#but I lived through the era of fans villainizing female characters for the sake of their favorite male characters and like

[supermanddntdieforthis]

I read a couple of fics that really kind of villainized Mary Allamby Bonnet and I was like “no??? Why would you????????”

[theliterarywolf]

You lived long enough to see yourself become the villain, congratulations XD I kid, I'm pretty against love triangles myself. As a writer, what are some bad examples of love triangles you've seen in fiction that made you wanna swear em off? Korra's needless one & whatever the hell was going on with the Team 7 assholes are usually the first ones that come to my mind when I think of times I said in my head "Eugh, Christ Almighty, I gotta sit through this shit..."

When I think of ‘FUCK YOU, JUST CHOOSE ALREADY!!’ love triangles, the main ones that bring headaches back to my mind at the thought are the infamous Edward/Bella/Jacob thing from Twilight, whatever the FUCK was going on with Vampire Knight (seriously, FUCK Vampire Knight), and way that Kikyo/Kagome/Inuyasha was handled in the original run of Inuyasha.

With the first one, Twilight is so badly written at the end of the day, but even from day 1 you could tell that Meyer meant for Edward and Bella to be the final state of things and that Jacob was just there to serve as a doorstop every Edward needed to be out of the picture because... Potatoes. But it was just pushed so hard for marketing sake (’Oh, I’m Team Edward!’ ‘I’m Team Jacob’ ‘I’m Team ‘Can we just remember how many poor bookstore employees were made the wrath of middle-aged Twilight fans back in the day? From underaged female fans getting shoved and trampled by adults trying to get the books to underaged male fans getting creepily hit-on by adults since their stores would have them dress up for events?’) and for forced drama in a story that was already not handling drama well... And not handling characters well... And not handling a lot of things well... And --

Vampire Knight... Just... I... You know what? No. I can’t even begin to go into this because life is too short. The love-triangle nonsense here started off annoying, got bad, and then, when I looked back into it thanks to Anime America reminding me of it, veered into ‘what EVEN happened here?!’

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown beyond the ‘oh, Kikyo’s the worst! She’s a bitch! She’s in the way of my ship!’ mindset that a lot of younger anime fans have in regards to their first ships and characters that gum up the works. 

However, on the same token, I can talk about how... Not great the dynamic between the trio from Inuyasha was handled. Cue VivaReverie’s ‘X but Really Fast’ style!

Inuyasha- ‘I’m an angry half-breed demon who’s been tormented all his life for being a half-breed so I’m gonna steal this jewel so I can become a full-breed demon! 

Kikyo - I’m the priestess that guards said jewel in question and I can’t let you have it.

Inuyasha - Fuck! But! Also! You’re kind of attractive and I admire your strength so I’m kind of into you!

Kikyo - No.

Inuyasa - Yes!

Kikyo - No.

Inuyasha - Yes!

Kikyo - No.

Inuyasha - Yes!

Kikyo - ... Okay, fine, yes.

Inuyasha - Sweet! So we’re cool now, right? 

Kikyo - Yes. ... Well, actually, no. I saw a demon that looks like you trying to steal the jewel and who also mortally wounded me so I’m going to shoot you with an arrow and bind you to this tree. 

Inuyasha - Wait, I did what now -- Ow, arrow to the heart!

Kikyo - And now, since I’m dying, I will saddle my little sister with the responsibility of burning my body with the jewel inside of it so no one else can have it. 

Kaede - Wait, why can’t we just use the jewel to heal your wounds -- Aaaand you’re dead. Well, light the funeral pyre I guess. This can’t possibly bite us in the ass in the future.

Kagome - I’m a school girl in the modern-era who is the reincarnation of the priestess somehow -- oops, fell in a well! Oops, attacked by a demon! Oops, released the half-breed demon! Oops, shattered the jewel into a thousand pieces scattered across the land! Hope this doesn’t become the McGuffin quest of the entire anime!

Kaede - Finding the jewel shards will be your McGuffin quest for the entire anime. 

