Keep Your Dream Alive

Dear Prime Time Player,

This is the exchange I've been waiting for all my life! Er, or, well, at least since some of my fandoms got ruled too big for Yuletide. :-) So let me start by saying a very enthusiastic thank you for writing for me! I think a tailor-made story is the very best kind of gift to receive, and I'm pretty easy to please so I hope this will be as much fun for you to write as it will be for me to read!

I'm going to provide a lot of detail in this letter because I believe it's better to give too much information than too little, but Optional Details are OF COURSE optional, so go where your muse leads you. I'm a fan of lots of genres, subgenres and/or 'ships in most of my fandoms so I can guarantee I'll be happy with pretty much anything you choose to write for me!

( General Likes and Dislikes )

Now for the fandoms!

( Babylon 5 )

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( Criminal Minds )

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( Doctor Who (Big Finish) )

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That's it! I hope is helps. The most important thing, though, is I want you to have fun writing this so if I gave too much detail and it's overwhelming, if there's anything you don't want to include, don't. :-) Don't like a 'ship I suggested? Pick another one or none at all. I'm SO okay with that! You are writing a fic especially for me and I will love you for it no matter how closely it does or doesn't adhere to anything in this post. So thank you again SO much for doing this for me and I can't wait to see the result!

Been reeling for the past couple of days at the news of Lis Sladen's untimely demise. It still doesn't seem real, especially so soon after losing Nick Courtney. As I said to a friend, the Doctor lost his two best friends this year. :-( And we as fans lost the two people who had always been there to tie the different eras of the show together and remind us that yes, this really is the same wonderful journey that we boarded one or two or ten Doctors ago. No one will ever be able to take their place. :-(

God bless you, Nick and Lis. May the next part of your journey, wherever it leads you, be as wonderful as if not moreso than the adventures you made us believe in. :-(

If you don't like River Song, you must either a) be a disgruntled Doctor/Rose 'shipper, or b) hate strong female characters.

Um, NO. Neither of the above, thankyouverymuch. My list of awesome female characters I adore is probably longer than your arm (a good chunk of it just from Doctor Who), and FWIW, while it really shouldn't matter to the conversation, I don't like Rose any more than I like River.

So, yeah, I'm admitting it. Out loud. In public. I don't like River Song. I dislike her less this season than last season, granted, but I still find her frequently smug (*gasp* yes, I used that word) and I strongly dislike her tendency to rub their shared/to-be-shared history in the Doctor's face. I love Steven Moffat beyond belief (after that finale, I would happily marry him if he weren't already married ;-) ), but when he created River, I think he must've said to himself, "I know, I'm going to create a character who's half Romana and half Benny Summerfield." But she's not Romana, and she's not Benny, and frankly I would rather have one or both of them than more of River right now. :-(

So why do I dislike River Song? ( spoilers for pretty much her entire arc on the show thus far, just in case )

So in conclusion: I don't like River Song. This does not make me a misogynistic Barbie!shipper. There are other things that might, I don't know: I'm still very much in the process of examining/discovering my privilege and my prejudices and probably always will be. :-\

As for why other people don't like her? That I can't answer. But you know what? I bet a lot of them--even the Doctor/Rose 'shippers--would have answers that are a lot more complicated and a lot closer to mine than the oversimplification fandom wants to slap on them. :-P

To my friends (and other people) that do love her: considering how big a presence I suspect she's going to continue to be in Moffat's Who, not only do I not begrudge you that, but frankly I envy you. *grin* With luck, maybe at some point in the future I'll be able to enthusiastically say a River Song episode was awesome because of her, not in spite of her. But in the meantime? All I ask from fandom as a whole is this: stop assuming that people who like or dislike a particular character that you feel differently about must have certain traits. It's a surefire way to make them a lot LESS likely to come around to your way of thinking. :-P (And you know what? That doesn't just go for River, but for characters like Rose and Martha and even Adric too, K???)