rosa_acicularis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosa_acicularis) wrote2010-07-10 03:45 pm
rosa_acicularis) wrote2010-07-10 03:45 pm
Entry tags:
in which I ramble about fandom nonsense.
So there comes a time in every fan's life when she (or, occasionally, he) must ask herself the difficult questions -- questions like, "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" and "Do I OTP or multi-ship?"
Because in fandom, as in life, labels are very, very important. If not for labels, how would we know who to judge? If we did not judge, who would we argue bitterly with over meaningless minutiae? The very foundations of our fandom civilization would crumble, or burn, or be crushed by the sudden impact of a metaphorical meteor, and then what would we do?
We would be extinct, my friends. We would die, and in the distant future bored school children would be forced to study terms like "FTW" and "TL;DR" as remnants of a long dead language, and elaborately-coiffed television preachers would claim that our bones were planted in the earth by God Himself as a (really rather idiotic) test for the faithful.
Basically, it would be bad.
What is this nonsense? I find OTP to be a fairly pointless term, but never once have I felt offended, hurt, or excluded because someone exclaimed their love for an OTP that doesn't appeal to me. And yeah, one of my favorite pairings in Who fandom is hugely popular -- Doctor/Rose fic is everywhere. And yeah, a lot of that fic is terrible -- welcome to the internet. Doctor/Rose has its share of nutty fans, but so does Doctor/Romana, Doctor/Martha, and Doctor/Master -- and I assume Doctor/River, though I haven't personally come across any yet. Fandom in general has nutty fans and nice fans and nicely nutty fans, and I think we would all enjoy ourselves a little more if spent less time dividing off into cabals and cliques of like-minded shippers and a little more time fostering a wider creative community. I don't want to say, "Why can't we all just get along?" because that's ridiculous -- fighting over stupid fannish shit is one of the great joys of being a fan. I just wish it wasn't always Us Against Them. I never know which side I'm on, or whether I want to be on any side at all, and it makes my tiny brain ache.
I think I am an OTP multi-shipper. Or a multi-ship OTPer. I like the ships I like, and I am bored by the ships that bore me, and I am likely to change my mind about what pairing falls into which category every five minutes or so. Then again, if I ever wrote a Who pairing other than Doctor/Rose I would probably shock myself into a small coma; so much for my multi-ship cred. I love Classic Who, but not for the same reasons I love New Who, and I absolutely understand how someone could like one and not the other. I will stop reading a Doctor/Rose fic mid-sentence if things get a bit too "Rose, my darling sweetheart sugar pumpkin! In all my long life you are the only woman/companion I have ever truly loved!"; I am just as likely to quit a fic if it heads in a "Thank god I ditched that bleached blonde idiot; all she ever wanted to talk about was girly shit like clothes and kittens and feelings " direction.
I think most of us would consider both of these attitudes wildly out of character for any Doctor, but they're fairly common in fic. I come across the first a lot more often than I do the second, as outright character-bashing fics are pretty easy to spot and avoid, but I think they bother me equally. Character-bashing is tacky, but some writers and readers must find it cathartic, and at the end of the day that's what a lot of fan fiction is for. (Though I often find that it has a troublingly misogynist tone.) Fic of the sweetheart sugar pumpkin variety is not to my taste, but it also serves a purpose for some fans. I do think it implies an ignorance of or emotional disconnect on the writer's part with the character's past, and I have to say that it bothers me that the issue is always whether the Doctor loves Rose more than anyone else he's ever known -- it's simply assumed by all parties that Rose couldn't possibly have ever loved anyone more than she loves the Doctor, which dismisses her history as meaningless.
But I digress. A lot. More to the point: In the recent OTP v. Multi-ship discussion, some OTP-defenders are equating multi-shippers with those frequently express open hostility for a certain female character, while some multi-ship-defenders equate OTP-proponents with those who think the Doctor is psychologically incapable of showing affection of any kind to any animate (or inanimate) being who doesn't answer to the name Rose Tyler. I think we all know that fandom is wider and more varied than that, and while there will always be a vocal, nutty few on both sides of every debate, most of us just want to write and read good fic about characters we love.
Also: the fact that someone says, "Character A/Character B is my One True Pairing" would seem to indicate that the term refers to a subjective personal preference, and not a statement of objective value. If a fan were to say, "Doctor/Rose is the Doctor Who OTP," then yeah: point out that they don't get to make decisions for fandom as a whole, thanks. But if they say, "Yay! Doctor/Rose is my new OTP!" no reasonable person has any cause to be offended.
