Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

"The Name of the Doctor"

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:24:35 GMT

So Clara has been reminding me of Mel, and then this made me think of "The Ultimate Foe", but not shite.

( Read more... )

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Star Trek: Into Darkness

Sun, 12 May 2013 03:53:43 GMT

I'm trying to decide where it ranks compared with the other Star Trek movies. I feel like I liked it better than Insurrection, but not as much as I liked Nemesis or The Motion Picture.

...er, my personal ranking system:

1. Wrath of Khan, Undiscovered Country, First Contact (tie)
2. Star Trek
3. The Motion Picture (SHUT UP, it's really good if you just fast forward through the special effects bits and don't think too hard about the sexual politics behind Ilia's creation)
4. Nemesis (would be lower, but there's a Janeway cameo)
5. Into Darkness
6. The Voyage Home (in fairness, I haven't seen this since I was a kid, but it hit my embarrassment squick hard)
7. Insurrection
8. The Final Frontier

( Spoilers )

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Doctor Who

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:52:58 GMT

yiduiqie told me on Friday night that she didn't know there was a Doctor Who episode last week, because I didn't blog about it.

I'm just very busy with Continuum stuff, and also other things, and also I'm a bit run down, and the thought of having actual, coherent thoughts about Doctor Who makes me want to go back and go to sleep.

Quick summary of my feelings about "The Crimson Horror" and "Nightmare in Silver":

Monsters bad. Doctor good. Vastra and Jenny great. Strax very nice. Clara very nice. Artie and Angie very nice. Warwick Davis very very nice.

I'm also coming to the conclusion that while I like Clara just fine, I can't really get a grip on her character. ( Cut for negativity and stuff. )

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I read the Free Comic Book Day short about Mai!

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:14:03 GMT

And I'm having some feels. (They don't get to be feelings until I can articulate them a bit better.)

If you're interested, I wrote a slightly spoilery account of my reaction over at my shipping Tumblr.

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Doctor Who: "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:11:56 GMT

I didn't post about this on the day because I was feeling unwell when I watched it, and didn't really have a reaction beyond, "Well, that happened." Plus, my ears were blocked, and I missed a lot of dialogue.

And thinking about it further, "I didn't like it because it wasn't like my fic" is a useless and stupid basis for a review.

Luckily, the ever-sensible selenak has come along and put into words my vague feelings.

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Remember that time I wrote "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"?

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:43:01 GMT

Seriously. It was 2008, and a bunch of us decided to take advantage of the Tenth Doctor's temporarily companionless state to write a virtual season where he was travelling with a not-dead Romana.

Needless to say, we didn't get the 13 fics we were aiming for, but I posted two, and violetisblue posted two, which don't seem to be on the AO3 but they're bloody marvellous.

Then we kind of stalled.

Anyway, I wrote "The Nightmare Room", but my betas said it needed work, and I was like, "Work? PAH!" and went off to do something else. Or so I assume. Anyway, 8000 words in which the Doctor and Romana are trapped in the TARDIS and there's something else in there with them.

(violetisblue described it as a story about advanced auto-repair.)

( And please be forgiving; this really is quite rough. )

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That one time Australia gets media first...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:54:54 GMT

Without getting into spoilers, I thoroughly enjoyed Iron Man 3, which may not mean much since I also liked Iron Man 2 the first time I saw it. I predict that Tumblr will have lots of feels, some of them hair-related (stay past the credits as usual), and some of them outrage that a plot development confidently being predicted on the basis of three seconds in the trailer doesn't go as expected.

( One small spoiler for the cast, one hint at a spoiler for the plot. )

In conclusion, this was great, where is my Black Widow movie?

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Doctor Who: Hide

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 07:47:15 GMT

Okay, that was scary. Well done, show.

( Spoilers! )

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Anyone familiar with fanfilm culture?

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:42:41 GMT

I really want to have fanfilm screenings at Continuum, but I can't find much about the etiquette of organising such things. Fanlore just talks a bit about their existence. DW doesn't have any comms, and LJ is spotty.

