A recent comment on Fallout: Equestria brought up the commonly argued topic of the acceptable use of violence, and the roles of justice and mercy. (I have no doubt that this is going to be one of my most controversial blogs – both because I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with my opinions, and because there are few subjects where we as people confuse beliefs with fact as we do on topics of ethics and morality. Either that, or a massive, wasteful exercise in preaching to the choir.)

art by Limreiart

The comment addressed the fight with the bandits at Arbu, one of the decidedly greyer conflicts in the story. Before discussing the battle, or the validity of violence, it is first necessary to establish a belief in a person’s “right to life”, and the parameters within which that right exists. For that, I will draw on the essay of a West Point army officer on the morality of killing of enemy combatants:

from Thoughts of a Soldier-Ethicist:

Every person, by virtue of being a human being, possesses the right not to be killed by another person. This is commonly referred to as the “right to life”… Our rights as human beings put limits on how others can act towards us. One person’s right has priority over another person’s freedom. For example, my right not to be killed trumps my angry neighbor’s freedom to kill me over our dandelion dispute. Were he to kill me, he would commit a moral wrong. To paraphrase the philosopher J. S. Mill, we possess the freedom to choose our actions provided they do not violate the rights of another. Rights must trump freedoms, if rights are to have any meaning at all. Rights themselves are absolute, but possession of them is not. People forfeit their rights if and while they are engaged in violating the rights of others. This explains the rights of self defense and defense of others. When an attacker violates the right not to be killed of those who possess it, he forfeits his own right not to be killed. Enemy combatants are people who are engaged in violating and threatening the rights of others not to be killed or enslaved. Thus, when we kill combatants, we do no moral wrong; we violate no rights. In fact, we vindicate the rights of those people whom the enemy combatants were threatening.

Next, we must ask: what is the nature of a hero?

This is a question that No One has explored at length, and with greater skill than I did, in his story Fallout: Equestria – Heroes. However, I’m not going to draw from that story for this essay as it has yet to reach its conclusion, and (at least up to the point I have read) the story has not settled on an answer.

The Free Online Dictionary defines a hero as a “person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life” and this is expounded upon by Wikipedia:

A hero (masculine) or heroine (feminine) (Ancient Greek: ἥρως, hḗrōs) refers to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity. This definition originally referred to martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.

For the purposes of this essay, I am going to define a hero as one who acts to save others from harm, who is willing to risk their own life and wellbeing for the live and wellbeing of another, and who is willing to sacrifice what is theirs so someone else doesn’t have to without expectation of compensation.

To that end, it is the first duty of a hero to protect the lives and safety of innocent people. The hero must be able to do this even if he or she is afraid, or if it calls for actions she would otherwise prefer not to take.

art by Mistermech

And this brings us to a final definition that I feel needs to be laid out for purposes of this essay: the good pony.

The good pony is the pony who will try his or her best to be honest and generous, kind and forgiving – to hold their actions to a moral standard because they believe that this behavior is the right thing to do, the best thing to do.

Particularly in the Equestrian Wasteland, the quality that divides the good ponies from those who are not is the quality of mercy. Mercy isn’t an obligation. Mercy isn’t something the hero is required to give because the villain deserves it. The villain doesn’t deserve it. Mercy is something that a good pony gives because they are a better pony than the villain.

From Project Horizons by Somber:

“I’m sorry, is there something to think about here? This buck is responsible for the death of possibly hundreds of ponies. He’s been in charge of Brimstone for years!” P-21 said in a low voice. “He’s hurt everypony here. Now they get justice!” “This isn’t fucking justice!” I hissed as I stared at him, unable to touch that button, unable to look away. “It’s murder.” Now I regretted my show. If I’d appeared near death... no, that would have put the blood on somepony else’s hooves. And he’d be just as dead. P-21 would have killed me right then if he could. Cold rage burned in his eyes as he leaned towards me. “Do you know what fucking justice is? It’s giving to others as is given to you.” Be kind. “It’s killing the fucker to make sure that she never does it again.” Be kind. “It’s making sure every bastard who even thinks of copying her crime hesitates because they know they might face the same punishment.” Be kind. “It’s what’s fair!” …be kind… These ponies needed justice. Was this it? Killing him wouldn’t bring anypony he had killed back. Would it even bring peace? Or would somepony else decide that it wasn’t enough and drag one of the former guards up there next? He was dead anyway. Send his broken body out the gate and the Wasteland would eat him. They’d track him down and lynch him. It wasn’t any different in Stable 99; he’d be retired without hesitation. Recycled. If he was put on some kind of trial, what verdict would be returned besides guilty? How was this not justice? Just a week ago I wouldn’t have hesitated. In fact, I probably would have been honored to push the nice red button. …be kind… Ante up.

