#and that you just want an excuse to be a misogynist & get off scot free about it

[druidgroves]

i wish people understood you can critique a woman without calling her a bitch but i won't hold my breath

[masked-disciple]

Your hatred of Thalassa :handshake-emoji: my hatred of Katherine Hall -> not being misogynistic and in fact being about the narrative getting them off scot-free for no reason

Yeah, Thalassa isn't really in the right here. She wants to rebuild her life before she speaks to her children again, who are strangers to her. Sure, it would be shaky going if the first thing she did was run to them, but not doing it means they'll never actually trust her, because they're clearly not worth as much to her as her own stability.

There's no excuse for Thalassa to wait before reuniting with her kids, and to ask Phoenix - who raised her daughter for her and didn't even ask for thanks - to hide it from Trucy? It's just such a dick move.

Zak sucks too, but he's also dead, so being a dick to him feels more like beating a dead horse.

Dahlia's pretty tragic, but also, no one's arguing that she's in the right: she's a villainous character, and presented that way, and only from there can we go "yeah aight she was justified". If Phoenix had up and poisoned Kristoph, we'd crucify him - he already gets a lot of flak for the implied alcoholism which straight up may be only reading too far into it. It's because Dahlia's a villain that we can humanize her the way we do. She already has a good reason, which is that she's a villain, so we look at her more sympathetically because the narrative doesn't.

Thalassa isn't presented as a villain, she's a victim, and the narrative lets her get away without consequences very much like Misty Fey did. So we go the other way and we don't forgive her, because the narrative did and we don't agree with it. I wouldn't call it misogynistic for doing that, it's just how you look at how the narrative treats characters and their actions versus whether we agree with that.

(This gets messier with Godot, who is presented as both hero and villain, victim and murderer. At this point, any non-nuanced opinion on him I immediately have to go 'and are you being racist about him tho' because it happens so damn often. But, once that's off the table, he's absolutely fascinating to discuss and debate.)

Question, how many of Dahlia's murders do I have to say she was right about to stop feeling like a misogynist for how much I hate Thalassa? Because I'm willing to go further than you'd think

Does it say something about me that I'm willing to forgive a serial killer before a shitty mother? Yes yes it does. Do I recognize that her story is tragic? Absolutely. Doesn't change the fact I think she's been a complete piece of shit to Trucy and Apollo and honestly Phoenix too. She's messing him about as well. Yes she's a victim of the Gramaryes as much as everyone else that piece of shit family ever comes into contact with, possibly their biggest victim. But she's the only one still alive and actively doing harm so.

For the record I do also hate Zak but he's dead so it's hard to get as angry even though if he ever gets channeled it should be on sight

[cheryls-blossomed]

Tbh I liked Sherloque until the Nora obsession bcs I thought the French Montreal thing was an actually nice touch bcs Cavanagh did it well (being a French speaker from Montreal lol). After 5x08 though he was absolutely horrible and I'm salty he got off scot free. Should have died and given us something back from having to suffer through his insufferable scenes. literally the worst part of season 5 excluding Cicada

Fair, although I didn’t like him from the moment he appeared, because he was nosy, rude, and invasive. He also was too lazy to do his job wrt Cicada and turned out to be an obnoxious fraud all in one episode. And then, as you said, he just got terrible after 5x08, and I hate that he never was held to account for his lack of empathy concerning the Nora situation and the fact that he literally only gave a shit about himself. He also doled out advice numerous times on subjects he really had no clue about (because he’s you know, a jack of all trades, master of none), absolutely unsolicited, and I think this was supposed to make him more likable, but only made him increasingly irritable to me. And then don’t get me started on the romance sub-plot they inserted into his story. One of my problems with this show is that it engages at times in misogynistic tropes and humor when it comes to male characters (Sherloque, Ralph), and Sherloque stalking and marrying the same woman on every Earth and then divorcing these women, and refusing to pay alimony, and the show trying to play it for laughs is incredibly problematic. Also, the fact that he then stalked the same woman again and considered her the best of all the women he’s married (like excuse you, dude, these women deserve to be angry that you’re not paying alimony) and then getting together with her is such an enraging plot. 

I do agree that Cavanagh playing a French-Canadian character was a nice touch. Also, I’ve always wanted to go to Montreal! 

[raywritesthings]

It is interesting that you can write 10 so well considering the way you feel about him. I understand what you mean, I do, but I think there’s more going on there and 10 is my favorite in part because he has such a depth, hurt and real emotions to him, even that he hurts others (and he does). I can’t stand 12 see him as almost evil. SoI get it! I just wanna say you have mad skills to be able to write him despite your feelings. So please don’t take this the wrong way. I couldn’t write 12. No way!

