Meredith Making Progress

ameretrifle @ 2009-02-28T00:32:00

2009-02-28T07:27:36Z

I am, incidentally, not dead. I'm perfectly fine, reading everything on my friends page-- I just haven't had much to post about. Sorry.

I've finally managed to apply for my Master's degree-- the hardest part has been getting a damn straight answer out of the people at FSU. The system really isn't calibrated for students who've attended before. My latest dilemma is, do I need to log in with my old ID information, or create a new account? I haven't been able to figure it out yet, and e-mailing someone with a question might get me a response sometime late next week. Maybe. *sigh*

On Valentine's Day, or, to be more precice, a dark and stormy Valentine's night. She's terribly shy, looks young even though she's about my age, and I believe her name is Heather. I haven't exchanged two words with her yet. She skipped Thanksgiving (to shoot at things with her father) and Christmas (for some reason) and I didn't get a chance to talk to her at the wedding (she was probably kind of shell-shocked anyway).

Maybe it's mean of me, but it's hard not to think they're screwed. As I mentioned, she looks about fifteen, and tends to act it, too. And my cousin, whom for the purposes of this journal I have dubbed JC... he has a long, long history of... not being exceptionally bright in his decision-making in particular. He works in the kitchen, I believe, of the Florida State Hospital or something, and another family member who works there is going to help him figure out how to apply for time off for his honeymoon ahead of time. (Apparently he's not even sure you can do that.) Our grandparents bought him a mobile home and have set it up on a piece of property they own; his dad and stepmother are giving him their old car (again). Hopefully Granny's not still calling to wake him up in the mornings (apparently an alarm clock won't work). Hopefully they'll pay rent and utilities themselves at some point but honestly, we're not optimistic.

We didn't go to the bridal shower, which was just as well, because JC's mom Sheila (whose identity I feel no particular need to protect) got the bride drunk the night before. Poor girl was hungover the whole time; she doesn't drink, apparently, and I'm not sure whether or not she's legally old enough to in the first place. The wedding was okay, though we went with Dad, who will make mean-spirited comments about anything, which naturally went triple for this. And it was hard. They kept playing Shania Twain songs at random moments. The whole way through. And half the crowd was standing, because there were nowhere near enough chairs. And half of us were in blue jeans. It was in a little cabin-type thing; they'd intended to hold it in the gazebo out front, but it was raining like everything. The dresses were nice, though, and the ceremony was quite nice if you ignored the music.

The reception... There were chicken wings, and meatballs, and pigs in a blanket. And they bought the cake at Wal-Mart. It's probably wrong of me to find that comical.

The thing is, they're both way too damn young to be doing anything like this. They'd probably both have enough troubles with relationships under the best of circumstances, and... I've got to admit it, I don't much trust JC's judgment. He's taken such a long time to grow up. I'm not entirely convinced he's managed it yet. But I guess only time will tell.

One of those Shania Twain songs they played was "You're Still The One". "They said/I bet/They'll never make it". "But just look at us going on..."

I winced, stung, and thought, please, prove us wrong.

I'm trying my best to keep away from Doctor Who, because at this point I don't think I can write anything that anyone's likely to enjoy. Which is just as well, because the only plots I've been getting are Utena crossovers of varying sorts. Guesses as to the main ideas of Utena?

-Waking up from dream worlds you've sealed yourself into
-Growing up
-Paying attention to the true needs of the people you think you're trying to save
-"Do you want to have a Prince, or be one?"
-"Girls who can't be princesses must become witches."
-And the unvoiced corrolary, still terribly evident: "Boys who can't be princes must become monsters."

Not to mention there's this big, blueish castle, spinning slowly in the sky, which is said to hold the Light of the World and the Power of Miracles within it. *headdesk* Which would imply Ten is Anthy. If you are, by some chance, familiar with both series, your head has probably just exploded. (But if you've seen Utena, you're probably used to that.) And you'll understand why, in the scenario where the Doctor stumbles into Ohtori, it's Martha who's with him. Does she want to travel with the Doctor, or become one herself? When someone's decided they deserve the punishment others have inflicted on them, how do you rescue them? Can you? Or do they have to walk out that door themselves?

And if you turn it around... How many princesses has Ten especially got in glass coffins? Safe and sound, locked away, worshipped and despised... Donna, Rose, Chimera-Ten, Martha, Jack, Jenny, more than I can count... Tragedies, just for him, so he can go on and save all the princesses of this world all on his own. That's what it's come to, these days, with their closed little world, and everyone who stands half a chance of being as competent as him leaving or worse. It leaves him as the Rose Prince, the saviour of all the universe. But is that really a good thing? Playing the Prince for too long will kill you. And you will always turn most violently on the one who tries to save you from yourself.

The thing is, it would be a didactic, trippy allegory with a moral no one would want to hear. So I've got to get it out of my head. Thing is, I still don't have much consistent to replace it. Hence, no fic to post, and hence, no posting for like four months. *sigh* Hopefully I'll get more productive once I have some actual structure to my life again.

Fic

2008-11-24T05:48:10Z

So I wrote this crossover between Doctor Who and Young Wizards. The latter's a YA book series, about wizards. Basically, it's a giant, slightly vindictive fixit fic for JE and Ten in general. Realizing that I would never actually manage to make any further changes to it, I began to post it at a YW comm, where it has been fairly well recieved. Apparently a lot of them had issues with JE, too. As I might've mentioned in earlier posts, I can't say I'm surprised. The whole philosophy of YW is pretty well directly opposed to some of the crap we've been seeing from Ten. I should post somewhere about that.

But anyway, despite the slight risk of incomprehensibility (though it's probably far, far easier to read this knowing DW and not YW rather than the other way around, given that it's got the DW characters and plot, just in the YW universe), here is the link to the last chapter with the full table of contents:

Journey's Dawn

It is apparently epic win. :D

Ramblings (might be fic in there too if you dig)

2008-11-20T12:41:26Z

I wonder why in the living hell it took me so long to watch Shoujo Kakumei Utena? I mean, a complex lesbian-feminist fable in anime form... You can get further up my alley, but it's not easy. Now I'm positively obsessed with the opening theme. I do that, I always have-- when I latch on to one song, I can just play it over and over and over again, for ages. Used to be the Hell Freezes Over version of "Hotel California". It's been "Viva La Vida" and "I Will Follow", too. Now it's "Rinbu Revolution". At some point I'm sure I'll move on...

..Then again, I just realized that that very song could serve as my crossover-Donna's theme, despite the fact that I finished that monstrosity long before I ever heard it. So it's possible this one's going to stick with me for a while.

Speaking of said monstrosity, I've finally divided it up into parts and started to post it, because by now, I just know there's no way I'm going to change it in any way, or try to get it beta'd like I should. It's a pretty obscure crossover, in my defense, but the only thing I was worried about was getting Donna right... Then again, she's got a hell of an excuse to be out-of-character.

Should anyone want to brave a fic that follows the rules of a fandom they don't know-- I did try to explain it as well as I could-- the first part is here. I wish you luck.

Due to injudicious wanderings on Youtube, I have now become rather a fan of Tales of Vesperia. Damn you, Yuri Lowell...! And the same to the anime tradition of making some boys look so very much like girls...

(I've rarely ever played video games. But for some reason, I'll read about them and I'll watch them. Might go back to the cousin I refer to herein as "JC" and his SNES.)

Oh, and said cousin has decided to get married. To a girl he knew for two months at the time. Probably I've already mentioned that, but there's a couple new developments:

-They've got a place to live after the wedding now. It's a mobile home my grandparents are buying on a piece of land they've got in Grand Ridge. My grandparents were thinking of buying that home for themselves, considering they're having more trouble with the stairs in their current house and my mom has some slightly crazy plan to go on and move in with them, even though they don't need us yet and Dad would probably become a living hell to live with... Apparently their plans changed. They're saying he's going to pay rent. We're all terribly skeptical.

-...Apparently there was an... "incident"... at a Wal-Mart. JC and his fiancee, whom I shall now dub "Ann", 'cause I can barely remember her real name anyway (I think it starts with a J...), were in a Wal-Mart. Ann apparently was voicing her opinion of current political matters. In doing so, it appears she happened to use a certain taboo word that begins with the letter "n" to describe our President-elect. Someone nearby took exception to this, and threatened them with a baseball bat and a gun (neither of which he had in his possession at the time). All parties escaped without injury, and no police report was filed.

But I'm really fuckin' thrilled about the coming nuptuals, you dig? -_-

Still having a bit of trouble breaking into the social scene at the library I volunteer at, but I'm coming to the conclusion that it might actually not be my fault. They had a Thanksgiving party the other day; I showed up, father in tow. There were tons of other volunteers and family there-- there had to be; there's eight librarians who work at that branch, someone said, and twenty volunteers. Forty-odd people at the party.

Now, am I wrong in thinking that, when hosting a party, you need to put some effort into bringing people together? Nothing too fancy, not if you're not in a fancy place, but more like "X, this is Y. Y, this is X. X works here Saturdays." Especially if you're dealing with a group of people who might be a bit shy around strangers... like... what would be a good example... people who work at a library.

After dinner started there was a little conversation, which was good, 'cause I was starting to feel ostracised as hell. All of the conversation was about football. Equal number of women and men at the table: the conversation's about football. Damn it, Tallahassee...

But honestly, I don't know how to break into that circle at all. When I volunteer, mainly I'm working. Half that time I'm working away from everyone else. 9/10 of the rest of the time, no one's talking. And in that one last fraction, they're talking about people and things I'll never know. Try jumping into that if you have any trouble jumping into conversations.

I keep asking if I can also volunteer at some time on a different day, but all I get told is that I could come in earlier. Well, I can't come in earlier. I live half an hour away and this is the one day I get up early all week. I can't get up at 8 one day a week, slip steadily back past noon the rest of the week, and then get up at 8 again. it's not gonna work. Give me a Thursday slot, for god's sake.

Ah, well. At least I won't feel guilty about dumping their asses and asking for a reference when I get a job or school starts again... whichever comes first. I still don't know if I'm ready to decide yet. I keep on wavering.

And I KNEW The Mentalist was gonna do a "ZOMG A REAL PSYCHIC TO DEFY HIZ CYNICAL WAYZ" episode. I just didn't think it'd come this goddamn soon. X_X At least that one damn annoying chick acted like a bitch defending her and got called on it. I just with the ending had been less open. You're supposed to think it might be real, or he might be affected by it, but it's possible it could just be a reaction to that incredible bitch move that "psychic" pulled. To be reminded of such things, by a con artist... I'd break down crying.

I've been writing scraps and scribbles, but not much with any serious potential. Still, it's better than it was a couple weeks ago. Damn that hellish divorce I had from DW. *Shakes fist at series* HAVE FUN WITH YOUR NEW WHORES, YOU LOUSY SONS OF BITCHES! THE LAST KID'S AT COLLEGE AND I'M OUT OF HERE! AND I KEYED YOUR TARDIS! YEAH, YOU HEARD ME!

...Reminds me of a crack!fic I never finished. It starts with Rose, in her parallel universe-- when suddenly Ten appears, to talk to her again. Is there something wrong? Can she come back home? Actually... he just wants to know who keyed his TARDIS. Screaming ensues.

He continues this game with several other women (Martha, Sarah Jane, Harriet Jones....), who, upon learning his business, promptly suggest to him where and whom he should go screw. Finally, he goes to Jack, asking for a copy of some security camera footage from the day his TARDIS was defaced. Jack is happy to oblige.

On the tape, Jack quite merrily keys the TARDIS, then waves at the camera... and starts dancing to the strains of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", which is now playing at incredible volume in the control room. Not only keyed his TARDIS, but them had the audacity to Rickroll him.

Anyway, that would've been better if I'd written it. Though possibly not by much.

...Okay, done now. ^^;

ameretrifle @ 2008-11-07T15:08:00

2008-11-07T20:46:54Z

It has... been a while since I posted. ^^; Honestly, I haven't had all that much to post about, as I haven't gotten anything done. But an overview:

-Still working at the library a couple hours a week. Now that they've invited me to a Thanksgiving party, I feel a lot more confident in asking them at some point to give me a reference. It's only a couple hours a week, but I work my ass off those two hours...

...Which makes it hard to get a word in edgewise. For one thing, it's a library, so there's not a whole lot of conversation going on to begin with. Second, I still have some difficulty with figuring out how to start a conversation myself, and having a task to do multiplies that problem: I tend to focus on getting a job done as quickly and as well as possible, somewhat neurotically, and so I don't talk much unless somebody asks/tells me something (in which circumstance I respond readily). Third, when someone does start a conversation, it is invariably on some sort of library business I know nothing about, so it's a bit hard to jump in. And last week, I was in the shelves all day, and there wasn't much point in starting a conversation with the books. Which didn't stop me, if you count "Oh for frak's sweet sake" upon discovering that there was no room whatsoever to stuff another book in the shelf unless I started transferring books over from six shelves away can be counted as conversation. I feel like I should be talking to people and being friendly and whatnot, but one day a week, it's hard...

-One of our cats is dead. I am sad about this, don't get me wrong, but to be brutally oest, those cats are fighting against Darwin every second anyway. They insist upon living outside but have no facility for it whatsoever. Out only warning was that our cat's eye started looking strange; he promptly disappeared before we could take him to the vet. *sigh* Oh, and the other one has fleas, despite the flea treatments we give him. He is a giant bucket of fluff, so I guess it's somewhat understandable.

-My dad had an appendectomy. He's still recovering; he can get up and go out and walk around now without complaining too much, but it'll be a while before he can properly get back to work. Which is fun, because a) he's not much fun when he's in any sort of pain and b) being around him for too long at a time tends to drive me a bit batty. I love the man, but he can get pretty damn childish when he's bored. And he has the worst taste in television. Left to his own devices, he will flip around and around and around, rarely staying on anything longer than it takes to reach a commercial break, unless of course he finds something truly atrocious on the movie channels. Ever seen "The Shadow"? With Alec Baldwin? That was one of the better ones.

-I have not been getting any writing done whatsoever and I can't stand it. Maybe just writing this entry will help.

-YAY OBAMA! Yay Florida voting Obama! Damn the crap-ass way Florida went on practically everything else on the ballot! Seriously. "Hey, guys, how about we let counties tax y'all to support community colleges? I mean, not just a flat thing, they'll have to put it in front of you for your vote first, and it'll expire after a couple years unless YOU vote it yet again." "WTF?! HELL NO!" How in the living crap did THAT happen??

-I joined an online forum, and I'm actually participating. I am so glad I'm a little more secure than I used to be. At sixteen, I was practically scared of my shadow, to be honest. But now I'm coming back, driving a car (when I can-- my mom's still pretty insecure, sad to say), talking to people on the internet, bitching about the Tenth Doctor and provoking actual conversation and agreement-- after years of trying, I'm actually less scared than I used to be, and it's fantastic. I'm not as social as I need or want to be, in the real world especially, but I think I'm halfway there, and it's really quite incredible to realize that.

Hopefully I'll get some actual writing done at some point, which I can then post here.

Oh, and YAY OBAMA! I don't harbor the delusion that he's the second coming, but I think he can do great things for our country, and he certainly can't do worse than some other people I could mention. ;D

ameretrifle @ 2008-09-26T07:07:00

2008-09-26T11:19:56Z

So in the only DW fic I've managed to work on, I'm actually trying to be reasonably nice to Ten. The things he has done are not entirely his fault, even if he left the door wide open and begged evil to come in. I'm doing my best to leave some ambiguity.

This bit, however, might be a little mean.

-

"A wizard," says the Lonely God. "Donna Noble. I don't believe it."

"I'm rather insulted I was so easy to forget. I think the little chav is getting to you."

"Oh, he is not," says the Lonely God, affronted.

"'When a Power enters the physical planes, It must accept the limitations of physicality'," she sing-songs. "He's corrupting you. He's so dense he's actually corrupting you. I shouldn't have thought it was possible."

"He is NOT!" the Lonely God yells. "He's nothing LIKE me!"

"You just spent the last five minutes telling me how he was EXACTLY like you, these days!" Donna yells back. "My God, he has sapped your brain!"

"I-- I--" He shakes his head furiously. "Well, it's hardly MY fault you humans are so blindingly stupid! I told them it was a bad idea, Creation that is-- I said, Are you seriously going to let these little apes have free run of entire physical planes? They'll find a way to kill us all, you mark my words! But no, nobody would listen, you were just the sweetest little things they'd ever seen and which one of those idiots developed the concept of 'cuteness' anyway? It's positively revolting, I'd kill them if it wouldn't destroy the fabric of all existence and I remembered which it was. Anyway I told them you had to have a time limit to stop the amount of damage you could figure out how to do, and it worked, didn't it? It's a brilliant idea, really, and aren't you very fond of time when it comes down to it, how everything happens in an order? Your ape brains would explode from it otherwise. Really you ungrateful brats owe me a favour. You should be down on your knees worshipping me right now. There's tribes that'll do that for cows and not for me. You just don't know when someone's trying to be nice to you."

He shakes his head again, and opens his mouth, and stops when he sees the look on her face.

"...Christ on a telephone pole," he mutters, "I'm talking like the brainless wonder."

"Told you," says Donna.

-

I may actually finish this fic. Astonishing, given how damn little I've been writing recently.

In other news: my grandfather's still sick in various confusing ways that the doctors outright refuse to explain (but he does seem to be on an upward trend at the moment), I now have a nametag at my library volunteer gig, and my cousin claims to be engaged.

Forgive my unromantic skepticism, but he's known the girl for two months, outside. If they actually make it to February 14th, I'll concede they've got a chance. I wish I knew what in the hell he was thinking, but I doubt I'd understand. But you never know.

