Hey, this might be a stupid question, so apologies in advance. I recently saw your post about "can everyone find the word yes". I've read the book and am familiar with the show, but who is D&D? Additionally, the person who reblogged it tagged it as "rape cw". Can you guys say a little more about that? Thanks!
David Benioff and Dan "DB" Weiss, the writers, producers, and creators of game of thrones. (they are the credited writers for Breaker of Chains so we're gonna give them full credit for this writing choice)
People tag things “tw”, which stands for trigger warning, or 'cw" content warning - when a post contains sensitive and/or triggering content that can be harmful to some readers.
hey!!! very curious about the 'steven moffats writing' thingy you just reblogged--- can you tell me more about that viewpoint?
Ooooooh gosh you just opened a can of worms.
(If you like Steven Moffat you should probably skip this.)
(the blog stfu-moffat is also a really good source of information for why Steven Moffat is kind of a fucktruck.)
Okay, so, to start: Do I think Steven Moffat is a bad writer?
Not really. I mean, I don't think it's a super-awesome good writer either, but I don't think he's a bad writer. I think he has some good ideas (IIRC the Weeping Angels and the Vashta Nerada were his brainchild) and he sort of, to an extent, gets the way certain people think, which is great.
But he is HIGHLY problematic and these problematic aspects of his writing leak into even good episodes of things and fuck things up.
I think Steven Moffat is a fairly good show writer, but a shit showrunner. Here's why:
He is unapologetically sexist, while at the same time claiming not to be sexist and refusing to listen to why he is sexist, plainly believing that you are only a sexist if you actually believe that women should stay home and never work and pop out kids on demand and have dinner waiting for you when you get home from your Big Strong Man job and that they should never, ever vote. As anyone reading my blog knows, that is NOT the only form a sexist takes, and it's not even the most destructive form a sexist takes.
He didn't want to hire Karen Gillian on as Amy until he saw that she was hot. While I'm not slamming on Catherine Tate, Donna Noble wasn't hot (although she is conventionally attractive), and yet she did a stellar job. He literally ties a woman's worth to how attractive she is.
He claimed that asexuality is "boring" and thus Sherlock Holmes could never be asexual.
He has Sherlock refer to himself as a "high-functioning sociopath" while giving him some autistic or Aspergers-like traits (and in fact has John mention his "Asperger's" within the canon), which is ableistic as all hell and destructive to actual autistic people.
Almost all female characters he's ever written have their agency taken away from them in some way. This applies to both Sherlock and Doctor Who.
SPOILERS: in the latest episode of Sherlock he mocked both slash fans and actual gay people at the very same time by having Anderson mock the slash fan to her face about why her theory was ridiculous; because, obviously, queer people are ridiculous and slash fans who like to write about queer people are ridiculous. END SPOILERS.
He had the Doctor not tell Amy that he thought she'd been kidnapped and was pregnant. In WHOSE WORLD is it okay to hide VITAL INFORMATION about someone's life and body from them like that?
All of the women in his Doctor Who narrative have to be special in some way -- River Song is the Doctor's Wife, Amy is the Girl With The Crack In Her Wall, Clara is The Girl He's Met Like Twenty Times Before. You learn almost nothing about their lives outside of their time with the Doctor. I was honestly surprised to discover that Clara even had a family! Compare this to Rose (whose boyfriend and mother we meet right from the get-go) and Martha (who had a promising career lined up and whose family are an important part of the narrative) and Donna (whose grandfather actually became a companion at one point! and whose overbearing mother shed light on why Donna was the way she was). Compare this to one-off companions like Astrid, and Morvin and Foon, from Voyage of the Damned: We still get backstory for them, we still get information about them. Bits of their lives come through the screen because they're people even if they're side-characters. I don't think I've cried harder over Doctor Who than when Foon demands that the Doctor tell her how she's supposed to go on without Morvin, her husband, who has just died.
He believes that women are needy and are out there all hunting for husbands (what are lesbians? What are aromantics? What are women who for whatever reason don't want to be in a relationship? Mythical, apparently), without ever acknowledging the patriarchal foundations for why so many women are "needy" and "looking for husbands".
He's a biphobic asshole who very literally told bisexual people that he's not interested in representing them because they're busy, "having too much fun." (Mark Gatiss is not much better in this respect, just so everyone knows.)
He's stated that he shouldn't have to listen to constructive criticism and thinks the concept is stupid. As a former professional writer myself, I'm going to go on the record and state that this is just about the dumbest tack any writer can take. I understand at a fandom level, not wanting criticism of your work -- you're not getting paid for this, you have a labor of love and you only want to hear good things about it. I don't particularly agree with this point, but I accept it for what it is and I abide by people's wishes for criticism. But a professional writer is getting paid for their work, it is on display to everyone. Media informs. People who churn out media which informs -- which is every kind of media, including fanfiction -- need to be open to criticism, because they're literally forming people's worldviews. It's not just entertainment. Also you will never get better, ever, if you don't listen to criticism. That's the point of concrit: to polish your diamond in the rough to something you could proudly wear on your finger.
