#being able to theorise with a fandom is so fucking fun

[thisismytotallyawesomeblog]

I've been seeing a lot of theories where folks are saying that maybe it's Rio who is responsible for Nicholas Scratch's death and that's why Agatha hates her. It's not a bad thought, but I also feel like, if someone had killed/sacrificed my kid for whatever reason, I would never be able to forgive them, let alone be in the same room with them, no matter our history.

My mind keeps bringing me back to "You can't kill me"/"You can't kill me, it's not allowed." Perhaps there is some rule/oath/pact we don't know about yet for witches in this universe that prevents them from meddling in death, both in dealing it or in healing it. Perhaps Agatha begged Rio for help to get her son back, and Rio refused. If she is a Green Witch with healing powers (or if she is Death as some people seem to think), perhaps it wouldn't be a reach to assume she has some measure of control over life and death, and maybe it was the refusal to save/resurrect Nicholas that drove the wedge between them, and not anything truly nefarious on Rio's part.

[bardqueenofgallifrey]

I didn't have a tumblr account in 2013, so I have no idea how the fuck a 53-year-old Sci fi show became part of something as cringe as "superwholock". I mean, I watch Sherlock but damn this match makes no sense. Could you explain to me how it happened please???

Honestly? I don’t know exactly.

I was never really a part of SuperWhoLock, and I don’t think I was on here for the origins either, but whenever it was that I did get on here, I was just a passionate Whovian who also watched and liked Sherlock (these days I’m pretty indifferent about Sherlock one way or another, and give as few shits about Supernatural as I ever did).  

BUT, I’m gonna see if I can try and work out/theorise how SuperWhoLock rose and fell, if only to try and make the point that Doctor Who never deserved to be lumped in with it. Feel free to challenge any points I make, because I’m guessing here. 

although, frankly, this idea of cringe culture is kinda snobby and gross. let people like shit, damn, if they’re not hurting anyone or trying to say Supernatural is the best show ever, who gives a fuck, honestly

Firstly, the thing about Doctor Who is that it has been around for literal multiple decades. Almost fifty four years. It has been around since before some of our parents were born. 

Doctor Who fans were around long before the internet was invented. They were here before, and will be here long after everyone has forgotten what the hell Supernatural ever was. Doctor Who fans are now the ones making Doctor Who. They were the ones who, when it got cancelled, created an entire thriving Audio Drama business through the love of it that still existed everywhere, and they are the ones who brought it back and now create it. They’ve never let it die. 

You know why? Why Doctor Who’s endured, and is so passionately loved by so many, and before all this mess wasn’t any more cringy than being into Star Trek? Because it’s good. 

It is a flawed show, of course (always, somehow, in some way, in ways that vary across different eras), but one that is good in a reckless, nonsensical, optimistic way. No matter the ups and downs of its objective quality, it’s never really lost its heart. 

It is a show with a protagonist that uses words/intelligence/compassion over violence to fight, a show that focuses on telling hopeful adventures that can be watched by children and also inform them of some of the harsher aspects of the world in an interesting way.

Also, it’s always been quite progressive. It had the first female drama producer at the BBC, and a gay Indian director. No one wanted it to succeed and it’s a miracle the show ever got off the ground. 

People like to talk about the “screaming Classic companions” but you know what? Fuck that. The Classic ladies were all wonderful, including the biggest screamers. Susan? The Doctor’s granddaughter, genius, with telepathic abilities and a whole lot of heart. Mel? Computer programmer aka fucking smarty pants, who once flipped the Doctor over her shoulder, and was such a genuinely nice person that it was genuinely impressive. Zoe? Adorable 60′s companion who canonically had a higher IQ than the Doctor. 

Doctor Who ladies have been awesome since the beginning, and calling out misogyny from the beginning. 

(It ALSO had errors of its time, especially an Orientalism issue that is pervasive through a lot of older sci-fi, that can’t and shouldn’t be forgotten either. But that’s for the most part irrelevant to this discussion other than the general whiteness which is still obviously a problem albeit one the show is slowly working on.)

The reboot then brought in (some, not enough) queer characters and main characters of colour, etc, and its general diversity has only been getting better and better on that front for the most part, especially in the last couple of years. 

But anyway, how the hell did it get mixed up with the whole SuperWhoLock mess? 

