@missrori  @puroandson  He’s never fared well on Gallifrey, has he?  His infrequent stops there are always dangerous for him.  Maybe he’s had enough of that kind of danger for a while, and just needs to get back to his ramblin’ ways asap, since that is what he and Clara have freed him to do by agreeing to part company.  The TLs are still anxi…[Read more]

@missrori  Thanks — I’m always intrigued by art inspired by the art of others.  Welcome to our conversations.

ichi

@bluesqueakpip  One of my favorite pieces of music — thank you!

@janetteb  Yes, that was clear in the story — especially since there is actually something for her inherit, later in the story, from — a deceased aunt, I think?  So her family is perhaps lower bourgeoise rather than outright peasantry, I suppose.   But she does start out a poor orphan, treated as some one just one insecure cut above servant cl…[Read more]

@janetteb  I love period dramas too but it frustrates me that all of them depict the lives of the privileged few. For every Elizabeth Bennet there were three or four servants living lives of absolute drudgery.

Exactly.  You might look up a book called “Mary Reilly”, set in the household of Dr. Jeckyll.  Also, there’s modern British author wh…[Read more]

@puroandson  If it needs to move forward then it shall -and should. Analogies about the French Revolution are interesting but not necessarily comparable.  Is feminism an ideology? Some would view it as such and others not.

Oh, to be sure.  I alluded to the Fr. Revolution as an example of going from one extreme to another, very quickly, and wi…[Read more]

@arbutus  Not to mention how many of these lovely girls would have lost their lives at an early age in childbirth– assuming that they survived childhood themselves. And yes, lovely to be courted by some guy three times your age who your father is going to make you marry, like him or not. The list goes on. I’ll take the 21st century, than…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave  Just reading your impressive reflections from a couple of weeks back on the possessive insanity of fandom

Thanks, I appreciate the appreciation!

What I become increasingly dispirited by is that so many people seem to fear, and even hate, change.
Sorry, that seems to have turned into a bit of a rant. Clearly time for a…[Read more]

@arbutus   Here’s a link to the review of the book about Elizabeth I in last Sunday’s NYT:

@arbutus  I agree about Xena.  Also the slowly dawning sense (slow for me, anyway) that the relationship of this heroic female figure and her female sidekick was different from, say, the female leads in Cagney & Lacy.  That in itself was fascinating, and refreshing.

I do wish a show would be done with Lucy Lawless as an older Xena — what ha…[Read more]

@puroandson  I’ve stayed out of this because I don’t really understand why we keep coming back to it.

I think a basic reason we keep coming round to this again is that we’re all at a crisis point in our own history, with enormous changes required of us if we’re to survive a massively shifting environment.  There’s also great resistance from peopl…[Read more]

@puroandson   feminism can’t go too far. It’ll go as far as it needs.

Well, yes and no, IMO.  It *is* possible for any sort of big change to go “too far”, correct for distortion, swing back again, etc.  I’m thinking of politics mainly, eg the French Revolution of 1789 becoming the Reign of Terror (and then the White Terror as the pendulum was sh…[Read more]

@missy  If a show is working and has been working perfectly and is popular as it is for decades, why change it?

It’s been working for 50 yrs. or so, and in terms of modern culture and how quickly it shifts, that is a long time.  I don’t think it’s ever worked “perfectly” either.  Viewers have been complaining about it becoming “stale” for som…[Read more]

@puroandson   Thanks for kind words, and a salute to your mum while we’re at it.  There’s still plenty of resistance to feminist ideas, though, even among SF readers and writers, who you’d expect to be more flexible in their thinking since social change does seem to be an unavoidable effect of time and we’re supposed to be pushing conjecture i…[Read more]

@missy  I am NOT a feminist, but that isn’t why I would detest the Doctor becoming a woman. It’s simply because I prefer it that way. It works and if it isn’t broken why fix it.

Does anyone consider the idea of a female regeneration a “fix” for something wrong with DW?  Probably some feminists well Left of me, I guess some of the younger folks w…[Read more]

@mersey  Moffat said categorical no to female Doctor 

My understanding is that he’s been *told*, No Female Doctor, by BBC higher ups, and that having us see the General regenerate as a woman was his way of surrendering on that score, but at the same time making a firm visual statement that TLs can in fact switch genders upon regeneration; so, i…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@stitchintime  As for copyright being dead, I have my doubts

I have doubts, too, and the timing may be off by a decade or two; in any case, the problem is *enforcement*.  Those authors and publishers who are making real bucks in the media markets can afford to threaten and then to sue pirates and other offenders, but given the costs of legal s…[Read more]

@winston  @stitchintime  Scary, yes; that was part of the message of the article — that when you get to death threats, you’re bordering on lunacy at worse, and have dangerous issues about where you stop and the rest of the world and all the people in it begin.  But not everyone is worried by this trend; there’s an interview with director Gu…[Read more]

@pedant  Thanks for that link — very interesting, and definitely confirms my own feelings about this . . . so far as I know, no Tolkien fans ever wrote death threats to JRR because he didn’t have the elf and the dwarf run away together and live happily ever after.  How times have changed . . . and how old and crochety it makes me feel to have t…[Read more]