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Torchwood, mostly
Feb. 14th, 2008 05:17 pmMy Torchwood love is growing with every episode, it seems. After a slightly weak start, I've really been enjoying the character development all round in S2.
My son is playing a male version of "I Will Survive" which seems wrong on so many levels. I've been reading a literary study of fanfic (something of a rarity) by Sheenagh Pugh, and she takes a long look at the slash genre in general, particularly the interesting fact that the overwhelming majority of slash writers are female. Apparently there are whole mags dedicated to anime slash in Japan - didn't know that. It's huge. Also, she claims Japanese slashers tend to invent OCs when they exhaust canon, whereas Western ones are more likely to explore RPF, which I find squicky.
I am gobsmacked by the complexity of the fanfic universe, its customs, etiquette, vocabulary and argot - and most of all by the way I jumped into it just over a year ago completely ignorant of all those things, and yet survived. Sheenagh Pugh hardly mentions DW because she's mainly interested in female ficcers - and before you jump on me, her book was published in 2004 and on the first page she makes the now ironic statement that "DW fiction is the exception in fandom, being almost exclusively a male preserve." She teaches creative writing in Cardiff, so she might revise that statement now.
But what really comes over to me is how precisely, and I suspect deliberately, RTD panders to fanfic writers by giving them exactly the material to make them foam at the mouth. Back in 2005 I hadn't even heard of slash, but I can see now that Jack/Doctor screams it from the outset. I wonder if he ever reads the stuff and marvels at the Hydra-headed monster he's created.
( Here be spoilers )
My son is playing a male version of "I Will Survive" which seems wrong on so many levels. I've been reading a literary study of fanfic (something of a rarity) by Sheenagh Pugh, and she takes a long look at the slash genre in general, particularly the interesting fact that the overwhelming majority of slash writers are female. Apparently there are whole mags dedicated to anime slash in Japan - didn't know that. It's huge. Also, she claims Japanese slashers tend to invent OCs when they exhaust canon, whereas Western ones are more likely to explore RPF, which I find squicky.
I am gobsmacked by the complexity of the fanfic universe, its customs, etiquette, vocabulary and argot - and most of all by the way I jumped into it just over a year ago completely ignorant of all those things, and yet survived. Sheenagh Pugh hardly mentions DW because she's mainly interested in female ficcers - and before you jump on me, her book was published in 2004 and on the first page she makes the now ironic statement that "DW fiction is the exception in fandom, being almost exclusively a male preserve." She teaches creative writing in Cardiff, so she might revise that statement now.
But what really comes over to me is how precisely, and I suspect deliberately, RTD panders to fanfic writers by giving them exactly the material to make them foam at the mouth. Back in 2005 I hadn't even heard of slash, but I can see now that Jack/Doctor screams it from the outset. I wonder if he ever reads the stuff and marvels at the Hydra-headed monster he's created.
