Oh fuck everything
Jun. 3rd, 2014 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gen_is_goneSo while tag-searching Tumblr (in and of itself never a good idea) I came a across a Bland Marvel Headcanon that essentially used Steve's catching up on television pop culture as an excuse to take a sideswipe at Moffat-era Doctor Who.
Despite seeing the usual 'Moffat's a misogynist' bullshit all over the place basically all the time in Doctor Who circles anyway, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe it was because it was just so obviously highjacking another fandom, maybe because the stupid post saw fit to describe all Moffat written women, including Amelia Pond, as "one-dimensional"--but I went off on a nonsensical swear-word filled rant at my mother, who mostly tried to make me see the sense that this is an argument about fictional characters in a made-up setting.
The thing is though, this is beginning to bother me. I'm all for live and let live, and I generally don't mind meta that I don't personally agree with, and I agree that criticism is healthy--when it's constructive.
The Steven Moffat witch-hunt isn't constructive. It's ridiculous. This has passed the "Your headcanon is wrong and you should feel bad" stage and moved into the kind of nonsense shouting matches usually reserved for the most violent of political warfare. People have insulted Moffat in spaces where his children can read their words. People have called him sexist, racist and a pedophile. A pedophile, and all because they happen to have liked Davies better. It's fucking awful. And of course, on top of that, there's the usual fucking "no true feminist" bullshit that worms its way into any discourse involving women, where, for choosing not believe hysterical Tumblr posts taking quotes out of context and then barbequing the man in the tags, I'm secretly misogynist as well. For daring to admit that I think Amy Pond is a better written character with a stronger character and story arc than Rose Tyler, Martha Jones or Donna Noble, I am somehow betraying the godsdamn sisterhood.
You know what? I like Rose Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble. I just happen to prefer Amy Pond. In fact, I prefer Romanadvoratrelundar, Compassion of the Remote and Anji Kapoor to Amy Pond, but she makes the top five, while the Davies era women don't. Amelia Pond is anything but one-dimensional. She is brave, often scared, adventurous, stupid when in love or lust, often wrong, even more often right, and, perhaps most importantly when discussing the difference between Davies and Moffat's writing of Doctor Who, right when the Doctor is explicitly wrong. Much though I do actually care about Rose, Martha and Donna, there is not a point in the entire Davies era where Ten does not, in fact, end up the unambiguous hero, even in the face of some of the most vicious, personal attacks the Doctor has ever committed, in fifty years of writing of various quality. I'm looking at you, Harriet Jones.
I really don't like comparative accusing, but from a feminist perspective, Donna's is the narrative that sets us back to the stone age, as it were. After a season of character development and insight into Donna's huge inferiority complex, brought on by years of verbal and emotional abuse, after a season of being told that she's the most important woman in the universe, we find out that the reason she's important is because on one random day she turned left instead of right, and stopped the Doctor from committing inactive suicide over the loss of Rose. Not because of anything particularly intentional, not because she used her own competence and specific skills to save the day, but because she stopped the white-male Christ allegory Davies can't seem to help turning the Doctor into, from killing alien children out of misplaced, incredibly selfish despair.
And after this? When Donna absorbs the meta-crisis and becomes, from a narrative perspective, equal to the Doctor, what happens? She is narratively punished for rising so high. She is stripped of her memories, against her will, to save her life at the cost of her soul. Ten ignores her pleading and reduces her to a shell of her former self against her consent, and Donna Noble is sacrificed on the altar of Russell T. Davies's obsessive need to see the Doctor as god-like, as well as his love for melodrama.
Not to point a fucking finger, but nothing Moffat's said or done is worse than that, surely? This post is stupid, and I don't feel any better having written it, but for all gods' sake, fucking idiots on the internet regurgitating other idiots' insistent claims that this person has made the shit-list for some unforgivable crime like not being or writing for David Tennant, should not have the right to ruin this franchise that I love, for me, but they are.