On the upside, I have, like, three vids for the vidshow playlist. Which I don't even need to start thinking about for another month.

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It's not necessarily that Doctor Who fandom is the worst ever...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:58:58 GMT

...it's just had more time to practice.

For example, every now and then I like to look at old issues of DWM and fanzines. There is, of course, the infamous case of the Liverpudlian fanzine that shut down after a tasteless joke about the death of Colin Baker's infant son. (Some versions of the story have the child dying as punishment for bad acting, others have something about Baker digging the baby's body up for some purpose. The boy had died of what we now call SIDS, so Baker was deeply unhappy about the whole affair.)

Anyway, nothing I've found has been quite that terrible. Yet. I have to say that the idea, currently being put about, that Steven Moffat is a pedophile who writes children into stories to get himself off, comes pretty damn close. (And seriously, if you actually believed that ... what does it say that you're still watching?)

But I have discovered that, true to form, the fandom reacted with DISMAY and HORROR when Doctor Who began to be released on VHS. Because then you might realise it wasn't very good, you see. And plus, with home video, anyone could start watching it.

But I'm particularly charmed by this article from Doctor Who Bulletin, a publication for which the saying that a Doctor Who fan is someone who hates Doctor Who might have been created.

( There's a large image behind here. )

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Procrastination

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:50:26 GMT

I have a lot of things to do this morning, starting with unpacking my luggage, since it's only, what, two or three weeks since I got back from Japan? And also working out why work has me so stressed and in need of a holiday, when it's, what, only two or three weeks since I got back from Japan?

In the meantime, however, aryas_zehral made the mistake of linking to a chibi dollmaker. Dollmakers are, like, my greatest online addiction. If Flash worked on my iPad, I'd have a serious problem. As it is, they just rear their heads every now and then. Like now!

I made a chibi!Lin. A younger Lin, obviously. She's cranky because (a) she's awake, (b) Tenzin has dragged her to some tedious party where everyone thinks they know her because of her mother, and (c) the design doesn't let you put underwear beneath this dress, and what if she has to do some fancy metalbending, eh? What then?

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21 first lines

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:17:11 GMT

...only I often find my first lines don't stand all that well on their own, so I'm being self-indulgent and doing first ... bits. Lines, paragraphs, whatevs. Includes completed stories, early drafts that were sufficiently different to get a separate file, etc. Going by the date the GoogleDoc was last changed.

( Here is a cut tag! )

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Doctor Who: "Cold War"

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:46:03 GMT

Well, that was a Gatiss script.

( Mutually assured spoilerification! )

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Remember when Gratuitous Icon Posts were a thing that happened?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:01:52 GMT

So Bryan Konietzko posted a draft version of the back cover design for the Legend of Korra DVD/Blu-Ray set, and I got embarrassingly squeeful because Lin and Tenzin are, um, standing next to each other. Facing in opposite directions. Only together in the sense that they're not the villains.

Sometimes I contemplate meta about how shipping can cause extreme tunnel vision. This is maybe one of those moments. But I refuse to be embarrassed, because it was really nice to have some shippy squee for the first time in a while.

Apparently only the Blu-Ray version will come with commentaries for every episode, so I guess I'll be finding out if our Blu-Ray player is multi-region. Fortunately I have until August (or September, knowing Amazon shipping times) to buy and install a Blu-Ray drive on my PC.

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Here is a very serious thought (that is serious)

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:18:31 GMT

There should be an ALL SHERLOCK HOLMES ADAPTATIONS EVER vid to the techno cover of "I've Been to a Marvellous Party". Mostly for the "Then Frieda arrived with a turtle" line.

(My definition of "ALL SHERLOCK HOLMES ADAPTATIONS EVER would include Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and that bit in Avatar: the Last Airbender where Sokka has a hat and a bubble pipe.)

