Fandom Kvetch 3

[dreamer_easy]

Ladies and gentlefong, fresh from this morning's fandomsecrets, Exhibit A:



Now we're all heartbroken over Donna's unbearable fate. I'm in optimistic denial ("It must be a cliffhanger!"). Plenty of ficcers are busy rewriting it - quite right too. So it's not at all hard to sympathise with the OP's unhappiness.

So where does this cross the line into overentitlement? By reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. srsly. Stories flow from the writers to the characters and then to the audience - not the other way around. How dare RTD give Donna a sad ending? Because he's the writer, one of the showrunners, and the characters' creator. Entitlement does not flow from Donna to Russell; it flows from Russell to Donna. But Donna's just the piggy in the middle; the real issue is that entitlement doesn't flow from fandom to Russell, it flows from Russell to fandom. No matter how much expertise, ownership, love, or authority we claim, we don't call the shots. We just don't.

The above secret is far from the worst example of fannish overentitlement I've seen, and the OP isn't a fuckwit, just some upset kid blowing off steam. But it does nicely encapsulate the phenomenon. If the attitude it expresses was rare, it'd be easy to just smile and shrug. But it isn't.

Comments

[ianracey.livejournal.com]

My absolute favourite response to Journey's End was someone in the LJ doctorwho community who said, "Come on, RTD, at least have the courage to give Donna the ending she deserves. Chickening out like this was an act of cowardice!"

I'm curious as to how going with the ending that is apparently going to have so many fans go ballistic and proclaim their undying hatred for you could possible be considered cowardly.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Bwa!

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I wonder if so many people are unhappy because the ending was like real life, in that we can't always have things the way we would like them?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

You can't always get what you want.

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

Exactly! So, some viewers are disappointed that they don't get their happy ending, because it's too much like real life.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

But sometimes you get what you need.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

My problem with it was that it, like a lot of "Journey's End", felt like bad writing - which is a bigger problem than "I didn't want a sad ending".

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree. The 'reset button' is usually lazy writing, and I think it is here.

(though Turn Left, where the reset button at the end is clearly flagged by the nature of the story, BUT the story actually turns out to have consequences despite it, is a really good example of a story where the reset button isn't lazy writing).

But, as I wrote in a response to an earlier message, I think there is a big difference between complaining about the quality of the writing, and the direction. Complaining about quality is natural, and inevitable in a show like Doctor Who where the quality of writing varies dramatically within seasons, sometimes (particularly with RTD) within a single episode. The complaints about what the characters experience that revolve around identification with the characters do seem to be a very oddly fannish thing.

[qthewetsprocket.livejournal.com]

word, tesitfy, and YES. lazy writing was my second-biggest problem with rtd's entire who output. rose's final scene on the beach with alt!ten in particular didn't seem like the characters were acting out of any internal logic whatsoever - more 'we're doing this because our writer is making us' - and it really shows in the performances.

[tide-and-time.livejournal.com]

That's precisely why it bothers so many people. :)

A little personal revelation: On the fourth re-watch of the episode I realized that I hated it so much precisely because I had spent 13 episodes watching Donna evolve and change and grow into something awesome at a time in my own life when I felt trapped by circumstance and situation myself. In a way her fictional journey carried me along out of my anxieties and got me "out of my own head" for a bit. Then to see the character reduced to what she was at the beginning with no hope of being the awesome she had been again was kind of a psychological sucker-punch that said "you can spend all this time and energy growing and becoming something new and it can be ripped away in an instant."

So rightly so, a lot of the people who are the most vocal and upset about Donna's resolution could probably use a little insight into *WHY* they feel the way they do. I guarantee it has a lot more to do with whom they are than with who RTD is!

[ajponder.livejournal.com]

What is this reality of which you speak? In mine not only has the doctor's daughter, donna and half a dozen other characters gone and kicked the doctors butt and maybe proved a point or two. But Wilf has gone for a spin... It was a great ending - and the best way of telling is that it's caused so much controversy. Imagine making a character that we all love SO much and getting nothing but bitchfest back, but we all CARE!!! We DO! And she's not even properly dead. sigh. Although that would be cool. Just letting one of the companions die in fire and flame. Stir. Stir. Truly if fans just left it at being upset/annoyed and not had a go at the writer, I'd be all for it. Jealousy oh rear your ugly head, and then hide it back in the sand in case you see something else you don't like. The ending was poignant and it left me feeling emotional, it was just so heartwrenchingly bitter-sweet, and yet there is still hope. The doctor says something about hope does he not?
In the end though, entitled or not he should be able to blow off steam about being personally upset. But while I'll disagree to the ends of the earth about "entitlement" dammit we're all entitled to speak our opinions however inane, this piccy is on my line in the sand for personal abuse. "I used to doubt the haters..." I mean really... that's so fox news... "some people say..." and the whole thing would have been abhorent if he could have come up with something that made more sense that "epic fail" on the end of "he is".

[jondennis.livejournal.com]

There were a boatload of problems with that episode, but that wasn't one of them. That was the brilliant bit.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

I've heard quite a lot of moaning about this, and to every one I've had the same answer; "To you, I introduce the word "tragedy". Some times, things just don't end well."

That sense of fan-ownership reached ridiculous heights around "Turn Left" on on of the mailing lists I frequent, with fans claiming that something as traumatic as killing off the Doctor (even if it is undone later) should never even be contemplated by the writers as it is "a fan's worst nightmare". Yes, that's an actual quote. If the new crop of fans are so fragile that they can't face the thought of the Doctor's possible death, I'm worried they'll be swinging from the light fittings in their hundreds when DT gets tired of the role and the Doctor really does regenerate.

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

...and suddenly the state of fandom would improve as it's deprived of hundreds of entitlement brats....

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I can totally understand going OH NOES at Donna's fate - it's so awful I'm kind of in denial about it myself. It's only when it crosses the line into YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG that blunt objects need to be thrown at skulls. It's a brilliant, horrible, wrenching piece of writing, acting, and direction, even if it leaves us going ARGH LET IT NOT BE SO.

[dinosaurcostume.livejournal.com]

The ending reminded me of something in Tilda Swinton's Letter to Derek:

"Don't [today's filmmakers] know the basic laws of being in an audience? That ... we say we like happy endings, but our souls droop without the bittersweet touch of something we might recognise"

I still can't help thinking of that ending as "cruel" - perhaps because of Tate's performance, perhaps because (as I tried to express elsewhere) for me Donna's story *was* the Doctor-companion story the show has been telling since 2005, in its most refined form.

And yet I still have a lot of respect for Davies in pulling a stonker of a sad ending out of the hat, at the end of an hour of popcorn. I've now read enough comments from fans that I just think: okay, we want completely different things from this show; we're not even sharing the same argument any more.