tea’s gone cold
if there was ONE THING I've learned from Doctor Who fandom that I wish everyone could know, it's how soon you realise that a writer's real-world political beliefs are not necessarily represented by their work.
tea’s gone cold
and it's not necessarily that they're bad writers or that it's a mistake - i believe that what one ends up writing makes sense to you because it's based on some 'deep belief'. but just that it's surprisingly rare for someone's 'deep belief' to match up with what they actually do IRL.
tea’s gone cold
and that can be for the better (I don't doubt Moffat being a feminist in his personal life at all, but he sure as hell does like to rely on tired sitcom gender essentialism in writing) and for the worse (Robert Holmes's stories all give the impression of someone with a leftist attitude towards authority, but he voted Tory because that was his background)
tea’s gone cold
the leftist-wing Who writer ever was Malcolm Hulke, a straight up literal Communist, but the politics of his stories are... pretty boring. lots of themes of 'both sides are just as bad, maybe they can make friends though'
tea’s gone cold
he also wrote a lot about lizards.
tea’s gone cold
he is also the Who-writer most obsessed with lizards.
tea’s gone cold
but either way, when people start making sweeping judgements about the political affiliations of artists based on their writing, I just wince. you kind of can't do that at all. people are complicated and the way they integrate their beliefs into their creativity is messy, too.
titantoadstools
this is a good plurk
ALL RED
Agreed.
Luke Skywanker
That is bad criticism in general. (Sorry, not you, I mean what you're talking about.)
ALL RED
You cannot tell a person's political beliefs by what they create.
ALL RED
Also may I reblog this?
titantoadstools
also permission to reblog?
tea’s gone cold
yeah, go for it.
Luke Skywanker
It's like morality too, IMO. I've written plenty of things I sure as hell wouldn't advocate. Thinking it's interesting doesn't mean I think it's ok.
tea’s gone cold
Mark Gatiss is a weird one, because his stories tend to have 'retro' politics, if not outright reactionary, yet he's pretty left. it's because Gatiss works in pastiche, and the kind of stuff he's pastiching is the bigotry of the past. he couldn't care less about the politics, because the reactionary tone is part of the feeling he's trying to create
tea’s gone cold
i'm not saying that i agree with his approach AT ALL. I get the sense he's someone who thinks The Talons of Weng-Chiang is one of the greatest Doctor Who stories ever and doesn't even see the need to apologise for how racist it is. but I also get the sense he watched it and wanted to Be Chang, and once you get that, you see what he's trying to do.
Luke Skywanker
Also! Lots of times folks aren't aware of the political implications of their work. I'm pretty sure no one meant for Kingsman to read as weirdly reactionary/conservative as it does to me, but there it is.
Luke Skywanker
(Which doesn't excuse anyone from the creation of things, just the attribution of their politics)
tea’s gone cold
yep, another person who finds Kingsman extremely reactionary, but it's simply because it started from a guy thinking 'haha, like, what if James Bond was actually just the comedy British stereotype instead? haha and then you can throw in a modern chav and have him be an Eliza Doolittle figure. this is funny to me.'
tea’s gone cold
again, i think writers do have a responsibility to consider this stuff and it is 10000% fine to hate a writer for pumping out reactionary garbage.
Luke Skywanker
Yeah and I can totally see that happening! But I'm side-eyeing even as I see how it is a romp.
Luke Skywanker
Yeah.
Luke Skywanker
Interpretation of the work should not be construed as a manifesto, however.
tea’s gone cold
but there's a difference between 'everything he writes is so goddamn racist' and 'he is a toxic goddamn racist and if you like his stuff you deserve to be hanged'
Luke Skywanker
(the reverse can be true as well)
shobogan
No, Mark Millar really is like that.
shobogan
I think it's actually softened a lot in adaptation.
Luke Skywanker
(not everything a piece of shit wrote is shit, even if it's by accident)
shobogan
But yeah, it's often not a simple 1:1 thing
Luke Skywanker
shobogan
: haha that makes me feel even worse BUT it was just the first thing I thought of
ALL RED
but there's a difference between 'everything he writes is so goddamn racist' and 'he is a toxic goddamn racist and if you like his stuff you deserve to be hanged' THANK YOU.
shobogan
There's no need to feel bad! If I were looking at Kingsman by itself I wouldn't assume that off the bat
Luke Skywanker
Yeah I was hoping the politics were an accident.
shobogan
A lot of the time they are, or they just come off differently than intended
shobogan
There are a lot of well-intentioned creators in comics who stumble into stereotypes, or pastiche without subverting certain things, or follow certain traditions unthinkingly, or aim for a progressive message but do it clumsily
shobogan
And I hate it when they're put in the same boat as creators who are vocally conservative, or blatantly bigoted, because it is not helpful. Or the reverse, where those prejudices don't appear in their work so clearly they don't exist.