Well, the reboot brought in a whole new generation of fans, and only got bigger and bigger and bigger, and was peaking RIGHT about when Sherlock aired. 

The Doctor Who and Sherlock crossover is easy enough to work out; they had the same headwriter(s), and they’re both about neurodivergent (coded??) genius white guys that theoretically have a kind of unconventional attractiveness to them. You can see how they drew in the same crowd. 

Now, how the hell Supernatural became a part of that, I’ve no idea. I’ve never been a Supernatural fan (even if I did watch the first four and a half seasons once, more or less enjoy them, but also not find them massively interesting). 

But I’m going to assume it’s because it again involved white guys with Big Emotions, that the fans could thirst over, who were undertaking some larger than life shit. 

My theory is that it, at least partly, was the White Male Slash Fandom. 

You know. That group of mostly straight girls who treat shipping conventionally attractive white men like a fetish and a kink to explore, who will ship basically any two CAWM under the sun if they so much as look at each other. I imagine the Johnlock crowd overlapped with the Destiel and Wincest crowd, and Doctor Who, since it had Ten/Simm!Master (and Eleven/Rory to a lesser extent) as well as some nice hetero ships, kind of got dragged along because almost everyone in the Sherlock fandom was probably in the Doctor Who fandom too. 

You can kind of see how it fits. The Supernatural gang and the Team TARDIS are big damn heroes with a lot of heart, while Sherlock fulfilled the ideal levels of pretentiousness that we all go through in our teenage years. 

Of course, then everyone realised that Supernatural kinda sucks because it’s an incredibly white, incredibly male, incredibly STRAIGHT show that just queerbaits its audience and doesn’t know when to call it quits, and so everyone started jumping ship. 

Then everyone looked at Sherlock, either went “this has its issues but it’s still fun”, “this is QUEERBAITING TOO, WHY WONT JOHNLOCK KISS, FUCK MOFFISS”, or “this is also incredibly white, incredibly male, and incredibly straight, so fuck this also”, and that was it for Sherlock and general opinion too. 

(For the record: Johnlock was not queerbait. Johnlock was an expression of Steven Moffat’s own very intimate, but platonic, friendship with Mark Gatiss, and they explicitly told everyone they were not gonna make it gay. And then the toxic ass fandom, deluded out their minds, started sending Gatiss - an actual gay man - abuse about being “an honorary straight” for not making their fetishised fictional relationship canon, at one point literally the day after the Pulse massacre. Seriously. What the fuck. Never speak about it being queerbaiting ever again and leave Mark Gatiss the fuck alone.) 

Now. Doctor Who had meanwhile been dealing with the changeover of the showrunner. 

Series 5 went down pretty well for the most part, but a lot of people had their issues with Series 6 and Series 7. The fandom had kind of gotten too big, for a show this unconventional. To the point of a lot of people not being able to deal with the distinct change from the style of Russell T Davies, because they weren’t really aware of how the show needs to reinvent itself constantly even on a stylistic level. Because they were treating the show like any other show, when one can’t really do that. 

It was all kind of a mess of:

very mixed fan reception on Series 6

Series 7 being on the weaker side (not as weak as some people who missed the whole point of Clara’s storyline make it out to be, but weak nonetheless, though Moffat has admitted to this and explained it was because he was under so much pressure about the looming 50th anniversary, and like, fuck, fair enough)

people being pissed at Moffat for Sherlock shit

Russell T Davies having done quite a few things in his era that are questionable from a wider Doctor Who standpoint, which Moffat as the Ultimate Who Fan didn’t go along with, only to then receive hate from people who were convinced that if RTD did something it must be right, because they haven’t seen Classic Who or apparently bothered to do a couple of google searches to educate themselves

plus, a few of Moffat’s quotes around 2012ish got taken out of context because he’s a sarcastic little shit who runs his mouth

and so people got the idea that Moffat’s a narcissistic misogynist who “loves white men”

also people confused “plot hole” with “is going to be explained later” and complained about him having plot holes in series 5-7 when really it’s just that he was waiting to tie up all the loose ends in Matt Smith’s finale episode

Anyway, thus began the popular - to this day! - sentiment of thinking that Moffat is one of the worst things to happen to television, or at least Doctor Who (and Sherlock Holmes). 