(Oh, and SHINee's video for "Sherlock". Especially the bit where Taemin wears a travelling cloak with skinny jeans. SHUT UP, IT'S AMAZING.)

The problem is that I can't stand Jeremy Brett's face*, so someone else is going to have to do it.

* Yes, heresy, I know.

Next time I have a day off, someone remind me to scan the Japanese Sherlock Holmes magazine I bought in Tokyo. I ~~don't read a word of Japanese~~ can only read the kanji for "soy", but the illustrations are amazing. There's a small number of Instagram pictures here.

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The Bells of Akhaten, also rantiness

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:38:09 GMT

Well, this one's been divisive, and not just because no one can agree on how to spell "Akhaten"! (At first I read that as "Akhenaten", and got really excited because I thought it was an episode about Egypt's foray into monotheism, with bonus Return!Nefertiti! Alas, it's not to be. But the BBC should get onto that, because a sun god with hands reaching down to humans? YOU CAN'T TELL ME THAT WOULDN'T LOOK CGI-TASTICALLY AMAZING.)

Anyway, yes, divisive episode. People seem to either love it or feel aggressively apathetic towards it. I'm in the first category, with an option to deem it mostly forgettable by the end of the season.

What I have to rant about, though, is that calapine got an immediately-deleted (so she therefore couldn't reply to it) comment telling her off for being negative about the RTD era in her review post -- I didn't think she was especially negative myself, but I'm hardly unbiased), and settiai got a comment telling her that anyone who liked this episode must be stupid.

Was it last year that I had to make a post asking that, if people hated this episode, they do so other than in my LJ? That still stands. I really love having a few hours or days where I'm incredibly happy and floaty and basically on a post-Doctor Who high, and I resent when people try to burst that bubble. I'll come to be more critical in my own time, thanks. As far as I'm concerned, as long as spoilers, large images and major triggers are behind cuts, people's journals can hold whatever opinions they want.

(Having said that, the etiquette of cutting spoilers seems to be a thing of the past. I'd blame Tumblr, only it's not just Tumblr users who do it. First Downton Abbey, then Legend of Korra and now Elementary, there seems to be this adorable idea that if you don't like Media Property X, then there's no need to cut for spoilers. "If you don't want to be spoiled, stay off the internet" tends to be the standard response, especially if it's an American responding, because spoiler warnings only matter if you're in the US, watching a British property. Apparently. It makes me a bit cross. I'm not entirely anti-spoiler, but I like to have a choice in the matter, you know?)

Anyway, I really enjoyed this episode, although I don't think it's going to go down as a classic, and I have a few things to say about it.

( The most important spoilers in human history, with brief discussion of abuse in the Catholic Church. )

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Doctor Who: The Rings of Check Your Privilege

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:41:17 GMT

I have to go out, so my actual episode reaction will be up in a few hours, but in the meantime, I had to react to some stuff I've seen. Mostly on Tumblr, yeah, but what can you do?

( Spoilers )

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The less than weekly reading post

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 22:38:41 GMT

I like this meme a lot, I just don't do it very much because I have enough trouble making time for my monthly round up of books!

What are you reading now?

Re-reading The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. violetisblue mentioned buying a copy, and I was overcome with the desire to read the whole series again.

I appreciate how Gen is, as Ambiades puts it, "not exactly stalwart". He's a great big whinger, and as much as I cringe a bit, I also like that he has no intention of being the Stoic, Brooding Hero.

I missed the actual get-together, but I put The Thief in my RL book club's hat, and no one liked it. *shakes head*

What did you just finish reading?

1. Avatar: the Last Airbender - The Search (part 1) -- actually, I cracked and read a scan last week, but I finally managed to buy the last copy in Melbourne last night, and it turned out the scan had missed a bunch of pages, so there was stuff I hadn't read yet! IT WAS VERY EXCITING.

