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♥♥♥Doctor Who♥♥♥

( spoilers )

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* Hey, I’ve got two Dreamwidth invite codes. Nifty. Who wants one?

( * a feminist complaint about the new Star Trek movie, with mild spoilers )

* Lots of Writercon stuff happening!

• Our official t-shirts (awesomely designed by contest winner Savannah Teague) are now on sale.


• We're going to open workshop sign-ups on Thursday at noon EST--watch the website and LJ comm for details.


• If you're attending the con, we want you to sign up to run a fan led event!


• If you're interested in selling something in our dealer room you can sign up as a vendor.


• We've posted interviews so that you can learn all about our fantastic guests.


• And more news is coming soon!

Are you coming to Writercon? Yes, I'm asking YOU. If you're involved in fanfic in any way--reader, writer, feedbacker, beta, comm mod, ficathon organizer--Writercon is for you. Think about attending--you can find out more info at Writercon.com or writercon or just ask me and I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have.

* Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is awesome. It reminds me of the 80s music I listened to in high school. Which makes sense as it was released in ... 1980. Wow, man, it's like everything in my life is running in one big circle! *is a dork*

* I've been spending a lot of time reading Twitter. YEAH I DON'T KNOW, OKAY. It's addictive, though: behind the scenes snippets from Rachel Maddow, extra jokes from Stephen Colbert, a daily stream of adorkable geekery from Bowie's son Duncan Jones, fan wank from Trent Reznor, and of course all the latest NYC vegan news from SuperVegan... plus little life updates from various friends, past and present, RL and fannish. And I can read it all on my phone!

( * Doctor Who finale SPOILERS )

* Picked up The Disorderly Knights to continue my re-read. I think what stopped me for a couple months there was that it was coming up on what is, to me, the most traumatizing character death of the series. But I got past it. (*sniffle*)

And, wow, glad I'm continuing, because I just hit a couple of my favorite lines of the entire series:

"I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with."
(p. 331, and I don't want to spoil which character says it)

( and a longer scene, with mild spoilers for The Disorderly Knights )

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Bowie’s persona-switching finds its most obvious counterpart in the central role of the Doctor in Doctor Who, an alien Time Lord who is permitted thirteen regenerations throughout the entirety of his lifespan. As the swish Jon Pertwee was morphing into bog-eyed Scouser Tom Baker, Bowie himself was morphing from glam-rock androgene into dandified soulster, a new version of the same character. It’s of little surprise that many Bowie fans are also fascinated by all things Gallifreyan. By one of those little twists of fate that are totally inconsequential yet somehow so appropriate, David Bowie shares his birthday with the actor who played the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, born in 1908.
Strange Fascination: David Bowie by David Buckley, pages 128-129

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It is the same Nicholas Pegg. The dude who wrote the excellent David Bowie encyclopedia I’ve been marveling over is the same dude who operates the Daleks on Doctor Who. I think my brain just melted.

(See: Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf promo, Wikipedia explanation, Complete David Bowie interview.)

If it wasn’t for Doctor Who I wouldn’t even be into Bowie. To further the endless circles of “every British thing I like is connected,” here’s an excerpt from the Bowie encyclopedia that I was meaning to type up anyway. From the entry on the song “Starman”:

During an interview for Rolling Stone in November 1973, Bowie launched into a disquisition on the song’s place in his planned Ziggy Stardust stage production: “The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I’ve made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage … Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes ‘Starman,’ which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village.” Bowie’s affinity with home-grown science-fiction permeates much of his work, and he has always enjoyed this Quatermass-style juxtaposition of the fantastic with the banal, of the mystical with the homely, of black holes with Greenwich Village. Remarkably, this account of “black-hole jumping” and of Ziggy’s ultimate fate (”When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make themselves real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world”) is identical to the storyline of the BBC’s tenth anniversary Doctor Who special The Three Doctors, a high-profile reunion of the show’s lead actors which had been broadcast a few months earlier, while Bowie was in London recording Aladdin Sane.

[cut a bunch more about the song’s success and places it’s shown up in pop culture, then in conclusion:]

Bowie’s original recording cropped up as an appropriate background number following the crash-landing of an extraterrestrial spaceship in Aliens Of London, a 2005 episode of our old favorite Doctor Who.