And so, that was the “downfall” of Doctor Who and SuperWhoLock, so to speak, as all three shows were written off by the wider Tumblr/nerd community as being incredibly cringy. 

Now, to examine it from today’s view, in light of recent series/opinion about the series/the female Doctor reveal. 

The problem is, the general attitude about Moffat - who don’t get me wrong, is far from a flawless writer, or person - has literally reached the point of mass delusion. It’s very clear that literally thousands of people have a completely fictionalised version of him in their heads. 

How do I know this? I saw someone say that a female Doctor was a “defiance of everything the Moffat era stood for”. 

As in, the same Moffat era that, in the last three seasons:

explicitly made the genderfluidity of Time Lords canon (Dark Water/Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time)

changed the Master into a woman (Dark Water)

had the now female Master refer to becoming a woman as an “upgrade” (The Witch’s Familiar)

had a companion’s whole storyline be about “becoming the Doctor” in her own right, with her getting a whole episode of her pretending to be the Doctor, and her flying off in her own TARDIS with a companion of her own in the end of her final episode! (Flatline, Hell Bent)

had ANOTHER companion’s storyline end with her immortal space girlfriend at the console of the TARDIS, offering for her to travel through all of time and space with her in a direct parallel to the Nine/Rose offer from the first episode to the reboot (The Doctor Falls, Rose)

had a Time Lord regenerate from a white guy to a black lady onscreen just to FINALLY shut up people who said race/gender changes couldn’t happen (Hell Bent)

had the Doctor positively reacting to the suggestion that he could be  - or had been - a woman, multiple times (Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time, The Doctor Falls)

Moffat’s era has been statistically proven to have shifted public opinion in favour of a female Doctor (ask @scriptscribbles, if you want proof), thanks to the above. 

Simm!Master: “She? Is the future going to be all girl?” 

Twelve: “We can only hope.” 

Also, Moffat wrote Lumley!Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. He’s been pushing for a female Doctor for 18 damn years. 

So, the idea that anyone thinks he’s against it, as opposed to having explicitly worked to help make it happen for years, shows that the general opinion of him is literally a mass fictionalisation/delusion. 

(It’s just one example, but there are hundreds of others, like how everyone seems to think he thinks of himself as The Greatest Ever and having a huge ego, when he’s literally one of the most self-deprecating people ever, if you watch him in an interview. He’s openly admitted to mistakes he’s made on his time on the show, such as the way he handled the scene at the end of Flesh and Stone, and how Series 7 wasn’t his best because of the pressure he was under about the upcoming 50th anniversary; he is aware of his fallibility.) 

He’s not a perfect person, or writer, and no one knows that better than him. There’s a lot of critical discussions we could have about his writing, and there are a fair few actual problems with it, just as there are in the RTD era, and every damn era of Who that has existed. I’m not saying everybody has to like it, because every era of Doctor Who is down to personal preference, and that’s fine. There are plenty of rational, well-informed people, fans and otherwise, who have their -often sound - reasons for not liking Moffat and/or his era of Who in general. I am friends with some of them. 

But those rational, well-informed people are like, 5% of the people who otherwise make up a sea of loud, ignorant delusion that condemns Doctor Who under Moffat’s direction and downright refuses to acknowledge some of the amazing stuff it’s done in the last few years. 

(Like, Series 10 featured a black lesbian co-lead who got a happy ending, leaving the Moffat era finishing strong on six canonically sapphic women, four of whom are still alive, none of whom died pointlessly or without agency, and three of whom are immortal or close enough, in a time when all other TV sapphics are dropping dead like flies. It also had the Doctor punch a racist in the face and comment on how history is whitewashed, and had an episode slamming capitalism. Plus, the finale canonised that Time Lords don’t view gender the same way, reinforcing canon genderfluid Time Lords.)  

Between his second and third seasons of DW being divisive and/or a bit weak, all the Sherlock shit going down, and the fall of Supernatural, and the issue of people taking RTD Who as the baseline for everything Doctor Who when they really shouldn’t have, anti-Moffat sentiments got so big that masses of people fell off the show, and continue to refuse to acknowledge that he might have done anything worthwhile with it since they left. That he might, as a person, have developed and improved. 