Having actually gotten a bit of work done today...

2008-09-19T06:30:19Z

Okay, I admit, I choose the DW crossovers I write based on the ability they give me to screw Ten over. In my defense, someone's got to. Most of the other fangirls seem content just to screw him.

*cough* Sorry, sorry. It's just that a well-executed Ten-roasting makes me so very happy. My last (and only) crossover, with Rurouni Kenshin, was widely regarded as unexpected but good; it seemed utterly obvious to me. In Kenshin, you've got a character that Ten could never understand and Nine would simply know without thinking. He's polite and ginger, and he's got a sword. It would almost be worth extending that one into a full-length fic.

And my most recent crossover project is working out quite neatly, too. All the pieces fit so perfectly. It works in both universes, and I have years' worth of arguments that Ten is quite clearly possessed that can finally get put to a good use.

A clip:

"And every single time-- every time I tried to tell him he wasn't alone--"

"Oh, don't be too hard on yourself," says the Lonely God. "Far more illustrious people have tried and failed. Rose Tyler, and Martha Jones, and that delightful creature calling himself the Master-- the Face of Boe whispered it to him with its dying breath, and I convinced him it was just an acronym. One of the oldest creatures in the universe! Makes a dying declaration and he's willing to believe it's just an acronym, some stupid little thing that's only going to be relevant once, for three seconds, as confirmation of something he's already realized. Some people just work so hard to make my job so easy."

Call it corporal punishment, 'cause I've finally realized: my problem with Ten was always that he was a teenager. *whistles as she wanders away*

ameretrifle @ 2008-09-11T01:34:00

2008-09-11T05:59:59Z

I have yet to determine whether the doctors and staff at TMH actually have no idea what they're doing, or have simply adopted a policy of not telling the family anything. As there'd be little qualitative difference between the two scenarios, I suspect I'll never know.

For one thing, the hospital staff does make a habit of telling my grandmother as little as possible, and she has an astonishing facility for not only failing to ask the right questions, but coming up with several very inventive wrong ones. Which, as she tends to be fretful at the best of times and tends to stay up nights with Grandpa at the hospital when he's particularly ill, is fairly understandable. Also, neither of them want to hear bad news. This is of course true of everyone, but they tend to find ways not to hear it. They'll mishear it, or think their way around it, snatch sentence fragments out of context and use them to their own ends... It's a bit frustrating, but so far? You can't argue with results.

So I still don't have the faintest idea what's wrong with him, except the drugs they've given him are working a bit better now; it only hurts when he moves. From what I've heard, it's been... pretty harrowing. There've been too many theories bounced around for me to list (fracture, pinched nerve, renal failure....), and apparently there's also some thing where a culture from his nose indicated the presence of MRSA, of all things. So there's some sort of sign on his door and apparently it took them all ages to get a straight answer from them about it ("Oh, it's just what we do when we get cultures").

Basically, all the information I've gotten is secondhand and scattershot, and no one has a damn clue what's going on. But I shouldn't be surprised. That's pretty much the way it is with all the information I've ever gotten about Dad's side of the family. Ask me how many cousins I have. Apparently even my Dad's not sure. 'Course, that's connected to my uncle, and let's not get started on that guy. *rolls eyes* There's a whole 'prodigal son' dynamic going on there, and it ain't pretty.

Anyway, still here. Posting mainly because I don't know what's going on, I may never find out, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I am willing to share this with the entire internet, and yet, ask me how much conversation I made with people at the library yesterday? Next to none. I tried to, once, but I couldn't quite get myself to open my mouth. I'm a workaholic, for one, and also my mouth works on two speeds: "Off" and "Full". I'm gonna make somebody a damn good employee someday. *sigh* Been a long week.

(still alive here)

2008-09-07T05:50:28Z

Okay, so my previous medical practicioner was clearly a bit too lax, which was, in actuality, a disservice to me. Little as I want to, I will try to wrap my head around that, because I know it is true. As a corrolary, the more stringent practices of my current practicioner are probably much better medicine. I will concede that point too.

But must they really strip me naked every visit??

Okay, technically it's not every visit. But it's at least half by now, and each time it's come as a surprise.

To document past episodes of unexpected nakedness: it might've been my prior doctor who sent me for two (as it turned out, useless) tests to check out my heartburn. (Which has gotten better recently, to spare any concern.) As one involved an ultrasound and the other an x-ray (and I maintain that that test was poorly conceived for diagnosis-- who in the hell's going to show signs of heartburn after ~8 hours of fasting thirty seconds after drinking air bubbles and a thick cocktail of radioactive chalk? Seriously, WTF?), they both necessitated some removal of clothing. That's obvious and reasonable, especially in retrospect, but I was sixteen or seventeen and not told very much beforehand, and that was one of the more minor details they left out. I was not at all happy, at the time.

When I first was transferred to my current set of doctors, Mom and I were sent to a "preliminary checkup". This turned out to be half a physical. Well, I don't know whether or not that's an exaggeration, but I'm talking breast exam, EKG, chest x-ray... The x-ray seems a bit random to me, but there's a reason I'm not going to medical school (and it ain't cause I don't want the money). Again, I probably wouldn't have been comfortable with it at that time under any circumstances, I admit, but it would've been nice if we'd been at least warned. My father, who's been with them far longer, had no idea, himself; evidently he doesn't usually have to get naked. So, no warning whatsoever. He described it as more of an interview. "Hi! Here to check in." "Great! Take your clothes off." Not the best of first impressions.

Now, I've been there a couple of times in between then and now; mostly for ear infections, which did not give them an excuse to remove my clothing, fortunately. (Though I'm surprised they didn't try.) Yesterday, however, I was blackmailed into making another appointment.

I say "blackmail" because they wouldn't renew my medication. They gave medical reasons for this when I came in to visit, but still, for God's sake, just call and say "We'd like to drag you in for a checkup". If I refuse, it's my right and my funeral. Don't just cancel medication I may need. I'd probably be less pissy about this if the medication in question hadn't been the Pill, which brings up some serious feminist issues in my head, maybe unfairly. I just have to think, "What if I were on these things because I was having sex? What the hell arrant, low blackmail would that be?"

Anyway, willingly or not, I came. After checking my weight (w00t, lost sixteen pounds! In nine months! And only ~50-100 more to go!) and blood pressure, the doctor herself came in, and, after discussing several minor issues, explained that the reason they called people in to get their supply of the Pill refilled was to give them a Pap smear. And I could do this either in a couple weeks or right now.

I mean, for Christ's sake, can't you warn a girl?! Is that seriously too much to ask?!

I knew myself well enough to know that delaying the inevitable would only make me nervous and dreadful (probably in both senses of the word) until it happened, so I flailed around for a couple minutes and tried to convey the impression "let's just get this the hell over with". This worked, eventually, though I was not in the least happy waiting ten minutes for the doctor to come back in, covered in paper, with my bare ass toward the door.

Of course, worrying about it was far worse than the thing itself, though the thing itself was less than comfortable. I hope to hell the damn thing worked; the-- sampling?-- itself I barely noticed, and the doctor warned that there might be a little blood, which there has not been. If they try to drag me back in again I will be seriously put out.

Whole incident got me a bit shaky and shocky. Medical stuff tends to do that to me; can't say why. It was worse the last time I got my blood drawn; it was almost like a homeopathic dilution of PTSD. My thoughts kept flashing back to it for hours, I could almost see it, especially that one point where she was poking and poking around for a vein. I don't like needles. I really really am not fond of needles. Not severe or irrational enough to be called a phobia, but I dislike them with great intensity.

Oh, they're making me get my blood drawn again, too. Just a cholesterol panel, so hopefully they won't need as many vials this time. I glanced down while the nurse was switching them last time. That was probably a mistake. But hopefully it'll have dropped a bit; I don't like having any hint of cholesterol trouble when I can't even drink yet. I'll admit my diet hasn't always been the best (but it's getting better), but even my skinny grandparents have high cholesterol, so I suspect I'm genetically screwed.

Also, my grandfather's in the hospital. This is not exactly like saying "it's a Tuesday", but it is like saying "Oh, I thought the month was over". Why is he in the hospital? Back pain. Spasms? Muscles? Kidneys? Your guess is as good as mine, and theories abound. But it means that he's in severe pain, and my grandmother's forgoing sleep to stay with him, and my father's testy as hell.

See, my father lived with his parents until he got married. His mother always used to say, "It'll kill your father if you leave". He was pretty sure this was a lie, but felt harassed into staying anyway, and I don't think he's even forgiven her for it, because, in his defense, I don't think she's ever stopped. She gets seriously weird about visitors when he's in the hospital. She'll wake him up to talk to them, insist he wants someone around when he clearly feels like crap, keep you around as long as she possibly can (especially if you're her son). Which is, on one level, understandable, but on another-- both her children tend to snipe at her, and you can see why it began.

So when dad goes to visit him in the hospital, which of course he has to, he never comes home happy. For one thing, Grandpa's in pain, and he just can't stand that; he has no tolerance for it at all. That makes him tense as hell, and not in an optimal mood to deal with his mother's fussing and small-talking or the occasional minor or not-so-minor incompetencies of the hospital staff. (Which, in turn, I doubt they're thrilled about.) And yeah, she does fuss, worrying at you and herself and trying to make Fred presentable when he's sick as a dog and trying to rest.

I'm honestly not sure what bothers me more: what'll happen if this keeps happening, or what'll happen when it stops. It can't keep going like this forever, and I'm-- not at all sure that's a bad thing. Crap.

But let's get the hell off of the medical nonsense. I got a volunteer position! Yay! 'Course, I imagine there's a lot less competition now that school's started and they've had budget cuts, but still. It's at the library, Tuesdays, 12-2. I told them I could do more days but I doubt they trust me yet. Maybe once I show up for a while, or my background check comes back, or they put out for a nametag. Did my first shift last week; mainly "bumping" (resensitizing the magnetic strips that set off the alarm if someone steals a book; we're not allowed to check them back in the system) and shelving new materials (the rest of the library's apparently done by other people). There was also some work with the reserves, bagging them for the couriers and whatnot; doesn't sound like much but it sufficed. Gonna have to wear my hair in a ponytail. Five minutes of anything even vaguely resembling work and my head starts to drip. It's fairly irksome.

I'm happy to have the motivation to get out of the house at least one day per week, and also happy for the exercise. I'm also hoping this will eventually provide me some insight as to my choice of career. Not happening yet, but I live in hope that someday a great beam of light will come down, and a voice will tell me my destiny, and suddenly it will all make sense and I will pick my course of study with a light heart. It could happen. Figuratively.

ameretrifle @ 2008-08-27T01:32:00

2008-08-27T09:06:28Z

(Incidentally, if you didn't check out the vid I posted in my last entry? You might want to do that instead. ^^ Just saying.)

So, Fay's come and gone. Didn't cause too many problems, personally; a few trees got knocked down, the power flickered once or twice, the road has ruts like you wouldn't believe, and our phone got knocked out for a day. The satellite TV barely even went out. Now, Tallahassee, they had a few problems. I think the power outages are fixed, but I'm pretty sure there's still a couple neighborhoods under water. We're starting to dry out, though. It's Florida, we're a bloody marsh anyway.

'Course, they say the improbably named Gustav might be coming this way in a week or so. But they can only predict hurricanes so far ahead, so I'll believe it three days before I see it.

I can never really bring myself to worry about hurricanes/tropical storms/what have you, even though I know I should probably be concerned. I believe this is why:

1. Hurricanes aren't scary where I live. If you live close to the coast, or maybe in a flatter area, you've got something to worry about. But in all the time I've lived here, a hurricane has been just a really bad thunderstorm. Power might go out, it'll get pretty windy, there'll be some trees down and maybe a couple streets get flooded, but by the time they get to us, hurricanes just seem to always run out of steam. Is this always going to happen? I don't know, but it always has.

2. This is Florida. You know the "snow days", when school closes down? Did those make you like snowstorms more, even if they were tchnically risky? Well, I don't know, because we don't get snow here. I mean at all. Back in February the local paper ran a big Sunday story about that one time it snowed around here and it actually stayed on the ground for maybe a week. That was fifty years ago. So, for those of us abandoned in the subtropics, the only weather-related school closing we enjoy is (wait for it) the "hurricane day"! This sort of predisposes you toward hurricanes as long as your house is never knocked down by one. And, in this area, like I said...

So it's hard to feel the proper concern. But Fay did dump a boatload of water onto us, and while we needed the rain, it was all a bit too sudden to be really helpful. Though I wonder if it's helped Lake Jackson any? Lake Jackson hasn't been a proper lake in years. Sinkhole drained it. Happens around here. It was always supposed to come back, but it still hasn't managed to. Didn't drive by it today.

Anyway, I may post a justification for the fic I'm working on when I'm in a state of mind that allows me to not sound like an idiot while doing so. It's just occured to me that the reasons I can't stand Ten have been blindingly obvious from the start. He's rude and not ginger, and not much else. Despite that, he's got the audacity to claim he's the Highest Authority, the Lonely God, and that's where he reaches my moral line in the sand. Anything else, I could cope with, could let slide, or simply let go. But when he/they set him up as a false god-- and yes, they have been-- that's the one thing I can't abide, the one thing I feel some sort of obligation to align myself against. A declaration of war, and I know exactly what side I'm not on. That's why I've never been able to just say "ah, screw 'em" and walk away. That's why I'm crossing DW over with a fandom that has the sense to call the Devil the Lone Power. I've learned to accept a lot of things, but I will never, ever learn to accept that. I take it that seriously. Are you sure it's not that serious?

DW vid-- OMG YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS

2008-08-19T07:26:13Z

SERIOUSLY, GUYS, I DON'T ASK MUCH

Yeah, you know all that weird crap I keep trying to say about Ten? Turns out someone else managed it a lot better with some clips, a song, and three and a half minutes.

I mean, I'd already realized it was way more absurdly simple than I'd been making it out to be, but damn. This is it. This is all of it.

And yes, it's ******* brilliantly done even if you don't think Ten is Satan. Seriously, I don't pull all caps for nothing. Or, ever. PLEASE GO WATCH IT.

Oh, and here's their LJ so you can go shower them with WELL-EARNED PRAISE. I MEAN THIS.

DW Fic: September, When It Comes (1/?, with any luck)

2008-08-13T11:13:31Z

It's been a long time since I posted something while I was working on it. This is because I once hit a block somewhere in the middle and I felt very bad about leaving my readers hanging. But, I think maybe I can lift this policy just this once for the following reasons:

-I was like thirteen. I should probably get over it now.
-This prologue actually stands very well on its own. Except for the "but, but, what, are they trapped or do they get out or WTF??" cliffhanger aspect. (And I could always just tell you.) Still, even if I never did finish the rest, it's a strange little story in its own right.
I've managed to get some work done on it lately. I suspect that moderate guilt and Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" on repeat might be able to get me through it.
For heaven's sake, how many readers do I have to disappoint?! Especially on LJ! (largely due to the fact I'm still too lazy to crosspost much)

So: this was inspired by a throwaway mention in wendymr's brilliant Don't Ask, Don't Tell of a time loop. Exactly how or why my mind turned that into this... I... am at an utter loss. I swear.

Nine!fic, though it's a while 'till he shows up. You wouldn't like me writing Ten. ;) Oh, and also? This goes to strange, strange places. I just hope to heaven it makes sense. ^^;
Temporary summary: Love, loss, and an endless summer. (With additional observations on the generation and maintenance of the temporal claudication, or "time loop". )

Solstice

It was a perfect summer day, sunlight rich and thick and sweet as syrup on the ground. Just enough pure white, fluffy clouds in the bluest of all skies, enough of a breeze to cool the skin and blow the shalan petals in slow drifts through the park. The vibrant yellow scent that permeated everywhere, in all its forms, the proper smell of growing things and plants and life itself, youth itself, peaceful days playing and laughing and cavorting through every nook and cranny of the parkground.

She hadn't had many days like that, but it reminded her of them anyway.

"Ah, summer!" Jan laughed happily, lifting up his hand to catch a few of the petals in the wind. "Isn't this fantastic, Lora?"

"Cha! 'Course you think that, you're from the North, aren't you? You even have summers up there? The snow barely even ever thaws. After nine-tenths of the year spent in this hell, you'll learn to value our three-week respite. " But she was grinning even through her derision.

"That's what you said last year, and the year before that, ne?" said Jan, utterly unrepentant. "And here I still am, taking joy in this glorious weather, like any sensible person ought to be doing. It's a festival, isn't it?"

"We don't even get time off!"

"Still a festival! It's the solstice! That's not just something we made up, that's got objective astrological existence!"

"Astronomical."

"Whatever." He shook his head, grinning at the familiar patterns of their old jokes, brown hair lighting like ancient gold in the caress of the sun.

"Astrology is the vile chicanery. Astronomy is the actual science. Fairly big difference there."

"Elitist. What you need is to spend some time out of that damn lab and out in the good yellow earth."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Jan's grin grew even wider; she pushed a chestnut braid behind her shoulder and grinned back. "That you are," he said.

And then he grabbed her hand, and she followed, laughing, into the thickest drifts of petals, around the grass-stained children, through the gaps between the bushes, around the fountains and off of all the paths, until they fell, trying to catch their breath enough to laugh, onto a park bench.

You lit my life, when I didn't even think I could be saved, she sang to herself, lifting a hand to brush a bit of hair behind his ear, marveling again at the autumn green of his eyes. Bringing back all the old songs of her childhood that she'd never, ever believed in. 'Till the end of the world, I'll protect you, the best thing in it.