I believe that some people confuse being a hero with being a good person (or, in the case of the Equestrian Wasteland, a good pony). The two are usually related, as a hero should desire to be a good pony should situations allow. But part of what makes the hero is that the hero is willing to make the hard choices and to sacrifice – including the hero’s moral comfort – to save and protect others. A good person doesn’t want to kill anyone; a good cop will still do so if that is necessary to save someone from the bad guy.

In the scene outside of Arbu, the group came upon bandits setting up an ambush for a caravan. Littlepip recognizes that these are a different class of threats than those she had fought before.

From Fallout: Equestria:

The rain-soaked ponies I saw moving between the rubble, setting an ambush for the caravan, didn’t look like raider ponies. They lacked the fucked-up, “scourges of ponykind” motif. No necklaces of pony bones or cutie marks of bloodied weapons. They just looked like bandits. “Uh… Calamity? Maybe we should just scare them off?”

A few issues can be raised here. First, are the bandits bad? What if they’re just trying to get food? Provide for their families. Now, hopefully everyone can sympathize with the need and the desperation, especially where loved ones are involved. And, to an extent, the bandits can be seen as heroes to their families, risking their lives in a violent action to provide for them. But the method which they chose to do so it to attack an innocent with lethal force. And with that decision, they become the villains.

I happen to be a firm believer in personal responsibility. An individual chooses the actions they take. Someone’s choices are not the fault of their parents, or peer pressure or their religious beliefs… or any other agency. Those things may skew an individual’s perceptions, and circumstances may put them in a horrible position, but ultimately they still make their own choices. The consequences may not be on their shoulders – other factors may come into play, or information they didn’t know may cause an unexpected outcome – but people have responsibility for everything they choose to do. And if they chose to act to harm another, that is on nobody but them. And it becomes the hero’s moral imperative to prevent them from doing so.

The second issue is that Calamity fires first. However, while it can be argued that other choices may have been better, this doesn’t prevent this from being the right thing to do. Bandits with lethal weapons were setting up an ambush. How absurd would it be for a hero to stand back and say, “Well, maybe they’re just planning to stop the trader so they could all give him hugs and cake? I should wait and see.” No. A hero doesn’t wait for people to be killed before acting. And a hero isn’t supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt when an innocent life is at stake. A hero acts swiftly to prevent harm and loss of life.

The third issue is that Calamity uses lethal force. Even Littlepip suggests another method of intervention. But what if they had swooped down and tried to scare off the bandits instead. First, there are many ways that could have backfired, and a high chance it would have caused more bloodshed rather than less. Second, even in they had done so, it would have only deterred this particular ambush while allowing the bandits to try again at a later date (and leaving them on a lookout for the Sky Bandit to ensure they weren’t interrupted the same way twice. Calamity makes the point:

Calamity, Fallout: Equestria

“So they c’n jus’ attack the next caravan instead?” Calamity asked gruffly, kicking the reload bar of his battle saddle. “Plan t’ go ‘round ‘pologizin’ t’ everypony they kill after we let ‘em go?”

Now, Calamity approaches these situations thinking not just on the terms of what a hero is called to do, but in the broader terms of what actions have the better long-term effects on the wasteland and are most likely to discourage other potential threats. But those arguments cease to be about heroic action and become about policy.

Issues of policy aside, should a hero act to preserve the life of the villain as well as the victim? Not necessarily. If you are threatening someone, a hero’s moral imperative is to stop you with whatever force it takes to prevent harm and/or loss of life to your would-be victim. Your wellbeing is not the priority – your victim’s is. A good person will try to disarm the threat that you pose in the gentlest way possible, but the hero isn’t obligated to. A hero will generally try to if the situation allows for it so long as attempting to do so doesn’t gamble with the lives of the innocent.

