comment in another journal

[scarfman]

Over on lifeonmartha I saw a post complaining of the emnity of some fans, presumably Rose fans, for Martha and her independence; and replied:

Is this normal for shippy people?

It's normal for fans. Fandoms are for bringing people together. Many or most of us come to fandoms having found few or no other places where we felt we fit in, where we failed to be the oddballs and the outcasts. But many, many of us react to this by finding ways to treat others as the oddballs and outcasts - retaliating for the way we've been treated instead of embracing fandom as the place where it shouldn't happen at all.

Comments

[galadriella1.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I am getting rather annoyed at how fans of Rose and fans of Martha are clashing - and it's not just happening with comm here on LJ, but at the moment, it's really visiable on Outpost Gallifrey forums.

It's stupid, we're all here because we love Doctor Who, sure some of us love Rose, some of us love Martha, but there is no need for fan or shipper wars!

[alienfish.livejournal.com]

I sort of arrived in the world of fandom while Highlander was on. I remember several schools of utter loathing. There was one for everyone who loathed Dr. Anne Lindsey, who ended up in Tessa Noel's place. They were really cross with her for being independent, strong and etc.

And then of course there were the massive Cassandra-haters, who were largely driven by the fact that she hated Methos. You know who those people are... hint, they think soulless Spike is a perfect man for Buffy and were dreadfully disappointed to find out that William was a sweet man raised by a doting mother rather than some poor kid raised on the streets who spent his early life getting raped by random dockworkers until he had to make a living on his back or something.

I love some fan-fiction, can't you tell? (this is sarcasm)

[galadriella1.livejournal.com]

Mmm... rather like the people who souly believe that Harry and Herminone belong together, only to discover that the author disagrees with them and there now trying to get the world to boycott all Harry Potter books?

Got to love fan groups sometimes

[alawston.livejournal.com]

*Round of applause*

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I got to thinking about this a few weeks back when I was taking my daughter around a gallery. Okay, the Louvre. We were looking at all those religious images, like the angel telling Joseph not to worry because Mary was having a baby, all the little bits of non-canonical narrative that built up around Bible stories and eventually turned into the Mystery Plays, the first written popular drama in English. And I saw a parallel with the whole fandom thing. We want to take stories in the public domain, connect with them, project onto them and make them our own. And the things you see going on in fandom; the schisms, the fights and the building up of inflexible positions on the flimsiest of data, aren't that different from religion, are they? The Doctor would find it all fascinatingly human.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

OMG, are you kidding? tell me you're kidding! Now I have a plotbunny for a bunch of ship-terrorists trying to bump off RTD for doing.....whatever he's gonna do.

[alienfish.livejournal.com]

You must be joking. Or perhaps they're joking....

[scarfman]

See my essay on the inappropriateness of applying the word canon to bodies of fiction.

[galadriella1.livejournal.com]

I am not joking - I could probably find the online petitions again if you like :)

Canon?

[(Anonymous)]

That makes some fascinating points. Just to confine it to the Rose/Martha thing, to give one example, what fascinated me was the intense emotion people invested in their positions - the complete reverse of your abstract, intellectual arguments as stated in your essay and the ensuing debate. I'm intrigued, and somewhat saddened, that I feel I'm being forced to identify with one group or the other, whereas I'd rather write about the relationships as I perceive them, without coming down on either side as such. Now, why do people do this so fervently? I posit that TV, in particular, makes us feel very powerless. Doomsday really got to people because when we saw Rose being pulled away, and the Doctor screaming, it illustrated that powerlessness - Rose was going and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. People wanted to grab that narrative and own it again.

Martha fans seem to fall into two broad groups. There are those (probably 20-something singles) who are primarily interested in the personality of the Doctor's ideal partner - they want her to be mature, fiesty and sexually demanding (although arguably Rose was all those things at times). They tend to gloss over the fact that the Doctor is an alien and may be unable or unwilling to have a sexual relationship in any recognisable sense. They assume he had sex with Rose and has to move on by doing the same with another partner. Possibly the fans are projecting themselves into this, and who could blame them?

And then there are the more "classic" DW fans who weren't all that comfortable about the Doctor having sex with anyone. They are more likely to stress the serial nature of the Doctor's relationships and cite his uniquely alien perspective. In their book, anyone who implies Rose was special to him is being untrue to the character, probably diminishing him.

I seem to have fallen foul of both groups. By writing happily about Ten and Rose as lovers, I have broken with "classic" fandom. But nor am I writing the Ten/Martha romcom in a way her fans buy into. Where my story ends up is with Ten saying he didn't have sex with Rose and he's no intention of having sex with Martha. I've a feeling I'll get torn apart for that, so it'll probably stay on my personal journal. Yet it is arguable that I'm being more true to the Doctor's character as presented officially on TV and elsewhere by taking the asexual line.