He takes concepts that could be tackled, and SHOULD be tackled, at a societal level -- things like the way the world views sex workers, women's bodily autonomy, sexuality, and PTSD -- and completely ignores them in favor of whatever new plot twist he's dreamed up that weak. Scandal in Belgravia could have been amazing for sex workers and dominatrices everywhere (and make no mistake, while some dominatrices are sex workers, and some sex workers are dominatrices, you shouldn't conflate the two), but instead we had an out lesbian falling in love with allegedly-hetero white male genius asshole. Amy Pond's lack of bodily autonomy in the arc where she was actually a ganger and her child was taken from her without her consent was something that should have been addressed by the narrative, but because it's a family-friendly show they glossed over it; really, it's something they shouldn't have touched upon without leaving themselves a method to address it, because people don't generally just go about their lives after suffering so traumatic a violation. They had an opportunity to touch upon what being queer is and isn't with Sherlock, but instead they just make gay jokes about John and Sherlock being mistaken for a couple. And PTSD, good lord, he's had ample opportunity to address that throughout all of his works and has never bothered, outside mentioning that John has it at the beginning of A Study in Pink. Most of the companions are probably suffering from some form of PTSD with what Moffat's put them through, but instead they skip off to their next adventure. What?
Moffat takes the Doctor, a man who says things like, "I think you're all giants," to humanity, who has once said, "Nine hundred years in all of time and space, and I've never met anyone who wasn't important." And then he has that selfsame man work with Richard Nixon, one of the most reviled, conservative, anti-person, pro-Establishment presidents the United States has ever had. Willingly and enthusiastically.
He, like a great many content producers out there, suffers from what seems to be subconscious racism. There is only one recurring black character on Sherlock -- Sally Donovan -- and she is routinely categorized as a bitch just because she mistrusts (validly, I might add) Sherlock Holmes. London is known worldwide for how multicultural and varied it is, and yet in my rewatch of Series One and Two of Sherlock this last week my mother and I spotted exactly ONE person of color in the background, outside of The Blind Banker (also known as The Really Racist Episode). All of the background scenes in the other five episodes had only white people in them, and white people even dominated the background characters in the Chinatown scene in The Blind Banker. Russel T. Davies established within the Who!Verse that people of color -- of ALL colors -- exist and are real characters with real lives and personalities, but when Moffat took over as showrunner the cast became mysteriously all-white, with people of color only showing up when it was relevant to the plot. They usually wind up being pigeonholed into some kind of racial caricature, as well.
Women within his narrative exist almost exclusively to serve the plot or character development of the heterosexual, white, (seemingly) straight male lead character: Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, Molly Hooper, and Sally Donovan are all there to further some part of Sherlock's plot (Mrs. Hudson, to house Sherlock; Irene, to sexualize Sherlock; Molly, to save Sherlock; Sally, to condemn Sherlock), not because they are characters with backstories and life experiences. Mrs. Hudson's first name is never even revealed!
When a well-respected, famous actress called for the next Doctor to be a woman, because it's been established in-canon that regenerations don't always adhere to previously-established genders, Moffat said that maybe he'd cast a man in the role of the Queen. Because Moffat is a huge dick.
SPOILERS: He and Gatiss apparently forgot the main reason Sherlock had to fake his death in the first place, instead making it all about John having to believe that Sherlock was dead and kind of glossing over the reasons for it, considering Mycroft took out the assassins set up to kill John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. Apparently neither of them recalls the pertinent details of their own canon? END SPOILERS.
I think I've said enough on this topic. Obviously, Moffat is problematic and his writing has a lot of potential, but between the problematic aspects overwhelming it and his love of intricate plots that fall to pieces upon scrutiny (seriously, google "Moffat plot holes" and prepare to have to sift through hours upon hours of him contradicting his own previously-established canon), I just really feel like he should retire early somewhere and let someone who's willing to listen to oppressed minorities (and who can take goddamn criticism) take charge.
was it really bad??? :( to be honest w/ you i havent even pretended to care about this show lately. the last ep i saw was the one where cas fucked the girl and got stabbed... and the cadence of that epi was just so awful i couldn't stomach any more : :( :( o ;9torglg
spoilers ahead
It was bad writing. Lots of people died. We find out the truth about Ezekiel, which absolutely no one is surprised about. there’s a super-awkward scene where cas talks about banging the reaper. One major character allegedly dies. Cas gets a grace transplant, Sam leaves the bunker, Dean cries a lot.
wawawwwawwait . wait. theyre doing mocking in 2 sections????? SINCE WHEN DID THIS BECOME A THING AMONG THE MOVIE PPL!??!?! T_T
Um, they announced it a few months ago. I think it's a good choice to separate the movie in 2 parts, because the whole story of Mockingjay is really complex and just wouldn't fit just into one movie.