Batman. Hero. Not interested in being a good pony.

If the universe is kind enough to provide another way, the hero is wise enough to glean that other option in sufficient time to act on it, and the villain(s) make it feasible, then the hero will take the kinder option. If a hero is trying to stop you, and you want to be treated with kid gloves, it is your responsibility to make a reasonable option for the hero to take.

In On Raiders, I discussed a similar incident in the story – that of Calamity shooting the child raider. This child had participated in the rape and brutalization of a woman, and was now chasing her down with a serrated knife. There was no question that he posed a clear and imminent threat, and Calamity responded accordingly, again with lethal force.

What if Calamity had shot to cripple rather than kill, and the group had taken a moment to discuss what options, if any, they had for trying to save the child? In truth, Velvet Remedy would have had the chance to offer up what was really the only other option open to them at that time: find a way to keep the raider child bound and subdued while they backtracked, attempting to deliver him to Shattered Hoof in the hopes that Gawd and her people could help him. And pray that he didn't find some way to escape and/or harm someone before that happened... ...but by then, the little raider would already have been dead. He would have been dead before any of them could reach him. Because crippling him would have left the raider helpless at the hooves of his victim, the blue mare, giving her the chance to turn that storm of hurt and rage that was eventually released on the ghoul doctor instead upon the last remaining of her tormentors.

Would this have been a better option? Possibly, but Calamity didn’t see that option; his mental framework for dealing with a clear and imminent threat to a mare’s life didn’t include “maim the monster then sit around and talk about it while the monster’s still alive and armed” – to the point that he was seriously confused when his companions reacted in dismay. His choice may not have been the most right option, but in that situation, it was by no means a wrong one.

art by Vombavr

In most cases that Littlepip and her friends had fought in before, the other party attacked first. Once self-defense comes into play, there is no question of action. If your life is threatened, you have a moral imperative to fight to preserve it by whatever means is necessary. If someone attacks you with intent to maim, rape, enslave or kill, they have forfeited their right not to be killed. When the other party attacks first, there is no question that Littlepip and her friends are right in responding with lethal force. So, does that then also apply to the bandits?

from Thoughts of a Soldier-Ethicist:

Briefly, the argument for the “moral equality of soldiers” states that since combatants on both sides take up arms against each other, then all combatants are both threats to their enemy and threatened by their enemy. Combatants on both sides, by this account, are equally guilty of being threats, so they all forfeit their right to not be killed. Consequently, all combatants are also equally innocent of violating their enemy’s rights. Thus, soldiers on both sides are moral equals, and no moral wrong is committed when one combatant kills another… Should we accept the idea that enemy combatants are our moral equals? As a soldier, I am offended at the claim that soldiers who fight for human rights and freedoms have the same moral standing as those who fight for Nazi or Islamist fascism. Moreover, as an ethicist, I am concerned that we would accept an argument that rationalizes killing on the basis that no one is morally wrong because everyone is morally wrong; i.e., all combatants have forfeited their right to not be killed, so none of them is wrong to kill each other. This line of reasoning has implications that we should be unwilling to accept… it is only the moral inequality among people in a context that gives killing in self defense its moral authority.

Self-defense is the act of doing what is necessary to preserve your life. If a person or persons are being attacked because they are threatening the lives of others, the only moral imperative to preserve their life is to stop violating the right to life of others, the act which is also endangering themselves. If they want the hero to spare them, their imperative is to surrender.

The reason that the situation with the bandits is so morally grey isn’t because it was wrong for Littlepip and her party to engage the bandits in order to prevent them from killing the merchant they were attempting to ambush, nor was it because Littlepip’s side shot first. And I would say it wasn’t even because a lethal option was taken against an enemy intent on killing. The real moral murkiness of the situation comes from the fact that the bandits knew something that Littlepip and her friends didn’t, and that something removed the option of surrender. It could be argues that because of who was fighting alongside Littlepip – the town of Arbu – the moral inequality that should have been in play wasn’t. And thus, the bandits were just as morally justified in lethal self-defense as Littlepip and friends where in charging to the rescue.

art by Favmir

But remember, hero is not a paragon of the heroic imperative. Nobody is truly a paragon – even the pony associated with Honesty will sometimes lie, the pony associated with Generosity will sometimes be greedy – and the fool who demands or expects otherwise has forgotten that people are people. People will always have failings, faults and moments of weakness. As DJ Pon3 says, the truth of the matter is that everyone has done something they regret.