And, Pegg thanks (among others) Gary Russell, Paul Cornell, and Gareth Roberts at the back of the book.

This icon could not possibly be more appropriate!

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I’m so out of it today. I was up until 3am last night watching The Man Who Fell to Earth, and before that I was at my friend Eva’s birthday party at V-Spot, where they had unlimited mimosas for $10. Me and my friend Anne’s boyfriend Nemo were competing who could get their per-mimosa cost lowest; I got to $2.50 (four drinks), he got to $1.66 (six drinks), but he cheated because he was sneakily sharing his with Anne. Then we went back to Anne and Nemo’s place to hang out in the back yard and eat cake and drink more mimosas. Basically there was a lot of drinking. And cake!

SuperVegan got linked from the NY Times City Blog. It’s always cool when that happens.

On Saturday I cooked enough to last (hopefully) the whole week: rice and beans, maple-cinnamon cream of wheat, scrambled tofu, vegetable uppama (an Indian dish from that weird Vegan Cooking for One book). I was going to make this really good Asian noodle dish with coconut milk, but I forgot to buy fresh ginger.

We had a long Writercon phone meeting on Saturday night, and then around 11pm I remembered that there was a new Doctor Who episode. Oh yeah, that.

( spoilers for this episode and spec for the future )

My mom has started Checkmate. I'm skimming along so that I can answer her questions as she goes. I'm really glad I got her the book of translations--I think Checkmate is the hardest to understand without them. I'm really excited that she's nearing the end and that we'll be able to discuss the entire series soon. I like Checkmate a lot better in retrospect, based on how excited I am to get to talk about all the passages that she's reading. Really the only book in the series that doesn't inspire joy is The Ringed Castle--it's definitely my least favorite overall. Although even it is growing on me over time, as they all seem to.

Oh yeah, and I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth last night. I liked it! Which is weird because I didn't expect to like it at all. It's strange and surreal and definitely has a lot of annoying aspects (the awful female characters for one) but it's also eerie and atmospheric and very interesting. And, okay, David Bowie is just so pretty to look at throughout. So, so, so pretty.

( embarrassing fangirlishness about David Bowie )

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( Doctor Who spoilers )

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So… yeah. I went to Gallifrey One. The fact that I came home and spent three hours writing a post about a Lymond book probably says all you need to know. I’m just not that into Doctor Who anymore. It’s always sad to leave a fandom, and while I’ve had kind of a miserable experience in this one, I’m also just starting to get to know a lot of interesting people, and I’m sad to drift away so soon. But you can’t force yourself to be interested when you’re just… not.

Which is really too bad because Gallifrey is a great convention. I was so impressed by how well it was run. They had several tracks of programming, with a good mix of topics, and a great array of guests. They were the polar opposite of DragonCon in terms of being welcoming to New Who fans–I never felt out of place for being a fan of the Tenth Doctor, Simm!Master, Rose, slash fic, etc. They really did a great job providing programming for everyone, regardless of whether you’re into the old series, the new series, or both.

( Read more... )

(who_daily, please don't link.)

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So, um, who’s going to Gallifrey One?

I’m arriving tonight and leaving Monday morning. Hope to see some of you!

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These responses are totally dripping with SPOILERS so please click carefully!

( Highlander )

( Doctor Who )

( Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( The Lymond Chronicles )

( A Song of Ice and Fire )

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Wow. Apparently lots of stuff happens in the world when you spend two weeks devouring the Lymond Chronicles and ignoring everything else.

My boss told me that they’d announced the new Doctor as I walked into work today. My immediate thought was “I can’t wait to read Fandom Wank.” It’s not disappointing.

(I’m surprised, actually. I expected to have to grudgingly give Moffat his due for choosing Patterson Joseph. Instead I’m LOLing at him for choosing some random kid who looks like the mutated offspring of David Tennant and Robert Pattinson.)

I owe email and comment responses to people. I’m sorry. I really haven’t been at my computer for two weeks–I updated the last two times from Indiana via my magical phone.

