'I CAN SEE MY VOICE!!!' by Kara
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 10:05 AM

The warm and cold fronts that are both sides of the Doctor Who fandom have yet to create a massive storm yet, but there have been a few ground strikes. It's fascinating to watch. I don't think I've ever truly hated a season/series finale of anything. I find it hard to downright hate something, mainly because I can't bring myself to resent something that I don't think the writers did 'right.'

Granted, I didn't like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but that's something else entirely. The books were just getting a bit lame.

I do indeed tend to get bent up from a literary/constructive standpoint when I feel like a writer really missed the boat on something good, but I don't consider them wrong for doing it, and I'm not going to sit about saying I could have done better unless I'm trying deliberately to demean them (because while I feel confident enough to have my own opinions, I don't feel qualified enough to offer them as Actual Criticism).

So I always find it very hard to say that I liked something while not liking individual bits of it, because fandom doesn't seem to work that way anymore. You either Like or you Hate, and if there's something you dislike, that's Hate and therefore unforgivable betrayal.

Fortunately for you all, I don't feel like spoiling the finale for you.

Two points extend from this. One is that I liked the Doctor Who finale while being vaguely unthrilled about some of the individual things within it. And I like to think that's okay.

The other point being the whole thing of feeling qualified to critique the work of others. I don't. Not for real. I feel qualified enough to snark because I am a snark. That's different. I may know literary theory and all that jazz, and I may have been doing this crap for seven years, but that doesn't mean I have any right to tell anyone with any level of seriousness that they should do something this way or that way. Beyond proofreading, I have no desire to tell someone that no, their writing is all wrong. I can't even get myself to think that far when asked. I'm too busy wondering if my writing is all wrong.

Get Co-Writer to do it. Seriously. Check out his writing on this page. He may not have taken fifty college lit classes, but I think talent-wise he's a lot more qualified.

If you have been, yes!