Path: news.enteract.com!not-for-mail From: "Douglas B. Killings" Newsgroups: alt.drwho.creative Subject: Re: Adric, the Third Doctor, and "Fannish Gestalts" Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000 08:45:42 -0500 Organization: EnterAct Corp. Lines: 161 Message-ID: <39BA3F06.4A0F296@EnterAct.COM> References: <8pc840$ush$1@slb0.atl.mindspring.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207-229-142-139.d.enteract.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.enteract.com 968507261 48777 207.229.142.139 (9 Sep 2000 13:47:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@enteract.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Sep 2000 13:47:41 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en,ja,zh-CN,zh-TW,zh Xref: news.enteract.com alt.drwho.creative:4904 That Certain Third Doctor Fan wrote: > Douglas Killings' defense of Adric can be found at this URL: > http://www.enteract.com/~detroyes/teotp/defense.htm Thank you for commenting! > Killings' assessment for liking Adric runs along these lines: "Adric > felt and acted like a real, living, 16-year-old to me. I never knew > Sarah-Jane Smith or Leela or Romana or the Brigadier or any of those > people as anything other than reasonably interesting fictional > characters." > > I'm ready to accept this statement at face value. I'm sure it's true > *for Douglas Killings.* That doesn't make it true for everybody. Of course not; I never said it did, and neither do I expect others to have had the same reaction as I had. The point I was trying to make was that I _did_ have this reaction, idiosyncratic as it was, and that by having this reaction and thinking this way I somehow managed to put myself at odds with general fandom. > The > fact is, I identify very strongly with Sarah Jane Smith as a person, > (because I was exactly her age when I saw her for the first time, in > "Robot") and Adric is as foreign to me as can be. That's why I > neither like nor dislike Adric. I don't have enough in common with > him to have any strong opinion. Which is probably true of just about every fan and their favorite characters. Don't get me wrong, I _liked_ Sarah-Jane and Leela, etc.; but at the time they weren't the sort of characters I could identify with. Had I entered the series older and presumably more wizened, that might not have been the case (BTW, by the time I first saw Full Circle I had already been watching DW for some six or seven years, dating back to the first Jon Pertwee PBS package in the mid '70's). Also BTW, this may come as a shock to some people, but Adric is NOT my favorite companion, and neither is Davison my favorite Doctor. In terms of favorites, I'd have to say the old Jamie-2Doc combo is my all time favorite, followed closely by Brig-3Doc (Hmm... I wonder if anything can be read into the fact that a) most of my favorite DW characters are male and b) I am not gay...) > You know, there are some times when pots just should not point out the > color flaws of kettles. I'd really like to see a fannish person who > is not "slightly arrogant, a little whiny, and more than just a little > argumentative." We're all tuned in to some big dream that was ignited > in each of us by Doctor Who (or Blake's Seven, or Star Trek, or Black > Adder, or Buffy, etc.), and each of us is clinging hard to that little > bit of dream. And that intense, private vision creates a huge > temptation to defend turf, to think our particular dream is better > than anybody else's dream, to elicit sympathy for our take on things > in the wide world of fandom. No argument here. [snip] > My point in all of this is that the question of whether or not a > character is any good is not a matter of who is like the character and > who is not. Nor is it a question of being whiny and argumentative. > It's a question of how much time a person is willing to put into the > task of creating a canon of stories that draws upon the original > character, fleshes him out, and presents him to the reader according > to the dream and the vision of the writer. > > In short, if you diligently write interesting stories about Adric, > you'll draw readers who will like Adric more than they used to. > You'll get their attention. You can change their minds about Adric. > But if you diagnose that people don't like Adric because there is > something wrong with *them,* you aren't doing Adric any favors, and > you put yourself under a dramatic irony that is too obvious to even > mention out loud. Up until this point I had no real arguments with you and agreed pretty much with everything you'd mentioned. But here's where I think we diverge. (REALITY CHECK: Remember, these are all just my opinions; if you have a different viewpoint on this, by all means step into the fray). The point of my essay was not directed toward writing or those who read fan fiction, it was directed at fandom in general, and to an attitude DW fandom in particular has toward people who have different viewpoints. Adric, I think, is one example of a larger problem, that of a general intolerance sometimes expressed toward fans with certain viewpoints. I have no problem with people disliking Adric or "think there is something wrong with *them*"; hell, I even understand why many fans do not like him (note that in the essay, I even acknowledge the character's many faults). What I DO have a problem with is the tendancy to express open hostility toward people who happen to differ in preferences from the general fan ideal, and that is really a different issue entirely. I have been in fandom now for about 20 years. I have been active not only in Doctor Who fandom, but Anime, Blake's 7, and general lit fandom as well. I also have a number of friends who are active in other realms like Star Trek and Babylon 5, gaming, comics, Gothic, etc. In none of these groups have I seen the same kind of intolerance and close-mindedness that Doctor Who fandom frequently indulges in. Going back to Adric as an example, were he a character from some other series (Star Trek, Babylon 5, whatever), within that fandom the fact that there existed fans who liked him would be treated as nothing unusual, _even by the fans who disagreed with that assessment_. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for DW, as the examples in the essay showed. In the main, much of my "defense" was really an attempt to point out how silly and petty much of this is. Fans are fans; it shouldn't matter what views we hold, only that we bring an enthusiasm and love of our subject matter to the table. Yet, for some reason, it does matter to a large number of people (notice that in my discussion of fandom I frequently used the term "we", meaning I consciously put myself in that same group of people -- and yes, I admit that sometimes I have been as guilty as the next guy of some of the attitudes of which I speak). And no, before anyone asks (I'm not reading this into your response, Jerri; I just want to head off the objection I know I can hear coming from those out there), I am not speaking out against the ordinary pro/con debates that permeate fandom. Good natured discussion is not at issue here. It's when that good natured discussion turns to ridicule, derision or worse that I am objecting to. > A lot of the perception of Doctor Who lies in our hands. We can guide > that perception any way we like, provided we keep writing genuine > fiction: not parodies, satires, poems, or drabbles, but genuine > fiction. Stories are the heart and soul of Doctor Who. Parodies, > satires, poems, and drabbles all have their place. But the > preserving, repairing, and continuation of Doctor Who rests upon the > ongoing adventures that are created. Period.. Pick any character you > want, and start writing your vision and your dream. Bring that > character to life in the way that you see him or her, and you're > already off to a good start at changing reader perceptions. Already working on it, and yes I saw a long time ago that the only way to rehabilitate Adric was to start writing such stories. That, in a way, is what my Phoenix series is about. Also, believe it or not, TDF (which, although in the main primarily a comedy, has also had a number of fairly serious, non-comedic moments -- cf. "Nocturnal Interlude"). And slowly, I think the perceptions are turning around for the character. The vehement anti-Adric bias feels less now than it did even five or six years ago. But it's still there, and if some of the email I've received on the essay are any indication, it's still strong in some quarters. Again, I want to emphasize, I have no objections to people disagreeing with me or to open discussion in general. I don't look at it as a "us vs. them" kind of thing. Rather, what I was trying to do with the essay was to get people to think, that by pointing out how stupid this whole thing really is I could prompt them to rise above their intolerances _no matter what they were_. We as a group don't need it. -- Douglas B. Killings, DeTroyes@EnterAct.Com Fanfiction Website: http://www.enteract.com/~detroyes/teotp/teotp.html "Any fool can walk on water if the world is cold enough." Al Gore is a risky scheme. Vote Bush-Cheney 2000.