Anonymous said:Whoops, I didn’t realize there was a bit of an argument going on when I sent that last comment. I was just replying to your post about shipping 10 and Donna but not liking 10 outside of series 4! Definitely didn’t mean to get into anything here... Sorry! You can just ignore me. Lol.

Haha, no it’s okay. I think the debate has blown over. And sorry if it seems like I was ignoring this; I was just celebrating my birthday yesterday and didn’t have time to get on my laptop to properly reply. And it’s probably gonna be long (sorry) so the rest of this is gonna go under a cut. Read more if you all wanna know some of my thoughts on Ten, otherwise feel free to skip.

Firstly, I want to thank you for the compliment. Regardless of how I feel about a particular character, when I sit down and write them I try to get into their head and into what they’re thinking and do it from their point of view. Now, I don’t always agree with what they think/feel/do in the story, but I present it as logically as I can.

My frustration with Ten specifically is that, while David Tennant put so much into the character and RTD clearly had certain character beats or threads he wanted to explore - they’re never really given their proper due in the narrative. 

Like, there’s this idea there that he and Rose are too reckless/careless in series 2, a bit too arrogant and uncaring of how their actions impact others (we see it specifically with Mickey and Jackie), and that it leads to the creation of an organization bent on stopping the Doctor (even though Rose was the one ceaseless bugging Victoria, but I digress). Here’s the thing, though: the initial plan for Tooth and Claw was for them to accidentally get Queen Victoria killed, thus altering/damaging history. Real consequences, not just a single moment where we see Jackie sad in the Elton episode, or Rose admitting for one second that they take Mickey for granted right before we say bye to him in the parallel world (for the time being). But without that plot, a majority of the audience completely misses that idea. Series 2 is considered the “good times” for Ten, where everything was right and nothing bad had happened yet. Never mind that there was plenty wrong with him already.

“Don’t you think she looks tired?” With one bit of misogynistic language, he topples the government that was supposed to usher in a Golden Age according to his previous incarnation. Into the power vacuum steps the Master. There’s this repeating theme that the Tenth Doctor creates his own worst problems, but it’s never really crystallized in the narrative. Again, I read that RTD was planning to emphasize that, but never quite got around to it.

On the other hand, the narrative has no problem shifting blame off of him wherever possible. “Then what happens next is your own doing,” he tells the Racnoss Empress before pressing a button he knows will drown all of her children. “You make me this,” he says to Miss Hartigan before destroying her and the other Cybermen. It doesn’t exactly matter that they’re evil; he’s still blaming the victim of his actions for causing his actions in the first place, rather than taking ownership of them. And other characters do it for him, too! “Some things are worth getting your heart broken for.” “The Doctor is worth the monsters.” “He’s like fire.” Like it’s just a natural thing that he can’t help it if you get hurt, when there are absolutely things he could be doing to mitigate the damage he causes, he just doesn’t. And almost nobody holds him accountable, at least not successfully.

Almost nobody - enter Donna Noble.

Donna was the best thing to ever happen to the Tenth Doctor’s character. I’ll be honest with you, I got into the show a bit late. DT was already gone, so I went back to watch his stuff after watching most of the Matt Smith era (what had aired of it at the time). A friend had told me to skip Rose, so I started right in on the Runaway Bride. Then, because I didn’t want to wait for more Donna, I skipped right over series 3 and went straight into 4. And here’s the thing; I genuinely liked his Doctor. I was enjoying it. Imagine when I then went back for series 3 and got to see what an asshole he’d been for an entire series to Martha. And then peeked back at series 2 to see if it was a fluke only to discover even more I found distasteful.

It was like night and day! He’s quite simply a different character around Donna. That’s the only real way I can explain it. Part of it just has to do with the Runaway Bride. It is so important to their development as characters and as a relationship. Because they see each other at their absolute worst - and there’s no hiding that. There’s really no excuses for it. Donna knows exactly what he is capable of - and demands better. Won’t take no for an answer. And because he wants to impress her, wants her to like him, he delivers. That’s simply it. He cares about her opinion of him in a way that he didn’t care about what Martha thought. He wanted Martha around, but he felt he had free license to lash out and give her as much hell as he liked until she refused to take it anymore.

