kafkaesquely: (Default)
[personal profile] kafkaesquely
Yeah, I know it's a bit late for a New Year post, but hey, whatever. I could say I've been busy, but actually I haven't done what i was supposed to do (i.e. studying) so I'll admit that I've been:
  • Knitting (expect progress posts of my infinity scarf)
  • Reading (expect reviews)
  • Watching doctor who (expect recaps. Spoiler: I don't like the Moffat era, so beware). 
  • Watching Adventure Time (I want to catch up with this one)

So that's pretty mucho has been my Christmas break (which won't end until January 9th, but it's close enough to be afraid of finals). And as it's customary: I'M NOT DEAD. 

Date: 2015-01-05 12:52 am (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
Oh no, if people are posting about how late their New Year posts are, I had better get on mine... And also the gleeful Yuletide reveal post that I keep meaning to do.

I look forward to the Doctor Who posts - I am also not the slightest bit a fan of Moffat's era, so I will feel gratified and validated when I read them... I still need to watch the Christmas special. Oops.

Also: happy New Year!

Date: 2015-01-05 11:40 am (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
Yuletide is in fact a great thing! Aside from anything else, it motivates me to write stuff, *and* you get presents. I would strongly encourage all fannish people who write to get involved (except apparently my sister, who finds deciding what she wants to request stressful).

The thing about Doctor Who and me is that the parts of the show I imprinted on and got invested in no longer seem to be there, and also I am heartily sick of matronly dominatrices... I really enjoyed Day of the Doctor too - it wasn't perfect, but it was thoroughly enjoyable, which is a lot more than I can say for poor Capaldi's season (not to say it didn't have its moments, but it was just so frustrating to see it take good ideas and run them into a hole).

Date: 2015-01-05 12:23 pm (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
I am totally behind you with everything you've said regarding Doctor Who. I mean, to be fair, I've always found it a bit weird that the Doctor would be romantically interested in someone centuries younger and of a different species, so none of his romantic plots have ever really done anything for me since Four and Romana...

I really deeply enjoyed Donna because they brought up the possible relationship occasionally, and both of them were just like, "Whoa, no, would never". (I mean, I really deeply enjoyed Donna for a whole variety of reasons to do with her sassiness reading like an actual character trait, rather than like someone said, "I guess she'll be....feisty?" and not being the obvious pretty twenty-something girl, and having this really delightful arc where she learnt things about herself and developed her self-esteem, and where skills that our society doesn't usually put much value on were celebrated... I could go on. I'm still ticked off at that ending.)

And god, yes, I am so sick of the way he treats Clara. I don't know what Moffat thinks he's doing. It's not funny, it makes me hate this Doctor, and it really really smells of sexism...

Date: 2015-01-06 12:40 am (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
I loved Martha a lot, and I actually did enjoy the way her feelings for the Doctor were portrayed (although his continuous references to Rose were so frustrating). She was a bit blinded by her feelings at the start, but then as the series goes on she realised she deserves better and by the end she leaves. And that was great.

I never understood the thing with Mickey. I was so ticked off when they did that. It was like a combination of "Rose and the Doctor's leftovers" and "eh, they're both black", and especially when Martha already had a canon fiance whose relationship with her made sense and was a little but developed... I just don't know why you would do that.

Classic Who is a lot of fun, especially if you keep an open mind about cheap special effects... It's generally less...emotional? than the new series, or it's not trying as hard to make sure you feel the emotional weight of what's going on. You have to do more of that work yourself. But the bits and pieces I've watched have been great, although you never know whether an episode is going to be legitimately good or so bad it's good. Enjoyable either way...

I saw a pair of quotes on Tumblr one time. One of them was RTD talking about the differences in personality between his companions and how that effected their story arc, and the other was Moffat, saying something about how all woman who would travel with the Doctor would be much the same - feisty and a bit adventurous - and it was up to the actresses to bring differences to the roles...
Edited Date: 2015-01-06 12:40 am (UTC)

Date: 2015-01-06 11:53 am (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
Martha is definitely my favourite - but I think the only reason I connected to her more than Donna is that she's closer to me in age and general life-experience (twenty-something, university student...) And yes - if you're sick of emotional weight and "the world will end because of you" and "I don't want to go" and all that shit, then Classic is absolutely for you...

I am hesitant to attribute my feelings on Moffat to Tumblr social justice stuff, simply because I don't think I even knew Tumblr existed for his first few seasons, and I still wasn't enjoying his run. I think the difference Tumblr has made for me is the ability to articulate what it is that's making me uncomfortable or dissatisfied.