Oh! And I have to say–THANK YOU kita0610 FOR THE LOVELY CARD AND DAVID TENNANT CALENDAR! And thank you netweight for the incredibly sweet card! My internet friends are the best. :)

Now I’m going to ramble more about the Lymond Chronicles, because that’s all I spent my winter vacation thinking about. I finished Pawn in Frankincense and The Ringed Castle and am now partway into Checkmate.

( spoilers for the Lymond Chronicles )

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( Spoilers )

One more day and then I'm back to civilization! *can't wait to get home*

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I’m halfway through Pawn in Frankincense and thinking….

( spoilers for Dorothy Dunnett's Pawn in Frankincense and a spoilery reference to the Doctor Who episode Journey's End )

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* This just made me choke on my coffee. I think I enjoy The Meathead Perspective far more than I enjoy the actual band Nine Inch Nails.

* I’m not an Avatar fan, but I’m still upset by the blatantly racist movie casting. Just… what the hell? I’m glad to see that the fandom has already launched a letter writing campaign.

* This xkcd comic is awesome and totally nails the “nice guy” phenomenon. The wank it’s generated is severely depressing, though. “Women have nearly exclusive control over the nation’s sex supply, and that will never, ever change“???? *headdesk*

* jaydk and kalichan came over to my place on Saturday night for a very fun evening of wine and television. We watched the first episode of The Devil’s Whore, after which jaydk declared that she couldn’t stand to continue watching history be raped in such a blatant manner, so we switched to the first episode of Life on Mars (which kalichan had never seen!) to get the bad taste out of our mouths.

To be honest, I didn’t mind The Devil’s Whore–probably because I’m woefully ignorant about that period of English history, and because I was only watching for John Simm. He had his shirt off for a whole scene, so I got what I wanted out of the deal. :P

* This panel description has me dreading Gallifrey One. I think it might be best if I spend this convention drinking and chatting and avoiding most of the actual programming. >:( Still looking forward to seeing Phil Collinson, though. And hopefully to hearing interesting insights from the various new series writers who are attending.

* I’ve kind of reluctantly gotten into Spooks–I actually went out of my way to watch the season finale as soon as possible. I don’t love the show by any means. It’s pure genre, which makes it incredibly predictable; it never does anything that a spy drama wouldn’t do. But it’s quite a good example of a spy show, which makes it entertaining for what it is. Well, okay, mainly the entertaining thing is the lovely contrasts between Richard Armitage’s pale skin, black hair, and blue eyes. But occasionally he even gets to do some actual acting! And I kind of love the character of Ros–her competence and snark make her one of the more appealing female characters I’ve seen in quite a while.

* I’m re-reading Pawn in Frankincense despite myself. I forgot how funny this one is as it starts off! In fact, I think I forgot almost everything that happens except for the ending, which kind of blew the rest of it out of the water. It’s a totally different experience to read this series for a second time; everything makes so much more sense when you already know what’s going to happen. Dunnett’s style of keeping the reader completely in the dark for 90% of each book (and the series as a whole) is incredibly frustrating, but definitely rewarding if you’re able to put up with it. It also makes re-reading a whole new experience–you can actually appreciate the subtleties instead of just wondering what the hell is going on. It also helps that I’ve got a book of translations with me this time around, so I can figure out what the hell they’re saying when the characters suddenly switch to French or Latin.

* I’m resisting the urge to write a long song-by-song analysis of “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” I know that no one cares about my interpretation of a 35-year-old classic album that I’ve only been listening to for two weeks. Still. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. I haven’t even turned it off at night, because it’ll play in my head if I don’t have it actually playing from my speakers.

* 5years.com is an incredibly helpful website if you suddenly decide to get obsessed with “Ziggy Stardust” 35 years too late. Plus I’m learning all this stuff about glam rock–now I totally get that scene in Life on Mars where Sam meets Marc Bolan!

* I bought this Best of Bowie DVD. It’s all so totally totally awesome for about the first 50 minutes, and then… 1974 happens. Good god. I think maybe I’m a fan of Ziggy Stardust, not of David Bowie?