ALL RED
It's why it's kind of important to watch them but also give them enough space to let them do their thing.
ALL RED
Somethings are so prevalent in society in general, that most do not know without being told about it.
shobogan
Yeah. And that ignorance can still hurt, but it's still very different than malice.
Thene
god i hate Kingsman for this reason and all the fangirls who don't see it, i just wanna shake them hard
Thene
anyway yes, this is a good plurk
Luke Skywanker
Thene
: 
Thene
<3 I HATE KINGSMAN I HATE HOW IT REIFIES THE SHITTIEST CLASS BULLSHIT i said it felt like a Guy Ritchie movie only with no charm & no actual understanding of britishness and then I saw Guy Ritchie's King Arthur, which is everything Kingsman ought to be but isn't
Thene
i don't even LIKE Ritchie that much, he's just clearly what they're aiming for and missing (tho King Arthur was very unexpectedly good)
Thene
now i am thinking about the Deep Beliefs in metal gear, like glorification of violence
ugly androgyne
I mean, sure, artistically this all well and good but like hell I'm rewarding certain assholes with dollars. That's what I have torrents for
Luke Skywanker
there's a Ritchie king Arthur?
tea’s gone cold
uh, my point isn't that 'people aren't actually all assholes!!' it's that 'even super woke people can write absolute garbage sometimes because no-one ever fucking knows what the fuck they're doing'
tea’s gone cold
'and sometimes people have bodies of work that seem to point very definitely to a certain political affiliation but it's actually just that they have a fetish'
tea’s gone cold
whatever you choose to financially incentivise, or don't, is fine with me
Thene
Luke Skywanker
it came out earlier this year, got swamped by Wonder Woman or sth, never got the love it deserves. It's very uncanonical, just Arthurian stuff thrown in a blender & deliberately tilted contemporary (most of it is set in a very ahistorical medieval London)
Thene
go to bed holly
tea’s gone cold
no
Thene
now obv i am wondering abt the shit i write and esp my weakness for manpainy idiots
Luke Skywanker
I've definitely written in this mode
tea’s gone cold
Thene
the three characters in my life I have deeply bonded to are: Cloud Strife, Vriska Serket and the Fourth Doctor so you bet I wonder about myself there
tea’s gone cold
three loud, cocky, performative jerks who treat everyone around them like crap and yet are always right? and they all have special magic eyes, and cool powers. I know I'm deeply a sinner.
tea’s gone cold
am I at heart just a 'Rick fan' who adores these characters because I fantasize about being able to treat people like that IRL, and being that charismatic and strong? like, some part of me is a fascist demagogue or something?
tea’s gone cold
because the thing is I really don't believe that, and really what I relate to about them is their sense of style, capableness and paradoxical self-hatred/self-worship issues.
tea’s gone cold
if someone wanted to analyse me from that alone, though, I wouldn't come off well
shobogan
Connections to fictional characters vary so much that it's really a fool's errand
shobogan
(Which I deeply, deeply wish more people in current fandom could grasp)
Thene
YUP. and i mean, if you've really long-term glommed on to someone it's prolly bc they're continuing to give you something important
tea’s gone cold
mm, it's only Cloud and Four out of those I deeply long-term glom to. Vriska's mostly left my head now.
tea’s gone cold
I think, since characters can't change and people do, they have to have some capacity for reinterpretation depending on your current phase of life. My feelings about Cloud and what's interesting about him have changed a lot on my journey from being much younger than him than older than him
Thene
yesssss. a few weeks back i was talking to a friend abt that, when u pass the character's age or alternatively, for long canons, when you catch up to a later canon instalment, and she said 'well i'm mostly in rpf fandoms so that's never happened to me' and this BLEW MY MIND. CHARACTERS IN RPF FANDOMS AGE AT THE SAME RATE AS YOU DO. HOW.
Thene
but while characters cant change, one finds new levels on which to relate to them