Basically, after I read the scan last week, I had feels-related insomnia, and then I had FEELS all the way from Tokyo to Melbourne. Feels, not feelings, because they weren't articulate enough for that ings. Mostly they are Ursa feels, but also Zuko and Azula feels, and my usual vague desire to set Ozai on fire. Although I really like the way Gene Luen Yang writes Ozai and fleshes him out without softening him, like the secret chamber that's full of artifacts from other cultures. If it was Iroh, you'd think he was interested and wanted to learn, but because it's Ozai, it's more like a serial killer's souvenirs, only his victims are entire cultures.

I haven't sought out the general fannish reaction, because unjapanologist said it was stupid, and I have enough problems with Doctor Who fandom at the moment. Remind me to make a post about how not liking a writer's tropes doesn't mean it's okay to decide he's a paedophile.

2. Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation - Assimilation2 -- I accidentally bought volume 2 instead of volume 1, 'cos I'm an idiot. But I read half of volume 1, so I knew that the Borg and the Cybermen had formed an alliance, and the TARDIS had turned up on the Enterprise-D for wacky crossover shenanigans.

I found the writing pretty clunky and exposition-heavy -- I strongly feel that if the heart of the TARDIS inhabits Data, that should be a crowning moment of awesome, not an afterthought -- and there was this weird thing where Starfleet officers addressed Amy as "Miss Pond" if she was on her own, but Amy-and-Rory were "Mr and Mrs Williams". Which mostly takes me back to the time in 2000 when I caused great offence on a mailing list by suggesting that women would have stopped automatically taking their husband's names by the 24th century.

On the other hand, the art -- hand-painted, although some of the photo references were a bit too identifiable -- was amazing, and completely justified the purchase. And I would happily buy some of the covers as posters.

What do you expect to read next?

The next three Queen's Thief books, and then I have some more Japanese crime fiction to read. I didn't love The Devotion of Suspect X, but I'm optimistic!

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Doctor Who: "The Bells of St John"

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 04:45:10 GMT

( Spoilers don't know where they are. )

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Well, that was completely expected

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:15:49 GMT

About five minutes after I posted here about how I was doing my trip blogging at Tumblr, I realised I couldn't use text formatting there anymore. Unless I'm posting a link, apparently? I don't even know.

So then I copied my posts over to Wordpress, figured out how to incorporate my Instagram pictures (it's only marginally less torturous than blogging at Tumblr!), and that's where I'm at now.

So here's my post on Roppongi and Ueno Zoo, with bonus discussions of food and correction of an error I apparently made.

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I can't believe I forgot to mention this here!

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:07:30 GMT

But I'm blogging my time in Japan over at Tumblr -- hashtag "japanadventures".

I really hate using Tumblr for long-form blogging, but it's really easy to cross-post pictures from Instagram to Tumblr, and I like having everything in one place.

Short version: Japan is lovely. Disney was fantastic, although we had a couple of close encounters with a very rude French-American man. My feet hurt. You can buy gyudon for 280 yen (AU$3) and order from a vending machine. There's a breakfast cereal that involves quinoa and chocolate. People keep telling me I speak Japanese very well, which makes for epic humblebragging because I only know a few words. But I think I will start classes later this year or early next.

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Belated White Lotus Lunar New Year post!

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 05:13:56 GMT

Just take it for granted that anything I post here for the next few months will have an invisible header containing apologies for late news, busyness, etc.

Anyway, the white_lotus Lunar New Year Exchange was a thing that happened! My favourite part of it is surreptitiously refreshing the comm on my phone at work, waiting to see what gets posted next.

I requested fic about Lin and Tenzin during the years when they had a (mostly) functional established relationship, and if my recipient could throw in some adventures, that would be ace. In return, I got the wonderful "why live on the edge when you can jump" by dropsofviolet, in which Lin and Tenzin FIGHT CRIME. And the crime is pretty clever, too, and based on a real one.

