As Close as it gets #5 Whedonverse

As Close as it Gets is my re-occurring feature to highlight media I like that contains vicarious Femdom thrills. This Time I’m covering all the shows of Joss Whedon. I’m doing four shows at once, because while there are a significant number of moments, images and themes that hit the spot over the run of each show, there isn’t anything  substantial enough to warrant it’s own post.

The first time I saw Buffy the Vampire Slayer I was about fifteen, flipping through channels when I spotted an attractive woman in leather pants beating the snot out of some dudes. That caught my attention, but I what hooked me was the witty dialogue, the humor and the complex and relatable Characters. I’ve since watched most everything he’s done, I’m a bit of a fanboy.

Still when I first wrote about the lack of Femdom in fiction I singled out Buffy because it is so ripe for a little female-in-charge romance but is lacking in that department. My recent bout of (ongoing) unemployment has given me some free time in which to re-examine the several shows and I while there isn’t the major explicitly F/m healthy romance I’d like to see, there are some very hot moment’s I’d overlooked before.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy is a young woman who is the chosen one, a slayer with super strength, accelerated healing, ect, supposed to stand against the forces of darkness. The show is a fun post-modern allegory for surviving highschool, growing up and finding your place int the world. Groovy.

My beef with Buffy before was despite being a postmodern tale of a super strong young woman written by a self proclaimed feminist, Buffy’s relationships follow fairly conventional narratives. Her romantic interests are all similarly super strong, there is little interesting about Buffy’s sex life until the later seasons when she is in a mutually abusive relationship with Spike.

These two once fucked a house down, but apparently their relationship was “unhealthy.”

Unlike True Blood vampires, in the Buffyverse when Vamps feed they get all evil and gross looking which really cuts down on the hotness when a female vamp has a male victim. Aside from some Villianesses here and there, and Faith jumping xander’s bones that one time (and trying to strangle him that other time) there isn’t much in the way of female dominance in the show.

However, if you’re into male submission, or images of men in chains, or men getting beat up, there is a whole bunch of that. Oh and in season three Evil Vampire Willow tortures Angle with matches. Which once again, not happy healthy Femdom, but pretty hot.

Good thing men on television don’t have chest hair.

Angel

After the third season of Buffy, Angel got his own spin off. It takes a darker more adult look at the world. Angel, is a vampire, who due to a gypsy curse has a soul, which forces him to live with all the suffering he caused in the hundred plus years of slaughter before here was cursed. However the curse can be broken by a moment of “pure happiness” which translates to an orgasm with his true love (Buffy.)

So the show doesn’t have a huge potential for romance, but surprised me when I was re-watching it. One of the major story lines concerns Angel’s sire, the woman who turned him into a vampire in the first place being brought back from the dead to work some sneaky voodoo on him for the bad guys. The scenes of her pulling his strings, and pushing his buttons are exquisite.

Later in the series there are some very fun interactions between Illyria (an elder god, who became trapped in a nubile young woman’s body) and Spike (again, I swear that guy gets all the fun.)

And again lots of men getting bloodied and/or tried up.

Firefly

Firefly was a show about space pirates that got a criminally unjust fourteen episode run. The first mate “Zoe” and her husband “Wash” the ships pilot are in a delightfully blatant female led relationship. Which if the the show had a proper run, would certainly be it’s own post. As it is we get a handful of sweet moments, a smidge of hotness and couple of fun quotes.

I just want to point out that you don’t get to see guys as the small spoon on TV all that often.

If you haven’t seen any of these shows before Firefly is a great place to start, it’s nearly perfect and there aren’t many episodes watching it isn’t a huge commitment.

Dollhouse

Dollhouse had a brilliant concept and a rough execution.  It was a science fiction show set in the present about a shadowy corporation that could wipe peoples mind and implant entirely new personalities, skills and knowledge for high paying clients. The protagonist Echo (or Caroline) was one of the “Dolls.” In between assignments Echo was kept in a tabula rasa “doll-like state, in a facility (the eponymous dollhouse) with other “Dolls.”

For a show that brought up a lot of question about free will, relinquishing control, and sexuality (a lot of clients contracted the Dolls to fulfill sexual fantasies) the show had very little positive to say about sexual power exchange.

However in a lot of the commercials for the show, and in the credit sequence the main character was done up as a dominatrix. This footage was for one opening sequence that did little than give the same old boring introduction to BDSM spiel that always happens and the image of Eliza Dushku in leather.

“Everyone thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust. Handing yourself over, fully and completely, to another human being, there’s nothing more beautiful than letting go like that.”

The show does have a lot of good points. I feel like it is a must for Whedon fans as few shows manage ensemble casts or quick fire dialogue like he does. Beyond that there are many little things for people who kink on control or the lack there of. Plus attractive women hitting men.