Having actually gotten a bit of work done today...

[ameretrifle]

Okay, I admit, I choose the DW crossovers I write based on the ability they give me to screw Ten over. In my defense, someone's got to. Most of the other fangirls seem content just to screw him

Comments

[ameretrifle]

Nah, I doubt it, it's pretty obscure. Limits the audience, but hey. I'm happy to be getting any headway on anything whatsoever at the moment.

And as to Ten, yeah, it's occured to me that his being such a stereotypical TV-esque teenager (and emo to boot) is probably the problem I've had with him all along. Everything else he does-- the pettiness, the god complex-- is a result of that. I'm actually rather annoyed with myself for not recognising it sooner. One of the first things I can remember is watching one of those idiots wander across the screen, oblivious to everything but themselves and leaving chaos in their wake, and thinking, I will never be like that.

Not to mention, the facts that I kept linking him in my head with a Green Day album about (three guesses) spoiled adolescents; adored that video that paired him with the song about what happens when you don't grow the hell up; kept linking to an article about the dangers of implicitly endorsing self-justified adolescent morality; and have rarely if ever been able to refer to him with a pronoun other than "boy"-- those should've been clues. *rolls eyes* I really was fairly clever at one time. Honestly. ;)

And that explains why it's always worried me that people who aren't under eighteen don't see through it. This sort of thinking is the sort you should avoid, or at the very least outgrow, and more and more you see pop culture trying to extend it as long as they can: 'high school lasts forever', doesn't it? Torchwood might as well be set in the basement of the local high school; I can't think of a single thing in the characterization you'd have to change. And Ten-- Ten is the Center of the Universe, like any stereotypical teenager ought to be. No one else matters. He can punish others in any damn way he pleases, at this point, and it's all justified by the weight of his ineffable pain. It's pure adolescent psychology, and I swear to God it's dangerous as hell.

People die when other people don't stop thinking this way. That's why I never was able to let it go.

And I also think that's why I've always felt misgivings when I've seen Ten described as a "geek" or a "nerd" or a "dork". It's never seemed quite right to me, even if I intellectually had to admit that enthusiastic techno-babble was perfectly geeky. But there isn't a geek, or a nerd, or a dork, not anywhere, who isn't praying for high school to end. For adolescent cruelty to be replaced by sensible adulthood.

If RTD has his way, we'll be trapped in high school forever.

[nina_ds]

Yeah, his immaturity is a MAJOR part of why I don't like him at all. Everything is about HIM, and not in the tongue-in-cheek way Nine would say. And from what I remember about the earlier Doctors, if they did have that attitude, they were often punctured by their companions, rather than worshipped by them.

Another description I've used about Ten is that he's like a little kid pulling the wings off flies. Because he can. There's something sociopathic about him.

People die when other people don't stop thinking this way. That's why I never was able to let it go.

Exactly. They're not recognizing how dangerous/authoritarian/obsessive he is. They're like the cheering crowds that lift the dictator and enable his excesses.

I think the high-school geek issue brings up a really pertinent comparison. Ten is like the dark fantasy of the geek/nerd who gets the popularity of the jock - but turns out to behave in exactly the same way as the obnoxious, self-centered, smarmy jock. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

[ameretrifle]

Exactly. There's a blind hero-worship, on the part of the characters, writers, and fans, and it's disturbing and demeaning. Not to mention entirely new. People used to leave his ass and take the dog. Wouldn't it be brilliant to see somebody dump Ten?

For the life of me, I don't know how everyone else doesn't see it. It's always "cute", or due to some terrible, terrible angst, and that doesn't justify a damn thing. And one of the things that bothered me about JE... was how much work they had to put into crafting that situation. Where he could do that and be blameless for it. It's insidious. I keep coming back and back and back to an essay I read about Ender's Game, of all things; the point was that Card carefully shaped a situation where a person could kill a whole race and be blameless for it. Intention's all that matters; he's still a good person, even if you couldn't tell from his actions, because he is. You can tell because he feels bad about the perfectly justified things he's done. I'm paraphrasing this badly, it's pretty late at night, but every paragraph or so, I think, Oh yeah, I've seen this one before.

For instance, the fact that the guy keeps mentioning he wishes he'd had the book in seventh grade, because the revenge fantasy it portrays would've been almost as good as a nuclear bomb that would've wiped the school off the map. I swear it's uncanny.

I will try to explain what I've meant by any of this probably sometime tomorrow. ^^;