Frizzle Frazzle, Razzle DazzleThe New Steven Moffat Hate:
Now, I’m not really on either side here, because I can’t give a shit either way. But I really want to know:
If you hate Steven Moffat so much, if you hate what he does, what he writes, why are you so enraptured with the things he makes?
It just seems to me that if you hated him so much, you’d boycott all of his Doctor Who episodes, all of Sherlock. You’d not watch any of it. If he’s such a jerk and such a bad writer, why do people continue to flock to the things he’s done?
I’m really honestly curious here, because I see people reblogging tons of Sherlock gifs and then the next post is like, “OH MY GOD STEVEN MOFFAT IS AN ASSHOLE.” Like, I get that the things he says are not exactly in line with many people’s beliefs, etc. (And I also know that DW and Sherlock have more writers than just him, but for the sake of argument, etc).
But for many people in these fandoms, it seems that they can’t separate the two of them, his beliefs and his writing. The things he says and the worlds he creates, etc.
So can somebody explain to me how it works? Why don’t you swear off his shows altogether if you dislike him so much? The whole “he should hand it over to somebody who isn’t a jerk” doesn’t really work because that’s not how contracts and networks and television and business work, so… just… somebody explain to me?My issue with him is not that he’s a “troll” or a mindfucker, as others call him. It’s that he’s brilliant with what he does, but his storytelling is so limited in its style. He loves going out of chronological order. He loves waiting for the other shoe to drop as a dramatic device, but the device often fulfills a prophecy that we have already witnessed/experienced, and so the hype is actually very anticlimactic. He loves using the same kind of characters: the awkward, intellectual and slightly immature hero; the female BAMF who is highly sexualized. While these things work brilliantly, when people approach him and say, “Hey, I think this portrayal of Amy Pond (in example) is sexist because you’ve reduced her character to her body’s ability to have children” he doesn’t take constructive criticism well. He tends to brush off valid criticisms. More importantly, it makes his work tiresome at times. As for Sherlock recently, I’m irritated that he’s seemingly shifted from seeing Sherlock as asexual to sexually repressed in a way that denies asexuality.
tl;dr I am irritated that he can take such brilliant characters and themes and use them so cleverly but that the themes and beliefs represented in his fictional worlds tend to represent his real-life views rather than necessarily doing what would make the character most interesting or well-portrayed and complex. Denying different types of feminine badassery or queerness as means of creating complex and compelling characters and stories shows not only the privilege that he has in being able to pooh-pooh these alternatives as “uninteresting” or “boring”, but is his loss in the end when it comes to having a great story.
This is everything I have wanted to say about Moffat but not possessed the ability to put into words.
