rynne | The personal nature of shipping and fandom

So I watch

metafandom, and periodically I find something I'm interested in and that inspires some thoughts of my own. Today

cupidsbow posted meta on modes of fannish discourse. I think that's an incredibly interesting topic, though what it made me think about is really only tangentially related.

I don't have an organized schema for my own meta posts, but what I almost always do is explore my own personal reactions to things. On one level, I welcome discussion and disagreement, because I know objectively that mine is not the only valid opinion out there, but on another level, I don't really want to see anything but agreement, that external validation of my opinion. Most of my meta has this element of the personal, and though I try to distance myself emotionally, it doesn't always happen. It is this that sometimes makes me open to debate--I think that I'm right, and that someone else is wrong, and I need to prove I'm right or else the idea that I'm wrong--and more, why I'm wrong--is just going to eat away at me.

I normally try to stay away from debates, because I'm very nonconfrontational and self-protective. (Obviously, I don't have the best self-esteem if someone else's opinion on some aspect of a TV show is enough to disturb my peace of mind. XD) I will only engage in debate with someone I can trust to be polite and open-minded, such as when

thunderemerald and I discussed Girl in the Fireplace and Moffat (before S4 started). This was before my views on Moffat got so intensely personal, but they were already tending that way, and I think it shows. I had an emotional investment in making my point, because being wrong would shake my worldview all out of proportion to the source.

Well, on the surface, at least. We get involved in fandom because there's something in a particular source material that resonates with us. In Doctor Who, that would be, about equally for me, the character of the Doctor, and the relationship between the Doctor and Rose. I find the Doctor a fascinating character--in New Who he's given a lot more depth, but even in Classic Who, I find him quite compelling. Here is someone who is highly independent, and who is so utterly determined to be himself, no matter what pressure is brought to bear on him. I love The Five Doctors, not just because I love the idea of the various Doctors meeting, but also because of the ending, when he gets appointed to be President of Gallifrey (as in, the leader of his planet, a position that would normally be considered a huge honor), and then he runs away. He RUNS AWAY. That's not who he is, and he won't be anything other than himself. It's like what One said to Susan, in his goodbye speech to her, about "going forward in all your beliefs". He lives that, and I love it.

So that's a lot of what attracts me to Classic!Doctor, but I have to admit that a large part of what attracts me to New!Doctor (basically Nine and Ten) is simply his angst and pain. Maybe it's the nurturing instinct, or maybe it's something else, but I see his pain, and I want to make it go away. I want him to be happy. And Rose very clearly made him happy.

Essentially, what I like in my pairings is people who make each other happy. It's like, I can acknowledge Doctor/Master as having an interesting and intense dynamic that would probably lend itself well to a passionate relationship, but I can't see them making each other happy, not without taking away an essential part of who that character is (like making the Master no longer a sadistic megalomaniac whose plans the Doctor has to constantly thwart). So while I can acknowledge that it's an interesting ship and I can get why people might OTP it, it's just really Not For Me.

Sometimes I get the idea that many writers (not just fic--take Joss Whedon, for example) think that happiness is boring, not worth writing about, that kind of thing. While I do think that stories need to have struggles of some sort, I want there to be a happy ending. I want the emotional investment I put into observing that story to pay off, and I want it to be happy, because--and here's a revelation--I like being happy. Occasionally I want to read something sad, but that's not very often, because frankly it's just nicer being happy.

Because of the emotional investment I put into some stories, what makes me happy is when characters are happy. What makes me unhappy is when it seems like people are arguing that those characters shouldn't be happy, or that the happiness I very clearly saw on screen was just artificial--that oh, the Doctor wasn't in love with Rose and happy during S2, she was basically just his security blanket. I mean, people can believe that if they want, but I don't want to hear about it, because it makes me question my judgment and my ability to see and interpret subtext (which, as an English major, is a big part of what I'm preparing to do for a living). This is unavoidable in certain circumstances (such as when I get a paper back with my professor's comments on it), but it's also always an uncomfortable process, and then I have to wonder if it makes me shallow to not like it. I mean, I do endeavor to learn from my mistakes, but it's much nicer to not make mistakes in the first place. XD

Another reason I don't like that kind of argument (the whole "Doctor doesn't really love Rose" and "she never made him happy" one) is because it feels like it cheapens that happiness. What I saw was very genuine, and while I do think that there was some element of security blanket there, I'm not sure why that would automatically make it an unhealthy relationship. Admittedly I have very limited experience with romantic relationships, but I would certainly like a significant other who makes me feel safe and secure, who can chase away my demons and help me through what can't be chased away. And if I lost this person under traumatic circumstances, as what happened in Doomsday, I'd grieve, just as the Doctor did during S3 and S4. The Doctor I saw in those seasons wasn't like a child who'd lost his favorite teddy bear and flailing--he was a man who'd lost the woman he was in love with, the woman who was helping him learn to live again after a terrible war.

