@missy  @mudlark  I think my interior, emotional age is maybe 30 — but then, I don’t really remember more than just fragments of having been a child; maybe I got a late start of some kind.  Raising my younger sister (my mother worked full time, plus half-time free lance work) might have something to do with it; but that aside, I think my si…[Read more]

@mudlark  It never occurred to me to feel bothered that the protagonists in TLoTR were predominantly male

Me, neither — until I began to notice such things, sometime in the late sixties, and the common under-representation of women in modern lit. fiction (as well as the US Congress, SF awards, etc.) became one of those things that once you see,…[Read more]

@missy  You know, I never could watch The Musketeers, even though PC was a major character in it.  Something about those costumes just makes me uncomfortable — all that fabric and leather and great big boots.  I get distracted thinking about what it must feel like lugging all that around.  (trailing rags of memory from a past life, mebbe . . . ?…[Read more]

@missy   Dang.  Guess I’m just a loser, then!

@missy  Yes, when we see it!  Seen a lot of Doctors and favored some, but this guy just blew me away from the get-go. Something to do with the profile, maybe?  I used to draw an imaginary face very much like that when I was in art school — long, expressively topographical, with that thick, vigorous hair.  Friend of mine says, “Oh, you’re just an…[Read more]

@mudlark   I do believe that is the only book (the second volume, I think) that I actually stole from the library.  After I’d read it, I felt so guilty that I took it back, under my coat, and furtively replaced it on the shelf . . . It was just too wonderful to keep to myself.   I must report, though, that I began to read the trilogy again, fo…[Read more]

@craig  According to Wikipedia “the story received a mixed reception from viewers. Some enjoyed the story, describing it as “intriguing” and “compelling”. More critical viewers thought the series was becoming “stale” and “boring” and that it was “too horrific” and “too far-fetched”. A small minority considered it to be “the usual predictable rub…[Read more]

@thane15 *But I digress. My new teacher is amazing. I got this* phrase from her 🙂

Oh, I digress all the time — it’s one of my favorite things to do.  And yes, I find myself saying that a lot lately — “I’m glad I’m old”.   Not “glad”, really, but — relieved.  I’m relieved that I don’t have a whole lifetime ahead of me that seems to demand not…[Read more]

@missy  Oh, they play those moments, those glimpses into deep feeling, brilliantly, don’t they?  Have we ever seen another TL show those kinds of feelings?  If we have, I don’t remember it; and in S8-S9 we do see the Doctor yanked back from what seems to be a default TL setting of no positive emotional involvement (“She cares so I don’t have to…[Read more]

@thane15  I like the way you think!  I hope the best for the show too, as I’m sure Capaldi and Moffat do also, with whatever kind of new Doctor they settle on.  If it’s back to another young white guy, if it’s not first rate comedy as well, I doubt I’ll be interested enough to stick with it long.  I think I’m getting — ah — age-ist?  In reve…[Read more]

@missrori  Perhaps Davros was right — compassion is a weakness.

I think compassion is a strength, and the heroic backbone of “goodness” itself — to do what you know and feel is right *in spite of* also knowing that your action won’t fix things forever and might even have terrible spin-offs in  future (Ashildr, as noted above); and with no exp…[Read more]

@juniperfish   Heart-breaking news, certainly.  I was hoping for four years at least . . . But there you are.

@pedant  Probably watched Broadchurch 2 and thought “Noooooo!”

I sure did.  Awful stuff.  Capaldi is probably well out of it, especially of BBC goes back to Teen Romance tropes for the Doctor.  Besides, nobody grows younger, and the p…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@mudlark   Thanks for the Roman rundown; and of course no exact parallels are expected.  But we certainly have the “bread and circuses”, and the foreign military adventuring (although we’re massively worse at that than Rome was, seems to me) . . . with other major powers active around the globe (China, India, and now Russia), the basic situation l…[Read more]

@missy  Oh, I don’t think so; Hitler meant to build an empire spanning Europe and Asia, the Third Reich.  He was prevented.  Trump will fumble it so badly that I don’t think there will be a US empire, at least not in the near future.  The Pax Americana will be a joke in his hands, and what else does the US have to offer anyone swearing fealty to…[Read more]

@alexwho  Maybe you’re not the only one . . . at any rate, I hope you’re not.  If things get too crazy around here, we could be looking at a military coup, just to keep the demented man-baby from nuking somebody across the world (or on the West coast, who knows).

A colleague who writes historical novels says the Imperial US is roughly p…[Read more]

@thane15   And, in this case, his excellent mum — moment by moment is good.  I think a solid dose of zen-style current awareness, on the one hand, plus a vast time horizon looking both past and future around these awful events, is a workable approach to enduring the storm.  I don’t think anybody needs to feel badly for being depressed and even ho…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Tea’s good, too, isn’t it?  (I’m on wine, myself, at the rather late moment).  I do hope you and @juniperfish and there IS a fourth installment.  That would be so god damn cool — and sly, and really, really, clever.

And bonkers!  Yes, and hurrah!

@janetteb   With regard to political trolling, the Right has substantial monetary power and uses some of it to hire moral imbeciles to do Right Wing trolling on line, as loudly and ubiquitously and frequently as possible, in order to amplify their “message” and make support seem much greater and more widespread than it is.  I don’t think anybody o…[Read more]

@pedant  Wish I could claim to remember ACD’s stories as clearly as you do, so that I could watch for that faithfulness — I really must go back and read them again, on a “Sherlock” re-watch.  Particularly since I dreamed this a.m. of clearing out a room of mine (with a couple of — Russians?) and quickly stopping one of them from taking a v…[Read more]