I'm just saying.
Because in fandom, as in life, labels are very, very important. If not for labels, how would we know who to judge? If we did not judge, who would we argue bitterly with over meaningless minutiae? The very foundations of our fandom civilization would crumble, or burn, or be crushed by the sudden impact of a metaphorical meteor, and then what would we do?
We would be extinct, my friends. We would die, and in the distant future bored school children would be forced to study terms like "FTW" and "TL;DR" as remnants of a long dead language, and elaborately-coiffed television preachers would claim that our bones were planted in the earth by God Himself as a (really rather idiotic) test for the faithful.
Basically, it would be bad.
What is this nonsense? I find OTP to be a fairly pointless term, but never once have I felt offended, hurt, or excluded because someone exclaimed their love for an OTP that doesn't appeal to me. And yeah, one of my favorite pairings in Who fandom is hugely popular -- Doctor/Rose fic is everywhere. And yeah, a lot of that fic is terrible -- welcome to the internet. Doctor/Rose has its share of nutty fans, but so does Doctor/Romana, Doctor/Martha, and Doctor/Master -- and I assume Doctor/River, though I haven't personally come across any yet. Fandom in general has nutty fans and nice fans and nicely nutty fans, and I think we would all enjoy ourselves a little more if spent less time dividing off into cabals and cliques of like-minded shippers and a little more time fostering a wider creative community. I don't want to say, "Why can't we all just get along?" because that's ridiculous -- fighting over stupid fannish shit is one of the great joys of being a fan. I just wish it wasn't always Us Against Them. I never know which side I'm on, or whether I want to be on any side at all, and it makes my tiny brain ache.
I think I am an OTP multi-shipper. Or a multi-ship OTPer. I like the ships I like, and I am bored by the ships that bore me, and I am likely to change my mind about what pairing falls into which category every five minutes or so. Then again, if I ever wrote a Who pairing other than Doctor/Rose I would probably shock myself into a small coma; so much for my multi-ship cred. I love Classic Who, but not for the same reasons I love New Who, and I absolutely understand how someone could like one and not the other. I will stop reading a Doctor/Rose fic mid-sentence if things get a bit too "Rose, my darling sweetheart sugar pumpkin! In all my long life you are the only woman/companion I have ever truly loved!"; I am just as likely to quit a fic if it heads in a "Thank god I ditched that bleached blonde idiot; all she ever wanted to talk about was girly shit like clothes and kittens and feelings " direction.
I think most of us would consider both of these attitudes wildly out of character for any Doctor, but they're fairly common in fic. I come across the first a lot more often than I do the second, as outright character-bashing fics are pretty easy to spot and avoid, but I think they bother me equally. Character-bashing is tacky, but some writers and readers must find it cathartic, and at the end of the day that's what a lot of fan fiction is for. (Though I often find that it has a troublingly misogynist tone.) Fic of the sweetheart sugar pumpkin variety is not to my taste, but it also serves a purpose for some fans. I do think it implies an ignorance of or emotional disconnect on the writer's part with the character's past, and I have to say that it bothers me that the issue is always whether the Doctor loves Rose more than anyone else he's ever known -- it's simply assumed by all parties that Rose couldn't possibly have ever loved anyone more than she loves the Doctor, which dismisses her history as meaningless.
But I digress. A lot. More to the point: In the recent OTP v. Multi-ship discussion, some OTP-defenders are equating multi-shippers with those frequently express open hostility for a certain female character, while some multi-ship-defenders equate OTP-proponents with those who think the Doctor is psychologically incapable of showing affection of any kind to any animate (or inanimate) being who doesn't answer to the name Rose Tyler. I think we all know that fandom is wider and more varied than that, and while there will always be a vocal, nutty few on both sides of every debate, most of us just want to write and read good fic about characters we love.
Also: the fact that someone says, "Character A/Character B is my One True Pairing" would seem to indicate that the term refers to a subjective personal preference, and not a statement of objective value. If a fan were to say, "Doctor/Rose is the Doctor Who OTP," then yeah: point out that they don't get to make decisions for fandom as a whole, thanks. But if they say, "Yay! Doctor/Rose is my new OTP!" no reasonable person has any cause to be offended.
I'm just saying.