Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-03-20 10:57 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-03-20 10:57 pm
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The saga continues!
...actually, most of the exciting things happened on Monday, but the Great Spring Break Road Trip did continue for most of the week.
Tuesday: Down to Washington DC so I could say hi to my family and we could crash at my dad's place. "Oh, let's walk to Georgetown along the canal," I said, "it's only a couple of miles." Turns out it was more like five or six. OOPS. Oh well, it was a nice walk? And killed an afternoon nicely?
Wednesday: Met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mmejavert in Harrisburg, where we hit up a few bookstores. And lo, there was much cackling and dramatic readings of bad romance-novel covers and massive fangirlage of both Les Mis and Doctor Who. (Things I will never be able to unhear: you can tap the Master's drumbeat along to DYHTPS. To large parts of Les Mis, really--just take those crashing thematic chords in the overture and add a note to make a triplet. When the beating of your heart(s) echoes the beating of the drums...)
Thursday: Baaaack up north. Attempted to make another trip to the abandoned dam I found outside Forestburgh, NY in the summer of 2009, but it's in a state park that was closed for the season.filia_belialis and I amused ourselves in the car by making up Doctor Who filks to the Battle Hymn of the Republic and then ghetto-blasting German bagpipe metal and waving cheerfully at passing hipsters as we sped back into town.
The weekend: was mostly spent on a MASSIVE DOCTOR WHO BINGE and then diving headfirst into aaaall the Doctor/Master fic. I'm now three episodes into season 5, guys. So much Who.
And... so many feelings. Especially about the Tenth Doctor. Everyone has Their Doctor, the defining one, and I think Ten is mine for better or for worse--loved Nine but that was before I began my headlong slide into the fandom. And God, Ten. It would be too simple to say "I adore him and want to smack him in equal measure." Because I adore him, and project my own geekiness and loner-complex and martyrdom kinks onto him too much, and think he is incredibly hot and suffers oh-so-prettily, and wish Russell T Davies hadn't heaped on so much ridiculously gratuitous Ten!pain after realizing how prettily he suffers, and want to kick him for being such an angstypants even as I take sadomasochistic pleasure* in how much of a woobie he is, and stare in awe at the Woobie Feedback Loop created by his perverse enjoyment in taking All The Burdens onto his poor overburdened shoulders and setting himself up to get nailed to every cross in sight, and am creeped out by his "then you leave me with no choice!" brand of moral ambiguity but am also pretty sure I like him better as an arrogant morally-ambiguous crazypants than as a bucket of angst. Because God, did they ever lay it on thick. I was okay with it in season 3! It did not trip my eyeroll meter. But in season 4, most of the episodes were great taken individually, but all together they added up to piling terrible burden onto terrible burden until it got ridiculous and oh, poor Doctor, only he can hear the singing of the Ood. And it was all gratuitous and out of left field and I would've liked it better if they'd stuck to exploring the sources of angst and trauma that already exist in his life because it's not like those are in short supply.
* Yes, both sadistic and masochistic, because I get a fucked-up emotional kick out of projecting his angst onto my massive martyrdom kink, but I also want to do horrible things to him because he suffers so prettily. This is a large part of the problem. And also why I love Doctor/Master from both points of view.
And... most of it fits together, I guess, if you look at it as him re-enacting the Time War/Gallifrey trauma over and over. Right down to his singularly irritating habit of refusing to lay smackdown on an aggressor just so he can give them a goddamn choice he knows they'll turn down, and end up doing something even more awful to them when they do. Because his sanity and coping depend on believing he had no choice but to commit a double genocide and that there was nothing, absolutely nothing else he could've done. On seeing himself as a good person who's been forced to make terrible choices and do horrific things because the alternative was so much worse. And that is interesting and complex and disturbing, I just wish they hadn't laid it on so goddamn thick.
...also, just throwing this out there: End of Time. What the fuck was that? I mean, what the fucking fuck I don't even--I want to find whatever Rusty was smoking and throw it down a black hole so nobody can ever have any ever again. And the worst part is that there is too much good stuff buried under the Bad Crack to completely write it off and go "none of that ever happened, la la la in my headcanon Ten just tripped over a brick and regenerated into Eleven."