Writing-wise, I produced:

"Joint Operations" for attackfish (Lin/Iroh, PG-13), in which the United Forces have to provide support to the Republic City Police Department in the wake of the revolution, and that means Iroh has to work with Lin Beifong. I had some trouble with the prompt, and wound up sort of just reducing it down to its bare elements, that is, that Lin and Iroh share a great deal of professional respect, even when that isn't necessarily extended to each other's organisations.

If I'd had more time and energy, I would have written something longer, in which they actually solved crime and fought bad guys together, but that wasn't to be. And anyway, why would the Chief of Police and a military general be getting their hands dirty when there are all these highly trained professionals about? Anyway, for the record, the opening scene was inspired by The Killing III, and the musings on the inappropriateness of using military forces to police a civilian population came via The Wire.

Secondly, as a pinch hit, I produced "Training" for silly_cleo (Ikki, Jinora, PG-13). It was really hard to choose between her prompts, because they were all great -- one was for Lin/Pema/Tenzin! YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT SNUGGGLEBENDING! -- but once again, time was short -- I only had one free afternoon to write this -- and the idea for this small Ikki fic entered my brain and refused to leave. If I ever have spare time again, I'm totally going to illustrate it.

And that, for me, was white_lotus done for the year again. Frustratingly, I've been in a mood to write fic lately, but haven't had time. Even though I've totally figured out what happens next in the Private Detective AU.

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So basically I've turned into one of those annoying bike people

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 07:32:19 GMT

Things that are great:

MY BIKE.

I don't think I've mentioned my bike here, which is silly, because I bought it a month ago, and I've been tweeting and instagramming and Facebooking it all over the place. It is a white vintage ladies bike, and is basically more feminine than I am. It's also incredibly easy to ride, and generally a sturdy little thing. At least so far! Fingers crossed that it stays that way, because I won't have time to do a bike maintenance class before I go away. You can see some pictures of it if you go through my Instagram feed (along with, uh, selfies, the cat, food, the usual).

Oh, good, you can link directly to pictures! Let's see...

The day I bought it.

It needed an Appa sticker ... and a Momo!

Then I got these beautiful panniers, which hold a massive amount of shopping and get compliments from strangers.

Anyway, cycling! IT'S SO GREAT. I mean, at first it was hard and I wanted to die, and now I go a lot further, and I still want to die, but with more excuse. Last Sunday I cycled with yiduiqie to the Continuum committee meeting, a couple of suburbs over, and I was so puffed out by the end -- and partially because of my stubborn refusal to climb off and walk up a hill until I'd already hit my limit -- that when we arrived, I dismounted and fell over. I am all dignity.

Somehow, though, that seemed to kill my nervousness about going places and road cycling and so forth. I cycled to work on Wednesday, right into the city, and I didn't die! (Seriously, Melbourne's drivers tend to regard the road rules as suggestions, and cyclists as targets. I was really scared!) Cycled to work again on Friday, and I'm planning to do so again on Tuesday, not least because I've saved money by not buying a weekly pass for public transport. (Not Wednesday, though -- it's going to be an extra-stupidly hot day, and I don't want to be sweaty and gross when I get to the doctor.)

This morning I cycled to Lygon Street in Carlton for a haircut, and continued to not die. I even cycled on Sydney Road, which has the general look and feel of a death trap, plus dannipenguin got hit by a car there last year, and yidiuqie saw a car hit a cyclist right outside the police station in January. Suffice to say, I'm proud that I did it, and I plan to avoid doing it as far as possible.

I realised yesterday that, although my friends have been calling my bike Appa, for its sticker and colour, it's actually Romana I. I mean, it's pretty, feminine and white. So I called it Romana for about five minutes, but then it evolved into the Vintage Ladies Cycle of Rassilon. Though mostly I just call it "my bike".

And because they're so cheap, these bikes are getting really common. Which is lovely! selvage and weaver bought one each on the same weekend that I did -- the owner of the bike store promptly put his prices up, so apologies to everyone else -- and Reid Cycles, who actually designed them, has them in even more styles and colours. So I see them all over the place. Yesterday, on our way home, weaver and I spotted a man riding a pink one, with matching pink shirt and helmet, and cherry blossoms decorating his basket.