Kagome and Inuyasha - Fuck!

Kaede - Also, take this necklace that is basically a BDSM collar for Inuyasha to obey your orders. 

Kagome - Sweet!

Inuyasha - Fuck!

Kikyo - Hey, I’m resurrected somehow.

Kagome - Wait, if you’re resurrected, shouldn’t I have been erased from history -- Also, Inuyasha, where are you going?

Inuyasha - To be with the actual woman I love, even though she shot me and bound me to a tree for a thousand years, and her sudden appearance is all kinds of suspicious!

Kikyo - Hey, by the way, I’m totally evil now and I’m going to use my sort-of/kind-of reincarnation to shoot you with another arrow. 

Kagome and Inuyasha - Damn, if this was only completely avoidable. By, like, you know, being cautious around obviously suspicious reanimated corpses or something...

Disclaimer - I actually do like Inuyasha, I swear.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Snowmen - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

The Snowmen has got to be the least Christmassy Christmas special ever, and believe it or not I mean that in a positive way. Doctor Who Christmas specials have always left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, not just because most of them have been poorly written and just plain idiotic, but also because every year the show seems determined to drown you in slush. To its credit, The Snowmen does manage to escape that somewhat, keeping the slush to a minimum. Okay the villain is ultimately defeated by ‘a family crying at Christmas’, but it never comes off as mawkish and there is actually a decent in-universe explanation for how that worked, so I’ll allow it just this once.

So who are the villains? A deadpan Richard E. Grant and some carnivorous snow voiced by Ian McKellen. Compared to other Christmas special villains, they’re fairly good. Out of the two, Mr. Simian’s character is the weak link because we don’t learn anything about his character or the nature of his relationship with the snow, but Grant’s performance is still pretty good and it holds your attention. Ian McKellen also does a decent job with the material he’s been given, and I do like the idea of alien snow, even if the bitey snowflakes and smiling snowmen were a bit gigglesome (and the less said about the bad CGI ice governess, the better I think). It’s a bit like the robot Santas and killer Christmas trees from the RTD era. It’s silly, but it’s enjoyably silly. And as an added treat for us classic series fans, it turns out this episode is actually an origin story for the Great Intelligence. Usually you can see Moffat’s plot twists coming several galaxies away, so I was kicking myself that I didn’t pick up on it the first time. Particularly considering how the hints and Easter Eggs are so obvious on rewatches. The Snowmen as in The Abominable Snowmen and the Yeti. A disembodied voice trying to gain a physical form. The map of the London Underground. The snow is being kept in a giant sphere inside Simian’s office. And of course the initials GI. So yeah, that was a nice callback.

All in all, this could have been a fairly decent Christmas special. Nothing to write home about, but still watchable. Unfortunately The Snowmen is ruined by one thing and that’s the characters. Good fucking God are they horrendous!

Let’s start with the Doctor. After losing Amy and Rory, he has decided that he doesn’t want to travel or help people anymore and is now living above England on a cloud as a lonely old miser.

Fuck off! Not in this universe nor in any other universe would this EVER happen!

You may recall a couple of years ago when I reviewed the RTD era that I really didn’t like the Doctor’s reaction when he lost Rose. it just felt too human and it didn’t really gel with his character. He’s lost companions before. He mourns, but he moves on. Why would Rose be any different? But credit where it’s due, at least the Doctor kept travelling through time and space rather than stay in once place and sulk because RTD knew that that at least is something the Doctor would definitely never do. Here... I mean you can’t even use the excuse that the Doctor was in love with Amy. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be emotionally affected by what happened. I’m just questioning why he would be this emotionally affected to the point where he would actually refuse to help people in need. It just feels totally out of character.

Plus it really does display just how arrogant Moffat is. Of course it would be his characters that caused the Doctor to sink into a deep depression and only his character can bring him out of it. And of course his characters are what inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes, which he will later adapt in his god awful Sherlock TV show. Christ Moffat, I hope you’ve got plenty of tissues to clean the mess up with after you’ve finished wanking yourself.