He smiled and pulled Lora close, until their lips met-- but chastely; it was, after all, a public park. But it was Solstice, and anything could be excused. Who'd grudge lovers?

Jan sighed. "It really should be an official holiday, you know."

"Well then, you're just going to have to wait until tonight to celebrate like the rest of us." She kissed him again.

"But the sun's the whole point... why go to the sunset festival when the real show's at noon?"

"Because your lunch break is gonna end any minute now?"

"Here I am trying to be spiritual, and you bog me down with the practical details. You're a bad influence on me."

"And you love it." She chuckled.

"Godless prig, of course I do." He kissed her forehead and stood up, linking a hand in hers. "Come on, I can at least walk you back."

"How could I refuse that?" She rose, smiling, and followed his lead, back over the yellow hills.

"Anyway," she said, a minute later, "I do have actual work to do, unlike certain people I could name, so I might be a bit late-- but we'll definitely be in time for Sunset-- and then we can drop by that deli you like, and-- Jan?"

"Nah," he said, with a slightly weak smile, "I'm fine-- bit out of breath, that's all. What were you--?"

Fear flashed through Lora's eyes. "Just more lab work... clearing up after the students... checking the circuits..."

"Ah!"

"Jan?!" she cried, as he fell against her; she dropped to her knees, trying to cushion his fall. "Jan!"

"'m... dizzy..." he murmured, and cried out again.

"Shh! Shh, it'll be all right, Jan, Jan, I'm calling for help--" She fumbled with the phone on her wrist, hit the code for emergency services with shaking fingers. I'm in the middle of Westerview Park-- east of the fountain. It's my husband, he's collapsed--" She looked down; his eyes had closed again. "I think he's unconscious, his breathing's all shallow-- you have to help me!"

They would, the voice promised, but she had to hold on: five minutes, five minutes she spent in a daze, brushing her fingers through his hair, chanting his name, sometimes in whisper, sometimes raising to a scream--

"Ma'am!" Someone was beside her, a man in a uniform; he and another pushed their way to her husband's side, and she couldn't think enough to push them away. "Pulse is thready-- Ma'am, does your husband have any heart conditions?"

She shook her head. "No, there's nothing--"

"Anything in the liver, kidneys--"

"No, there's nothing, he's just-- he just collapsed-- his breathing went short and he started to hurt and then he just collapsed."

"All right, ma'am." They were loading him onto a portable table, she realized; they were half done already. Where had the time gone? "Ma'am, there is not enough room in the helicopter for all of us, okay? You're going to have to follow us to the hospital. Do you know how to get there?"

"Jan..."

"Do you know how to get there?"

"Yes." She forced herself to meet his eyes. "Yes, yes. Yes."

"Good. Don't worry, ma'am. We're gonna do everything we can."

And then the doors were closed behind them, and the helicopter was lifting again, sending swirls of wind and petals and honeyed sun around her.

Lora stared after it for a moment-- and started to run.

It took her only a few minutes to get back through the park-- her university, and therefore the labs, were easily within walking distance. She burst in the entrance on the second floor-- lunchtime, of course, nobody around-- and went straight for the stairs: one flight, two, three. She kept her key in her pocket always; for this abandoned place, it was a simple metal key: no one thought there was anything here worth securing.

"Well, look who's back."

She ignored the voice, heading straight for the machine. She wished she could get the thing to boot up a little faster, so she wouldn't have to listen to him for quite so long, but she didn't dare mess with what worked. Not when the stakes were this high.

"Earlier and earlier," he said, voice echoed oddly through the small brick room. "Seen a pattern?"

"Shut up," she said, and hit the second switch. All proceeding normally; the third would be ready in--

"It is a pattern," he said, "and it isn't gonna stop. You can't cheat death, Lora."

"Watch me," she said, and hit the third switch.

His voice grew strained, as it always did around the third switch; somehow that made it harder to bear, not easier. "It's gonna be earlier and earlier, Lora. Eventually it's gonna be the second the loop starts, and what're you gonna do then?"

"It doesn't matter."

"No. It doesn't. Because by then, this whole solar system is gonna be gone."

She sighed. Not this again; why did she have to suffer through this again?

"This-- machine--" he said, spitting the words out, "--is doing things to the fabric of the universe, Lora, to the fabric of time. It's not much longer before it starts to tear itself apart. It'll be the whole system, if you're lucky. This sort of thing could take out the whole galaxy-- the whole universe."

She let out a bark of laughter and flipped the fourth switch. "Galaxy? Maybe. Universe? Please."

"Lora--"

"You know what? If it'll make you shut up?" she said. "I'm not an idiot. I've read the equations, and I'm not an idiot."

"What the hell are you talking about?" He always started yelling at around this time, raising his voice louder than he had to to be heard over the drone of her machine, as if he was hearing something she didn't. It was possible. There was something strange about the man. She didn't care what it was. "Wait-- you're saying you know?!"

"Of course I know! You think I'd be able to build this thing if I wasn't able to figure out what it'd do? I'm a physicist, you idiot! I know what the damn thing's doing!"

That did shut him up, if only for a moment. "You know what you're doing... you know what the consequences of this will be... and you're still doing it?! What the hell is WRONG with you?!"

"Call it a mercy killing," Lora said, and flipped the last switch.

The machinery screamed, and so did the man. No matter how many times she'd heard it-- no matter how hard she tried to block it out-- those sounds combined always forced her to clap her hands to her ears, duck her head away, sometimes even fall to her knees, because the sound went through everything, even her bones. The power drain of this thing must black out the whole city-- but that was the beauty of it: the city would never know.

The screaming stopped; she got up from her knees, cautiously. Even after all this time, she never could get herself to believe that that god-awful noise had actually gone away for good. But it had; she could feel the heat emnating from the machinery, but it was intact. And that man was finally quiet.

Man, though, she thought, was probably a misnomer, given the contents of his pockets, his very odd arrythmia, and the reaction he always had to these timeslides. Whatever he was, he'd taken to passing out after the slides, for longer each time, for which she was profoundly grateful. Like a nagging wife, he was. Besides, it gave her more time to put some supplies in his room to tide him over until the next slide.

She went back up the stairs, to the first floor, since Shel Rofer would be on the second, and she'd take the secretary's inane chatter over Rofer's vindictive gossip any day.

"Ms. Kuski!" the secretary greeted her, as always. "Emerging from your den?"

"Ah, yeah, winter's over, isn't it?" Lora smiled at her. "Solstice is in a couple weeks, isn't it?"

"Thirteen days," the secretary said happily. Lora never had understood why the woman would keep track so damn precicely, but she didn't care: it was as good a way as any to check her time. If the machine got decalibrated and started the loop too late, she could lose all the time she'd bought them. "Where are you headed off to?"

"Gonna restock my lair," she said, so the secretary wouldn't ask when she came back with the grocery bags; "then I think I'm headed off home. I think I've earned an afternoon or two off, don't you?"

"Absolutely! You need a little sun. And if you should happen to indulge in any other less-than-scientific pursuits while you're gone, well, so much the better!"

"Tisa!"

"You've got a nice young man and you should enjoy it! Now get out of here, child, and get some fresh air into your lungs!"

Lora hit her heart with her fist in a mock salute and hurried out the door. Five seventy-one; three minutes and her phone should ring. Maybe four, never fewer than two. She could call him, but she'd tried that before; she'd spilled it all to him, the whole story, and he hadn't believed a word. How could he? She'd tried to pass it off as a bad dream or a bad joke, but he'd kept looking at her funny right until he-- right until the next iteration, and that wasn't how she wanted to spend this time. It had to be normal, all of it.

She paused in front of the store, just as her phone rang. She smiled and turned her earpiece on. "Hello?"

"Hey, Lora!"

"Aren't you supposed to be attending a lecture? You slacker. What juvenile mischief will you get yourself embroiled in next?" She grinned.

"It got out early! And it was on filing procedures, anyway. This is what Assistants are for, everyone in the room knew it. But this means I can be home early!"

"Yeah?" She walked into the store. "And what use will you make out of this glorious opportunity?"

"I'm making cookies."

"And..."

"Fixing dinner?"

"And...?"

"The dishwasher?"

"There we go. And don't you let it detract from the quality of your dinner, either."

"Yes, Authority of All." He laughed. "Crazy woman. You going to be late?"

"No-- in fact, there's just one thing I've got to do in the lab, and then I'm coming straight home."

"You? Really?"

"Even world-renowned geniuses get days off! It's a goregous day, and I'm spending it as I see fit. So have those cookies ready!"

"Yeah, okay. Love you."

"I love you too," she answered, voice going soft. Suspicuously soft, she thought; but Jan just broke the connection, so she couldn't have been too bad. Good.

She paid for the food and headed back to her dungeon, as she'd called it even before she'd gained a prisoner there. Said prisoner was still unconscious; he'd fooled her a few times, but these days, the claudication seemed to knock him out for longer and longer. Probably it was a sign that the universe was crumbling. Too slow for her taste, but this at least gave her time to reprovision his room and get out before he woke up and started moralizing at her. Which was annoying, because it was so fruitless. He thought she shouldn't destroy the universe; she honestly couldn't give a damn anymore whether she did or not. Irresistable force, immovable object. Fundamental difference of philosophy.

She closed the door, locked it, and watched as he started to stir. Possibly a bad idea; the look he gave her was bleak and scrambled and might've broken her heart if she thought for a second he had a corner on it.

"You're going to wreck the world," he said, hollow-voiced.

"It's wrecked already," she said. "I'm just saving us the wasted time."

And she headed up the stairs, into the endless summer's sun.

(--)

Ten, the Highest Authority (Final thoughts)

2008-07-23T08:04:55Z

If I'm lucky, this will be the last time I think about "Journey's End" and the Incident at the end thereof. Well, the last time I post about it, anyway. My mind tends to worry at things.

I doubt I have much else to contribute to the Debate about the Incident (I still think the mere fact that they used that as a plot device, no matter what it technically was or wasn't, is utterly rephrehensible), but there is one more thing I want to say.

If Ten were here, there would be no debate.

By which I mean: say this weren't Ten who had done this. What would he think?

Let's take past canon-- hmm, I seem to recall there were some other companions who got their memories wiped, and I don't recall the Doctor being especially happy about it. But, different person, different series, let's lay that aside.

What other instances in the past three series do we have of someone taking unilateral, drastic action in order to save one or more lives?

Let's see, there was that incident with Harriet Jones. She destroyed the Sycorax or whosit to save the planet Earth. Ten flipped the hell out. But, of course, that killed billions of aliens, and she didn't have the right, and it clearly wasn't necessary.

So that's out. How about that incident with the Ten-clone I heard of? Destroyed the Daleks, didn't he? Obviously the Daleks couldn't have been rehabilitated-- I mean, he's already tried that, what, five or six times? Hell-bent on killing everyone. Ten flipped the hell out, yes? But, of course, that killed billions of aliens, and he didn't have the right, even if it was necessary.

Hmm, getting closer here. What more do we have? That time he yelled at those shopkeepers in "Gridlock"-- but those were obviously just terrible people anyway, and that's inaction, not action. UNIT? No, Christ knows you can't trust soldiers, that wasn't in any way a knee-jerk reaction. The end of PotW? No, that's Nine, and obviously even that's had conesquences, from which Rose has only been spared because the Doctor ~~martyred himself~~ took the blame for her and because she wasn't precicely herself.

Oh, the end of that Sontaran two-parter I never did watch. Didn't someone fire a nuclear bomb at those aliens? And he flipped the hell out. But, of course, that put billions of people in danger, and they didn't have the right, and it clearly wasn't necessary. (Or, something.)

No, no, we're going backwards here. Oh, wait! Maybe I have it. Remember that Jenny bird? Soldiering and all? Scandalous. Remember that time when she knocked a guard out instead of trying to sneak around like any civilized person would? Ten flipped the hell out. But, of course, that... hurt someone... and she didn't... well, she was defending herself, you could argue that gives her the right (Ten never, ever would)... But it wasn't necessary. Probably. Everyone knows nobody actually trains their guards. Easy as pie to distract 'em.

So the point I'm trying to make is that sometimes, I've gotten the impression that Ten is a trifle judgmental. Just an eensy bit. So, if it had been someone else who'd had to take Donna's memories-- say, clone-Ten-- how do you think he would have reacted?

Can there really be any doubt that he would have FLIPPED THE HELL OUT? He would've rounded on clone-Ten. "How dare you!" he would've screeched. "I had to!" clone-Ten would've protested. "To save her life!" "You didn't have the RIGHT!" Ten would have screamed. "You changed her very essence! You didn't have to do that!" "I did so!" clone-Ten would have cried.

That argument has never held ANY sway with Ten. Not when someone else was using it. Clone-Ten would be lucky if he were still banished to Rose's AU. He'd be lucky if he were banished to a mirror. But he wouldn't die. Of course Ten wouldn't kill him. Ten doesn't kill anyone Ten just sentences them to eternal damnnation. "If you're looking for a higher authority, there isn't one."

So what suddenly allows this "I had to, to save lives, and it's a weight I'm willing to carry" argument to hold water? What's different this time? Two things:

1. It's Ten.
2. No one died. (Memories aren't alive. Right?)

Why does the fact that it's Ten change anything? Because he is The Highest Authority. It wasn't a cute turn of phrase. It wasn't a cool icon-able quote. This is his, and the show's, gospel truth. This is absolute. He. IS. The. Highest. Authority. There's no appeals. And if that's okay, that must mean he's infallible. And if he's infallible, don't all of these weird Christ allusions make rather a lot more sense?

Why does the fact that no one died change anything? I grant you, death is terrible, and so is murder, so that should change things rather drastically. But the difference in "murder" and "theft", to use the penal system as an example, is not "death" to "let me shake your hand". Whatever the alteration of memories is, it's serious. But it isn't death. And that's all that matters on this show. The Family of Blood didn't die. Ten never kills anyone. Killing is the only unforgivable sin.

I'm not saying I don't buy Ten's rationale. On the contrary, I do. I've entirely accepted why Ten had to do what he did. But I did so, I've realized, based on arguments and mercy that Ten would never and has never entertained. Harriet didn't get a hearing, or a debate. Harriet got sacked. Clone-Ten didn't get to offer his excuses and have them accepted. He was left for Rose to "fix". (And obviously it's her job to fix him. Yeah. Nothing dodgy about that one.) Jenny was programmed to believe that soldiering was necessary, but what did that matter? She had Ten's DNA, she should've known better. Donna had to beat the living crap out of him to get him to bend a little on Jenny. Ten would not be listening to these excuses and theories and rationales and rationalizations and debates. Ten would've hated this bastard. Might've even devised some private hell for him before walking off with a song in his hearts.

Does that matter? Not to the discussion of what he did. But I think it sheds a little light on why I want nothing to do with the son of a bitch. He's a narcissistic, self-righteous, judgmental, hypocritical bastard, and there is no questioning him. He's got the power to get away with all of it. And the excuses. Excuses and excuses and excuses. Half of them even make sense, out of context. But I've gone past the number of excuses I can stomach for a character I don't like. Past the number of excuses I could stomach for a character I loved. Past the number of excuses I hope I could stomach for a man whose children I had carried (though I'll admit that's not one I'm likely to ever be called on).

At a certain point, you've got to admit there are no more excuses. Think about it, take it word by word, think past the cliche: it's not even a little worrying that Ten can do no wrong?

Only post-JE stuff I've come up with is a crossover fic, with a universe that coincidentally allows me to make Donna a wizard and Ten possessed by the Devil. The summary I've got is, Turns out, he's not the only road. There's other journeys to make, in this crossover universe. Other vehicles, other roads, and you can be the driver.

And, perhaps most importantly, in the crossover universe? There would be a court of appeals.

But I don't know how far I'll bother with it. I'm more inclined to leave Ten as the God of his bounded little world. He'll drown himself in it eventually; he already is. And I've got better things to do.

"Journey's End" (Hang on, for whom?)

2008-07-10T07:23:18Z

It's rather difficult working through an episode when you haven't even seen it yet, but given the reactions I've been seeing, I haven't really had a choice. (Which would imply I shouldn't be reading ahead, but I repeat, "spoilers"? There's something to be "spoiled"? Not for me, not in this fandom, there's not...) I've been doing my best not to comment because I had a feeling I hadn't yet thought it through. I think I mostly have now. So, for anyone interested in half-informed Disloyal Opposition thoughts that might surprise you,

Now, I am not a fan of the memory-wiping. The memory-wiping presses all of my buttons. I firmly believe with an almost religious fervor (though I do believe I can back it up with logical and even scientific arguments, instead of just my instinctual feeling of no) that memory can not be completely, permanently erased. Temporarily? Yes. Partially? Sure. But not completely, and not forever. On top of that, I've never been a fan of the notion that losing memories can make you a completely different person. Can it change you? Hell, yes. But I'd like to believe (is it too naive a notion?) that there's some part of you that stays the same. Maybe a soul; I'm not done with my personal philosophy yet; I doubt anyone ever is. But some core to personality, little as we can define personality; some tendencies, a couple of ideas. Not to mention, with incomplete amnesia-- like Jack's memory incidents, and now Donna's-- I'd think that even if conscious recall of a memory has been taken from you, something of it, some knowledge of the import of it, remains. Tip-of-the-tongue syndrome; the subconscious mind. You can remember exactly where the information on the test question was in your textbook; you can't remember what the answer is, but you've got to say something, and turns out you've got it right; the way you feel that something's wrong before you can figure out what it is. Everything in my experience and everything I've learned in Psychology courses and everything in biochemistry itself says, it's still in there. Even if you never find it again, it's there.