The hero will try his or her best in a situation to make the right choices, but will not automatically make the best ones. Characters who always chose the absolute best possible method of dealing with a situation are not realistic or relatable characters. Again, it is important to remember that the quality of choices is not binary. There are good choices and better choices; just because something isn’t the best choice doesn’t make it a wrong one.

Likewise, there will always be people who play armchair quarterback, tearing apart every choice and analyzing every possible alternate choice that a hero (or for that matter, any public figure) could have been made in hindsight. But such arguments are disingenuous, being neither realistic nor fair, and are the bread and butter of those attempting to tear down a hero (or other public figure) for their own gratification or agenda, not a practice engaged in by honest critics.

This is not to say that lethal force is always the right or preferred method of a hero. The hero’s job is to prevent harm of innocents, and must take whatever is the swiftest and most guaranteed course of action that the hero can perceive to do so. But if circumstances allow or the hero is equipped with the ability to intervene in a non-lethal manner, then the hero should always take that option unless that option unfairly gambles with the safety of those the hero seeks to protect. A hero should apply mercy whenever mercy does not interfere with the main priority of the hero. (However, when dealing with a villain, I believe mercy should not be applied when it would violate the moral imperative of self-defense.)

Additionally, a hero will not respond with grossly inappropriate levels of force. If a hero is attempting to prevent a murder, lethal force is appropriate. If a hero is attempting to prevent rape or enslavement, lethal force is most often appropriate unless the antagonist(s) allow a non-lethal option, usually by surrender. However, in circumstances `where the antagonist(s) can be subdued non-lethally with minimal risk to the hero or those the hero is protecting, then lethal force is unacceptable. If a hero is stepping in to stop some bullies from beating a smaller child, lethal force is not appropriate (although it may become so if one of the antagonists draws a lethal weapon or similarly escalates the situation to life-and-death).

The potential for incarceration and rehabilitation should also be taken into account. In a situation like the Equestrian Wasteland where Littlepip and her friends are operating, there is no law of the land, no justice system outside that of isolated communities that do not have the capacity to incarcerate the criminals outside their walls. In an alternate setting, where incarceration and rehabilitation are viable options and have the chance for positive results, a hero should make greater effort to subdue an antagonist and deliver them into such a system so long as doing so doesn’t significantly increase the likelihood of the antagonist harming others.

In the Batman comic series, Batman chooses not to kill, instead subduing (often with extreme violence) criminals and other antagonists so that they may be incarcerated. The fact that rehabilitation is almost always ineffective, and that the criminals escape, are the fault of the justice system and the institutions involved. This inevitably leads to the criminals killing more people and causing more havoc. As an advocate of personal responsibility, the criminals and they alone are responsible for their actions. If a criminal commits murder, it isn’t the fault of the hero (whether it be Batman or a police officer) who didn’t shoot him in the head, it is the fault of the criminal alone.

However, what about those who are incapable of making moral choices due to impaired mentality, such as the incurably insane? Doesn’t the responsibility for their actions falls on those who do take on the responsibility of dealing with them and then refuse to eliminate the problem. Is the blood of the Joker’s victims on Batman’s hands?

In Fallout: Equestria, Diamond Tiara is faced with a moral dilemma: should she release those imprisoned in the Shattered Hoof correctional facility when leaving them their meant they would starve to death, but releasing them would mean turning them loose on a devastated civilization incapable of dealing with the threat they posed? What should the hero do if she knows the one who needs to be saved will become the villain tomorrow? In such a situation, policy will often become the deciding factor, but personal responsibility dictates that it is the ex-convict’s choice, not the hero’s, to continue being the criminal should he or she live. However, if a person chooses not to save someone, that blood is on her, and that is not the actions of a hero.