Which shows, perhaps, that "shipping" communities are not interested in developing the generally accepted version of their source, but in substituting their own "canon" - rather as, arguably, the Mormons or Seventh Day Adventists have amended/supplemented Biblical narrative.

I'm interested rather than pissed off.

Re: Canon?

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was me, sensiblecat, forgetting to log in.

Re: Canon?

[scarfman]

I'm interested rather than pissed off.

Maintain that and you'll be fine. I suspect it's a matter of maturity (I was an adolescent fan myself, thirty years ago), and most of the worst offenders will eventually just grow out of it, which may or may not mean growing in other directions than to continue in fandom. That doesn't help us much in our online fora, because it takes time and even then there are always new adolescent or adolescent-minded fans coming along, but there you are.

*cruises by*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

And then there are the more "classic" DW fans who weren't all that comfortable about the Doctor having sex with anyone. They are more likely to stress the serial nature of the Doctor's relationships and cite his uniquely alien perspective. In their book, anyone who implies Rose was special to him is being untrue to the character, probably diminishing him.

I currently consider the "asexual" dogma unsustainable given the source text. I find it diminishing only when fandom takes a hardcore "soulmates" line that reduces the potential of the story past, present and future. And I think that comes from two camps -- those who OTP Doctor/Rose and those who want the asexuality back. For both, the preference is for the Doctor to fail to respond to any sort of overture, so that he isn't diminishe in some way.

The alien perspective I'm not sure about either. It's only sex people seem to mention it for. As someone else said once, no one ever tries to argue that the Doctor wouldn't understand anger because he's an alien. Some people can happily accept Ten as merely blind to Martha's affections "because he's an alien," but that doesn't fit with every other occasion when he's understood the subtexts thrown at him and even if he's an alien he's spent most of his adult life around humans. Heterosexual female humans at that.

Re: *cruises by*

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

There's a line in one of the books (forget which one) where the Seventh Doctor responds to a blatant come-on by saying something like "I'm well known for either being oblivious to such things, or getting them completely wrong. It's simpler that way." I liked that idea; the Doctor is clueless about sex on account of being an alien *when he wants to be*.

Re: *cruises by*

[scarfman]

I currently consider the "asexual" dogma unsustainable given the source text.

Oh definitely, and I say that as a past asexuality proponent. In my first ten years' online fanfiction, in what was publicly distributed Time Lords/Gallifreyans propagated in the lab and had their pairbonding instincts chemically subverted in the name of non-interference, and the Doctor remains pure in the manner of such Western archetype-stamped heroes as Sir Galahad and Radar O'Reilly. In more privately distributed stories the Doctor came from an asexual society with laboratory propagation, and overcomes the inhibitions imposed on him by it. I especially liked the asexuality scenario because it was a great boon to the writing of squick-free Doctor/Susan.

But twenty-first century Who dialog snippets such as, "I've been a dad," are doing away with the twentieth-century ambiguity that allowed for the inference that Time Lords don't have normal humanoid biological and family connections ("normal", of course, by the standards of the viewing audience).

Re: *cruises by*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

It's sustainable for the NAs (which - it's always worth remembering on this one) were written by fanboys. But RTD's telly version makes it a much more difficult thing to argue. Err, "imho".

Re: *cruises by*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I reckon it's been changed to be easier on the viewer. It feels so unlikely that in RTD's DW the Doctor was born in a testube, y'know? Cos it's so big on family and all sorts of love. So the Doctor has to be able to love and has to have a family.

Re: *cruises by*

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

RTD's telly version is *also* largely written by fanboys (often the same fanboys who were writing the NAs), but I take your point.

But I don't see the above quote as supporting the idea the Doctor is baffled by our human mating rituals; quite the reverse, it seems to be saying he deliberately cultivates such an image to avoid having to deal with something he understands all too well, but would rather avoid just at the moment.

(I've found the proper version, incidentally: "I'm well known for knowing nothing of such things, or getting them very slightly but extremely obviously wrong. It saves all sorts of complications." -Death & Diplomacy, Dave Stone.)

Re: *cruises by*

[(Anonymous)]

Of course, one could paraphrase what Larry Niven said about Superman (Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex), to the effect that, being an alien, he is a different kind of animal.

Despite the superficial similarities, he isn't human. His psychology is different, sure, but more to the point his anatomy and biochemistry are different. Just because Gallifreyans look like humans doesn't necessarily mean they smell, or taste, or feel like them — they are as different as whale-sharks and whales.

In other words, it is possible for him to be entirely sexual in the usual way, as regards his own race, without experiencing any desire for human females. That doesn't have to be the case, but it can be. I don't assert any position.

--publius--