The "Spirited Away" approach to memory, if you've seen it. I firmly believe in it. And after a few days, I realized, given those ideas and my ideas about the series? Donna got the best ending ever. The best ending possible. Maybe even the only good ending possible. The writers would never and could never imagine it this way, but I swear to you, it's true.

Three axioms:
1. Memory is never entirely lost.
2. The Tenth Doctor is, in his very best moments, an asshole. (Given how few people would agree to this crucial element, the outrage is unsurprising.)
3. Donna would never have left him willingly and was unlikely to ever suscribe to axiom 2.

Take axiom 2 and 3. Presuming that a) we like Donna and b) we don't want people we like to hang around people who are, at best, assholes, this means that we do not want Donna to stay around Ten. (Substituting "CT has to leave at the end of the series and so Donna will have to be written out somehow", actually, produces much the same result. Think about it.) Given that we want Donna to leave (or, for the less radical, she must leave), consider axiom 3. Donna is extremely unlikely to run off on her own (and given they'd probably have her running off after a man? Let's count our blessings), and RTD seems unlikely to pull another Romana "Nah, I'm going off this way, seems interesting and they need me more-- and by the way, I'm taking the dog" end. The more likely "Sorry, I love you and you're too special to love me, so I'm going off to make myself a life and get over you", he just did last year. That would leave death, as everyone was fearing, or entrapment, as they did with Rose. Would either of those have been satisfactory?

Now, given axiom 1, consider what did happen to Donna. She's home and away from Ten. She can't remember Ten, or get back to him. But she'll remember, just a little, just vaguely, what she's learned about the world and about herself. Just the slightest echo, and the sudden irrational certainty: there's more. There can be more. I can be more. Just a little bit of that. And just a little is enough. What do you think Donna can do with that knowledge? If she's still Donna, just away from Ten, just temporarily distracted by the notion that nothing's ever happened to her and she's only a temp-- if she's going to become who she was again, because that's still who she is, she'll be fantastic. She'll be wonderful! She's free! She's free and alive and she's not going to let some stupid bugger mucking about in her mind take her down. So that's a fantastic ending for her.

I've heard a lot about how Donna's memories got taken away. Well, by "a lot", I mean more opinions than facts. I don't know what excuse they used for taking away all those memories when apparently it was the Time Lord Whatever that was bothering her, but I'm sure it was distressingly stupid on at least four or five levels. In fact, I can probably name the levels.

1. Simple stupidity (clearly lacking in internal logic)
2. Writing incompetence (badly explained, cheaply done, et cetera)
3. Feminist issues (the term 'mindrape's been used, consent issues, possible implication that Donna is only important as she figures in the Doctor's life)
4. Messianic issues (overstatement of Ten's importance, general use of incident as an action of and tragedy for him, Time Lordiness as something "too much" for the human brain to endure)

Am I wrong?

Incidentally, I don't like the way the scene was framed; "medical necessity" or not, when you're screwing with someone's personality and being, and you have magic telepathic powers that should make it very easy to communicate intent and reasoning, no really ought to mean no. Was it worse than death? Well, I obviously don't think so, but Donna wouldn't agree with some of my reasons. And it just proves yet AGAIN that in this DW universe, there is NO fate worse than death, not anywhere. Nine was often hampered by his reluctance to kill (it was practically a complex; see the Gelth, the Daleks in PotW), yet somehow he's now apparently a Xenocide in the style of Ender Wiggin (which, given that Orson Scott Card is kind of an asshole? Very intriguing). Clone!Ten was evidently perfectly willing to kill Daleks (and may I note HE HAD ALL TEN'S MEMORIES? No one to blame but your CURRENT self, you stupid whore), so apparently that makes him like Nine, who-- hang on-- wasn't willing to kill Daleks, in the end. Damn. But he's got to be like someone who isn't Ten, because Ten leaves all his victims alive. That whole Nine/Genocide/Ten issue... that I can still take issue with.

Apparently half the rationale for Clone!Ten going home with Rose was that she would be able to "fix" him again. (Other half? Going by the Wikipedia entry, "You killed Daleks! Bad boy! You're grounded!" They literally used the word "punished"-- is that justified?) And the six of us Ten-bashers over here say "Yeaah, 'cause clearly she did a bang-up job fixing him the first time." And I repeat-- he's got all Ten's memories, right? So why is he apparently "more like Nine" (which is, I repeat, ludicrous)? Because he did something Ten didn't like, and so he cannot, in Ten's mind, be anything like Ten. Ten who's created hells for the souls he's deemed damned. Ten the Redeemer. Ten the Jesus of Suburbia. I am incapable of putting up with that bullshit.

Finally, I want to touch on the issue of "TimeLordiness" being deadly to humans. This could be just because it's different. Theoretically. Given the entirety of this show, I feel entirely safe in asserting that it was because it was "more" and "better" and even "higher". Don't look directly at the sun. Don't look directly at the Ark of the Covenant. (I always preferred C.S. Lewis and Diane Duane's version-- the divine might be blinding, but it will give you the strength to endure it.) I am not happy about that. Mainly because I have never enjoyed Ten the Jesus of Suburbia, and partially because I'm not willing to say we as a species are inferior to Time Lords. Less advanced? Well, that's a bit of a problematic assertion. It implies that evolution's a ladder, going up to perfection, one way. The mere fact of different species proves that one false. Evolution will only get you so far. Natural selection's only concerned about "good enough to survive long enough to have kids". Intellectually less advanced? Well, maybe. Special Time Lord spatiotemporal senses? I'd think the mere fact of having those would help you cope with having them... It'd be okay if they just saw differently. But I promise you, it's that they see more. Not too different for the human brain to handle, just too much. I don't like that. RTD's Time Lords say they see all of Space and Time, and I don't accept that. (All of time except the spot you happen to be in right now. Right. All but your own timeline. Sure, that one makes sense. The "original" timeline. Which is getting changed all the time, even by people who aren't you. There's One True Way things should happen. There's non-paradoxical ways things should happen; there's better ways things should happen; but that there's One Proper Path and it's easy to discern, I call bullshit. "I can't change this because the ramifications of the change might be far worse than what we've got"? Hell, yes. "I can't change this because it's set in stone in the proper timeline"? Who deemed it The Proper Timeline? Is it just because it's the one you're from? Is it because you'd wipe yourselves out of existence, or is it because god or your friends or your history books said That Is The Way It Went and You Can't Change It? It's too convoluted. Time Lords can see more, differently, but not always better, and NOT everything. Only way it makes sense, on many levels.)

"Journey's End". No, it isn't. The mere fact they titled it that says strange and terrible things about their thinking. Just because Donna's not travelling with him doesn't mean there's nothing left for her. On the contrary. This is her journey's beginning.

Donna, Rose and Clone!Ten, Jesus of Gallifrey-- no, their journey's still continuing. But I don't think I'm riding this train anymore. I think there might be a reason I haven't been making progress on anything I've been working on, and it might not be the vacation lassitude and laziness I'd assumed. I think, after several false starts, I might have finally lost my ability to even want to care about this show. I've only cared for the community for quite some time now, but I don't think even that can make me watch this show ever again. I'm not even sure I can still write Nine or watch other eras (I'll try a couple of One and Two scripts, but Four and Five might hit nerves RTD's scraped raw). I really am not especially motivated to try. I think this divorce is finally amicable, and final, and permanent.

But since I'll keep reading fandom stuff, I could easily be wrong again. ^^ And if anyone wanted to start an Alt!S2 project with Nine and Rose and Jack, well, I doubt I could resist-- especially not the plotting of it, if you chose to keep to the basics of S2 in at least a few spots. I adore working out those logistics. I could probably even write a bit of it. Hell, I'll set up an LJ comm if I'm only assured that someone else would be interested in working on it.

You know what's happening on Monday? New season of The Closer. God, that's a good show. When they pose ethical dilemnas, they always do it on purpose. When a character does something wrong, we know it's wrong and understand where they're coming from and know there will be consequences and we can hold that in our heads all at once. All of the characters have flaws and know it and are still entirely awesome. Brenda is often overly dedicated to her job, which often gets her in trouble, and often leads to her job being done extremely well. It's a tradeoff, and she thinks it's worth it. Sanchez is badass, Flynn and Provenza are awesome, Tao is deeply cool, Pope is not my favorite but often truly excellent... Even the "villain" of the workplace who's been trying to sabotage Brenda from day one turns out to have occasional good intentions (and, more often, self-serving ones, but still). He's an asshole, but there's no reason to hate him too fiercely, because he does what he thinks is right (usually for himself) and has done some very good things, and everyone (including the writers) knows this. There aren't any Messiahs in The Closer. Just a bunch of good and not-so-good people solving crimes. *happy sigh* A show I can watch without feeling insulted. I'd forgotten that could happen. ^_^

Incidentally--

2008-07-06T10:21:08Z

So I've been reading about the S4 DW finale.

This is my best strategy for retconning Ten out of canonicity. By this, I mean specifically strategies for denying that Ten is, in fact, the person known as the Doctor, without impacting the canonicity of either Nine or the events of S2-4. (I must specify this because if you need a strategy for retconning Ten out of existence, I've already got a couple and I'd be happy to think up more for you. Also, the simplest and probably still most effective way of denying Ten's canonicity is the more direct, "What series 2?" route.) I also believe I know how recent events with Donna might be addressed within this framework. Yes, I have already thought about it. I enjoy puzzling it out. It actually makes more sense than the actual show ~~all~~ half the time.

Any and all help in hashing out the theory, writing a story, or forcing me to write a story would be met with genuine and heartfelt gratitude.

Right now, if you've glanced at that theory and found it in some way interesting, here's pretty much the only scrap of fic from that scenario I have:

(-)

It doesn't look a thing like a prison cell.

Too lavishly furnished. A bit small, but every square inch is crammed with carpets and wall-hangings and rich chairs and tables and sofas (who is it they think he'll have occasion to entertain?). Mirrors and gilt and aged elegance, opulence so thick he can see how they've all drowned in it. A small computer, seamlessly recessed into the wall; a desk, with possibly the only ballpoint pens on the entire planet: large ones, that write thick, bold lines, because they don't want him near anything that even remotely resembles a point.

It's such a civilized prison. All the comforts, all the luxuries, it's so very humane. It might even be possible to forget the trivial fact that you can't get out.

But he's always had an unusually acute sense of space and time, and he doesn't need anything so dramatic as iron bars to feel the presence of the cage around him.

He taps the too-thick pen against the table. His jailors have done their job with truly scrupulous paranoia; there's hardly a scrap of real metal in the place, much less accessible circuitry, or power lattices or crystals or lenses. They're pretentious enough to serve him his meals on sliver platters, with proper cutlery, but afraid enough of him to count every single piece when they clear it away.

Much as he hates to admit it, he doesn't have a damn thing to work with. Nothing to build on, nothing to start with. He's in a cage and he's got nothing, but he will not be trapped in this place. Not here: never here.

He's escaped from this place before, and he will do it again.

Which only leaves him the question of how.

Out of sheer boredom-- and to distract himself at all possible costs from the conclusion that he's trapped until they slip up-- he starts going through the mail. Nothing from anyone he knows; all the people he ever really knew are dead by now. Just letters from councils and wardens and sub-committes, which appear to actually be cordially welcoming him to his stay and acquainting him with the facilities; why is it that one always finds the most alien things in the universe right at home?

He opens them all anyway, because he isn't exactly busy-- and hang on, the last one appears to contain something besides empty platitudes. Three or four tiny objects concealed within the unusually thick folds of parchment-- he tips them into his sleeve in a minor feat of sleight-of-hand. Surely it escaped the cameras, and the dullard who was no doubt manning them. Well, he'd find out.

The letter is another set of platitudes, enjoining him to see the wisdom of the new policy and assuring him he will be perfectly free as soon as he steps into line. Like all the other letters, except perhaps a bit more fancy, with a rather fetching geometric border.

He can't help but grin, because it's genius, unadulterated and strong. There were few, if any, telepathic translation fields on Gallifrey-- in the city, who would need them? Even the planet was homogeneous enough to render such things unnecessary. And even if this had fallen, by some chance, into the hands of someone who could translate, the code still wouldn't fail: telepathic translation depended on intent, what the other person intended to communicate, and the person who had written this had been thinking quite blandly of lines, of geometric shapes, of four colors and a deadline and how he hated it when a committee demanded a new design for every meeting.

And yet: for anyone who knows the written language, there are red English letters standing out quite clearly against a latticework of multicoloured lines.

We have not all betrayed you, it says.

And in the bottom corner: Get to work!

Who does he know who could have done this? He never had got a clear roster of the dead-- had Romana's loss somehow proved less than permanent? It seems impossible, but he isn't much inclined to trust his sense of the impossible anymore.

How much does it matter? If she'd taught someone, if there were some other scholar, if he'd recklessly looped back on his own timeline, what difference does it make? He's got a lens, two circuit panels, and a match. He gives it a month at most before he's gone.

-

I don't know if I myself can write this, but the things I've been hearing have made me want to. Thing is, I suspect my emotional divorce from the show has just about gone through again for the last time, and given how spectactularly unproductive I've been of late, I think I'd need some fury to get myself through it. I know one person who volunteered to help, but she seems to have disappeared (or have you? I know you've got my e-mail, feel free to impose if you're reading)... Any interest? Advice? Aid? Probably it's a waste of time...

ameretrifle @ 2008-06-27T00:42:00

2008-06-27T06:12:27Z

Well, since they've finally sent me my diploma, I can now announce without hesitation that I totally have a bachelor's degree. In humanities. This and a dollar should get me a small fry at McDonald's. (Hmm? Job search? Yes, I have been looking for openings commensurate with my total lack of experience, and those are far harder to find than I seem to remember, why do you ask?) Well, at least I got family I can crash with.

My father somehow contrived to suddenly come down with two ear infections, a sinus infection, and a diverticulitis flareup at once, but he seems to be recovering nicely. His father, however... Oh, I can't even tell how he's doing anymore. He was hospitalized for a couple days, but I couldn't tell whether that was a sign of mortal peril or a Tuesday. He has the most astonishing facility for bouncing back from medical crises the doctors seem to think will kill him; it's either God or astonishing powers of denial. Not to slight the divine, but I know they've got the denial down pat. At this point I suspect he'll live for years and die when no one at all is expecting it, but life doesn't always make narrative sense.

Anyway, having displayed my academic achievement, I will now give my ignorance equal time by means of that book meme that's been floating around. Why not?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I should read more Austen)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I had to try several times before I could manage it. I had to get a lot older before I could keep track of all the damn names.)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (See, my liberal arts degree did do me some good!)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I don't know how many other books out there can manage to be both overrated and underrated at the same time... Depends whether you're talking to a fangirl or a stuffy critic.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (If I recall correctly, the movie definitely rivals the book in quality; a rare achievement.)
6 The Bible (...Well, a lot of it, possibly all at some point or another... Probably enough to count, but I don't want to fudge on the Bible. Doesn't seem quite right.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (First one was the best. I just didn't like Will much. Too much time telling us he was great and having everyone listen to him because he was fantastic, and far too little time showing us why he was worthy of it. Boy was practically cardboard; I know, "stiff upper lip", but damn. The third was better-- I love Balthamus just because he occasionally disagreed with Will; he was pretty much the only one-- but I didn't like who Lyra became around him. A little too close to Milton, there, I think.)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I read it just to figure out what the hell "catch-22" meant. I was so very glad I did.)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Well, except most of the historical plays, but I read Titus Andronicus, so I think that earns me a little leeway.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Managed that one long before LotR.)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (I should read that one again...)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Here I am, brain the size of a planet, annotating a meme.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (I'm pretty sure I have...)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (Yay, college! I actually enjoyed most of the books in my Women in Lit class. The one I didn't was at least interesting on a theoretical level.)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (I rather prefer 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader'. And 'The Silver Chair'. And 'The Horse and His Boy'. And 'The Last Battle'. Not that it isn't still good.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Please don't hurt me. Wasn't actually reading that book punishment enough?)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (So long ago I can hardly remember when, but yep, I remember where they were on the children's shelves...)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (Women in Religion, this time. Great books there, too. The professor owns a small eco-friendly coffee shop on Lake Ella. I know 'cause she invited us all to show up for a free drink Finals week. If I lived closer, I'd start haunting that place.)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Actually... Was it this book or 'Bridge to Terabithia' that depressed the living crap out of me? Can't remember...)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Yes, my Dickens ignorance is astonishing)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I threw it down about halfway through. Don't remember if I was frustrated or revulsed. Possibly a combination of both. Since I'm never finishing it I'm going to count it anyway, out of sheer spite.)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Yes, yes, I'm sure it's well-written, and I'm sure it's been influential, and I'm sure it's got impressive literary merit-- 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' contains enough discussion and excerpts of it almost to count here-- but I don't want to read about some old pervert happily ruining some kid's life. Sorry. No thank you.)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (Not my thing, but I've read it.)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (The movie count?)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (My dad had to read this in high school. His famously strict English teacher ["The Rock"] said that to pass the test, they would have had to have read the book cover to cover. This incited much panic, especially in my father, whose best subject never was and never will be English. The test day came, and she handed out the exam, which consisted of one question: "What is the first sentence of Moby Dick?" As students groaned and beat themselves about the head, the answer suddenly came to my father in a blinding flash of insight. He walked up to the teacher's desk in triumph, and he's never forgotten it was "Call me Ishmael". *pause* Anyway, never read it myself. Fantastic story, though.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (What, no 'Black Beauty'?)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (...Ah ha ha ha, not yet, no thank you.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (...What? Who? Interesting title though...)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (I think the Muppets did the best movie version ;)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (Women in Religion. Way less depressing than 'The Bluest Eye'. It has a happy ending, for cripes sake.)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White (Awesome)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (Ah ha ha, I'm not making that mistake again.)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (What, just the Adventures? Dilettantes. I've read them all. Except maybe the second half of Valley of Fear. Everyone skips that. ^~)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (Tried, once. Didn't get anywhere. Was a long time ago, though.)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (Clearly of roughly equal literary merit.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So that's... 29, maybe 30? Pretty random list, too. Ah, well, at least it wasn't movies. I would probably epically fail on movies. Though I was the only one in my American History II class who'd seen Dr. Strangelove. I found that so very sad.

ameretrifle @ 2008-06-24T05:17:00

2008-06-24T09:41:09Z

Came across a post-HN/FoB snippet I'd worked on. It was less damn long than everything else I've been working on, and therefore stood some sort of chance at being completed within a reasonable amount of time (despite how hard it was to get it to end properly), and it isn't too terrible, so:

Some Smothering Dreams
Summary: Martha's not talking to him and he can feel the gun in his hands.

