alexwearspants

I'm feeling very restless but too headachey to do anything about it. I resent this a great deal. Also bought a bag of almonds tonight with the express intention of sitting down and eating it a lot, but had to give up after only a few. Almonds, I will give you this, you are a very filling nut.

Also watched SJA, which was delightful! It has been some time since I watched SJA, for reasons which I shall not go into, and I am so glad I got to see these two particular episodes. I found out a while ago that many respectable and awesome people do not in fact watch SJA, which is sad and slightly shocking, as they do not have my reasons, merely the Fear Of Spinoff. At the time I wrote a whole thing about why they should which essentially boiled down to:

- It has Sarah-Jane goddamned Smith.
- It has K9.
- It has the motherfucking Brig.
- It has great character chemistry, continuity and dialogue.
- Speaking of continuity it handles Classic References supremely well, see:
a) That time SJ randomly referenced Peladon in casual conversation in a way that was relevant without alienating (please take this on board, New Who. Mythos can be both created and reinforcing Classic w/out having to take a dip in the Exposition Ocean. Check also: 'I Have A History That Is More Than Just Showing You My Faces In Order'.)
b) In a move very similar to Dalek, SJ, who is consistently 'no we don't use guns, we never involve the military, this is not our way' aaaalll S1, flipping the fuck out upon meeting the Sontarans and calling up UNIT. For people who've never seen Classic you can just go 'ooohhhhh these are bad bad guys'. For those who have? The part where she was horrifically tortured by a Sontaran makes the instinctive terror and lack of mercy kinda understandable.
- Did I mention it has the motherfucking Brig?
- It has Ten. (This is not so much of interest to me but you know. To others I guess?)
- And now it has Eleven and Jo. Fffffffffffffffffffffffff yes.


Now I want someone to rant with. *sadfaces about*


( SJA - 'Death of the Doctor' Spoilers. And boy did they ever get long and rambly. )


So also my headache is not hugely better and I wanted to/still want to do some writing but can't because of restless energy and achey pains, but am going with it so whatever. Also I really wish I had a turntable. I want to play that vinyl of Three singing lullabies that I have now. I want it so hard.

Perhaps some Three, and then sleep.



Also I have been very shoddy at answering comments lately (read: always.) I will try to get on that (read: most likely will fail.)

Hello Internet! How are you? I am well. On the creative front things have been fairly stop-start. I managed to get fic finished, which is now doing the rounds in beta hell and has no title. Long-fic is going nowhere, which is sadfaced, and I have three videos in the works. Cheetah is viable but increasingly problematic, Shalka is grit-your-teeth-and-work-through-it-you're-never-going-find-any-more-animation-than-this and Three is ... at the unfortunate stage of both being the easiest to complete and the one that needs the complete overhaul. So I'll probably poke at that next.

And I've been sketching, a little, and considering icons, but nothing's really coming of that. So we'll see how it all goes.


Also, I'm afraid I have a confession to make.

Internet, I do not like Cumberpatch!Master very much. Actually, it would be fair to say I loathe Cumberpatch!Master. It has gotten to the point that when I see Cumberpatch!Master mentioned I want to scream and possibly do something violent to the person espousing his virtues. There are instances where this is not fair. Actually, in every instance this is not fair, because violence is not cool. But there are cases where people are just musing (which is awesome) and cases where people are doing more (which makes my blood boil.) And I have now seen enough of the latter that my hatred spills over into the former, so Internet I have written a very long post about why this is so. It is very long, and filled with bits of anger and at times it may not be clear! But if you want to read it, it is there. And now I will go maybe eat something nice and try to be cool. Or perhaps I will watch Bones? I do like Bones a lot.



( Teal Dear. )


Wow that was a lot of words. Now if only I could do that much on my fic.

Ok, so, a long time ago x_los was bugging me about Who-related lists and how I should have them, and more recently tardiscrash posted a list on his fandom journal, and I was reminded how many moons ago I attempted to buck the trend by yes, making a list, but instead of Who eps focussing on BFAs. Except I stole that from aralias.

Still, here is my bigass list of the first 40 BFAs and general (sometimes spoilery, to the extent of 'IT'S GOT DINOSAUR SKELETONS') descriptions/reactions of the sort that are useless to anyone who's listened to them already. It's weird now to look at what I thought then, because this was when I'd only first really started to discuss this aspect of fandom with other people and I wasn't really doing relistens. So I've got updated thoughts, for what they are, in bold, but even then they're less thoughts and more ... squee and snark. At some point I'll keep updating this list as I'm well past the episode 40 mark, but for now, here we go.


bold is for amazing
strikethrough for terrible
and italics is for completely forgettable

( Bigass BFA List Wot I Have Listened To )

General conclusions? Six grew on me rapidly, Eight is swings and roundabouts, Seven gives me rose coloured glasses and BFA still don't really seem to know how to write for Five. There. I've just saved you ten minutes of your time.

( Slightly spoilery stream-of-consciousness type thoughts. )


Oh and in not-a-spoiler? Having seen van Gogh's work adds a whole other layer of depth and meaning and beauty and appreciation to this episode, I feel, and also, having actually seen it and loved it, to life. I <3 Vincent van Gogh.

Ok so I am doing a semi-liveblog to this, in that.... I am finally watching it. And I'll need to stop multiple times because I get scared.... Well. May as well take advantage of that to rant.


( Spoilers )


Annnnnd done. Looking at next week's trailer and ignoring all the.... stuff.... that carries over from this week's ep, all I can do is squee and shout out 'Helen McCrory YAAAAAAY' :D.

Ok I saw it? And I liked it! Mostly. Bits of geek rage here and there but I liked it! And I can't be bothered writing up a review because.... I'm lazy. So here instead is my enormous and boring chatlog of watching along. Very little pieces here and there are cut for relevance and it's very spelling fail and grammar fail and interest fail but eh. Oh, and yes. It did in fact take me two hours to watch it, because I kept pausing whenever I got scared. I'M A WUSS OK SHUSH.


( OK I'M SORRY RIVER SONG BUT WE CAN NEVER BE FRIENDS NOW )

Oh Internet. You have established that you can be, for the most part, seen in public, and I am proud of you. Was the con awesome? THE CON WAS VERY AWESOME, YES. Will this be incoherent ranting? YES. YES IT WILL.


( A Super Long Con Report: Save time. Bone a Cat. )



Now I have to find new Eleven, and maybe have some tea, and oh did I mention that Sylvester McCoy is coming to Australia? I didn't? Yeah, he uh. He is. I'll just be over here. Dying.

So. A fun year so far. On Saturday I finally got my licence, complete with little picture of me looking like I'm stoned off my face and/or suffering severe bloodloss. It was meant to happen on Friday, when I have no doubt it would have appeared that I had some kind of rare Amazonian disease that had made my face break out in vivid rashes, but the RTA's computers were down. So vampire victim it is.

It meant that I've had the whole weekend to be puttering around and getting to know the streets. Trying out my first roundabout. Trying (and failing) to park in carparks. Twice.

It's been good.

Today, however, I get to try to ride home for the first time in weekday traffic, and to be honest I'm not entirely happy about the idea. I'm not yet good at riding at consistent speeds. And I sometimes turn too wide. This is all fine. When there's no other cars on the road. So. It could be interesting.

I finally managed to watch End of Time last night. Lets talk about that. ... Ok, lets not. I will write up a reaction to this, because, card-carrying geek, hello? But right now I need to go and see if I can get my scooter home without crashing and killing someone, or worse, myself. So I'll just say ... it was better than I expected. And there is a lot of meat for discussion. A. Lot.

TO THE BIKEMOBILE, RASSILON!


I always liked Omega better anyway.

OK, so. I really should have posted this last night, but I was tired and thought I could better spend my time reading doctorwhy (the worst of the Time Lords.)

Previous episodes back thatta way.


( The Tomb Of The Cybermen, Episodes 3&4 )

Alright, so I spent most of my day reading fanfiction (as you do. Or I do. This is a thing that I do.) and I came upon this excellent remix fic. The Eighth Doctor and Delgado!Master and all sorts of goodies. The original is also excellent, but I am discussing the remix, because it brought up an idea that completely contradicts one that I have held in my personal canon since .... um, Utopia? Before then it was just in my 'I will write AUs about this*' box, but RTD did the one good thing in his reign and went and changed that for all us bleeding heart fangirls out there, so that's alright.

To recap: The Master was given a new set of regenerations by the Time Lords** because of his assistance in the Time War. Or rather, he was given his new regenerations so that he could assist with the Time War. On the side of the Time Lords. To defeat the Daleks. I think this should be made clear, because with the Master, you just never know.

In my personal fanon the Master definitely wants the extra lives, but he also understands the seriousness of potential outright genocide in all timestreams for his entire civilisation, and even worse the universe-wide domination of the Daleks. Because if they were in control everything would just be so boring. And the Master is made a special case of and given extra regenerations because he is a demon of a fighter, especially when trapped, and he has no qualms about killing things and he's actually been out and had experience with the universe (and the Daleks) in the past few centuries, and basically, it's probably a smart idea to keep him on your good side. But. I also quite like the idea that this war is such a disaster that every Time Lord in every time stream ever is called back to help with the efforts. (Or even not called back. The Daleks have time travel, they are going to hunt down and kill every Time Lord they can find, so as they're probably going to find themselves under attack anyway, it's probably better to run back to Gallifrey where there's at least backup of some kind.) So not just the Master but the Toymaker, the Meddling Monk, the Rani and so on will all be part of this effort. (Ok, ok, I also like the idea that some of these renegades that we've met manage to escape detection, but my fanon is twisty and not entirely rational.) All of this is also pleasing in that it reconfirms the power of the Time Lords as a species, when they actually pull their shit together. If/when necessary they can find and summon their little runaways, and that adds a nice little edge to the fact that, actually, they also could have at any point tracked down any of the renegades if they'd wanted to, and pretty much the reason all these Time Lords are running around is because the Council have let them. Which makes sense seeing as TARDISes all seem to run off the same energy source.

SO. This is just my personal fanon. But what aralias has rather brilliantly suggested in 500 Bottles of Beer is that the Master was brought back to life specifically so that he could be handed the resources of Gallifrey and devise the stunning strategy that would save them all.

Which, considering he used to be beaten by the Doctor every other week ... is maybe not so much of the best idea.

This is probably the best time to make a very important differential. I don't have to agree with an idea to think it's brilliant. But if it's one I've never thought of before? If it's completely revolutionary (to me)? Then I've got to admire it. And I really, really don't think that giving the Master the virtual keys to the city is in any way, shape or form a good idea. The Master's no Sulla, he's a Caesar, and I cannot see him giving up that kind of power once he has it. But the idea is intriguing.

Actually, in an odd kind of way it's almost a throwback to most of his Three-era plots, i.e. 'The Master allies himself with another species who's goals seem to align with his and proceeds to use their firepower/army to take over the planet/universe, betraying his so-called allies at the crucial moment whereby his victory is still assured but he is the one to take supreme power alone and without their interference.' Or as it actually played out: 'The Master allies himself with another species who's goals seem to align with his and proceeds to be beaten by the Doctor.' It sometimes gets to the betraying bit first.

And somehow, magically, the Master has managed to do that in this scenario, except that 1) he actually succeeds, and 2) he didn't have to go through all of that tedious work and plotting and so on and so forth first. In fact, if I were a particularly nefarious 6Ber*** I could even subscribe the whole TV Movie to some bizarre Xanatos Roulette on the Master's part, wherein he gave the Daleks just enough technology before/during his trial to set in motion their eventual threat to the stability of the universe should his initial attempt at a comeback not be a success. He was then able to either stop them early in the game should his initial revival attempt be a success (which, since he was up against the Doctor, clearly was not going to go that way so much) or he waits a hundred odd years until the Daleks have developed time travel to the point where they seriously threaten the Time Lords, and out of necessity he is brought back and given the keys to time!the city!****

Oh my god did he plan his entire capture so he could set this in motion???

... Seriously, there are easier ways to get the Doctor's attention. *eye roll*

OK, so, as you can see, it's a crazypants (though incredibly fun) theory, and that's why I love it. I can't really see the Time Lords ever, ever putting him in charge of anything though (ok, maybe a battalion or something, but seriously not anything they can't afford to lose. Messily.) because a) cannot be trusted and b) seriously. Can't even out think the Doctor. And there is no way they'd ever put the Doctor in charge of all their lives, so.... you see where I'm going with this?

It is a beautiful fic though.





* This is clearly a lie. I do not write AUs. I do not write. (Particularly ironic since this journal was originally started as a Nano blog.)

** And I really have to make another post explaining how this is the ultimate proof that the Doctor can't just 'keep regenerating' once his thirteen are used up. Or I could just say it there. Yes. There you go.

*** Here I mean one who likes to have every bit of continuity tied to every other bit no matter how many crazyknots are involved.

**** OK, yeah, my immediate reaction was there is no fucking way that he actually planned that, so definitely a Roulette. Nevertheless.