In my Stalliongrad game, one of the most haunting locations that the wastelanders visited was The House of Kindness, a Ministry of Peace hub where the upper floors served as an insane asylum. One of the threats in The House of Kindness were robots that had been reprogrammed to administer a painless, lethal toxin (via tranquilizer guns) to any living beings within the building. When the final day started, one of the nurses was faced with having to decide what to do about the wards of the asylum. Realizing that the Stables were not equipped to handle them and that introducing them to a Stable was to put everyone within it at risk, but unwilling to release them to die horribly in the radiation blanketing the city, she made a very hard choice. It was the merciful one.

photograph by Eddie Adams

The above picture is one of the most famous photographs in history: the execution of a Vietcong guerilla by a general during the Tet Offensive. The general was South Veitnamese National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. The prisoner was Bay Hop, a mass-murder whose death count included slaughtering the wife and six children of a South Veitnamese colonel that very morning just up the road from where this photograph was taken. Loan remarked immediately afterwards that the execution was an act of justice, stating “They killed many of my men and many of our people.”

When the American people saw this photograph, they did not see the context. They did not see ditches filled with the bodies of civilians unfortunate enough to meet Bay Hops and his guerillas, nor the photographers and civilian journalists that were slain in cold blood for trying to tell the world about the Vietcong. Instead, they saw an iconic image of the excess and brutality of the war.

Jason Fransisco, “War Photography in the Twentieth Century: A Short Critical History”:

For many viewers, the picture was also climactic, proclaiming the horror and immorality of the war, signifying its barbarity and its incoherence.

This photograph stoked a backlash against General Loan and against the war, even by the people of a country that largely supported (and can be argued to still largely support) the death penalty. People react emotionally and even irrationally when confronted with violence.

The photographer, Eddie Adams, praise General Nguyễn as a hero, and spent the rest of his life regretting taking the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. In his words:

”The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?”

Was this justice? I believe, unequivocally, that the answer is “yes”… or at least as close to justice as possible without descending into inhumane barbarism and brutality. Was it heroic? The man was barefoot, bound, captured… he was at the mercy of General Nguyễn. He didn’t deserve mercy, and General Nguyễn was under no obligation to offer him any. There is no reason to believe he could have been reformed. If he was ever to escape, he would murder again.

But at the same time, he was not an imminent threat to anyone. Taking his life did not immediately protect or save anyone else. He could have been imprisoned for the rest of his life. Would that have been better? Would it have even been more merciful, especially given the conditions that were likely to be his imprisonment? And would his imprisonment serve as fuel for further terrorism and murder? Would he be able to extend influence and twist people to his ideals as long as he lived, even from a cell? Or, conversely, would his death make him a martyr to the Vietcong?

And finally, in a country ravaged by war, the food and resources needed to keep Bay Hop alive might have meant someone else went hungry and cold, and possibly perished. Are you still being a good person when the mercy you give to the undeserving becomes a cruelty to the innocent?

Littlepip, faced with the same choice, makes the same decision:

art by JohnNoz

Littlepip wasn’t kind; she wasn’t merciful. At least not to the mass-murdering crusader whom she put down. You could definitely argue she was to all those who would have been his future victims. What she did was justice, and she did it to save those who he threatened just by being allowed to live. If you are to agree with Eddie Adams, she was a hero. But unlike Blackjack in the quoted passage above, in that instant, Littlepip was not a “good pony”. Or, at least, she didn’t consider herself such. She sacrificed being a good pony to do what was just, necessary and (at least arguably) what was right.

A small number of people have attempted to re-interpret Littlepip as a Villain Protagonist – mostly people with a vested interest in tearing down the story, or whose opinions were derived from such sources. However, as much as someone would have to twist or ignore large portions of the story to justify this viewpoint, is it entirely without merit? Littlepip almost always acts to save lives and protect people, behaving in accordance to the call of a hero, forced to use violence to solve problems because any other option gambles with innocent lives. Almost always.

Take the case of Old Olneigh. On the bridge over Old Olneigh, Littlepip engages in a sneak attack on monsters that are later revealed to be sentient people. The monsters in question were in general known to be genocidal towards ponykind, and a group of these monsters had just launched a surprise attack where they targeted Littlepip and her companions as well as others, resulting in the loss of several lives. Calamity’s would have been one of them had it not been for protective spell.