However, I continue to be amused by all the shameless visual references to Star Wars. I started noticing them around the escape-pod sequence in "42," and then we got the Master's mini-Death-Star-meets-ANH-interrogation-bots and Jedi funeral pyre, a bus stranded on Tatooine, Ten and Jack in the Mos Eisley cantina, hands chopped off left and right, the Battle of Yavin recreated by goddamn Spitfires in space, and God only knows what else. I'm sure there were others I'm not remembering.
And from what I've seen of season 5 so far I am so glad Moffat took over. Because I may have fewer issues and feelings about what I've seen so far (well, feelings besides "fuck yes this is awesome!") but I also want to punch the screen a lot less. And it's so much less shippy--in all four preceding seasons I pretty much wanted to ship everyone with everyone, and now even though Amy is smoking hot I am content to sit back for Happy Fun (And/Or Horrifying) Gen Adventures In Space, admire the steampunk TARDIS, and bask in the fact that Moffat knows how to fucking write.
Tuesday: Down to Washington DC so I could say hi to my family and we could crash at my dad's place. "Oh, let's walk to Georgetown along the canal," I said, "it's only a couple of miles." Turns out it was more like five or six. OOPS. Oh well, it was a nice walk? And killed an afternoon nicely?
Wednesday: Met
mmejavert in Harrisburg, where we hit up a few bookstores. And lo, there was much cackling and dramatic readings of bad romance-novel covers and massive fangirlage of both Les Mis and Doctor Who. (Things I will never be able to unhear: you can tap the Master's drumbeat along to DYHTPS. To large parts of Les Mis, really--just take those crashing thematic chords in the overture and add a note to make a triplet. When the beating of your heart(s) echoes the beating of the drums...)Thursday: Baaaack up north. Attempted to make another trip to the abandoned dam I found outside Forestburgh, NY in the summer of 2009, but it's in a state park that was closed for the season.
filia_belialis and I amused ourselves in the car by making up Doctor Who filks to the Battle Hymn of the Republic and then ghetto-blasting German bagpipe metal and waving cheerfully at passing hipsters as we sped back into town.The weekend: was mostly spent on a MASSIVE DOCTOR WHO BINGE and then diving headfirst into aaaall the Doctor/Master fic. I'm now three episodes into season 5, guys. So much Who.
And... so many feelings. Especially about the Tenth Doctor. Everyone has Their Doctor, the defining one, and I think Ten is mine for better or for worse--loved Nine but that was before I began my headlong slide into the fandom. And God, Ten. It would be too simple to say "I adore him and want to smack him in equal measure." Because I adore him, and project my own geekiness and loner-complex and martyrdom kinks onto him too much, and think he is incredibly hot and suffers oh-so-prettily, and wish Russell T Davies hadn't heaped on so much ridiculously gratuitous Ten!pain after realizing how prettily he suffers, and want to kick him for being such an angstypants even as I take sadomasochistic pleasure* in how much of a woobie he is, and stare in awe at the Woobie Feedback Loop created by his perverse enjoyment in taking All The Burdens onto his poor overburdened shoulders and setting himself up to get nailed to every cross in sight, and am creeped out by his "then you leave me with no choice!" brand of moral ambiguity but am also pretty sure I like him better as an arrogant morally-ambiguous crazypants than as a bucket of angst. Because God, did they ever lay it on thick. I was okay with it in season 3! It did not trip my eyeroll meter. But in season 4, most of the episodes were great taken individually, but all together they added up to piling terrible burden onto terrible burden until it got ridiculous and oh, poor Doctor, only he can hear the singing of the Ood. And it was all gratuitous and out of left field and I would've liked it better if they'd stuck to exploring the sources of angst and trauma that already exist in his life because it's not like those are in short supply.
* Yes, both sadistic and masochistic, because I get a fucked-up emotional kick out of projecting his angst onto my massive martyrdom kink, but I also want to do horrible things to him because he suffers so prettily. This is a large part of the problem. And also why I love Doctor/Master from both points of view.