Matt Smith doesn’t help matters. His turn as a reclusive miser just isn’t in the least bit convincing, but at least it’s preferable to when he magically makes a full recovery and reverts back to his obnoxious goofy self. This is the Doctor now everyone. A man who has arguments with his own hand and sexually molests Punch and Judy dolls. (Sigh. Only 11 episodes to go Quill. Just hang on).

We also see the return of the Paternoster Gang. A group of one dimensional, unfunny cardboard cutouts that people really seem to like for some reason. Strax is by far the worst, with each bad joke and moment of incompetence driving another nail into the coffin of the Sontarans forever. (But wait, isn’t Strax supposed to be dead? Ah fuck it! Everybody knows death is only a minor inconvenience in the Moffat era. Who cares if it ruins the impact of future deaths or that it completely contradicts Sontaran lore. Just laugh at the Doctor calling him a potato, something the Doctor would also never do because I’m sure that’s racist to Sontarans). And Vastra and Jenny have the same problems as every other Moffat woman in that they have no character or agency of their own. They exist solely to help the Doctor. Also Jenny is in a dominatrix outfit for some reason, and they openly talk about being gay. Two things that would definitely have caused shock and outrage in the rigid and repressed Victorian era.

Actually that’s one thing that really pisses me off about New Who and this episode in particular. None of it is true to the period. Clara is completely contemporary in both her outlook and behaviour, and everything unsavoury about the period is dismissed with the Doctor’s sneer of ‘Victorian values.’ Yes this is the Victorian era, but it’s the Victorian era you’d find on the front of a Christmas card. It’s very easy to just sneer at a period of history and congratulate ourselves for how much better we are today, but why not actually explore the era properly? What’s that saying? The past is like another country? Let the audience see that. Why not have Clara behave like a woman during the Victorian era would and have the Doctor come in to challenge that? Have the episode be a clash of different attitudes and values.

Speaking of Clara, she is by far the worst thing about this episode. I honestly didn’t think it could get any worse than Oswin in Asylum Of The Daleks, but boy was I wrong. She is just insufferable. She’s really smug and smarmy and not in the least bit likeable or believable. She’s like River Song, but 10x worse. Also it doesn’t help that Jenna Coleman decides to give Clara this really bad ‘gor blimey guvner! Strike a light! Up the apples an’ pears’ Cockney accent. (Brief side note, why was she keeping the whole nanny thing secret?). I’m certainly not buying her supposed special connection with the Doctor. That’s another thing Moffat is guilty of. He’s so shit at writing female characters that he can’t effectively convey whey they might be so unique in their actions or behaviour, so he has to just flat out tell the audience instead. Well I’m sorry, but that shit just won’t fly. What reason does Clara have for chasing the Doctor’s cab? What reason does the Doctor have for being impressed with Clara despite the fact she’s done nothing remotely noteworthy? What reason does Clara have for snogging the Doctor’s face off despite the two sharing no romantic chemistry whatsoever? Answer: the script said so. Maybe if Moffat spent less time writing stupid scenes like the ‘respond with one word’ interrogation and more time actually developing her character, I might have actually given a shit when she died. (I mean for fuck’s sake, talk about disappearing up your own arse. How the fuck would Clara have known the word ‘Pond’ would have passed the one word test? How does ‘Pond’ convey she needs the Doctor’s help? What is even the fucking point of the one word test other than as a pathetic attempt for Moffat to try and look deep and intelligent as opposed to a pretentious halfwit? God, he’s such a shit writer).

Worse still, despite the fact Moffat had insisted that Series 7 won’t contain a series arc, it turns out Clara constantly dying is going to be a series arc now. So it looks like we’re going to be stuck with this ungodly annoying woman for quite a considerable time. Bugger!

While The Snowmen is considerably less slushy than some of the previous Christmas specials, I unfortunately have to stick this in the bad category along with the likes of Voyage Of The Damned and The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe due to its terrible characterisation and Moffat’s pretentious, egocentric bullshit.