On Fandom

On Fandom

It is becoming ever more difficult, in the current climate of fandom, to like things. It seems that the majority of the experience of being in a fandom for a work, involves hating the work itself. And once the prevailing attitude of a fandom goes negative, it’s an incredibly hard attitude to shake no matter the actual quality of the work.

You would never be any the wiser if the quality changed for the better.

This post was supposed to be about Doctor Who, in light of Steven Moffat leaving the show to be replaced by Chris Chibnall, but it also applies to the general fan reaction to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, to some extent. No matter what way I look at the criticisms of Episode VIII, nothing seems to justify the sheer amount of vitriol it has received for simply existing. Even if I agreed with every criticism of it, I could not find it in me to rate it below Episodes I and II. Yet that is exactly what many people such as The Armoured Skeptic are saying about it.

Similarly, I have found Steven Moffat’s time on Doctor Who to have been punctuated by fairytale set pieces, snarky dialogue, pretty aesthetics, and a general sense of fun which not always but sometimes undermined a genuine emotional beat or two. I have also seen it punctuated by some of the most vitriolic hatred one creator has ever faced. Nothing I have ever seen of Doctor Who while Steven Moffat was running it, could justify the prevailing attitude of the fandom, which at best seems to be “Steven Moffat is making the show bad, and we need to wait for Chibnall to take over so it will be good again”, and at worst seems to be “Steven Moffat literally murders an LGBT woman every time he opens his stupid mouth”.

My conclusions in both cases are the same: The fandom’s prevailing attitude has shifted to one of hatred, and a well has been poisoned in each. There is no recovering from it.

So I’d like to offer everyone some advice, from experience: As attractive an idea as it might be, to be able to share your experiences of a piece of fiction with other, like-minded individuals, do not participate in fandoms, especially not popular ones. In the end, the fandom itself will kill every last ounce of joy you got from the work in the first place. Enjoy something on your own terms, by all means, but forming a collective around it is a bad idea.

That brings me to my next point: Remember to enjoy yourself. Remember, perhaps, that you don’t HAVE to be experiencing this, and that someone out there put a lot of effort into it. Don’t be too critical if you can avoid it. And if you truly are not getting enjoyment out of something, you should stop engaging with it. Don’t do what some fandoms do, which is continue, say, watching new episodes of a TV show every week despite hating it. Every time this happens, they get more and more vitriolic with their criticisms, and you may find that every grievance becomes more and more petty. Where a few weeks ago, the complaint may have been “the writers utterly ruined this person’s character arc by having them do something out of character!”, a fresh complaint may take the form of “well this character didn’t do something which would have made no sense but made for a great shipping moment!” And it will only get pettier from there.

In my opinion, Steven Moffat had a shaky start, but in the end gave us some of the greatest episodes of Doctor Who we’ve ever had. He gave us at least two all-time great companions (Rory and Bill), some of the greatest and most ambitious plots, some surprisingly thorough and internally consistent canon (capped off in Twice Upon a Time with a superb callback to the events of 709 episodes ago), a whole bunch of progressive values (which detractors vehemently deny him either having anything to do with, or executing properly for some reason or other), and most importantly, he gave us indispensable and timeless wisdom from the mouth of The Doctor. I could fill a book with all of my favourite wisdom from Doctors 11 and 12 (and War). Whatever you think of the man, don’t discount what he was trying to say in every episode.

Take a bow, Steven Moffat. You’ve earned it. May your Doctor Who legacy be remembered more fondly in retrospect.