(-)

Martha's not talking to him and he can feel the gun in his hands. He can feel the gun in his hands and he doesn't understand it, not at all.

But he was human, of course. That's why he did it, human frailty, just human nature, go along with the flow, they do it all the time.

(And Time Lords so hated conformity.)

Only human. What's that word even mean? They use it all the time, mean a thousand different things-- biped, hominid, decent, humane, mortal, conscious, kind, likable, fallible-- they don't have the faintest idea what the word means. A bit of clarification there would save them all so much trouble so many different times so many different ways.

(And what do you mean when you say human?)

That odd little species, so durable, so cowardly and brave, so primitive and brilliant, omnipresent survivors.

(There we have it.)

Survivors. He's a survivor. Always has been. It's got worse lately, though.

(Talk around and around and around it and it'll only lead you in circles in the end.)

Martha's not talking to him and he can feel the gun in his hands. He gave guns to children. He taught them to use them. The verge of the Great War, and he gave guns to children. But of course he hadn't known it at the time.

(You knew everything. You just couldn't remember it.)

Hadn't known a thing at the time, how was he to know? It was his job, of course, he was protecting them, they'd have to learn sometime

(Would you accept that excuse from anyone else?)

they've have had to learn sometime, anyway, his not teaching them about guns wouldn't have stopped the war

(That wouldn't, but there is something you could've done, isn't there?)

and the war was necessary, anyway, to the proper flow of time

(Necessary? Proper?! Who decided that?!)

and why is he even thinking like this? He couldn't have known! He was a stupid human and it's all over now, it's all in the past.

(You of all people think that means it doesn't mean anything?)

All in the past. She and they and the war and that boy lived, didn't he? That boy lived anyway, and a lot of other boys lived because they knew how to use their weapons, because they hadn't learned the day before they were sent in the field.

(If in some smothering dreams you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in...)

Martha's not talking to him and he can still feel the gun in his hands and he just saw something move in the mirror.

(Has it even occured to you what you've done?)

Why does he keep thinking he's done something wrong? What did he do wrong? He might've fallen in love, yes, that was a bit of a mistake, but he didn't kill anyone, they're all alive, just like they wanted, and he probably saved people, like usual--

(You've seriously forgotten that there are worse fates than death? You've forgotten that immortality's one of them?)

--but the point is they're alive and it didn't end too badly and all he's lost is his chance at--

(Who said it was all about you?)

--his chance at happiness, at domesticity--

(Because staying in one place is something only a human could do. Not a thing you could ever be capable of, not you, not you with all the time in the world. No, staying in one place would be cutting yourself apart, suffocating yourself, neutering yourself, that's a thing for lesser beings--)

She'd rejected him because of what he was. That proved that sort of thing wasn't possible for him.

(And the ones who'd follow you? What makes them less worthy than the ones who never would?)

Everyone he loved went away.

(The human word for it is "life".)

Martha isn't talking to him, and he's held so many guns.

(Just face the truth of it.)

When he'd lost his memories, his past, his knowledge, his self

(That's a lie--)

When he'd made himself a human

(Your commentary on the human race)

He's taken guns and taught schoolchildren how to use them.

(And you were a right old codger about it, too. Let the ones who didn't shoot quickly enough get beaten? Your proudest moment.)

He taught children how to kill.

(If in some smothering dreams)

He does dream it. He dreams it and dreams it and sometimes he's not even sure he's awake because peace isn't so unlike wartime as it ought to be anymore. He dreams all the nightmares he's lived and that's why he'd thought--

(you would not tell with such high zest)

To children, ardent for some desperate glory.

The old lie...

(You've seen it done. Start with the truth. Rebuild yourself on that.)

God, he hates guns. He's never going to allow one of those damned things to be around him again. Yeah, that'll fix it; that's where he went wrong, forgetting his hatred of guns. It's all so clear.

Well, that's sorted!

(...How can you truly think the wounds you just inflicted were made by guns?)

(-)

Possibly I'll whine at some point in the near future about how everyone I know is sick and how I've only just now been reassured that I did, in fact, graduate and how the hints about Donna in "Turn Left" have changed my Horror Alert Level from "Maybe it'll be okay, but someone has notified the UK disaster authorities, right?" to "Oh, god, brace yourselves, people, if you need to vent despair or homicidal rage toward RTD I'm right here with virtual tea and blankets". But, not right now. This is probably a very good thing for all involved. :)

ameretrifle @ 2008-06-20T01:13:00

2008-06-20T05:41:46Z

Mainly as proof of life, a fragment from a fic that will hopefully someday in the far-off future be finished:

It was a smaller, more haphazard party than any she'd ever been to, Martha thought, as she headed toward the stairs, but even with few decorations, homemade alcohol, and music exclusively from the 70's and 80's, she had truly had a rather excellent time. No small feat, considering the world was in the hands of a madman and death reigned all around. Of course, it was Georgia; they'd probably had quite a bit of practice at "small-scale brewing".

Sometimes she could swear they'd seen this coming.

"Excuse me," came a voice from behind her. She turned; it was the marginally more attractive man from that group of Jack's. Jones, something Jones. Ianto.

"Yeah?" she said.

"I realize this might be a bit forward," he began, and her heart sank. She hated fending off advances. "But it's been a very long and trying few months, and there's something I really need to ask you, for the sake of my peace of mind, if nothing else. And what do we really have to lose, anymore?"

"Uh," she said, smiling awkwardly, "Ianto, really--"

"So, have you shagged Jack?"

Her mouth dropped open as her train of thought quietly derailed. Whatever it was, it wasn't a joke; his eyes were deadly serious. "Er, what?"

"Have you shagged Jack," he repeated, obviously a bit uncomfortable, but insistent.

"I..." She blinked, several times. "We... only knew each other a couple of days."

Ianto stared at her, expectant.

"...What could we have done in a couple of days?"

"You haven't known him long, then, have you?" Ianto said, all the tension going out of his shoulders at once.

"...What?"

"Well, that's all right, then. Sorry to bother you. Have a nice night." He started to walk off, an actual spring in his step, but suddenly turned back. "What about that skinny whore, do you know?"

"I-- what?"

"That... that Doctor fellow. What about him?"

"What? You mean--" She shook her head, thinking that something was clearly very wrong with this conversation, and she wasn't inclined to think it was her. "Are you asking if he's shagged Jack?"

"Just if you happen to know."

"I... I mean, they knew each other, an' they were sort of flirting, but Jack was sort of flirting with, you know, everyone, an' possibly everything, an' the Doctor's... He's pretty hung up on this blonde tart. Named Rose. So I don't think..."

"All right, then. Thanks again." Ianto nodded respectfully and ducked out.

Martha stared after him, wondering if she'd had too much moonshine to understand that conversation, or too little.

"'Torch-wood'," she muttered, and headed up the stairs, shaking her head all the way.

-

It'll take me ages to get it all down, given where I actually am at the moment (several months before this scene), but I do already know all that happens. I feel a duty to explain Owen/Toshiko, for example, despite how little I support it, and I already know how... Better than the show ever did them, at any rate. If I'm doing anything even vaguely Owen/Toshiko, I'm doing it right, damn it. I'm giving her a reason to pine after him despite no encouragement and active discouragement for weeks and months. That half-arsed "motivation" we got from the show don't play around here, no no. Lazy sods.

I'd stuff in other news and things, but I've already accidentally posted this, so... probably best to actually get some content in the accidental post as quickly as possible, yeah? ^^

Something about poison

2008-05-31T07:58:22Z

I tried to watch "The Poison Sky" or whatever it was called. I'm afraid I didn't meet with much success. I just gave up fifteen minutes in. I knew nothing good could come of it.

First, the revamped theme song. I am not fond of the revamped theme song. Granted, I'm not generally fond of remakes and remixes, but it's brash and loud and actually, rethinking it? Probably absolutely perfect. Then came the first scene, where Donna's mother or other older female relative (didn't have much luck with TSS, either, really) finally showed the sense to break the windshield while the Doctor futzed around with something in the car that any idiot could tell that he could never fix in time and would, at this point, entirely fail to fix the problem when he did. That is, I assume he was trying to stop the car from emitting gas. He could've been checking the alignment, wouldn't have been much less help. I'm not so clever that the Doctor shouldn't be smarter than me, not by a long shot.

Then, as they ran off, another bit of recycling: "You can't go with him! All those bad things keep happening when he's around!" The same logical fallacy they forced on Francine Jones, and it was annoying enough the first time. At least this woman's seen the man more than once, and at least he was associated with chaos both times, so that's a bit of an improvement. Still not enamoured with the logic. It doesn't seem organic to me-- it doesn't seem like what the character is thinking; instead, I'm stuck with base suspicions that the writers are sticking "opposition" opinions into the mouths of characters no one's supposed to care about. And why these are always women... I'm still angry with myself that someone else had to point out to me that there only seem to be three or four types of women on this show... I spent two years majoring in Women's Studies, and I certainly wasn't blinded by fangirl glee; I really should've noticed.

So then Sailor Gallifrey sends Donna off to the TARDIS whilst he goes off to do the Big Important Things Around the Horrible Men With Guns. Seriously, I firmly believe that the Second Amendment refers to militias and should be so interpreted, but sweet Jesus. He's so damned patronizing about it. It makes me want to run to a shooting gallery and take a class just for spite ~~and so I can shoot him, goddamnit~~. I'm surprised someone had the balls to call him out on the "So, speak for our planet, now, do you?" thing, but for a legitimate point, it was sure dismissed quickly. The whole damn thing had the air of what I believe is referred to politely as a "pissing contest"-- other euphemisms refer more directly to the Freudian notion that it's really about comparing your male genitalia.

So he was going on and on and being horribly patronizing with that voice of his, that particular yowling sort of drawl he uses possibly because he thinks he's got to do something to make the particularly long chunks of dialogue interesting, and I just could not take it any more. Not. Especially as none of the bad things I'd heard about the episode had even happened yet. Apparently there's a nuclear bomb and more patronization and of course he's right and has some "brilliant" plan that revolves around some extremely dubious science (even if the gas will burn out eventually, what's it going to do while it's on fire? I mean, I can't see what dangers burning gas concentrated in every major city on earth could possibly do, but what the hell ever) and I don't think I'm going to do this any more.

My real divorce with DW was pretty much final with TCI. Maybe not irreversible, but that's when it happened, and damn comprehensively. Then I tried to get back into it again, for the sake of the fics, because I liked the fandom and keeping up with new episodes is the easiest way to keep it in your mind, somehow. And also, there was always the possibility that this would end as suddenly as it began-- there would, after all, eventually be an Eleven. But now they've turned the thing over to Moffat, and there will be no regime change. The man may have done TEC/TDD, but he also did GitF and Jekyll, for god's sake, and I don't see the slightest scrap of evidence that he sees anything broken to fix. Not to mention Jekyll was a critically acclaimed narrative train wreck that I just didn't like at all. I suspect nothing's going to change. In the words of the Who, "Meet the new boss...."

And I already know I'm not going to watch the next two episodes. "The Doctor's Daughter"? The mere title proves a project that would have to be handled with great finesse and narrative honesty to be anything more than a particularly disgraceful Mary Sue, and a) these are not qualities the new series has ever evinced before, and b) these are not terms I have seen in others' less-than-glowing reviews. I figure if I get the urge to watch it, I'll lay down and trawl fanfiction.net until it goes away. And "The Unicorn and the Wasp"? A DW farce? To me, that's like saying "alcohol and barbituates": central nervous system depressants taken together whose effects don't just add, they multiply, leading to a real possibility of overdose, coma, or even death. The only flaw in the analogy is that gin and sleeping pills are relatively painless. I can't watch that episode. I could not cope.

So what I think I'll have to do is just give up on it. I'll keep writing, but I think I might just read everyone else's reactions to the episodes, instead of trying to sit through them myself, because all it ever does is make me unhappy, and I'm really very tired of it. I will also be here to offer sympathy when the season finale crashes and burns in a horrible, horrible train wreck (okay, it's theoretically possible it might be fine. It's also theoretically possible I will suddenly find myself in Siberia). I swear to God I won't be smug at all. I just can't even try to believe in them anymore. The carrot they're holding out isn't even real, much less worth the stick. Or, in the other analogy I keep using (for someone who never plays video games, I know far too much about them), the cake? Is a lie. He's gone, and he's never coming back. Not in "canon", anyway.

This leaves me with a lot less to post about. Huh. Guess I'll just have to write more. ^^ Good luck with that...

Fic!

2008-05-22T08:22:52Z

So I've been listening to "Pancho and Lefty" rather too much. This led to vague thoughts linking it with DW sometime in the future. Then it somehow occured to me how much better it would work like this.

Title: Kindness, I Suppose
Disclaimer: I suppose by now you've all heard that I've apparently been passed over for Steven Moffat. ;) Personally, I think wendymr got robbed... but, well, that's just me. ^^
Summary: The Doctor, the Master, and the end of the road. He hadn't expected it to end in a place like this, but maybe he should have.
Notes: Hmm, how much of what I want to say might constitute spoilers? Let's just say, NINE. There is no PotW here. Needless to say I stole only what I cared to from S3's Master (he was mostly a clone of Ten, and as there isn't a Ten yet...).
American country music isn't the most obvious of choices to pair with a British sci-fi show, but I keep coming back to it, because what other genre's dealt so thoroughly with wanderers?

-

He hadn't expected it to end in a place like this, but maybe he should have. Sand and oven-heat and a wide blue sky... You could hardly get less 'Gallifrey' than that. And neither could they. Or at least, that was what they'd always liked to think.

But how much can you really get away from home? he thought, as the figure he was walking toward grew clearer. How much does it mark you forever, no matter what your best or worst intentions?

"Ah figgered yew'd come," said the man, in a broad and rather terrible imitation of a Texas accent.

"How much choice did you give me? And if you answer in that terrible accent, I will be forced to kill you."

"Ah-- a completist."

The Doctor took a moment to objectively admire the subtlety and craft of the barb while he recovered from its sting. "Where is it?"

"Why, I don't have the faintest idea what you could be talking about." The Master spread his hands in an entirely unconvincing show of innocence.

"Oh, yes, you could never do such a terrible thing as steal a vital component of a colony's life-support system, heavens to Betsy, Doctor, where do you get such horrible ideas? While we're pretending to be innocent and Texan, could we also pretend I'm not stupid?"

"'Heavens to Betsy'?"

"Shut up, you started it. We're on a timetable here, you know."

"Well, lookee there! What with that 'flow a'tha time stream' thingy, ah reckon you do got only fifteen minutes 'fore the hydrogen goes!"

"We're in Mexico, you dolt. Would you at least adopt a bigoted Mexican accent?"

"No habla Ingles."

"Well, thank you. You have made my day complete. Give me the circuit board."

"I repeat, what makes you so sure I have it?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Because I 'didn't jist fall off the turnip truck yesterday', you know. Give it back."

"No."

The Doctor rubbed his temples. "Why not?"

"I frankly prefer not to."

"What for? What does it gain you?"

"Maybe it doesn't gain me anything. Maybe the joy of watching you suffer is its own reward."

"Or maybe you're hoping I'll shoot you."

The Master blinked. "What, you? The 'pacifist'? Though, granted, you've obviously become a lot more violent in recent decades--"

"Yes." The Doctor pulled out a gun from the holster that had been hidden under his jacket. "I have, actually."

"Period piece," said the Master, giving it a bland look, for all the world like it had been a sandwich instead of a firearm. "How quaint of you. What, did you buy it in town before you came?"

"Yes."

"Not exactly reliable, are they?"

"What is? It's good enough. Give me the circuit board."

"Or you'll shoot me?"

"Do you really want to find out?"

The Master looked at him, at the hooded eyes staring coolly at the barrel, considering the rough manner, the rougher accent, that jacket, and wondered what his own answer was. "You've changed, haven't you?"

"Didn't have much choice. You thought Gallifrey went to war of its own accord?"

"So you provoked it, as well. You have grown cold-blooded."

"Do not tell me I wanted this," the Doctor hissed. "Do not tell me I wanted any--"

"And don't tell me you didn't. We filled up notebooks and datachips with plans, don't you remember? Half our childhood was dreams of escape, the other half revenge. What childhood we had, in that place. We planned it, you and I. It was quite rude of you to do it all without me."

"It was rather rude of you to run away. You don't know a damn thing about what went on there, because you ran away at the first sign of trouble. So don't you dare tell me--"

"You've been running from that place your entire life! It's gone, and you still are!"