* I wish I’d gone to the Bowie Ball last weekend. I totally want to go see this all-female Ziggy Stardust cover band in January. And I want to go see this thing at MOMA even though I doubt 1) I can get tickets, 2) that it’s anything I haven’t already seen on the Best of Bowie DVD.

* I finally figured out how to connect my computer to my TV wirelessly. It’s a combination of this and this and it totally works! My TV is a second monitor and I can just drag video files over to it and play them. Now I should probably cancel my cable TV, but I’ve gotten addicted to The Rachel Maddow Show and now I kind of don’t want to give it up. I suppose I could just watch that online too. And I might actually continue catching up on more of those old Doctor/Master episodes now that I don’t have to waste CDs on burning them.

Although I might just watch lots of YouTube clips of young David Bowie instead.

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Oh, god. I love the internet.

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Oh my god, you guys, I am in love:

I want a TARDIS so badly. Right now I want nothing more than to go see David Bowie live in the early 1970s.

I think this must be the true reason I adore the Doctor and Rose. They did exactly what I would’ve done if I could travel through time and space: get dressed up and go to awesome concerts throughout history.

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* Neil Gaiman continues to be awesome. See Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech?

* I’m lurking at theemptywriter and quite enjoying it. Nice to see that not everyone is caught up in the Moffat hype! And, man, he just continues to annoy the hell out of me. Here he is in 1996 calling the Doctor’s female companions “bimbos”; what, did I need another reason to loathe him?

* This list of top movie characters is currently making the news rounds. Only one woman in the top 25? Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, what about that “huge lack of respect for anything male” that tragically inflicts our society? (Could it be that Steven Moffat is … full of shit? :P) And… and… Yoda is a better character than Princess Leia???

* Scott Weiland has a new album. How come nobody told me this? His last solo album was actually really good! Hopefully this’ll make up for the entertaining-but-soulless artificiality of his work with Velvet Revolver.

I’m still getting used to this whole thing of enjoying someone’s music but not having any particular interest or respect for them as a person. I think I’m too old and cynical to worship all-perfect musical idols, and this way it’s less disappointing when they inevitably fall. I’ll just try to enjoy them when they’re good and move on to something else when they start to suck. No need to feel all heartbroken and/or betrayed by the whole thing. (I’m even starting to get over Courtney Love’s Hollywood sell-out; none of her later bullshit can take away from the pure awesome of Live Through This.)

* I’m still listening nonstop to David Bowie. The song “Velvet Goldmine” is really, really good. (Now I’m extra disappointed that the movie was so bad.) Wikipedia says the song is about Bowie making out with another man, but I’m listening to the lyrics, and… that sounds like a lot more than making out…?

Also, if you’re ever looking for motivation to weep for the state of humanity, just go to songmeanings.net and look up your favorite song. If the inanity of the interpretations doesn’t make you want to kill yourself, I don’t know what will.

* This ad is currently plastered all over the NYC subway system. Every time I walk by I kind of have to resist the urge to stop and, I don’t know, lick it maybe? Which, eww, NYC subway. But, damn. David Bowie was reeeeeally pretty once.

( pretty pretty subway ad )

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Those of you who read my journal regularly are probably aware that, every night before I go to bed, I get down on my knees and pray that John Simm will return as the Master for one of the 2009 Doctor Who specials.*

Nothing has been announced yet, BUT…

( spoilery speculation )

* I don't actually do this.

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My friend Cat came over Saturday night. We drank a bottle of red wine and watched two episodes of Spooks and two of Doctor Who. (Alas, jaydk is the only person I’ve found who’ll marathon TV with me until 7am; Cat was tired at midnight!)

( Spooks: 7x01 and 7x02 )

( Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion and School Reunion )

( Due South: my thoughts on the series as a whole )

So, um, anyone have fic recs? I've never read a word of Due South fanfic--what are the standards in the fandom?

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Mmmm. Fancy mixed drinks? Totally the best way to deal with that kind of news. Thank you, Galaxy Global Eatery.

The possibility of Hamlet coming to NYC is totally my silver lining. PLEASE LET IT HAPPEN. (*crosses fingers, knocks on wood, and prays*)

Note to self: in the midst of hangover misery, don’t forget to put Writercon tickets on sale at noon tomorrow!

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( Read more... )

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