick my vocal cult on you. (What's a vocal cult, anyway? Do you all talk like me?)

Was that harsh? I went to "X" last night and listened to the Pistols, the Weirdos, Germs and The Bags all the way to Costa Mesa. Could account for the attitude.

(Edited because Allyson said I sounded whiny. I trust her to tell me these things.)

(also edited because Allyson points out it's not my job to do research for this writer who needs to meet Google.)

Tim, I'm probably too late with this, and I'm nothing close to ita, but if you want the text to appear different, all you have to do is put > at the beginning of a line, then a space, then the text. So

this

looks like

this

[Edit: yup, too late. And now, to read what you actually posted]

Tim Minear's vocal cult following

I think that's me. But I'm not following you.

Tim, you should to come to San Diego today. The love was flowing muchly in the direction of creators and would have brought your attitude back to the normal cheerful murderous mode...

Thanks, Nilly.

CaBil, would, but I gotta work in the editing room on Sunday. I was thinking of stealing Joss' cutting style.

Perhaps we are facing the problem of projection. People who write these sort of stuff can't imagine that the people who produce are really all that different from them, so they HAVE to be as famaliar with other material as they are, irrespective of the fact that by the defination of being a creator that most of your time and effort is sheperding your own project rather than exhaustively researching everyone else's. Even for no other reason that if you do so, everything has been done before and the only difference is execution...

EtA Sorry for the spelling, but way too tired and laptop barely working in this crummy hotel...

Yes, CaBil. Very true. And if people are watching your thing and their expectation is "why isn't this like Buffy? Why isn't that actor playing it more like that other actor I was thinking of?" They sometimes don't seem to see the thing that actually IS there.

What's a vocal cult, anyway? Do you all talk like me?

In five part harmony, no less.

Wow. A cult of five. We won't need much Kool Aid.