Things I Don't Get: Smallville, Doctor Who
LJ isn't sending out most of my comments.
*sigh*
So, I'm currently at a place where most of fandom is... confusing me. In the sense that I very much disagree with some of the conclusions that are drawn by the most vocal parts of the fandoms I'm in and can't even see where they're pulling their feelings from. I'm not sure if that's to do more with fandom or more to do with not letting myself be talked into opinions that I don't share anymore.
I don't understand all the talk of 'lightswitching' in the Smallville fandom, as people seem to use it every time that a character gets some development that they don't like. I realize that the word itself comes from a speech of Lex's, about how becoming evil is a journey, not a lightswitch. I think that they've actually done a fairly good job with that on most fronts. Some people seem to be confusing 'journey' with 'uninterrupted gradual change', which isn't true to life or most fiction. People have stops and starts in their growth, that's natural. It's natural to do something and then backtrack and go back to familiar ground. It doesn't mean that the characters are being lightswitched, it means that the creators are actually doing a decent job of making their characters more like people.
As for Lois in particular, I never felt her character was in the least bit forced into journalism. Yes, the falling barn door is kinda silly, but so was the tossed tractor that inspired Perry White to get back into 'real' journalism in Perry. When I was watching, it felt like a clear call-back to that moment. That both Lois and Perry got (back) into journalism because of something involving Clark's powers was pretty neat to me.
And, yes, Lois is written more lightly than the rest of the characters. That's a huge part of why I love her character -- she brings joy to Smallville, punctures the angst. Something that will be pretty useful when she's married to the world's most powerful and most looked-up-to superhero. Superman needs... has always needed... someone who treats him on the human level (even if she doesn't know it). For the most part, for the last 65+ years, that's what Lois has been.
As for Lois' remarks along the line of "I'd die before doing journalism", I really felt that they were showing how her journey is so much like Clark and Lex's journeys -- which have also been full of protests and attempts to be anything but what they'll end up being (and you can put Lana in that category, too, as she fought the 'princess' label for many years before starting to embrace it this year). The more she protested, the more like the 'Big Three' she was.
So, yeah. I can understand wanting the actual story to be written better (because it could have been), but it didn't feel out of character or like a lightswitch -- it was Lois finally chasing after a story she'd picked herself, doing all the work with no encouragement from the people around her, and getting it published (again, with no help from her family and friends). Of course, that'll feel different than writing an opinion piece for a school newspaper that your cousin runs (and even back in Facade, Lois was clearly surprised and taken back by how much she enjoyed the finished article). It took all of the pieces coming together for Lois to realize that this is what she wanted. Made perfect sense to me while I was watching the episode, and it still does.
And speaking of things that I don't understand, the idea that Ten/Rose is more co-dependent than Nine/Rose baffles me on so many levels. Yes, she argues with him less -- but that's because they understand each other better, not because she's 'giving in' to him. They have fun together, he respects her opinions, she understands his. They don't need to fight about all the things she fought about with Nine because they've already worked those things out. Instead, they just tell each other what they're planning to do, and respect each other enough to respect each other's choices. No more emotional manipulation, as Nine did at the end of World War Three. No more trying to make him jealous, as Rose did with Jack.
Overall, I find Ten/Rose to be an exceedingly healthy relationship -- yes, it's intense and yes, it involves angst, but they respect each other as people and they have such a strong friendship. They trust each other and know each other's strengths and weaknesses. It's nice. And, much like any pair of people in a relationship, their opinions have started to overlap more than they used to. Ten starts to understand the important of the domestic side of things, while Rose gets a handle on the big picture. They've given each other a new perspective on life, and it goes both ways.