"What is it you're doing?" The Doctor shook his head. "This can't be what we're really arguing about. What is it you're trying to say?"

"The total destruction of our planet by you isn't sufficient basis for an argument?"

"As you've pointed out yourself, you'd be more likely to congratulate me had I actually destroyed our planet, and have I mentioned that it was not exactly my fault?"

"'Not exactly'?"

"Well, if you want the full explanation, you're gonna have to survive the next few minutes." The Doctor waved the gun a bit, raising an eyebrow. "So let's get working on that, shall we? Step one would be give me the damn circuit board. Now, please."

"You seriously believe you're capable of shooting me, don't you?"

"Apparently you believe I'm capable of destroying our planet; how's that different, then?"

Because he didn't actually believe it. He'd known him far too long for that. "You'd better hope it's not that different, because if you want the board, you will have to shoot me."

"This doesn't make any sense. Worse than your usual plans. Usually there's something you're trying to do, something you're trying to gain-- and you don't get anything if you keep that useless piece of crap the Andellians are still foolhardy enough to call 'technology'. So d'you see how I might come to the conclusion that the board's not what you're after?"

"You think I want you to kill me."

"Everything else is gone. The silence is deafening--"

"What, you get silence? You lucky sod."

The Doctor blinked. "You don't get silence?"

"No, I ran away, remember? Like some sort of coward." He scowled. "I don't get silence."

"What do you get?"

The Master folded his arms, unwilling to answer.

"Is it bad enough for you to decide you want to end your life?"

"Please."

"Because I can see you wanting to spend your death on something useful, under which category you would include torturing me."

"We're not narcissistic at all, are we? Tell me, how much effort have I put into avoiding death in the time you've known me?"

"Oh, truly prodigious amounts, of course." He raised the gun a little higher. "But everyone changes."

"Not that much." The Master laughed. "For instance, you still can't murder anyone."

"Oh, really?"

"If you could, you would've shot me before the deadline rolled around."

"What?"

The Master smiled diabolically. "Don't you realize? All this time we've spent talking, always your favourite pastime--"

The Master watched as the penny started to drop, but his old nemesis resisted, shaking his head against the thought, delaying the truth just a little longer. "What the hell are you--"

"Your TARDIS is nowhere in sight, and that horribly inefficient Andellian board will take longer than three minutes to reinstall. It's too late, Doctor. You've waited too long. They're all dead."

The Doctor paled. "Oh, my God."

"Unless, of course, you cross your own timeline... but that would have even worse effects, wouldn't it?" The Master smiled. "With no one around to ever clean up our mistakes... Will you chance it, then, Doctor? How many people will you kill today?"

"My God." The Doctor shook his head in horror. "That would be absolutely horrible if I hadn't fixed the thing this morning."

The Master's smile faltered. "You're bluffing."

"Nope. Fixed it this morning. Five people got dizzy, and the base commander wrote a very sternly worded letter to headquarters about the advisability of redundant systems and supplies which will almost certainly be entirely ignored." The Doctor smiled sweetly.

"You're lying. Those security-obsessed pencil-pushers don't have any duplicates of that board! I'd bet they're not even willing to release the schematics!"

"Correct on all counts!" The Doctor grinned insufferably.

"So how the blazes could you have fixed it?!"

"You know that thing in your coat?"

"This is not the time for--"

"The circuit board, and please don't tell me what you could possibly have thought I was referring to. Why don't you glance over it a bit?"

The Master glared at him suspiciously and drew it out. "What am I supposed to be..."

"Found it, have we?"

The Master stared at the board, hands shaking in fury. Probably it was fury. "...You switched it?"

"No, through a freak of quantum mechanics, the quartz changed to cubic zirconium on its own. Think, man."

The Master glared at him, envisioning his bloody death. "How?"

"Think back. Why don't you tell me?"

"...That chavvy blonde?! She didn't get close enough!"

"'Course she didn't. I told her to be obvious so you'd draw a timeline. Did you think I wouldn't notice you knew exactly how long it'd been for me in relative time?"

"You--" The Master struggled for appropriately obscene words and found none. "What-- that brunette? I thought she was a whore!"

The Doctor frowned. "Well, with the lack of any other evidence, I'd have to assume she was. I don't have the faintest idea who you're talking about."

"Then how the hell did you do it?!"

"Well, think back. Is there anyone who did get close enough?"

The Master reflected on his morning one more time-- and flushed bright red.

"Good Lord, I hope he didn't do anything too drastic."

"Th--" The Master choked. "That man? That suave, felonious strumpet? You've let him on your TARDIS?"

"Well, as you've seen, he's proven to be dead useful." The Doctor beamed.

"Him? Your TARDIS? Have you gone mad?"

"The pot cried at the kettle, recoiling in horror..." The Doctor rolled his eyes.

"My God." The Master shook his head. "But... if you've already fixed the thing, why the hell have you come here?"

The Doctor shrugged, tossing the empty gun onto the sand between them. "Kindness, I suppose."

"...That gun was never even loaded, was it?"

"'Course not! You knew that. You had to know that. So you weren't trying to die."

"Didn't I tell you that?"

"So what were you trying to do, then?"

"Doctor." The Master scoffed at the title. "Why don't you tell me?"

"You're one hell of a strategist. I think you really wanted exactly what you've got."

"And that would be?"

"Attention," the Doctor said, taking a step forward. "Company. Help."

"Oh, God," said the Master, taking a shaky step back. "The day I come onto your TARDIS to endure some god-awful therapy sessions with you-- what is it you're planning? Our planet's dead, how does that make you feel?"

"Like you don't need therapy? You grew up a Time Lord, for god's sake, that's enough to unbalance any man. Come, children, let's look into the uncontrolled maelstrom of all space and time! That couldn't possibly scar you for life, could it?" The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I'm not interested in 'therapy'. I'm the only person in the universe you wouldn't have to explain it to. So why don't you come with me a while and not explain anything to me? It'll be just like old times..."

The Master pulled himself erect, staring down his nose at the Doctor. "I would rather die," he said, and turned around, storming off into the sand.

He got about five steps before collapsing to the ground.

"Diva," the Doctor muttered, taking a second to roll his eyes before running over to check his pulse. It was there, and fairly steady; so he sighed and dug Rose's mobile from his pocket, hitting the number marked 'TARDIS'.

Two rings: "Yeah?" Rose answered. "Did it go all right?"

"Well, yeah. But remember what I said before I left? That bet?"

"Twenty quid says the idiot's forgotten that Time Lords can get dehydrated?" Jack said, sounding far too amused.

"That'd be it. Someone owes me twenty quid."

"Don't look at me, I didn't take you up on it," Rose protested.

"Yeah, we'll be right there," said Jack. "Rose, get the red lever..."

"By the way, what exactly did you do to him?"

"What, me?" Jack sounded entirely too innocent. "I just talked with him, that's all. What else could I possibly have done?"

The Doctor shook his head. "A model of decorum such as yourself? I don't have the faintest idea what I could have been thinking. Such a shy and innocent flower couldn't possibly have done anything untoward..."

"Oh, god," said Rose.

"Just get here, we can work on the mental scars later."

"Mental scars? I protest!"

"Just try to get here without destroying my ship, all right?"

"Wait!" Rose called, before he could hang up. "...What is it you plan on doin' with him? You can't just keep him here forever, especially if he doesn't want to come."

Answer me truly, because if it weren't for me and him you wouldn't have carried an unloaded gun, Rose didn't say. Couldn't say, because she couldn't know. But she didn't have to; he heard it well enough anyway.

"...I'm not sure I know," he answered. "But... I can't just let him slip away. I've done that too many times already. I've thought it was camaraderie, mercy, distraction, his cleverness... But I wonder..." If all this time I wasn't just afraid. Of what he could tell me about myself.

"Anyway, he's got nowhere else to go, and I can't very well let him run out to wreak havoc again," the Doctor said briskly. Not when he's all you have left of them? "Might not catch it in time. Speaking of which, it would complicate matters quite a bit if he died of heat-stroke before I could get him on the TARDIS, so delightful as this conversation is, why don't we cut it short so you can attempt to pilot my ship?"

"Attempt," Jack scoffed. "Attempt? We're about to show you how it's done, old man! Not that you don't look absolutely fantastic for your age--"

The Doctor hung up. So, is this for you or for him, then? he thought, looking up to the cloudless blue above them. If it truly is a kindness-- kind to whom?

The sky held no answers for him; just the sound of his TARDIS materializing with vexing accuracy nearby.

Which was enough.

-

ameretrifle @ 2008-05-19T03:29:00

2008-05-19T08:23:02Z

Holy crap, my cousin's a beatnik.

Well, technically I doubt he's doing beat poetry in bars, 'cause he was never the type for bongos, much less poetry, but he's got the look pretty well down. He's wearing a lot of black and he's got a little triangular goatee and 'stache and his hair's below his ears and it was a sight to see. And he's got a tattoo he's managed to hide from our grandparents for months. This would be less remarkable were it not that a) he's always spent quite a lot of time with our grandparents (long story) and b) it's on the inside of his wrist. It's not an enormous tattoo but it's a good inch and a half by two inches, so that's a bit of a feat. He said he'd been folding his arms a lot.

That, and the eyebrow piercing, and the "My Chemical Romance" hat, and the "Avenged Sevenfold" wallet (as well as the idea inspired by said wallet of tattooing a skull with bat wings across his shoulders), has made me wonder if the car accident he was in a year or two ago might not have affected him a little more than he tends to show. He's always been sanguine about it, but it was the sort of thing that really might shake a person.

I might as well explain. A year or two ago, my cousin was in a car wreck. He was the only one in the car, and as I recall, the only one seriously hurt; I don't recall where exactly the fault lay, but I think it was probably on both sides. His car was pretty well totaled; I know because they've still got the wreck of it in the back of my grandparents' yard, and he insisted on showing it to me. I don't know why, but he pointed out the remains of the driver's seat to me with a smile on his face, and hearing about the incident has creeped me out a bit since then.

Which is bad enough on its own, but let me give you a piece of useless advice: never get sick in Marianna, Florida. I realize this isn't the sort of thing you generally have a choice about, but if you can make it to the next town, it really might be worth the risk. Justifying this statement: they only had one surgeon; this surgeon nicked an artery; this surgeon then went off to vacation; this surgeon then dismissed several nurses' and doctors' calls telling him that they were pretty damn sure his patient was bleeding internally; it took at least several hours (maybe even a day or two; I don't get told too much about these things, and remember even less) to persuade this surgeon to return from his vacation, at which point his seventy-year-old physician father (with shaky hands) was threatening to go on and do the surgery himself if his son didn't show up. So, based on this and other incidents, I would suggest if you're ever sick in Marianna, beg the paramedics to go to Tallahassee or Dothan. The extra drive might be far less risky than arriving at that hospital would be.

A nurse apparently told him he nearly died three times; the rest of the family isn't so sure about the number, but it impressed my cousin enough that the tattoo he's gotten is a spade with three skulls inside. He said something about the spade and some card game in which it means you get another round, but he was pretty vague about it and I don't know a damn thing about card games. We got talking about the incident this afternoon, though it's never something I'd bring up; I don't even know what to do with the memories of helping him with homework assignments and Hooked On Phonics, a near-death experience is out of my reach entirely. He said he talked to God but he can't remember what he said. I don't think it's the sort of thing he'd make up, but I'm not convinced I'd know anymore. Just because he tells me things he doesn't tell anyone else in the family doesn't mean I know a damn thing about him.

He's never seemed fazed by the incident, but that's probably stranger than if he'd broken down or broken up: but probably I wouldn't know if he had. I wouldn't be there and I wouldn't be told, because I was the baby of that family until my cousin Mallory was born, and I'm starting to suspect that in a way, I always will be. In some ways, anyway-- it doesn't entirely make sense, because I was never the one they thought they had to take care of.

So I guess I'm just wondering who he is, what he thinks about these things. But I don't know how to ask, and I suspect he doesn't think about them at all, and I suspect that I might not want to know the answers. I suspect even more strongly that I'm overthinking the whole damn thing, because I suspect that's my default state. I submit the whole of this journal as evidence. :)

I can relate just about any song to a fandom-- so much so that I wonder what would happen if I actually tried-- but it occured to me recently that "Hook" by Blues Traveler might possibly be the most perfect song for Ten ever. Of course, I have my biases. And I don't know every song ever written. But it even has a bit near the end where the singer talks way too quickly about nonsense. The more I think about it, the more perfect it gets. And there's your completely irrelevant opinion of the day. :)

"The Sontaran Strategem" (noticably lacking in strategy)

2008-05-17T08:27:20Z

All these weeks with no fic ideas, and abruptly I have a deluge. Damn it. If anyone knows where to find a thought transcriber, now would be a really great time to point me toward it. ^^ My thanks to Wendy and that Nine/Rose ficathon over at hearts_in_time for putting Nine back in my head. I missed him.

First, a disclaimer: I was not paying much attention. At all. I'd argue that there were several good reasons for this, but the point still stands. ;)

Loved the sequence wherein Martha meets Donna. Donna was pretty damn awesome there. "Now, don't you two get in a fight." "Oh, you wish." Not to mention the snark on his skinniness and "she's engaged"... Way to go, Donna.

Still, I wasn't too enamoured of the anti-military bent of this one... "You turned her into a soldier?" Sigh. Or the sequence in which she berated the military officers for not having noticed her yet and demanded a salute... And Ten, "I don't like people carrying guns around me"... Must be nice to live in his head. Everything's so damn simple there. Guns are bad! People with guns are bad! Shiny things are good! Whatever I want is good! It's all so easy. Little like living in George W. Bush's head must be. Yeah, I said it. Assuming she's broken, expecting her to be an angel... I wonder if Martha's got the same song as I had in her head now? "Come, doused in mud, soaked in bleach, as I want you to be..." ... "And I swear that I don't have a gun..."

Seriously, at this point I'm starting to think it's canonical that "Ten" is, in fact, some poor random Gallifreyan sod they shoved the Doctor's memories and a horribly flawed approximation of his personality on and transmatted in place of Nine in the end of PotW. No, really, it all makes sense. No wonder poor John Smith was so terrified to go back to that! I take back all the mean things I said about him! (Or, well, most of the mean things I said about him. He's still kind of an asshole.)

That kid is a moron. I'll grant you that genuiuses are rarely geniuses in all fields, but the kid went through school, didn't he? You'd think that would've taught him to recognise when he was being used like a wet paper towel. Trust me, people do want to copy your homework. And notes. Up through university. Eventually you'd notice.

The Doctor and the Jeep's navigation system-- stupid, stupid, stupid. Only an idiot would program it to "do the opposite of what the driver suggests" instead of "accept no input from the driver". Granted, the Sontarans don't seem to be the sharpest crayons in the box, but this is not that difficult a concept to grasp. The latter would be FAR easier to manage. AND, if it were doing the opposite of what he said, what about all those other orders they shouted at it? And wouldn't "You're programmed not to do anything I say, right?" produce no response at all, given that he's asking for a confirmation? If it won't do anything he says, why will it give him an answer? There had to be a better way to do that. Or at least a better way to frame it. "You're programmed not to do anything I say, right? ... Oh, I get it-- Don't answer me!"

And finally, witness the devolution. The Doctor who worked at resonating concrete in TDD (granted, without success, but it was a tough job and he was distracted in the middle) can now not figure out how to resonate a single pane of glass. Way to go, moron. Donna's already piloted your ship, why not relinquish your sonic screwdriver to more capable hands, too?

Somehow, I nearly always find the "average" or "worse" episodes to be a lot more tolerable than the "good" ones. I wonder why that is? I mean, I wasn't thrilled with this episode, but "Fires of Pompeii" and "Planet of the Ood" threw me into an outright fury. "42" was crap, but I didn't much mind "The Lazarus Experiment". It's strange.

[Like the way LJ flips the hell out over a single broken HTML tag. Grr.]

tries not to yell "THE CAKE IS A LIE" fails

2008-05-13T10:30:42Z

Life's a trifle strange lately. On the one hand, I've survived the ficathon without having to commit seppuku to atone for my shame, and there's a truly excellent story being written to my prompts to boot; on the other hand, my mother's a bit down due to the death of one of her younger cousins (whom I have never met. My ignorance of my own damn family scares me sometimes). Our rather useless cats have continued to combine their refusal to live indoors with their limited ability to survive outdoors. Oh yeah, also, I've just graduated college with a 4.0 GPA. I don't even want to know what a trained psychologist would say about my priorities right now. ^^; I'm not gonna think about it.

Fires of Pompeii and Planet of the Ood-- I was just not impressed by these episodes at all. To be kind. Donna... When she's not yowling, she most absolutely has her moments. This I fully acknowledge. But I'm not exactly bowled over yet. Maybe it takes a while to earn my trust, on this show in particular.

Fires of Pompeii... not as bad looking back as I considered it at the time. Not very good, either. But-- sometimes I swear that man is out to get me. Me in particular. Like he's got a little list of "what should we do to piss her off next". "Mm, can't do Jesus again this soon... Hey, let's do Roman culture! Says here she studied a little Latin! Make sure especially not to have a damn clue about Roman women, that'll really get her! Oh, and steal half the scenes from Series One while you're at it! She'll probably flip out and call it sacrilege, it'll be hilarious."

*sigh* There's very little I can point to and say "No, no way, that could never, ever happen". All I can say is that they certainly ran into an abnormal, abnormal city. Not to mention that Roman families did generally not behave like a typical British middle-class family. I just... wash my hands of the whole damn thing. Let's shoot the lava monster with a water pistol! That'll do the trick! Just... No. No sense of temperature, I swear to god.