I have to admit that when we all turned up for brunch with the same bike last weekend, I wondered if we had turned into those awful inner-north lady cyclists, or insuffrable hipsters at the very least, but I don't actually care, because I'm really enjoying myself.

I just wish I didn't get so very red in the face. dannipenguin asked the other day if I get bikey face, and I do, but it looks like this:

Like I said. My bike is way more ladylike than I am.

ETA: Demonstrating the popularity of the model, a former manager of mine just posted to Facebook, asking if she should buy one.

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I love you, America, but...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:18:46 GMT

...the general puzzlement and confusion because the last-minute hiatus means that all the holiday episodes are out of sync with actual holidays is a bit hilarious to me. Because it's always like that in Australia.

I mean, in the last couple of years our networks have started "fast-tracking", which means airing stuff within a few weeks of the US (or, in the case of Doctor Who, the UK). And it's not like we have a Thanksgiving to sync up to. Or a 4th of July. But delays of months or years are more common -- the first few Doctor Who Christmas specials aired in June!

(And the Christmas/summer period doesn't count towards ratings in Australia, so no local shows bother with such things.)

It wasn't until I got the internet that I realised holiday episodes were even meant to sync up with holidays!

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Updates

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:47:39 GMT

Work: returned yesterday. I was assigned a job labelled as "assault/affray/serious bodily harm", which I took to mean that my run of sex offences was over. NOPE! It was mislabelled. I'm not sorry I have Wednesdays off.

Arm: healing! I mean, that's how I interpret the nagging itch. Most of the redness has gone, too.

Ankle: sore! I think I overdid it yesterday. For one thing, we control our audio with foot pedals, and it turns out I'm strongly right-footed. And, yes, it's the right ankle that's sprained. Even so, it's not unbearable.

Ovaries: HAH! I HAVEN'T COMPLAINED ABOUT THESE YET! I've had nagging pains in my right side since before Christmas, which at first I put down to some kind of phantom gallbladder syndrome, but I finally went to the doctor last week, and he poked and I yelped, and apparently it's probably something in the ovary department. His money's on a cyst. At least, unlike a surprising number of my friends, I made it through my US trip without an ovary literally exploding.

White Lotus fic: remember how I was crowing that my prompt was exactly what I wanted to write? Yeah, not so much. I have 1014 words, none of which relate to the specific prompt except in terms of the pairing, but I'm sure I can fix that before it's due on, um, this weekend.

TV: Parks & Recreation is so amazing, you guys. Well, not the first season. I had a dream last night that I went back to watch the first season, and it was brilliant. Then I woke up and remembered how terrible the pilot was. But seasons 2-5 of Parks & Rec are so amazing, you guys. The Carrie Diaries is less amazing, what with the post-pilot episodes so far being a bit generic, but I think it has the capacity to improve. If not, at least it's a chance to admire Freema Agyeman in a series of improbable and terrible outfits. Finally, Breaking Bad is quite brilliant, although I'm quite mystified by all the people who say Walt crosses the line in season 4 or 5. Were they not paying attention to the attempted marital rape in the season 2 premiere? Anyway, I'm convinced that, however the timeline works out, Walter White is actually the son of Pete Campbell and Peggy Olsen that was given up for adoption. Turns out that Pete's sense of white, male, middle class American entitlement with a seething underscore of potential violence is genetic.

Books: Are pretty great. I just finished For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund, a retelling of Persuasion set in a dystopian (or, more accurately, post-dystopian) New Zealand. With steampunk elements. It was quite excellent, and well worth the trouble I went to in order to get a copy. (For some reason, I could buy a prequel novella from the Kindle store, but not the actual novel. In the end, I had to buy a hardback edition from The Strand in New York.) Now, naturally, I'm reading Persuasion again. Turns out I own three copies. This seems reasonable.

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