And so, that is potentially how Doctor Who got lumped in with SuperWhoLock, labelled “not progressive”, and considered “cringy” to this day. 

Or at least, that’s my theory, as someone who wasn’t really paying a lot of attention, but knows her Doctor Who. 

[pinelife3]

Fuck Felurian

Matt got me into Patrick Rothfuss and the Kingkiller Chronicles last year. They’re really great. I’m a pathological sourpuss (known for getting 20 pages into a book and then putting it back on my bookshelf) so I think it’s significant that I got into the series, especially since it’s fantasy - a genre I rarely dabble in. An observation though: all of Rothfuss’ heroines are brunettes. And so is his wife. Coincidence or conspiracy? Does he just have a real hard on for brunettes, or does his wife rule him with an iron fist so that the mention of an attractive female with anything other than dark hair would cause her to rain down hellfire OR - fuck - was she originally a redhead who has dyed her hair brown to secure his affection after he’d written with such verve about brunettes? We will never know and it’s not important: we’re here today to criticise the part of the book featuring Felurian. I’m not even really going to try to theorise about what makes it so bad - I just want to complain. If you haven’t read Wise Man’s Fear this post will be boring to you - and if you have read it, it may still be boring.

(Disclaimer: I was blonde when I was younger but my hair now is basically the colour of cardboard. I like to describe it as beige mostly for laughs but also because it’s pretty apt.) 

Thesis: the section of the book featuring Felurian is awful because:

It’s boring. A hot woodland princess who has weird child-like quirks (she’s a messy eater!) and can’t hold a conversation for shit - that’s boring, right? Nothing happens during the chapters he’s with her, apart from energetic off-screen sex. It’s not even titillating. If several chapters of your book are gonna be focused on the protagonist boning down we should at least get to read something hot. I believe that erotic fiction is typically aimed at women, but The Power of the Dog (a crime novel about Mexican drug cartels) which I presume is aimed at men, has a ridiculous hot sequence (which, in a sexually confusing twist, concludes with a woman being decapitated). Did he not include graphic details of the sex for fear of alienating his audience? I’d rather be disgusted than bored. (Theory: is it possible that Rothfuss deliberately made that section unbearable so that the scene with the Cthaeh would be even more compelling?)

The descriptive writing is incredibly bad. Like, as bad as my first year creative writing assignments from uni. Rothfuss is obviously a good writer as demonstrated across basically every other page of the book - so what gives?

Alright, let’s take a look:

I ate her with my eyes, knowing all the songs and stories I had heard were nothing. She is what men dream of. All the places I have been, all the women I have seen, I have met her equal only once.

He means his wife, guys. He loves his wife :’) I kinda wanna post her pic but I don’t wanna be mean to her when the point of this was to make fun of him. Not that she looks bad or anything, but she’s not an enchanted faery princess either. Not many people are. Okay, so that bit isn’t too bad, but then:

Felurian’s lips parted and she sighed, making a sound like a dove.

HOT. I, too, long to fuck a dove.

I forced myself to look away from her face, but there was nowhere safe to look. Her throat was smooth and delicate, trembling with her rapid pulse. One breast stood round and full, while the other angled slightly to one side, following the downward slope of her body. They rose and fell with her breath, moving gently, making candle-cast shadows on her skin. 

Yeah I’ve seen a boob before but thanks. Is this interesting to anyone? We know she’s a hot girl. There are many girls like that but Felurian is supposed to be special - hotter in some way (and better at sucking dick). Do you get that from this description? It’s boring and not even doing it’s job well, like a drunk accountant.

I glimpsed the perfect whiteness of her teeth behind the pale pink of her parted lips…

Ooh she has teeth.

Her smile was like the moon through the clouds.

That set up from earlier really pays off here - she has teeth in her mouth and is able to smile.

Felurian giggled like a brook.

Sure.

Her laugh was wild as a fox’s cry, clear and sharp as morning birdsong.

Sigh.

She was slight, and pale, and perfect. Never have I seen a face so sweet, a mouth so made for kissing.

Vom.

Felurian went perfectly still, as if she were a startled deer or a cat about to pounce.

Foxes, cats, deer, doves, moons, brooks. We get it, this human reminds you of nature. It’s like he’s stuck in the woods and just uses anything in his line of sight to describe her. 

You know how half the myth about Felurian was that no one who banged her had lived to tell the tale? Imagine if she just had some form of super virulent STD so all the dudes died from dick rot. Sounds less romantic than men going crazy and wasting away because she was such a great fuck. Still, it seems like no one gets STDs in fantasy books. I read an interesting article (or possibly Reddit post) talking about realism in fantasy - in addition to accepting the existence of dragons, elves, etc. the audience needs to believe that the hobbits wouldn’t have had to deal with blisters on their walk, and that no one got dysentery. 

For a while I thought I was having a bad reaction to this section of the book because I’m a jealous girl and lush descriptions of a woman who is better than me in every way made me want to lash out and find fault with what I was reading... but I don’t think (/I hope) it’s not that. There are lots of other books I’ve read before where a male narrator is besotted by the looks of some girl. And I actually liked those bits because it made me feel wistful about the possibility of someone ever feeling that way about me. If you wanna read good descriptions of hot chicks, my faves are Nabokov and Eugenides (check out my post where I argue that Eugenides jacked Nabokov’s whole style). 

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that this section sucks and is un-sexy and uninteresting. The proof (or as close as I can be bothered getting to it) comes to us via An Archive of Our Own - a site dedicated to fan fiction of all sorts. Thousands of fandoms (Naruto, Twilight, LOTR, The Avengers, etc.) are represented on the site and users share their stories and receive feedback from readers. In addition to regular fan fiction fare, the site is also known for its erotica: if you ever wanted to know how a BDSM gang bang with Snape, Hagrid, Dumbeldore, Voldemort, Harry, and Hermione would shake out, they can help you with that. Anyway, The Kingkiller Chronicles seem less popular here than one might expect (weirdly, The Witcher is quite popular), but there are still 100 fan fiction stories on the site about Kvothe and co. Felurian is tagged as a character in one of these, but in a text search of the story her name doesn’t actually appear anywhere. 

For a community of deviants who have managed to sexualise every character from Harry Potter, there is total disinterest in Felurian - supposedly the sexiest woman ever. I kid you not, Harvey Weinstein appears in more stories than her. Fan fiction may not be the best metric for measuring the popularity of a character, but I think it is telling - plus, I can now count myself in the fine company of the deranged users of An Archive of Our Own who also find Felurian boring.

[autisticblueteam]

one more week and my weekly tag participation is Over

honestly participating in fandom without an in-fandom squad at my back has been fucking terrifying. not that my ex-fandom squad hasn’t had my back where i’ve needed them, not that my scattered couple of in-fandom friends aren’t great, but it’s been terrifying. every time i post an opinion in the tags i get prepared for BS in my inbox, sometimes ppl delivered on that which didn’t help

i was involved in a minor drama flare up in the second goddamn week of airing this season. getting vagued about by someone on multiple accounts because i Dared to say ‘RT’ instead of ‘Joe’ when i was talking about an issue that wasn’t just joe related. that was fun. luckily my friends did have my back, but...

i genuinely fucked up at points. made too big of a deal out of things, got too heated, made posts that hurt ppl that follow me etc etc bc i’m too used to using my blog as a dumping ground and back during my early days of fandom that was fine, because i rlly didn’t have any fandom mutuals outside of my squad and i wasn’t actively participating outside of fics. i’ve kinda learned from that. i’m keeping stuff to vents at friends and my vent blog these days. i’m hoping that i’ve been doing better.

i still haven’t succeeded in making friends that’s... for sure. i tried but ultimately i kinda fucked that up for both the above bullshit and because i’ve not worked on the ingrained issue: not being able to initiate conversations. so. hey ho, i guess.

but i have had fun? especially in the earlier parts of the season, post episode 2 drama and before i got so nervous i stopped making so many posts. theorising was fun, it was.

during the off-season i will be back to just posting fic and aesthetics and etc etc in the tags, i’ve never tagged my fandom rambles besides the stuff for this season so. back to Hiding, i guess. it’s gonna be weird because this isn’t like my last two off-seasons where for at least some of each i kinda had an active fandom squad, just got a couple of scattered in-fandom buddies now (who r wonderful) because shit happens and i sure haven’t expanded that so.

back to my corner i go. who tf knows what season 16 will bring. if i survive in fandom that long