Doceo, docere, docui, doctum. To teach. I thought the general derivation of the word "Doctor" was such common knowledge that even the producers of DW must be aware that it really means "teacher". Was I wrong?

Planet of the Ood-- yeah, Donna's definitely got moments here. I like her, I'm just not gobsmacked by the awesome yet. Using the whole slavery issue... I keep feeling like I ought to approve of that, but I can't, and I don't know why yet. Possibly just out of spite, because lord knows I don't approve of sweatshops or anything, and the comparison makes some valid points, and I don't buy Donna's "stop condescending to the Companions, bitch" as a truly valid counterargument (though definitely true)... but something about it, I can't figure out what... I don't think it's a valid metaphor, but I can't say exactly why yet. Further bulletins as events warrant.

So... what do the Ood eat? 'Cause that area looked pretty icy. And how did that giant naked brain survive in the wild? And why would any creature really have an external brain? I applaud the creative impulse, but after that comes step two-- working out how exactly this is possible. I don't care whether you bother explaining it or not, you have got to know how it's possible... I could swear that these people put less effort into editing a television series than I put into editing a ficathon entry.

You know, this show is actually starting to make me believe that rich white male CEOs are actually discriminated against. In television, anyway. In this show, without a doubt. Want someone evil? Grab a capitalist! It's like Cold War Soviet propaganda. And I HATE rich white male CEOs! But this is just getting to be too damn much!

And you know what really got to me? The ending. The Ood will sing their names forever. Because they... ... ... What was it, exactly, that they really did? Infiltrated the facility, got shot at a bit, made friends with a couple Oodlings, threw a switch... Was there something I missed? Very nice, I'm sure, and they should always be welcome to revisit the planet, and the Ood should like them a great deal, but... forever? Is that just what they tell all their guests?

Seriously, the Doctor did nothing in this episode. And that's all right, as long as he doesn't get all the credit for no apparent reason. And that wouldn't piss me off so much if there hadn't been someone who DID do all the work. What about that poor Dr. Ryder guy?! Good God! The man has enough humanity to come to sympathize with the Ood on his own, while they're still acting for all the world like content servants. He has enough conviction and courage to join a protest group. He has enough foresight to choose the exponentially more difficult undercover mission that will yield far greater dividends instead of the psychologically and physically easier routes of vandalism, propaganda, litigation. He has enough nerve to keep up a lie for TEN YEARS!, at the risk of exposure, at the risk of having all his work come to naught, probably at the risk of death, coping with the feeling of collaborating in these horrible crimes, coping with watching all of these things that he believes are truly heinous every day, taking part in these things, having to weigh, every day of those TEN YEARS, the harm he is doing to the Ood with the harm he hopes he is preventing. He has the composure to keep up the lie, the patience to inch that field down slowly-- and it must have been agonizing, trying to figure out how quickly you ease it down without risking everything, when all you want is to free these poor aliens and stop living this nightmare.

All that terrible, terrible work, and you know what? It paid off! Everything in this episode was due to him! The growing consciousness of the Ood? The "Red-eyes" and Sigma? All because he had that sort of courage. For ten years. He frees an entire race of people at terrible personal cost. He's the hero of the story. And what happens to him? He's chucked off a balcony and never mentioned again while some bitch who wandered in six hours ago and pushed a button is remembered forever. *strangled scream* FUCK Ten, I want a show about THIS guy!

But nooooooooooooooo! He's just a plot device and a plot device he shall stay! Glory and character development and humanity are for Ten and maybe Donna if we've got some to spare! Never mind that if the Doctor hadn't shown up, the Ood would still be free, and if something had ever happened to this guy, they wouldn't! And Ten pushing the button! That was ridiculous! They're a slave race, they have to be helped to independence! They can't push that button on their own! That's the part of the magnanimous enlightened white guy who's wandered in and seen the injustice of the situation to do!

God, I am so angry for this poor extra! Chucked him in as a plot device, and that is all he was, but the enormity of that plot device demanded a little respect! And they chucked him into a giant brain! Of course, it's a giant telepathic brain, so there's no reason in hell he shouldn't have survived in one way or another, but Jesus, the gall to not even mention the poor bastard again! "You and Donna and that Ryder dude will be remembered forever". That would have been okay. Still a bit unearned, but okay, because the man wound up dying for their freedom. That rates a mention! That rates a goddamn mention! But NO! This is insanity! I have never seen a television show do this before! Even Star Trek usually had Kirk at least look sad for a couple seconds when one of the redshirts died! Say whatever you will about the Stargate series, but when someone sacrificed his life, it got a little damn respect from the natives while the heroes offered similar sentiments and went home! This is UNBELIEVABLE narcissism!

*sigh* Sorry. Keep in mind that I'm the kind of person who can cry at sitcoms. (It's not that I cry a lot; but I saw some of Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite" or something the other day and the third act had me sobbing. I wish I was kidding. It was supposed to be comedy, but to me it was a heartbreaking display of a daughter systematically and sociopathically emotionally vivisecting her parents. God, it was horrible. For some reason, sitcoms can make me far more sad and disturbed than the majority of dramas.) But I don't know what's worse. That it's horrible, horrible writing that betrays their obsessive need to have the Doctor be The One True Hero and Rather Jealous Lonely God, which is idiotic and makes no sense whatsoever... or that this is probably EXACTLY what would happen. All those years of work, all that accomplishment, but not flashy enough, not unambiguous enough, doesn't make a good enough story. No one recognises you. You die alone in silence and all you've got to comfort you is the knowledge that you did do right, you did do a heroic and momentous thing-- and I'd imagine even that would fade, the certainty of it, the certainty that it ever even mattered, that anyone ever cared. That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard! Especially if you're never going to be the Doctor, waltzing in! Especially if you're always going to be the one foolish enough to devote yourself to the real work, that takes the real effort, the real diligence and the real time!

No, really, I'm going to stop now. Except to note the thought I had that ~~when~~ if Donna does fall in love with Ten and we have to organize a conspiracy to attack RTD with spoons, we could maybe find some more co-conspirators in Classics departments. I'd go for the grad students, they're more likely to be zealous about such things. I had one guy who did a whole lecture on the movie "300". Just because he could. Seriously, it was a mythology class: he had no other excuse. That sort of person might get angry over 'Fires of Pompeii'. If we can't find enough on the internet.

Damn vacation lassitude setting in again. I have to actually work on things at some point. And apply for more jobs. Learning how to drive would probably be helpful, too. :) *sigh*

ameretrifle @ 2008-04-29T03:38:00

2008-04-29T12:06:43Z

So I've been spending my days of freedom trying to get my bedtime to a reasonable hour, get my entry for the ficathon I recklessly signed up for done (these two are not exactly compatible), devouring library books at a fairly disturbing clip, and changing my e-mail address, because god alone knows how long my school one will let me in. (This is the university that says, when you apply for graduation, "Oh, we'll let you know if something goes wrong". I literally cannot be completely sure I'm going to graduate until a) I hunt up a phone number to call the bastards at or b) they send me my diploma. In my family we call it Half-Ass U.) I've got everything at the old address forwarding, but for anyone concerned, though I'm pretty sure at this exact moment there isn't anyone concerned, it's my LJ username with dots between the words at gmail. I figured if I had to shackle myself to a terrifyingly powerful monolithic internet company, I could do worse than Google.

Vague thoughts on several episodes-- by which I mean "LotTL", "VotD", and "Exit Wounds" (I can't believe I actually remember the name of that thing).

The main reason I rewatched Last of the Time Lords was for information to put toward Anno Domini-- and to check if I'd gotten anything wrong. There was actually surprisingly little-- hadn't realized the locations of the gun parts were specified, that changed a bit. I'd hadn't noticed before that the Master was making fairly regular broadcasts to his subjects, or that they were evidently fairly docile due to the telepathic network thingy. (Yes, yes, "Arcangel". I respect the plot device so little that I don't want to give it its proper name.) I hadn't realized Clive had been on the ship, and Tish might have slipped my mind as well; and I hadn't realized that Leo wasn't, which is just insane. I don't think I can let that one slip by. I've also come to the conclusion that Lucy Saxon was probably drugged by the beginning of this episode, which has some interesting implications.

I think wiser and more impartial heads than mine have already heaped upon CaptainPlanet!Jesus!Doctor derision enough. Though... rethinking that one, I don't think sufficient scorn can ever be piled upon that. So, to do my part for humanity: Sweet Jesus, WTF were you people thinking?! When that bloke outside the local pub called him a "fairy", I don't think that's what they meant! Did you run out of sci-fi cliches and have to start looking for cartoon ones?! Even cartoons have done that cartoon plot better! You have just showed your writing skills to be worse than Captain Planet, Sailor Moon, and Pokemon! Pokemon, for god's sake! Granted, first-season Pokemon, which was way better, but still! If you want to write bad Jesus fanfiction, go to ff.net like everyone else! You useless bastards!

With that duty discharged: presumably, the effect of the paradox machine's destruction was to turn history back to the first mass appearance of the Whatever (Toglafane; see above), which is, indeed, explicitly after the American President was shot (I'd been worried about that one). Presumably, the cameras were still rolling to catch that-- I had forgotten about that; the body was clearly totally disintegrated, and by the aliens; presumably that would've still been broadcast-- and there'd probably be enough highly suspicious behavior by Saxon before the paradox was activated to incite devilish paranoia in the US. (He admitted he was their master, so, given the tendency of the governments to go with the explanation that doesn't involve aliens-- Saxon created an evil killer robot army and killed the President. And now he's dead. Oh, yeah, we're screwed.) Now, when time was turned back... there's a question for you. What happened to the cameras? They were rolling before the paradox, and before the paradox was destroyed; so did they keep broadcasting, with a sudden jump between Saxon being megalomaniacal and the Doctor explaining that the last year hadn't happened and they'd be the only ones to remember? The latter option would cause trouble, probably more than could reasonably be explained away, so we'll assume that the cameras stopped after the paradox. And what of all the other people who were in that room? Presumably they're not still dead; they were killed after the paradox. So where are they now? Somewhere on the ship? At home or work, confused? Either way, they're going to have a strange skip in their memories... And they were high-level people, journalists and diplomats, too. Trouble.

See, Mr. Davies, this is why people have so much disdain for reset buttons. Not only do they devalue the continuity thus bypassed, they tend to create gaping plot holes unless they're handled very carefully. You don't handle anything carefully, Mr. Davies.

So, to the people, Saxon was clearly shown to be crazy, but the transmission mysteriously ended just as the rest of the aliens showed up. Now Saxon's been shot, the American President's dead, the aliens are missing (or are they? If they existed to shoot the president and kill that reporter, their existence per se couldn't have been predicated on the paradox machine; where have they gone?), and who the hell's offered an explanation? And what the hell explanation could they give? A weighty question, and Harriet Jones will have to answer it. I figure she'll decide she has to find a way to blame Saxon for everything, which is both poetic, practical, and mostly true. Had they told people about the Sekrit UNIT Ship the negotiations were to be held on-- exactly what and where it was? Or is that another kink in the works? And Arcangel's still around-- even if the Master isn't, is it safe to leave all the machinery?

I remember how my initial reaction to this episode was "That little bitch gets a reset button?!" He didn't deserve it, he took the opportunity to learn nothing, and it was a particularly lazy-ass retcon to boot. The "I forgive you" and "Gollum!Doctor" and "FairyPrincess!Doctor" were also reprehensible, but I find the reset button's what gets to me. It's just f--king lazy. It is bad writing. You can't just rely on cliches and your characters-- you've got to visualize the situation in your head, try a couple different perspectives, think it through. And that ought to go triple if you're writing for millions of people! Lazy bastards! It's heinous to trust the fandom to do your work for you!

I'd been bracing myself against the Jesus!Doctor that I knew was coming in LotTL, but the shit in VotD caught me by surprise. As I've recounted. Other than Ten, it wasn't a miserable episode. It wasn't much special, either, but it was something you could watch without much physical pain. That was a step up. Something about the relationship between Ten and Kylie (Astrid; see above) struck me as off-- probably just the same goddamn hero-worship again, with a dash of classism ("Oh, THANK you, Master!") tossed in just for despair. Oddly enough, classism every way you could slice it-- the middle-class fat people (actually, this time, I just don't remember their names), spoiled, crass, and comical, but still with those homegrown values and decency that make the common folk great; the academics, very impractical but basically good; and that rich douchebag. I mean, I hate rich people as much as the next low-to-mid middle-class proto-Marxist, but DAMN. Those rich white dudes were some of the laziest caricatures I've ever had the misfortune of seeing. Speaking of fucking lazy. (OMG! Uncensored! This is a milestone for me!)

And then they sprung the Christ imagery on us. Right after the last time. Effing golden angels carrying him up in effing white light and WTFH? This is why I've pretty much scratched "RTD learned something" off my list of possible plot explanations, Occam's Razor be damned. I fear so terribly for Donna, and even more for those who love her. Which is why I'm so damn wary about joining those ranks.

"Exit Wounds"-- saw this in pieces. Even the assurance that Owen was going to die again, allegedly for good this time, wasn't enough to make my mother watch, except during other shows' commercials. The whole Gray (don't know how they spell it, couldn't give a rat's ass) storyline was just a bad idea. The last thing Mr. Barrowman needs is melodrama; the last thing the show needs is poorly thought out soap-opera melodrama. Just because you have a canonical reason for Jack to come out of every soap opera scenario still alive doesn't mean you should take advantage of it.

I could probably nitpick other plot details if I cared. Owen died somewhat decently, excepting his outbursts and the pathetic plot device that killed him; I wasn't happy about Toshiko, mainly because I never liked Tosh/Owen and never will, down to the ideological level. I held an inordinate fondness for lesbian!Toshiko, and Throwing My Life Away On Owen Harper Despite No Real Evidence That He Has Any Redeeming Qualities Or Registers My Existence Other As A Fountain Of Technobabble And Spatial Usage Of Several Cubic Feet!Toshiko irked me a bit. (Does it show?) She did, at least, live up to her hard-earned reputation as the least useless-- nay, the only decently competent and responsible Torchwood employee. Dragging one's bleeding body to the radio might be above and beyond the call, but "Hey, maybe we should think before opening the temporospatial rift..." is simple duty. No less, no more.

As to the end of the episode-- RTD seems to evince the strangest attitude that there is no fate worse than death. That was the one bit that irked me about Parting of the Ways-- faced with a choice between an already devastated planet slated for capture, slow death, and cannibalization and the return of an even more insane Dalek empire... Is it just me, or does that go a bit past "ambiguous"? I have to assert that there is an equation. It's not a simple equation; it's not a foolproof equation; it's certainly not an easy equation; but it's an equation and it's all we have. There's tens, even hundreds of mitigating variables-- how certain is death? How terrible is death? Would those to die be willing or unwilling? How certain is the imminent disaster? How certain that this action would prevent the disaster? I don't pretend to be able to do the ethical calculus at the endpoints-- near the asymptote, it would probably start varying from person to person-- but this isn't anywhere near the endpoints. This is the few people on Earth that the Daleks haven't already killed, and the new Dalek race, weighed against apparently the rest of the entire universe. Not to mention that those aforementioned few people would probably, for the most part, rather die than become Daleks, if given the choice. This is clear. This is as clear as you get in this equation.

Now, in Exit Wounds-- the lives and emotional trauma possible if Gray escapes, versus the tormented and broken existence that he fairly clearly wants to end. The brother thing adds wrinkles, but why in the world wouldn't someone else reopen that casket and shoot him? For instance, if Hart actually loved him... that would've been a more creative ending; more realistic, too, given that Hart claims to love Jack, has few moral qualms, and knows firsthand how crazy the sociopath is. Ianto's got to know the passcode, and Gwen might be willing to help... If he ever gets out, it's a black hole of angst and death, and I think I would sleep at night. I could be wrong, of course. I don't know a damn thing about it. But these people allegedly do. These are decisions you'd think you'd have to know how to make, in that kind of job... Ah, the unparalled failure of Torchwood. Someday I'd like to write about a group completely opposite to it, for fun or profit.

Missed "Partners in Crime"-- damn Sci-fi's stingy rerunning schedule-- but I will try to watch the next one, even though I will not be happy about it. Even if it's miraculously good, that will make me unhappy. And the fact that they're creating this new era of decent scripts by cannibalizing Nine's plot... Oh, I am not going to be happy about this.

Freedom; Fic; Donna

2008-04-27T09:11:08Z

Free. And still the worst judge of my own work ever. ("An e-mail... saying she was impressed with my final? But... I thought I was half-assing that. How in the hell...?") Of course, keeping that in mind's gonna help me during the ficathon I recklessly joined. "Maybe this fic isn't a shame upon my family's honor for which I will have to commit seppuku. I could be wrong." ;)

In that spirit, not to mention sheer joy at the fact that I can actually do things now, for myself, here's a fic. Gift to readers, or a cheap beta before I post it anywhere else? You decide. ^^

Status Quo Ante
Summary: What would be worse-- forgetting a dream, or remembering a nightmare? Francine Jones thinks she knows, but she's not the only one...

Notes: I haven't read any whofic or been around the general fandom in ages-- am I the first person to ask, in reference to the Year, "qui bono"? Surely I'm not.

