Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized amy pond, doctor who, my mental health 0 Comments

tillthenexttimedoctor:

spicolithemouse:

Does anyone else think that we should put together a small, maybe a few pages long, list of things we’d like to see in DW? One without any rudesness or criticisms like moffat is used to? I think he doesn’t listen to the fans because we’re all rude about it, rude with good reason cause he’s ruining a loved show, but sometimes we ought to suck it up and give positive criticism instead.

Something like
1. Make the companions more relatable, we’ll care about them that way. Please call someone for help, someone with beloved characters that aren’t just loved for the culture, that you know….

You have no conceivable idea how incredibly offensive I find the first one. I didn’t even get to the rest, so I can’t comment on it. For all I know it’s perfectly valid stuff, absolutely reasonable, respectful to both Moffat and fans.

But the first one made me feel sick.

How dare you.

How dare you.

Just… I’m done with this website for today.

I can’t.

This is utterly, utterly offensive, for those who see themselves in Moffat’s characters more than in any other characters on tv, who find inspiration and joy, and…

They are beloved.

I’m so so sorry that I can’t make everyone on this planet just see how utterly amazing these women and their stories are.

And I’m also sorry for my reaction, because I can rationally see that you didn’t mean to hurt a soul with this. I see the same sentiment daily, much less friendly. But I think can deal with “this character is crap and everybody who likes them is an idiot” better than with “he might actually listen to us”.

But this isn’t something to be fixed.

This isn’t something to be fixed.

Don’t you dare even insinuate that this should be taken away from me.

OP, honestly – this is a noble sentiment. I mean it. But this isn’t How It Works. Especially since this list oscilates wildly about between ‘things that are objectively wrong any any circumstances’ and ‘things I personally don’t like about this TV show’, and though I know full well it wasn’t your intention, it does look a little odd seeing sexism, racism etc put at the same level as the moon egg, or a complaint about an inadequate amount of respect being paid to Ten or the Brig.

The Amy/relatabilty argument has been gone over and gone over, by hundreds of people more qualified than me to talk about it. My defining feeling towards Amy is relief: here was a companion I didn’t just love, but whom I could point to and say ‘she is like me’. She doubted her mind, doubted her memory, that scene in The Big Bang where her parents and aunt groan and facepalm at her sudden supposed insanity hit me like a truck when I realised I’d been Amy in that scene. Relatives had groaned and facepalmed because of me, too. I had been the woman at that wedding table, saying things that couldn’t possibly be true, while my loved ones looked on in pity. (The difference here, I suppose, is that Amy’s thing actually was true. But I feel the point still stands.)

I am mentally ill. I don’t know if Amy, was she real, would count herself as mentally ill too; I don’t know if criticism critiquing her as ‘unrelatable’ or ‘not normal’ is truly ableist or just me projecting; I also have no idea what ‘loved for the culture’ means in the context you’ve used. But I do know that if you actually did put a list together and delivered it to the front steps of the BBC, I would physically fight you before Amy Pond was mentioned in the same breath as some of the genuinely terrible things you’ve listed here.

Another story:

I started watching Doctor Who with Series One, in 2005. I was sixteen, I think, and I fell in love instantly. When Aliens Of London aired, I observed Rose casually say to the Doctor “You’re so gay”, meaning in that context ‘wimpy’ or ‘cowardly’ or something bad, anyway. When she wasn’t told off for that, a mild mounting horror crept over me. But I happened to have Russell T Davies’s email address. (It’s a really boring story, not even worth recounting here.) After some considerable thought, I wrote him an email, explaining that whilst obviously I knew he was gay, I didn’t want Rose to be homophobic, I didn’t want the people I went to school with to continue thinking it was alright to call each ‘gay’ as an insult, was there anything he could do about it? Never got a message back.