And... most of it fits together, I guess, if you look at it as him re-enacting the Time War/Gallifrey trauma over and over. Right down to his singularly irritating habit of refusing to lay smackdown on an aggressor just so he can give them a goddamn choice he knows they'll turn down, and end up doing something even more awful to them when they do. Because his sanity and coping depend on believing he had no choice but to commit a double genocide and that there was nothing, absolutely nothing else he could've done. On seeing himself as a good person who's been forced to make terrible choices and do horrific things because the alternative was so much worse. And that is interesting and complex and disturbing, I just wish they hadn't laid it on so goddamn thick.
...also, just throwing this out there: End of Time. What the fuck was that? I mean, what the fucking fuck I don't even--I want to find whatever Rusty was smoking and throw it down a black hole so nobody can ever have any ever again. And the worst part is that there is too much good stuff buried under the Bad Crack to completely write it off and go "none of that ever happened, la la la in my headcanon Ten just tripped over a brick and regenerated into Eleven."
However, I continue to be amused by all the shameless visual references to Star Wars. I started noticing them around the escape-pod sequence in "42," and then we got the Master's mini-Death-Star-meets-ANH-interrogation-bots and Jedi funeral pyre, a bus stranded on Tatooine, Ten and Jack in the Mos Eisley cantina, hands chopped off left and right, the Battle of Yavin recreated by goddamn Spitfires in space, and God only knows what else. I'm sure there were others I'm not remembering.
And from what I've seen of season 5 so far I am so glad Moffat took over. Because I may have fewer issues and feelings about what I've seen so far (well, feelings besides "fuck yes this is awesome!") but I also want to punch the screen a lot less. And it's so much less shippy--in all four preceding seasons I pretty much wanted to ship everyone with everyone, and now even though Amy is smoking hot I am content to sit back for Happy Fun (And/Or Horrifying) Gen Adventures In Space, admire the steampunk TARDIS, and bask in the fact that Moffat knows how to fucking write.
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But . . . but I want to smoke it first!
(Moffat does, in fact, know how to write. He can construct concurrent plot and character arcs and everything, which is something Rusty never managed to do. I'm a bit miffed at him over the comedy sketch that just aired, though.)
(Haha, remember when you swore you'd never be a fan? Because I distinctly recall it, mmhmm.)
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(Yeah, I think I saw your entry on that--didn't reply because I can't watch the sketch until I've finished s5. At this point, though, there's quite a bit I'm willing to forgive him.)
(And I think all my fandoms are things I once swore I would never get sucked into. It's more fun that way.)
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(I'm slowly starting in with Eleven again because Matt was so deeply disappointing the first time around, in part because of so many hopes and rumours. More time, and going slow, I've managed the first two episodes without wanting to kill anyone, but I'm not sure i can handle the brightly coloured Daleks again. We'll see. Amy is so hot I want to enjoy her series. I never got further than Winston Churchill with Daleks the first time around because the crappy theme song, the fugly new logo, the steampunk TARDIS, the brightly coloured Daleks, and Matt Smith being sort of the anti-what I wanted were simply too much for me to take after the crap Rusty left in his wake. Change for the sake of change wasn't making anything better, it was just driving me up a wall. We'll see if it's better with more time since the disappointments and long-spaced-out episodes.)
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And yeah, I can imagine where it could be frustrating to watch the last season all spaced out. Doing it all in one go, I find it kind of refreshing, in the same way that Martha was refreshing because yay a competent companion! and Donna was refreshing because yay a companion who isn't a love interest! After becoming waaaay overinvested in RTD arcs that were so often shitty despite being emotional heroin, I'm kind of enjoying the better writing and the lack of swirling id vortices. Like taking a breather. But I imagine it'd be very different watching as the episodes aired.
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Trying again, without mainlining the thing (because I'm still wary), I don't hate Matt nearly as much as I did the first time around (with the very same episode 2). So we'll see. But I'm not trying to catch up in time for the next series. (I was never involved in the fandom but I was disappointed to the point of being pissed off at Matt's casting when the Patterson Joseph rumour had been so awesome. Martha's one season is the only non-white companion, and I'd love to see a non-white Doctor. It would probably require a non-white show runner, but I still want. So very badly. It would make some of the historical stuff really fascinating!)