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19 June 2016 at 07:55 #52754
@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 who react, quite rightly I think, to the persistent anti-feminist backlash (in the US) by becoming more critical, condemnatory, and militant than I think I remember being myself as a youngster. More power to them, since they’re having to fight tooth and nail just to hang on to whatever advances were made by earlier waves before them.
To some of these feminists, just the idea of a male authority/power/figure being central to the show, and usually being orbited by a spunky, attractive young woman is a red flag of battle. To them, a female Doctor *would* be a “fix”, specifically an attempt to counter-balance (or better yet, cancel out) the more usual male-centric template. These are SF fans, so they are all too familiar the original pattern in early pulp SF of the all-knowing (and inevitably male) scientist being cooed at by some generic idiot female to whom he has to explain things all the time (by way of explaining to the reader). It was stupid then, and it would be stupid now.
But DW is not stupid. By adding generous helpings of goofiness, vanity, and an emotional life to the central male, and having the female companions show courage, brains, and humor instead of just making the tea and being brainlessly alluring per the old template, they’ve broken the show away from the old demeaning pulp SF patterns, sufficiently for my taste, anyway.
So I don’t think they have anything to “fix”. On the other hand, in a time of challenging slants on gender identity and social roles, trying out how a female Doctor might be different (and how she might be the same) re the male Doctors just seems a natural thing to try — by way of exploration, not just to throw down a gauntlet to start a fight.
18 June 2016 at 08:39 #52747@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, if at some later date another show runner working for a more flexible BBC admin wants to give it a try, the groundwork has been laid for such a change, in no uncertain terms (to NEVER try it, now post-General, really *would* be a sexist statement). Pretty shrewd of him, if so.
Oops. Bluesqueakpip makes the same point. I saw it laid out first in a context of Moffat, denied the gender switch himself, was already safely signed on for S10, and was cocking a snook at BBC fuddy-duddies (and masculinist fans who made such a raging fuss when the issue was originally raised), so there!
Bringing up Xena is interesting; Xena was such a strong, female character. It wouldn’t work if she was a man.
I’m not so sure of that . . . A series called “Hercules, the Legendary Journeys” or something like that was on when Xena was, I think, with Hercules played by Kevin Sorbo. Of course, there was no hint of a sexual relationship between Hercules and his (completely unmemorable, now that I think of it) male sidekick; so that *did* make a big difference in the popularity of Xena — that bold (for the time) assertion of sexuality between two women in a mythic adventure show!
@kharis the Doctor throughout his regeneration has represented the traditional Yang Magician and the Master has personified the Yin High Priestess, and I would have said that about the Master before he ever became Missy.
Interesting; thank you. I’m trying to figure out why my immediate reaction to the female Doctor idea is so contradictory: politically, YES, why the hell not?! Of course! But viscerally, I am apparently hooked on the traditional pairing of the older, quirkier, adult male alien and the (usually) more practical, more or less brash and challenging earth woman who gets swept into his adventures and emerges not unscathed, but certainly wiser and stronger and more knowledgable about herself.
I’m a feminist: this favoritism toward the traditional character constellation is embarrassing, to say the least. So I wish they’d *do* the gender switch at some point so I can be convinced on both levels, which I think I would be, if they did it really well. Easier said than done, though — so many heavily emotional stereotypes to contend with, of the damned if you do, damned if you don’t, variety.
I’ll check the pub for further posts on the issue.
10 June 2016 at 01:19 #52667@geoffers I think the filming alluded to (if you mean Capaldi dropping hints of spoilers at Q&A in DC recently) in which Clara “was there” is filming for “Class”, which was set to begin this month as I recall. If there’s a bit of time travel involved in that show, and an appearance of the Doctor himself in the first episode, well, he could drop in on Coal Hill in the past at some point, and *see* Clara (for whatever Moffat decides that’s worth to him now), but probably not interact with her past self (?). No more than a nostalgic look-back, I should think, and in a different but related show.
3 June 2016 at 05:33 #52646@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 services, and the median writing income of published authors (and guild members) last time I looked at the Authors Guild report as about $7500 a year, the best most of us can do is to find a lawyer who’ll write a cease and desist letter to the offender (who may simply move the pirated text to another site, or just ignore such warnings as a matter of course, and that’s assuming you can actually *find* a real human person to contact). Disney can copyright everything it owns and (so far) enforce their ownership, just as corporation can copyright gene sequences for drug formulations etc., but for “small” creators (and discoverers) what appears to be real protection can be worthless, or nearly so, if you actually try to use it.
Most professional writers don’t have time to spend surfing the net for plagiarists; your publishers are supposed to keep track of that (I’ve found myself sending plagiarism tips (sent to me by readers, mostly) TO my publishers to follow up on, because they, in true modern no-service business fashion, weren’t even trying).
Judy Merrill was, of course, right — by all accounts, that’s how things were in the early years of American SF, and it paid off hugely — in ideas, not the only reward that signifies in America, ie cash. In those days writers of genre fiction were paid 2-5 cents a word, and ideas in the genre were still fresh and new. People wrote very very fast and did actually produce some wonderful work — usually loaded with unquestioned imperialistic, racial, and patriarchal assumptions that now make many of those books and stories a tough read now. There were few big screenplay buys — genre writers wrote directly for Hollywood, when they could. Mostly they sold stories to pulp magazines and publishers who also put out Westerns and Romances, all of which were considered crude, low-rent entertainment, which a great deal of it was.
No doubt Ted Sturgeon, of that mid-century generation of writers, had all that in mind when he uttered his famous dictum (at a panel at a convention, I heard) that “90% of everything is junk.” Only he used a different word.
Love the phone story! I think there are scads of negative effects of screen-connectedness replacing “face time” as well as whatever positives come out of it; and there are also experienced people in tech and business who still recognize the value of sitting in a room and talking/listening to each other — happy to have you confirm that (I’ve been hearing rumors — ).
2 June 2016 at 06:13 #52643@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 Guillliermo del Toro (sp?) in a recent issue of “Wired” magazine in which he says he’s eager to plunge into a near future in which everybody can disassemble, adopt, and recombine in different media all the parts that make up any individual’s or group of individuals contribution to mass culture, so that everyone is a creative sharer in whatever they choose to get involved in. [not if Disney, Marvel, et al have anything to say about it, Bub — but his point is that copyright really is about to become a dead (ie unenforcible) issue, and different incarnations of an original creative work will spool out into infinity as others adapt the elements of it to other media, some not even extant yet.]
Copyright and single or small group authorship/ownership is, according to another article in the same issue, a formula well tuned to a society in constant change, but slowly, not changing at the breakneck speed that’s fracturing it right before our eyes now. They just disintegrate under the force of rapid innovation and almost instant distribution.
I’m glad I’m old; I’ve run out of interest in re-inventing myself to suit rapid changes in my field of work. I thought we’d have a functioning base on the Moon by now, but that’s not where the big changes are happening as quickly as SF suggested. Instead, it’s our own society that morphing into some weird new forms linked to innovative communications and media. Example? A recent study says that kids sitting at a table and clicking away on their cell phones instead of looking at and talking to each other are using their phones to create rapid and multi-dimensional conversations involving those present, plus everybody else they’re all drawing into the discussion via texting, pictures, links, etc. It’s becoming rather rude, some say, for someone at the table to interrupt the lightning inter-actions by speaking aloud . . .
Is there a “Singularity” after all, and have we met it, and is it *us* becoming shifting and flowing groups co-existing and interpenetrating and developing endlessly through dense, though mostly silent, conversations? It is for me, at any rate, because I have no interest in living that way, and certainly nothing like the speed and agility of the youngsters who’ve grown up living this way.