These AD fics keep linking up with each other-- in the little things that get referenced and cross-referenced. The Master, in my head, has organized an infinite playlist for himself (at least until he discovers what Earth music he likes and sticks to that)-- and any song that stands a chance of making the Doctor happy, or, even worse, strikes a little too close to home, is off his list forever (probably the whole band, just to make sure). This goes double if it sounded at first like the sort of song he'd expect to like (good beat, clever, uptempo, never too deep). Example: "C'mon C'mon", the Von Bondies (on top of the rest of it, "was I right to leave"? Whole band's probably dead by now). Given this, I suspect that the song at the end might be Kotoko's "We Survive", but don't quote me on it. ^^

status quo ante, from the phrase status quo ante bellum, which was the source of the common phrases status quo and antebellum-- "the state which [was] before". The way it used to be. Often used in reference to reset buttons and Retcons.

-

This is the way the world should work.

The instant your feet touch the good, solid earth, the past year (were they saying it had never happened? That man was the same as ever, now, babbling at five million miles per hour in all the wrong directions, passing you over just like He used to, like you didn't exist at all) would seem like a dream. Unreal, as it had been. Ancient Lords of Time, death robots, laser beams-- such things couldn't exist in the light of day. Like emerging from the dark, warm cinema into the blinding sunset-- the spell of fiction dissolving, leaving you to fall safely back into Reality's waiting arms.

This is the way the world should work. This is the way the world has to work.

But you're finding out, to your despair, as the world tumbles along, that it's the sun and brick and pavement that feel like the dream.

-

Her hand is still stretched out, reaching for the can of condensed milk. Did she expect it to be somewhere else? For just a second, there, she did. She can't imagine where, though.

She takes the can, and drops it into her basket, and stands there for a moment, thinking. She'd just thought of something very important, she thinks. Something that could change...

She chides herself. What could possibly change? It's all in the hands of men, men who won't settle for anything less than everything, whatever the costs to everyone around them. Through the whole universe, surely, men are like that. And the occasional treacherous woman...

Aunt Murwa, she thinks, suddenly worried: she doesn't know why. But the intuition shakes her like the concussion of a bomb, so she hurries to the register, drawing her money from her sleeve. The shopkeeper doesn't mind; he seems on-edge himself.

Everyone seems anxious this afternoon.

-

It will get easier with time. Everyone says it; you've seen it yourself; it's true, it has to be. It will get easier. It is getting easier.

The day is coming, you know. When you won't be at the grocer's, reaching for a box of cereal, only to be stopped in your tracks when they start playing "Build Me Up Buttercup".

Build Me Up Buttercup, for Christ's sake. Setting the tea tray on the table, balancing it as quickly as you could so you could get down to your knees, to the bucket and rag, to the cold grey steel and the warm red iron--

Why do you build me up (build me up)

His voice singing absently along, His fingers tapping on the table as He read a report.

Buttercup, baby, just to let me down

Blood seeping into your fingernails, you never could get it out for days, and by then there would just be more blood.

And mess me around, and then worst of all,
You never call, baby, when you say you will,
But I love you still--

Half the time, if you hadn't been there to see it happen yourself, He would act so-- so carefully, smugly nonchalant, like He was waiting to spring his trap, that you knew, that the blood, that was on your hands

Don't break my heart...

was Martha's.

But you got home from the grocer's that day (even if you don't quite remember how), so it's getting better. It has to be. It has to.

-

Aunt Murwa turned out to be fine, so she's on her way home, feeling foolish and paranoid. Well, in this land, she always feels paranoid, and often foolish as well, so there is little to accustom herself to.

She keeps getting the feeling that she's somewhere else, on another street. She takes the wrong turn twice on her short walk home, and she doesn't know why.

Except there's something she's forgetting. Some thought, some revelation, that was probably just mildly interesting, and it's only because she can't remember it that she thinks it might change the world.

-

It isn't fading. You can't deny it, it isn't fading, it isn't fading at all. Every morning you wake up, you think you're still on that Thing, His own little world, a public hell. Forgetting is supposed to be so easy. You forget where your car keys are all the time, it's that effortless when you're not trying. Why can't you start forgetting now, when it counts?

But you know why. Because you studied Him: you had to. The frown that was joy in His own superiority, the frown that was fury at something failing to meet His standards. The smile that meant He was feeling indulgent, the smile that meant He was feeling self-indulgent. Every twitch of His eye, every tilt of His head, every quirk of His lips-- you memorized it, to survive. You know His face better than your husband's, almost better than your children's.

And it won't let you go. You see it around every corner, on every street, and even keeping your hand clutched tight on the handle of the knife in your handbag doesn't stop that fear.

-

She fixes dinner and sets it out on the table and daydreams about an end to war.

It's not an uncommon thought for her, not in this world, where the bombs light so often, but the dreams are no less beguilingly sweet for their familiarity. An end to this war.

The other side-- the lunatics on her side, too-- could suddenly weary of death-- give in to the old demands, redress the old grievances, work as hard to honor the treaties as they had to work their way around them. And the young hotheads could be softened and the old profiteers overthrown, and they could all get down to the art of living, maybe even together.

Or, perhaps more likely, God could come down from the skies and settle the whole matter Himself. You are right, he could say. You are wrong. Or more likely, You are all insane. You are brothers, have you failed to understand that? You could help each other, and love as I have told you, and this land would blossom like unto a second Heaven in its beauty. Instead, you have all chosen hate, and you are tearing yourselves, your land, and all you consider holy apart in the process. Or maybe they would not listen even to God anymore. Maybe He is shouting and shouting and no one can hear Him.

The third option she can think of is for there to come a greater war-- an enemy so terrible that even this divided land would have to come together in the face of it. This is her least favorite option, because it would just mean switching wars, it would just mean more death.

But maybe, just maybe, if they were forced to band together for a time, under some dark alien threat that menaced them equally, they could learn how to be on the same side. Learn how to live with each other, learn they wanted the same things, and maybe once this new war ended, they'd know enough not to restart the old one. She hopes so. That was what she had been hoping when... when... when she was reaching for the milk? Or just before that...

It seems so possible, now, closer than it's ever been before. But she's forgetting something.

-

The thing is, it's your own fault, and you know it. You sold them out, cast your lot in with Him, and what did you get but your deserts? You were wrong about Him, you were wrong about everything, and you paid the price.

And yet. He might have served his time beside you, but you still hate the Doctor.

You didn't then-- not while it was happening. His favorite toy, at His command, an old man who rarely put five words together-- how could you hate him then?

But looking back at how he was after, when he was young again and so instantly joyful-- the smile on his face as he told you that it was all okay now, that no one else would ever remember, that it had never happened--! Those lies! The nerve of him standing there and telling you the last year of hell no longer mattered--! You want to take a spoon and dig into him like a quart of soft ice cream, dig and dig and dig until his icy blood melts around you and there's nothing left.

And what's scaring you is, you do want it. You want the feel of flesh parting beneath your spoon, you want the taste of blood in your mouth. You want to tear your clothes off and run into the rain and scream your throat bloody, you want to chain yourself into a coffin and hide yourself away until everything ends. You want everything to be normal again; you can't stand that everyone's acting as if it never happened. You have to tell someone, but no one can ever know. No one. No therapist could understand. Tish, Martha, Leo, Clive-- you can't burden them, they can't ever know: this is your fault anyway.

They're all past it already, and you can't drag them back to those times to suffer this with you. It has to go away eventually, it's got to.

You can't live like this indefinitely.

-

She's in the house when the sound of the bomb rocks it, and she runs outside. She knows where her husband is, but Ismael's not here. She runs, blindly, toward the sound, toward the crowds, though she'd know if she stopped to think that they'll never let her through.

(She doesn't remember the running she did on that day, the running everyone did on that day, when those demon sheep-dogs came to thin their herd. Aunt Murwa was dead, she couldn't find anyone, she sank to her knees on the street, her head clutched in her hands, unable to hear even her own wailing in her ears.

But then-- "Mother!", a thin cry above the din, and by some miracle, she heard.

She ran to him and gathered him in her arms and cried, because she had something left after all.)

Eventually her husband comes and takes her home, but she barely notices, because he hasn't come back yet and she can't find him.

The night comes, and friends bring food, and she spends the night in bed staring at the wall, waiting for the sound of the door. The sun rises and she still hasn't heard it.

(There were a few embittered madmen on both sides who blamed it on each other, and after all this time of war, she had to admit it was easy to believe.

But then the annoucement. He was white, and a man, and an alien, and he was calling himself their Master. And all around their corner of the world, that was far too familiar.

One in ten was the figure the learned ones cited. She didn't care about the numbers, what it meant was, everyone had lost somebody. Everyone.

And against an evil so vicious and pervasive, that considered them all nothing and therefore equal, people were finally, finally able to see themselves as all being on the same side.)

The sun rises and rises and he still doesn't come home. She sits, staring at the door, no matter how her husband tries to move her. He could be anywhere. He could still be anywhere. He might even have been in that explosion, burned and still unconscious, so that the police still don't know who he was.

He'll be home. She knows it.

The door opens, and it's the police.

(And so the rebellion began. For many, there was little difference-- for the many who had been struggling to survive before and were still struggling to survive after, what did a change in wars matter? But to those with the time to spare to think of it--

The first few weeks were difficult; there were squabbles and fights and murders, on occasion, by people who hadn't learned yet that the rules could change. But, slowly, they became a people: they became a team, a family, like any other. Of course there were still disagreements, but it didn't threaten their unity anymore; whatever happened, they had to stay together.

It was hard to get anything done against him, because the sheep-dogs were nearly indestructible, and few of his factories were anywhere nearby; but they tried, regardless.

And one day, there came a woman.)

They tell her that her son is dead, but what reason does she have to believe them? Everyone has said they lie all the time; they could easily be wrong. And they won't show her the body. They say there is no body to show.

She doesn't believe them, so why is she crying like this?

(They were all distrustful of tales of saviours at that point, but her name had by now become legend. Martha Jones.

She told them all the Story, the Name that had already been whispered around-- the Doctor. He would end this all, she said. He would save them, if they only believed. And it was an old, old story-- but it worked, as it had before, because no human had any way to win against That Man, and there wasn't a single one alive who didn't realize it. Divine intervention was the only chance left.

But the Master was looking for her, and there were any number of foolish spies who still believed they had something to gain by betraying her. She needed to get out, hopefully blowing up part of the Wall along the way. And they rose up to follow her.)

She doesn't even believe that he's dead when they tell her it was her son that caused the explosion. His bomb, they lie. A suicide bomb, they lie. A terrorist.

Her son would never. She knows, because she remembers. In the time that never happened.

(They fought bravely and got her in and got her in and got her out and only two people died, which surely was a miracle. They could only hope that those in the next village over would guard her safety, and send her off with promises that they would remember, that they would spread the word.

And they did. All those months, they kept the faith; and no one ever breathed a word to That Man, or else surely it wouldn't have worked, surely it would never have ended.

Because it did end. They stood, together, breathing his name at the time appointed, and, for the briefest of moments, she could feel it: all of them, everyone anywhere, more people even now than she had ever dreamed-- innumerable people, everyone, with that one thought, that one word: Doctor. Save us. Deliver us from evil.

For just a moment, she could feel it. And then came the waiting, with bated breath; had it worked? Had they been fooled? Fooled again?

And then the sheepdogs were gone, into thin air-- and then the screaming started, the cries of delight. A faith fulfilled. All together, falling all over each other with hugs and tears and meaningless babbling, family and friends and there weren't any differences anymore, she realized. That old hate-- they'd forgotten it. Maybe a few sad fools would try to bring it back if they wanted its power or if they felt wronged, but it wouldn't work anymore, surely. It couldn't work anymore: they'd learned the secret.

They'd learned the secret, that war was over, and all the hate could end with it. She'd thought before at times that it was insurmountable, but nothing was. They were together: they'd won. They'd all won.

And her hand reached out for the can of condensed milk.)

She remembers, now, the secret she'd been chasing after for days. An end to war could really happen. An end to this hate is within our grasp.

But it doesn't matter anymore, because it's a lie. Here and now, it's a lie. It's back to the way it was before and there isn't any hope, there's nothing to unite them, it's all her side's bitter resentment and the other side's callous arrogance, and neither side has any reason to back down. Not anymore. Because it never happened.

They have learned nothing and her son is dead. Peace is possible-- and the dead could rise tomorrow. There was a chance for it, that's what she was trying to remember. But it's gone now, and how much longer... how much longer...

Her son is dead and they have learned nothing. And there's nothing left to do but go on.

With the memory of betrayal burning a hole in her heart...

-

You're eating out with Martha, holding yourself together with both hands, when you hear it, over the chatter of the restaraunt. A familiar voice-- a familiar song-- at least the first few seconds of it are: He'd always skip over it after a few seconds, He hated this singer, God only knew why because it wasn't even in English-- but He hated it, it always put Him in a bad mood, why were they playing it, He'd snap--

"Mum!"

Her hand's wrapped around your wrist; you stare at it, slowly realizing that you've started, you've gotten up with every intention to bolt from the table, bolt to His side, because it always went worse for you if you didn't.

"Mum," Martha says, more softly. There's people staring at you-- damn it, there's people staring at you. "You're not okay, are you?"

You sit back down, slowly, forcing yourself to ignore the song still playing, still playing, were they insane?

But it's not His world anymore. You have to keep telling yourself that. Still, this song has no earthly business playing in a London restaraunt. "Isn't that song in Hindu or something? Why in God's name is it playing here?"

"Japanese." Martha smiles. "He hated it, remember? That an' everything she ever did."

Of course you remember. "But why...?"

"Because he hated it," says Martha, smiling. "Every song he hated is climbing the charts. Had you noticed? I'm just sorry for the Scissor Sistors; I dunno if their sales will ever recover..."

"But... it didn't happen," you say. Your head's spinning; you take a sip of your drink, hold onto the glass for dear life.

"Yeah. But they know."

You stare at her; she still has that gentle smile of hers on. That one she must have learned from swanning off with him. Or is it her "doctor's" smile, the one she'd learned on her own?

"Turns out you don't forget something like that so easily," she says. "No one remembers. But they know."

Not gone after all. Not meaningless. It did happen; he had been lying about that, the twiggy son of a bitch.

It did happen. All of it. All of it.

Why is that such a relief?

"You don't have to pretend, Mum," says Martha. "You've got to stop pretending. It's all right, that you're not. That's all right."

Oh.

"That song--" you say. "Do you know the singer's name?"

"Hmm? Yeah, I think. Got a few of her songs myself. Why?"

"I think I'll want to buy the album," you say.

"What-- Japanese techno?"

"What, am I too old to broaden my horizons?"

Martha grins. "No," she says. "You're not too old to do anything."

Not even too old to recover from this? Doubtful. But who knows? Maybe she's right.

Maybe this is the beginning of the life you've been waiting for.

(~-~)

Despite all the assurances about the sheer awesomeness of Donna, I'm finding it very difficult to get myself to watch the new season of DW. Frankly, I just don't want anything else to do with the little bastards. And the potential of having a truly awesome Companion thrown in there just makes it worse, somehow; I emphatically do not want to have anything invested in this show, for much the same reasons I would avoid investing in "Defective Pharmaceuticals, Ltd." Besides, a character I like hanging around with Ten? "Hey! This is your friend Donna. Sorry I didn't show for lunch yesterday-- but guess what?! I'm engaged! I'm driving Charles back from California, but we may make some side trips along the way. Hope you won't mind if I have the wedding without you-- I know I said I'd never elope, but some of the chapels in Vegas aren't that bad, and I just don't think I can wait to be Mrs. Donna Manson. Isn't that a great name? Anyway, sorry I missed you, I'll call you back. Bye!"

...Okay, that's an unfair comparison, but it gets the basic premise across. Yeah, they could've finally learned something. And Charles Manson could be rehabilitated. Anything's possible. But even if it's cynical of me, I can't help waiting for the knife to come out. Not to mention... Even if it makes me a bad person, I don't really want to see him rehabilitated. I want him to be the same person who committed the crimes so there's still the possibility he can be punished for them. Makes life so much simpler. I do know I shouldn't want that; probably accounts for a lot of the horrors of our prison system, but... I mean, if Ten or RTD found Jesus, that'd just make the situation worse. And in the few months between VotD and PiC, have they really turned themselves around so completely? After two solid seasons of dreck, I just find that hard to believe. (Oh, and a lot of it's the classical conditioning. The CR is even generalizing, damn it-- those damn Robin Hood promos make me nervous now...)

Fantastic, now I've got 'Jesus of Suburbia' in my head AGAIN

2008-04-19T06:49:53Z

I don't have much time-- one of my finals is a ten-page paper due Tuesday, and I actually have a number of comments and things to respond to, the volume of which is rather new to me-- but I'll spare just a second to talk about 'Voyage of the Damned'. I actually kind of liked it, until it got me in trouble with my mother. I'll explain:

*Random Slo-Mo Of Terrible, Terrible Angst*
Me: Oh, Jesus!
Mom: What did you say?
Me: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just... *gestures at Wind-Tunnel Ten striding along in slo-mo*
Mom: I don't want you to take the Lord's name in vain like that.
Me: I apologise, it's just, he drives me to profanity.
Mom: I think that's 'Blasphemy'.
Me: But, but, that's blasphemy!
*Ten stretches out his arms in a suspiciously familiar pose*
Mom: ...I think that is blasphemy.
Me: See?!
*The 'Host' take Ten's arms and begin to ascend*
Me: Oh sweet Rassilon on a freaking pogo stick.
Mom: What did you say?
Me: I don't know, but it wasn't anything holy. I can't believe they're doing this again.
Mom: Again?
Me: Wait'll you see the last episode from last season.
Mom: When's it on?
Me: I think tomorrow at eight.
Mom: Oh. Great.

But other than that and Ten in general, it was actually kind of good. ^^

(Other thing on Post-Finals To-do list: get actual icons. That I can use.)