And I guess the other thing about learning to dislike something through Tumblr is this: sometimes "I didn't know to expect any better" is a thing? Like, if you don't know you can expect a thing, then you can't be disappointed when you don't see it? So it's less "because of Tumblr, I can't enjoy this show anymore", and more "because of Tumblr, I know I deserve better"? (Maybe I'm expressing myself coherently, maybe I'm not.)

Date: 2015-01-06 01:01 pm (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
Yes! This is one of those things I really loved about Martha - she was really deeply involved and invested in her life without the Doctor, so that it as well as providing a backdrop to her character - it was something she wanted actively to keep doing.

It's a little bit like that children's novel trap of making your main character an orphan - sure, it stops you having to deal with the logistics of protective guardian + adventurous child, but it starts to feel like a cheat after a while, and one day I really want to pick up a book where the first thing the teenaged protagonist does when she encounters the supernatural is ring her mum like, "You'll never guess what, Mum - vampires are real!"

Giving your Doctor's companion no pressing commitments at home makes it *easier*, yes, but it also misses out on some really interesting character stuff that I think Martha played out really well - eventually realising that her life with the Doctor wasn't worth as much to her as the life she was leaving behind to travel with him...

And yes - I've never formally studied scriptwriting, but I think all the writing-about-writing stuff I have read has made me far more able to explain *why* I didn't like a thing, as well. So you go from, "That book was boring" to "That book was boring because..." (Speaking of, I often find Moffat's episodes really badly paced? Like, they will be so slow that I'm bored for the first half an hour, and then it's almost as though they realise suddenly that they've only got ten minutes left to wrap it up, so the endings feel really rushed... I don't know, is that one just me?)

Date: 2015-01-08 07:17 am (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
Re Amy: yes, that was something I was quite interested in at the beginning of Amy's arc, and then it was all about Amy fancying the Doctor (having fancied him since she saw him that one time when she was a kid??), which was disappointing. (Not to mention that that arc contained one of the early appearances of Moffat's weird non-consensual kissing kink...) In the end, I just never really connected with her the way I did with RTD's companions.

(I also remember being really ticked off at the Doctor for making a mess of a seven-year-old's kitchen in the middle of the night, promising her a trip away, and then buggering off... Seriously, it's a time machine. Couldn't he have rocked up 20 years late, gone, "Oops, missed a bit," and then headed back? Or at least stuck around to clean up.)

I think the thing where people complain about realism in movies that are not going for realism is not so much an idiot saying, "Those look *nothing* like the dragons I've seen in real life" as it is just people having difficulty expressing the lack of believability. So when they say, "The way it flies is just not realistic," what they mean is that when they looked at it, they weren't convinced... Not jerks, just people not expressing themselves as clearly as you need them to?

With regard to teen novels, I would just really like to see a protagonist who learns about the existence of a hidden supernatural world and doesn't turn out to already have some sort of secret connection to it. Because a lot of the nice thing about that kind of novel is reading it with the feeling that, yes, this could happen to any normal person, and it would be really nice if it really was "any person" and not, "any person whose estranged father was secretly a sorcerer".

Date: 2015-01-23 10:18 am (UTC)
alasse_irena: Photo of the back of my head, hair elaborately braided (Default)
From: [personal profile] alasse_irena
Don't worry - you didn't make a jerk of yourself, and there are definitely people out there crying for realism in silly places (see: those people who say "But it's *realistic*" about the lack of female characters in a book which literally has dragons). But I do think there is a place to say things like, "Her friendship with the centaur just didn't seem realistic to me". You know, there aren't any real world examples to compare it to, but we have the imagination to figure out what it *should* be like.

I'll be honest, most of what I read is still teen novels, and that's why I have so much to say critiquing them: I have seen so many things I've loved, or wanted to see again, and I have a tonne of favourite books, but there are also things that, the more I read, the more I *want* to see, that just aren't appearing, and one of them is the "ordinary teenage girl" being, literally, an ordinary teenage girl, whose interesting traits and plot points come from her own choices and actions rather than things she's born with?

I found the way Amy dealt with pregnancy and motherhood and losing her child very unsatisfying, for probably the same reasons. It was like, on the one hand, the writers wanted to make her a mother, and on the other hand, they didn't want to deal with the consequences, so the baby was stolen, and then Any's desire to find her never really followed up. To me, finding Mels and growing up alongside her didn't really satisfy the desire to raise her child I felt like Amy was written with, and so it felt like the show let something that was important to Amy drop without following it up...

Profile

kafkaesquely: (Default)
kafkaesquely

November 2015

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
151617181920 21
22 232425262728
2930     

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 10th, 2025 07:52 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios