Rantypants.

[mrv3000]

I have to bitch about a fandomsecret thing, which I'm not keeping secret.



The original f!s:
http://i27.tinypic.com/mbppq8.jpg

1. Who are these "fans?" You and your online buddies? Is that supposed to comprise all of the show's fans?
   
   
2. I never heard about any field polls about what characters people liked better. Must have been some super secret polls done just so RTD can craft entire shows that make up his livelihood around the results.
   
   
3. What about Martha, Owen and Tosh? Are they off their shows because RTD wanted to punish the fans for liking cheese?
   
   
4. I guess the fact that Ten's final story will involve Donna means that RTD is continuing with the punishment. DAMN HIM FOR RESOLVING DONNA'S STORYLINE! Oh wait. I think that's what we wanted. I'm getting so confused of when I get to curse RTD's name and when he merely exists.
   
   
5. I can't speak to Gwen, since I really don't know anything about that show's overall fan base, but I can speak to Rose. Rose is so unpopular with the fans that as of last Halloween, little girls (and a few big ones) dressed up as her. Rose is so unpopular with the fans that at the DW panel at ComicCon, people were yelling out her name. Yeah, fans hate her.
   
   
6. I know you're upset at Ianto's death, BUT STOP BRINGING ROSE INTO IT, YOU INSANE PEOPLE. Rose didn't cause Ianto's death. Rose didn't even get Donna kicked off the show, nor is Rose responsible for Donna coming back. ROSE DID NOT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING.
   
   
7. The few responses to this secret actually agree with the secret. O_O I just... Why do I always expect to find logic in fandom, but always am surprised when I don't? I must be mad.

And semi-related, I saw some "St. Gwen" comments in a Torchwood post. To give a little backstory on me, I wouldn't say that Gwen is my favorite Torchwood character. I probably don't have a favorite character on Torchwood, but possibly it's Jack just because of his DW ties. I don't ship anyone on Torchwood and I mainly watch it for the crack.

However, I have watched S1 - S3, and "St. Gwen?" HARDLY. We are talking about the woman who cheated on Rhys, right? Yes, Gwen did awesome things, but so did Jack, Ianto, Owen and Tosh. These are characters who work for a semi-secret alien-catching organization. They're supposed to be a bit more superhero-ish than your average Joe.

Feel free to hate Gwen all you want. No one has to like a character. But when you feel the need to justify that hate with stuff like "St. Gwen" or "Mary Sue," I'm just going to roll my eyes at you. I actually watch this show too, and no amount of repeating those titles will make it be true.

Comments

[papilio-luna.livejournal.com]

I'd like to cosign everything you've said.

Also, I think that people seriously misconstrue the idea of an audience-substitute character--the character who is supposed to be the audience's "in" to the universe of the story. That's not a synonym for "self-insert" or "character with no flaws." It just means that when you're telling a story, especially a story set in a universe quite different from our own, you need to have a character who starts out "on the outside" and who's job it is to ask the questions, have the "normal life" and to be more or less "like us" in that he or she at the beginning has a normal job and a normal boy/girlfriend and normal opinions on what's happening in the story. People get this St. Gwen and St. Rose BS from the acknowledgement by the writers that those two characters were our "audience stand-ins" for these brand new TV shows set in a universe most viewers would not be familiar with. It doesn't mean they were supposed to be perfect or that the writers "favour" them in any way. It just means that they're around to ask Important Questions and to behave in ways that make the audience pause for a moment and think, "Yeah, what would, I do in that situation?"

Martha and Donna also had that role, but to not quite so great an extent as Rose and Gwen because Doctor Who/Torchwood was already rolling along and the audience was much more familiar with the world of the show by the time Martha came along.

Also, word on your last paragraph. Torchwood was a hot mess (and pretty roundly mocked by pretty much everyone). You can kind of see RTD angsting over how little control he had over it (because of his time commitment to Who) and what a mess it was becoming in The Writer's Tale every now and then. He doesn't come right out and say it, but you can read it between the lines.

[ginamak.livejournal.com]

Martha and Donna also had that role, but to not quite so great an extent as Rose and Gwen because Doctor Who/Torchwood was already rolling along and the audience was much more familiar with the world of the show by the time Martha came along.

SO MUCH THIS. Of course, I also think the Martha lovers who hate Rose (not all Martha fans, just that particular subset) project their personal issues on her too much, which is a shame since they miss the point that Martha GOT OVER the unrequited love thing (although a bit too late for my taste) and moved on.

Torchwood was a hot mess (and pretty roundly mocked by pretty much everyone).

Oh, most definitely. The hardcore Jack/Ianto shipping and fic really had nothing to do with the reality of the show--and that's not uncommon in fic, there's PWP everywhere--but the fact remains that Torchwood, as a show, was terrible in the first series and only marginally better in the second. It didn't know what it wanted to be. Now that RTD is fully in charge, it can be the way he imagined it. It just so happens, though, that the way he imagined it is NOT how the Jack/Ianto fangirls wanted it to be.

It's a shame, and you could argue that they were done a disservice by the poor quality of the writing up until CoE. Even so, this is not their show--it's the BBC's, and RTD's.

I hated what happened to Veronica Mars after the first season. HATED IT. So I stopped watching. Same goes for X Files. I never thought the writers owed it to me to write the story to my satisfaction; that's what fic is for.