So fuck you, Tumblr intelligentsia, this is not a Moffat-hate blog. And Steve Rogers totally loved Series Five.
Despite seeing the usual 'Moffat's a misogynist' bullshit all over the place basically all the time in Doctor Who circles anyway, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe it was because it was just so obviously highjacking another fandom, maybe because the stupid post saw fit to describe all Moffat written women, including Amelia Pond, as "one-dimensional"--but I went off on a nonsensical swear-word filled rant at my mother, who mostly tried to make me see the sense that this is an argument about fictional characters in a made-up setting.
The thing is though, this is beginning to bother me. I'm all for live and let live, and I generally don't mind meta that I don't personally agree with, and I agree that criticism is healthy--when it's constructive.
The Steven Moffat witch-hunt isn't constructive. It's ridiculous. This has passed the "Your headcanon is wrong and you should feel bad" stage and moved into the kind of nonsense shouting matches usually reserved for the most violent of political warfare. People have insulted Moffat in spaces where his children can read their words. People have called him sexist, racist and a pedophile. A pedophile, and all because they happen to have liked Davies better. It's fucking awful. And of course, on top of that, there's the usual fucking "no true feminist" bullshit that worms its way into any discourse involving women, where, for choosing not believe hysterical Tumblr posts taking quotes out of context and then barbequing the man in the tags, I'm secretly misogynist as well. For daring to admit that I think Amy Pond is a better written character with a stronger character and story arc than Rose Tyler, Martha Jones or Donna Noble, I am somehow betraying the godsdamn sisterhood.
You know what? I like Rose Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble. I just happen to prefer Amy Pond. In fact, I prefer Romanadvoratrelundar, Compassion of the Remote and Anji Kapoor to Amy Pond, but she makes the top five, while the Davies era women don't. Amelia Pond is anything but one-dimensional. She is brave, often scared, adventurous, stupid when in love or lust, often wrong, even more often right, and, perhaps most importantly when discussing the difference between Davies and Moffat's writing of Doctor Who, right when the Doctor is explicitly wrong. Much though I do actually care about Rose, Martha and Donna, there is not a point in the entire Davies era where Ten does not, in fact, end up the unambiguous hero, even in the face of some of the most vicious, personal attacks the Doctor has ever committed, in fifty years of writing of various quality. I'm looking at you, Harriet Jones.
I really don't like comparative accusing, but from a feminist perspective, Donna's is the narrative that sets us back to the stone age, as it were. After a season of character development and insight into Donna's huge inferiority complex, brought on by years of verbal and emotional abuse, after a season of being told that she's the most important woman in the universe, we find out that the reason she's important is because on one random day she turned left instead of right, and stopped the Doctor from committing inactive suicide over the loss of Rose. Not because of anything particularly intentional, not because she used her own competence and specific skills to save the day, but because she stopped the white-male Christ allegory Davies can't seem to help turning the Doctor into, from killing alien children out of misplaced, incredibly selfish despair.
And after this? When Donna absorbs the meta-crisis and becomes, from a narrative perspective, equal to the Doctor, what happens? She is narratively punished for rising so high. She is stripped of her memories, against her will, to save her life at the cost of her soul. Ten ignores her pleading and reduces her to a shell of her former self against her consent, and Donna Noble is sacrificed on the altar of Russell T. Davies's obsessive need to see the Doctor as god-like, as well as his love for melodrama.
Not to point a fucking finger, but nothing Moffat's said or done is worse than that, surely? This post is stupid, and I don't feel any better having written it, but for all gods' sake, fucking idiots on the internet regurgitating other idiots' insistent claims that this person has made the shit-list for some unforgivable crime like not being or writing for David Tennant, should not have the right to ruin this franchise that I love, for me, but they are.
So fuck you, Tumblr intelligentsia, this is not a Moffat-hate blog. And Steve Rogers totally loved Series Five.