People like to say he’s grieving in series 3. Okay, I get it’s fine to have emotions and feel sad and miss someone. That doesn’t give him a pass to treat the people around him - people he invites into his life - like dirt. And yet, he’s largely left off the hook for that. Martha gets her goodbye speech, and Ten admits to Donna in Partners in Crime that what happened “was all my fault”, but by the Sontaran Stratagem notice how the narrative has shifted what that means. What happened is no longer “I made Martha feel unwelcome and like she didn’t matter as much as other people for an entire year (or two)” and is instead “I taught Martha how to fight and she became a soldier”. Because it’s no fun acknowledging that your main character - the through-line for most of RTD’s era - was kind of an abusive friend.

The Tenth Doctor to me is a Byronic Hero in the worst sense. Broodingly handsome and haunted by the things he’s done in the past, meant for girls to swoon over and tolerate how he treats them because he’s in pain. But Donna doesn’t give any of that nonsense the time of day, and that’s why he had to change so much in series 4. The few times he slips back into it, she’s there to pull him out or flat-out tell him “I think you’re wrong”. If he had grown out of that Byronic phase of his life, if the series 4 him had remained for the rest of his run, I might have found his character alright. There was an arc there, and he learned something and improved.

But instead, with Journey’s End, all the good is undone. He lobotomizes Donna. Full-stop. Sends Rose away with his clone and doesn’t tell anyone else what’s going to happen or that he’ll be alone, because he knows what’s best for all of them and this has to be the way. I think he likes being that tragic figure a little too much. He enjoys blaming all of his woes on inevitability and “the curse of the Time Lords”. It’s nice to have a scapegoat for all his wrongs. (Isn’t it so convenient, that Dalek Caan prophecy which declares the metacrisis “destiny”? Almost like it’s not the Doctor’s fault for leaving his hand lying around chock full of regeneration energy for anyone to touch. It simply had to happen, completely out of his control. It’s not his fault, isn’t that nice?) And then he’s killing Miss Hartigan like he did the Racnoss Empress, he’s turning down Christina because he’s meant to be alone~, he’s fighting time itself in Waters of Mars.

Sidenote, I hate the whole Time Lord Victorious title-y thing. You know why? Cause it lets the narrative push the blame again. It’s treated like this separate persona, what he ‘almost became’ - bullshit. That was the Tenth Doctor. He did those things. He spiraled out of control. The only reason he stopped was because a woman put a bullet in her head. He thinks the Ood is there to signal his death at the end and to be honest, I agreed with him. He deserved to die there.

When it came down to the Tenth Doctor’s actual final episode, RTD had to make a choice between a big, bombastic finale and a quieter, personal one. He went with the first option; had to send his hero out with a proper swan song, right? But the quiet finale I feel had much more potential to do something good to his character. Nobody watches the End of Time now for the plot - they watch it for those quiet scenes between him and Wilf, where he finally starts to admit his failings and owns up to them. It is beautifully tragic, and rightly so. The Tenth Doctor is a mass of contradiction and complexity, and I can absolutely respect people who find value in that and consider him their favorite character. My issue stems with the way the narrative chose not to properly interact with that complexity. I have an issue with characters who get off scot-free while others are held accountable in the same narrative. It bothers me. The hypocrisy in the writing there feels like an injustice. It also doesn’t help that I think any and all Byronic Heroes can go step off the nearest cliff and stop bothering women who would be much better off without them.

So I think if I tried to write him outside of that series 4 bubble (excepting some kind of post-Journey’s End fixit or, possibly, something to do with Sarah Jane because she’s about the only other character who made him likable to me), you would see a much harsher take on him. I would write as fairly as I write any character I dislike, but I would hold him accountable where the show did not. I don’t know if that counts as bashing or not. To me, it’s honesty.

I think the reason I’m much more receptive to Twelve than you are is because I feel he does learn and improve from his initial beginnings. I’ve never managed to finish series 8. Believe me, I get it, it’s sometimes painful to sit and watch how he treats the people around him in those early episodes. But, if you haven’t done it, I would recommend skipping ahead and giving series 10 a try. Because to me, that is the proof that he learned, in a way Ten was never allowed to because RTD was determined to have his “tragic hero” ending. Certainly Twelve is not perfect (no Doctor is), but I would take his interactions with Bill Potts over series 2, 3, and the Specials any day.

So, if you read this far, again thanks very much for the compliment and for giving me the opportunity to expand on my Ten thoughts. I hope I didn’t offend, as I know it’s no fun to read criticisms of a favorite character, and I hope I continue to write him well for you!