Keep watching Doctor Who guys, it’s making those people mad

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized doctor who 0 Comments

cielamisseh:

I really want to believe this comment isn’t serious and is just a pisstake, but on the other hand… I’ve seen things like the Daily Mail comment section.

Actually, the more I think about a male companion for a female Doctor

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized doctor who 0 Comments

lyricwritesprose:

holytardisofgallifreyan:

lyricwritesprose:

the more I think he’d actually be a really good role model—in a way guaranteed to piss off a good portion of the “we need male role models” faction.

I mean—picture it.  We’ve got this guy.  Call him Paul.  Paul is an ordinary bloke with ordinary bloke problems, getting more lonely as he waits tables by day and goes to bartending school at night and has no time to catch up with his friends in the meantime—you know, human issues.  Then one day, the bus Paul is on is whisked away to an interstellar zoo, filled with hundreds of exhibits of panicked and dangerous aliens as well as the malevolent Zookeepers.  To be a proper companion, Paul has to do three important things:

• Realize that the crazy woman knows more about the situation than everyone else combined
• Follow her lead on all the things she knows about, which at this point includes everything relating to aliens, escapes, and so forth
• Have at least one moment where he impresses her, whether that’s figuring something out or just acting with unusual courage or compassion

What this means, is that Paul has to be a really secure guy in a lot of ways.  He can’t have a lot of toxic masculinity.  He has to be willing to defer to a woman when she knows more than him.  He has to take a look at everything society tells us about men and women and who’s supposed to have what role, and then chuck it out the window.  He not only has to have a strong sense of self to stand up to the Doctor, he has to have a strong sense of self to understand that he doesn’t have to—that if he takes orders, if he runs, if he finds himself saying, “Doctor, what is it?” an awful lot of the time—it doesn’t reflect badly on his masculinity.  Paul’s got to be quite a guy.

Men could actually use a role model with all those traits.  And yet, if he were a real Doctor Who character, I can guarantee you that a lot of the complaints would revolve around just those character traits—he’s a follower, he’s weak, he defers too much.  There’s no way fandom would ever give Paul a fair chance.

But if it was a woman/girl again. The whole fandom would complain about how it’s all more targeted to teenage girls these past few years. And we’d have that kind of problem. 

Yeah, there’s no way to win.  Doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, of course, but there’s really no decision that won’t piss off a sizeable swath of the fandom.