However, at the time there was no evidence that this specific community of the monsters were involved in any attacks against others. All Littlepip knew was that the territorial nature of the monsters would drive them to attack the group if they tried to sneak into Old Olneigh and failed, that they monsters were extremely deadly in close combat, and that they were between her friends and the medical supplies she hoped would cure the grievous injury Calamity sustained in the previously mentioned attack.

The rare failure to act heroically in a dangerous situation does not make for a “villain protagonist”. Littlepip is tarnished, imperfect hero, yes – and perhaps one with no right claim being a good pony – but she is still unquestionably a hero. Additionally, these failures also add a deeper layer of grey to the character of Littlepip – a character who is far from perfect.

Homage, Fallout: Equestria:

The true mark of a hero is not that they never fail, never fall down. I’ve said it a hundred times and I’ll say it again: the one great truth of the wasteland is that every pony has done something they regret. “No, you know a true hero by what they do after they fall. By the way they pick themselves back up again, shake themselves off, and throw themselves back into that good fight. Despite what they done, and despite the bleak prospects of a happy ending.

As Homage states in the chapter “Cold Dawn Light”, being a hero doesn’t mean never making a mistake or never doing the wrong thing. The true measure of a hero is in continuing to be a hero even after you have made mistakes, and in learning from your mistakes and trying to be better.

Or as Watcher says it perhaps even better in Somber’s Project Horizons:

You do everything you can to make up for it, knowing that you’ll never succeed in getting rid of the guilt. You devote yourself to spending every second trying to do better despite the fact that it will never be enough. And you pray with every single good act you do that somehow, when your life is over, that you came close to making up for the wrong you committed.

While the view of Littlepip being an actual “villain protagonist” is unsupportable and easily debunked (with other arguments predictably either revealing a desire for a protagonist who is not willing sacrifice being a good pony, or engaging in morally repugnant values such as advocating the freedoms of rapists and slavers over the rights of their victims), the in-world social perception of Littlepip as a villain by some people within the setting can certainly be justified.

It takes Littlepip a long time to learn from her mistake at Old Olneigh. Less to learn from others. But before the end, she was striving to do better. And she acknowledged how the world could see her as a villain, not just for the times she failed to act heroically, but for the times she succeeded – because being seen as the villain was a price she was willing to pay to be Equestria hero.

Littlepip, Fallout: Equestria:

Your people have every reason to hate me, but I really am trying to do the right thing, the best I can. I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to do better. After this, the pegasi will have plenty of reason to hate me too. To save Equestria, I’ve become the villain of the piece.

art by Mistermech

One final thought:

Few things will muddy the moral waters more than an appeal to “the greater good”. But at the same time, a hero may face a situation where risking the life or wellbeing of another is actually a proper choice, and even a necessary one, to save lives.

from Thoughts of a Soldier-Ethicist:

Finally, leaders must incorporate the rights of potentially affected noncombatants into their course-of-action analyses. To some in our profession, the leadership mantra “Mission First, People Always” is interpreted as “Mission First, Soldiers Always,” thus overlooking our duty as military professionals to protect noncombatants. The fact is, every human being possesses the right not to be killed, unless by his own choice to violate the rights of someone who retains her rights, he forfeits his own right. This is not a binary condition; people can forfeit some of their rights claim, according to their participation in a rights violation. Thus, civilians can lose some of their right to not be killed if they support the rights-violating activities of enemy combatants. For example, a noncombatant who allows enemy combatants to assemble in her house forfeits much of her right to not be killed, so it is less of a moral wrong to take action against morally legitimate targets that results in her death.

However, while there may objectively be such a thing as “acceptable losses”, this does not in any way absolve the hero of his or her choices. Just as not being the best option doesn’t prevent a course of action from being a right course of action, an action that is “less wrong” is still wrong. Personal responsibility remains. This is arguably the hardest sacrifice and the heaviest burden a hero may ever have to bear.

Will you be a villain or a hero? A hero or a good pony? The wasteland is calling, and it will demand an answer.

Ante up.

art by Mistermech

Thank you for reading.

Joss Whedon: