Doctor Who

[rm]

1. HOW CAN ANYONE HATE RIVER SONG? She's Jack, but with tits and frizzy hair. As someone with tits and frizzy hair I hate the haters on River Song. Seriously, the Jack references are SO OBVIOUS -- the drape of that dress is the girl version of Jack's coat; her lines are just as bad, and that teeny tiny blaster is the same model as the one pulled out of John Hart's ass in KKBB. Hell, I bet she's slept with John Hart.

2. I love the 51st Century! Oh, the things this season is doing with the military.

3. Wait, back to River Song.... the very good man she killed... it's the Doctor, isn't it?

4. Wow, I'm working on something related to how sacrifice of one's life is the gold standard for heroism in the Whoniverse and how that prevents the show's narrative heroes (the Doctor and Jack, primarily) from ever being actual heroes by the show's own definintion and wow this episode just handed me everything I needed on a platter with Octavian.

"Ready?" the Doctor asks.

"Content," comes the response.

The Doctor and Jack can never sacrifice themselves for anyone, can never be content!!!!

5. And if you think I didn't find that resonant with Ianto's death too, you're out of your mind.

6. Rory's speech about how the Doctor destroys people because they want to make him proud!!! Spot on! Also resonant with pretty much all the fuckery that goes down in Torchwood.

7. This season is weird in that it feels more like a children's show in pacing, exposition and staging, and yet the dark, dark, dark themes are still there. Silence and genocide! Ah, Doctor!

8. I didn't feel like "Vampires of Venice" was a major episode, but I suspect it will be so in retrospect.

9. Extension of the Weeping Angel mythology is challenging, at least to my Jack/Weeping Angel, eye-gouging sex fic, but I can work with it.

9.5 -- Oh hey, when River tells the Doctor that there's "a thing in there that can't die" did anyone else go "OH SHIT, THE DOCTOR THINKS IT'S JACK?"

10. Yeah, I'm not well.

11. There is truth in the meta on this show.

"That's a fairytale."

"So are we."

!!!!!!

12. Oh, oh, oh the things about death!!! Never being born vs. just dying. The horror of being undone as opposed to dead. Oh!

Right, so in three days I'll be in a plane over the Atlantic. I can't even process it. I think the idea that I can break this mood is probably bullshit. I'm just going to be in a weird space for a few days, and it is what it is.

In speaking with my mother on the phone earlier it occurred to me, not for the first time, but for the first time in a while, that I can only write -- in any genre, really -- from a place of sadness, of longing, of desire, of mourning, regardless of whether I'm writing something sad or not. It's just one of those Ways That I Am, but right now I feel very tired out by it.

My mother was saying how my paper is about something so neat and fun earlier, and I was like "Mom, it's awesome. I love what I'm doing work on, and I think my subject is fascinating, and quirky, and beautiful and really, really elegant. But it's sad. And it's exhausting to have to spend so much time in other people's grief, some of which I share and some of which I don't understand at all. And I do it every day, because I'm looking at everything I'm reading and watching through this lens, every day. I watch a show I love, and I sit there watching it through 'he's dead, he's dead, he's dead' so no matter how excited I am by this scholarship, RIGHT NOW I AM VERY TIRED."

Getting to say that made me feel about 200% better, too. But death project moratorium for a week post-Bristol (it's one reason I'm doing the Imperial War Museum before the conference and not after) before I start working on the D*C presentation. I suspect this will all feel moderately different on July 10. I can't wait. Take me there.

Meanwhile, as much as I don't buy this Doctor as a sexual creature (Nine wanted to fuck, Ten wanted to have his heart broken, Eleven doesn't want to think about how fucked up he was as Nine and Ten), anyone got any Amy/Rory/Eleven that will change my mind?

Comments

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

I've yet to watch Dr. Who, so I skipped over that bit, but, I used to think I wrote from a place of grief.

I started writing when I was in 5th grade (an epic adventure about twin bunnies that found a golden carrot in their garden and wanted to take it to the Smithsonian to get it checked out; I was a strange girl and haven't really changed ;-p). That was the spring my favorite grandfather's cancer was discovered and I spent the next 5 months watching him die.

I got more lost in my stories when my mom died 2 1/2 yrs. later. I wrote (and acted, my after school activity in high school was drama) because my real life sucked rocks and I needed to escape. I created obstacles my characters could overcome or in the ones I never showed anyone, they spent weeks doing all those things a proper Southern lady of not quite 14 shouldn't even know about, let alone contemplate doing herself. (Mostly crawling into a bottle of something alcoholic to forget but occasionally paired with drunken orgies.)

By the time I hit my early 20s, when I was the happiest I'd been since I was a little kid (I'd finished college, was newly married, loving finally being an adult and having my own space and money I didn't feel guilty about spending.) I had no urge to write whatsoever. I remember chatting with my best friend when we were at Balticon about it.

Both of us had done a lot of writing as teens (her life sucked as much as mine but in different ways) and now that we were happily married and getting on with being grown-ups, we didn't find too many things to write about. Our creativity was elsewhere.

And then, about 6 years ago the urge to write came back. Mind you I was inspired by the tragedy that was Remus Lupin's life, so the sadness was still there. But, I'd somehow figured out a way to not let the sadness take over.

I also didn't focus on death or sadness either. I think it would be very easy to be overcome if I were writing about death of grief regularly.

Hope this wasn't too off topic or TMI.