Hello folks, no new art since on top of being lazy I am extremely busy this year taking classes AND teaching, but for a change I'm gonna post my little opinion on Dollhouse, by Joss Whedon, since season 2 is starting tonight: yay!
I am a big fan of that guy. Okay, I laughed at that "ridiculously, stupid and dumb TV show" the first time I saw an episode of Buffy, before becoming a huge addict a couple of years later. I never got hooked on Angel however.
A couple of years later I heard of Firefly, but never watched it...Until I saw the trailer for Serenity. I watched the whole series, and the day after watching the last episode I was in the theater with a friend to watch Serenity. Even the French dubbing, beyond crapiness, did not prevent me from screaming during the last 30 minutes while I was almost having a heart attack every minute.
So yup, I am fan.
However, when I first heard about Dollhouse I didn't get interested in the show: the story of a super agent having personalities imprinted before every mission sounded like a random scify series for me. It screamed "fun mission of the week" for me.
I almost completely missed the first season of Dollhouse, and it's by accident that I remembered of the show and watched the first episode on streaming the day after it was broadcast in the US.
I wasn't expecting anything of this show, and I thought it was almost worst than what I was expecting. The pilot just seemed a completely boring "mission of the week" for an extremely bad TV series, it didn't even looked like Joss Whedon at all...Which would not have been bad: it is good for an author to change of style. But the first episodes of Dollhouse didn't look like Joss work because they were quite freaking boring and bad.
The good things...Well, I really liked the main set of the show. And the second thing...Well, those aren't really agents/prostitutes/whatever having switching of personality between missions. Those are humans transformed into toys of some secret of powerful organization, now that's something that could bring some good things.
Then came the sixth episode, Man of the Street, and the very first line everybody was waiting for.
"You can't beat the Dollhouse alone. There are 20 Dollhouses all around the world, and fantasies is simply their business, not their purpose"
...Holy cow, things start feeling very frightening. Sadly the first season of Dollhouse won't dig deep into that direction, and will focus on Alpha, who sadly was a deception for me. I mean the agoraphobic technician he was playing was instantaneously my favorite character of the show, and boy was he hilarious (because, let's be honest, we all wanted to kill Topher during the whole first season...). Sadly, he was Alpha...Bye bye fun character and welcome, er, well, welcome "rather disappointing Big Bad Guy" who simply happens to have a huge crush for an active.
That was a quite boring end seasons, if you ask me.
Then I got my hands on Epitaph One. The first time I watched it I thought it was not bad, but nothing to fancy, yet it was probably one of the best episodes of the whole show, with an extremely nice scene for Topher's character, who was this time played brilliantly I think.
A couple of years later I was thinking about the ending song and watched the episode ending to listen to it.
And I started getting the plot that I missed the first time, probably because of my "weak" English.
I started knowing what was happening. I started understanding.
And Then...

Oh
My
FUCKING GOD!!!

JOSS IS A GENIUS!!! JOSS IS BACK!!!

I don't know if season 2 will start covering all the "purpose" of the Dollhouse that is finally revealed in Epitaph One, nor if it will start using the Dollhouse technology for other things than "the mission of the week".
Here is a little list that I hope to see in a way or another in season 2, and if we're lucky in season 3.

- The first main purpose of the Dolls is finally cleared. This is a poshumanism topic: the dolls are only the key to immortality, and powerful people will transfer their character and memories, in other words their souls, into the bodies of young actives, continuing the process to live forever.
- The second main purpose will become also clear: mass destruction. The Dollhouse technology can be used through satellites and phones. Only one call to a major city is needed to have an army of actives under your orders, or an army of "crazy zombies kind of guys" if you prefer, like in Epitaph One (Between those and the Reavers, I am pretty sure Joss would love to do a Zombie movie one time...Wait, didn't he do that already in Buffy? ^^). Some nations will simply use it to provoke Third World War, or more simply the post-apocalyptic world seen in Epitaph One. We can suppose that this world is only a part of Earth in 2019, the other part might be an extremely powerful and modern country (or group of country), whose inhabitants are simply Dolls imprinted with the personalities of all the "Bid Bad Future Guys made in WhedonLand". One of them might be using the body of Caroline/Echo.
- Caroline on the other hand will end up being trapped in the body of a 12 years old (gosh, that kiddo simply played brilliantly in Epitaph One: please, bring her back!) and will go on her quest to find her real body and take down the Dollhouse. While some people might switch from body to body continuously to achieve immortality, maybe some others simply wish to leave this world on the body in which they came here. Caroline is not one of those persons who wishes to leave forever, she wants to die on her own body. Could be interesting to see actually Caroline's body being destroyed, and Caroline (in the body of that young kid) having to bury/cremate/whatever her real body at the end of the series. Okay, as you can guess, the ending of Epitaph One where Caroline stares at the picture of herself while saying "I hope you will find me alive" almost made me cry, I admit it!
- Now think about it: what about a Bid Bad Guy using the Dollhouse technology to imprint himself in MANY actives who would be telepathically linked, and so forth becoming some kind of God with the power of ubiquity? Now what would be interesting could be one of his, or her, personality inside a Doll having a completely different arc story, and becoming after one or two seasons a good guy! Someone fighting himself because he duplicated himself on of himselves became different: pretty fucked up, right?
Oh gosh, that could be great, and I pretty sure there could be much more interesting stuff!
- And finally, because we are all probably thinking about that...What about something going wrong with the imprinting machine, and Topher's character being stuck into Dewitt body while Dewitt ends up inside Topher? THAT COULD BE HILARIOUS!!! ^_^

Okay, that's it for my random histeric fan-crisis.
I'll see how tomorrow's episode is.
So far Joss is back...Well, not completely back, let's just say that for the moment he was behind a heavy wooden locked door. Now that door is unlocked and halfway opened: Joss, please, open the gorram door and come back!

Tutorials!!!
Coloring 1 : [link]
Coloring 2 : [link]
Wing on photoshop :
[link]