I just can't see his happiness in S2 as artificial. I might be able to if that season had just completely glossed over their issues, making it seem like they were determined to be happy even when they really weren't, but that's not what I saw. One of the reasons I love School Reunion so much is because they do address a pertinent issue for this kind of relationship--the inevitablility of Rose leaving (in some way, whether by choice or by death or forcible separation). One of the reasons I love Army of Ghosts is for the "forever" scene, where the Doctor (the source of the issue) asks Rose how long she'll be with him, and smiles when she says forever. Those two scenes are a big part of why I see S2 as the Doctor's emotional journey in accepting that loving is worth losing.

And more, to go back into the personal realm, that theme is one reason I love Doctor Who. I think love, real love, is always worth it. This is because I think that even if you lose your beloved, you're a better person for having loved in the first place, as I think loving Rose made the Doctor a better person. Before Rose, he was reluctant to get involved with his companions' lives outside his life, but during her time with him, he grew more comfortable with "the domestic", and was then able to be open to knowing the Joneses and the Nobles. And when she was with him, she inspired him to be a better person--with her family, but also challenging him to live up to his ideals, like in Dalek and Parting of the Ways, and challenging him to be his equal, with her own ability to make decisions about her own life and whether or not she'll risk it, such as in The Long Game, Age of Steel, and Doomsday.

One reason I love Doctor/Rose so much is that I see in their relationship a lot of what I'd like to have in my own. Mutual support--she supports him in his Gallifrey angst, while he supports her in her father angst, and so on. Trust. Faith. Sexual tension and comfort with each other's bodies. Loyalty. Mutual protectiveness. Learning and growing as people from knowing each other--I talked a bit about what she gave him, and he gave her expanded horizons, and the very wonderful and empowering knowledge that she can make a difference. Equality--she assumes herself his equal, and he does the same (apart from being a bit high-handed in the finales, but he's high-handed with everyone, so that's not specific to her). And, of course, the sheer joy they get in being with and interacting with each other.

Here I project, because it's difficult to avoid doing that in something I've gotten emotionally invested in, but I can't quite separate out the element of the personal from criticism of the pairing. No, Doctor/Rose is not the healthiest possible relationship, but people are flawed, imperfect beings, and it's not possible to have a perfectly healthy relationship. There will be issues and misunderstandings--that's inevitable. But the thing about the Doctor and Rose is that they accept and deal with the issues that come up--the Doctor answers her in School Reunion when he wouldn't answer Sarah Jane, and throughout the season journeys to an emotional place where he can be happy with what Rose can give him; Rose, through School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace, accepts that he's loved people before and will love people again, and still wants to be with him.

I know about messy, complicated TV relationships that eventually become canon--I love Mulder/Scully (X-Files) and Josh/Donna (West Wing), who respectively took seven and nine years to get together and who had mounds of repression and general "don't talk about it (whatever it is)" issues going on. Frankly, I think the Doctor and Rose are pretty damn healthy, comparatively.

But anyway, back to the projection--when people dismiss Doctor/Rose, it feels a bit like they're dismissing my idea of a good relationship. Of course they're not; most people who do that probably don't even know I exist, or would want to insult me if they did. But though I know this objectively, it's hard to suppress my gut-level reaction, which is "how can they not understand how good the Doctor and Rose are for each other? Am I just totally off in seeing and interpreting a good relationship, or is it that I've gotten what exactly is a good relationship completely wrong?" Not that what exactly a good relationship is isn't completely subjective, but there have to be some commonalities, or no one would ever be able to write about relationships and have other people be interested.

Effectively, either my view of the world and of love is skewed, or other people are wrong, and I'm much more comfortable with other people being wrong. :p This is, I imagine, why people are so protective of their ships, and why ship wars happen. It's not just a fictional relationship that's being defended--it's an entire worldview.

This doesn't mean that I'm going to go out and start telling people that they're automatically wrong if they don't ship Doctor/Rose, because while I may not understand why they believe what they do (or really care to understand, since I'm happy with my own beliefs), it's not my business to say anything. If they're as happy with their ship (or non-ship) as I am with mine, then good for them. Knowing this won't stop me from having that personal reaction to criticism of my ship, but at least I can control that.

Now it's getting late and this is a lot longer than I thought it would be, so I'm going to shut up and go to bed.