Oh, well, SF current has carried me away again, and I haven’t seen anything to indicate that these conversations are anything but sprawly chatter of youthful peers more interested in who’s dating whom than in the changing world around them — but there must be some who feel the need to go beyond that, and who do.
1 June 2016 at 07:34 #52631@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 to say that in a discouraged tone! But there’s no doubt that the undercurrent of possessive insanity in fandom has becomes much more than one undercurrent among others.
I suppose it’s also possible that we’re seeing a serious conflation of fantasy and reality in the more extreme fringes of fandom. It certainly applies to, say, ISIS and their dream of restoring whatever they think “the Caliphate” was. The condition sometimes has the flavor of distilled idealism run utterly amok out of sheer frustration in the real world.
1 June 2016 at 07:04 #52630@missy No one can really edit their own work.
Well, you can, — just not alone. As I see it, everyone who writes more than one draft of a story is editing. But the judgment of others needs to be brought to bear just you can step outside your own head and look at the work with fresh eyes. Many writers take this necessary step by asking “Beta-readers”, usually friends and family, to read and comment on a story for them when it’s become too stale to the author’s eyes for clarity. I don’t know why they’re called “Beta” — it’s a computer thingie by origin, I think. Maybe because a Beta reader is not your target, but an intermediate whose reaction can help you aim better at your *real* target (Alpha readers?), which is your readership at large, readers in general, or fans, etc.
Some do this by joining a writing group (local or online), where each member Beta-reads others’ work and critiques it. I don’t do this myself, because I’m too slow a producer and would only have something to be critiqued maybe once a year or so (and critiquing others when you don’t submit your own work to the same people and process can cause resentment among those who regularly take their slings and arrows every month or more often). I’ve sent fifth drafts (that is, work that’s fully formed by that point, so I’m not likely to be completely bowled over and re-directed by criticism, unless I ask for that) to friends etc., with detailed instructions to make critical reading *as readers rather than as writers themselves* easier (eg, “x in the margin wherever it feels slow to you, or you voluntarily put it down and go do something else”).
One other useful tool is to read your work, or some portion of it, aloud, and tape your reading. After a bit, you may find that you’re listening and catching problems as the words come out of your mouth, no tape needed. I’ve found this an excellent way to catch clumsy, ugly, or confusing sentence and story structure, unwitting repetition, and the whole music, pace, and style of the piece, so you can make all of that better. It’s a last stage for me in polishing an mss. for submission to an agent or editor. And it’s fun. I do the voices and everything . . .
1 June 2016 at 06:31 #52629@missy @stitchintime Agreed on Capaldi, and most definitely on “Heaven Sent” — gorgeous piece of work (and let’s not forget the contributions of the director, as illuminated by her comments on her fb page). Is it *perfect*? Not quite. I could easily do without Steven Moffat’s cliffhanger, “The hybrid — is me.” Considering that “Hell Bent” follows this by leaving the true identity of the hybrid even murkier, that final line from “Heaven Sent” just feels like a tease without a pay-off, to me.
On the other hand — everything else — stunning, so bitter with sweet and still the richer for it.
1 June 2016 at 05:47 #52628@arbutus et al: what you say about professional writers sometimes receiving less and less editorial help rings true. I have noticed the same tendency in films sometimes, when someone produces something successful, and suddenly has carte blanche to do what they want, and the sequels and so on become increasingly overblown because nobody wants to sit them down and say, “Stuff needs to be fixed.”
Yes; you don’t want to alienate your big earners by offering unwelcome criticism, and of course big earnings tend to increase self-confidence and decrease self-criticism in creative people. There’s another side to it, though, which is more nebulous but just as important: if a writer gets sloppy, self-indulgent, and long-winded over time, *but* her books just keep selling more and more copies (P.D. James, prime example), then no one can say with certainty that the sloppiness, indulgence, and long-windedness is harming their work; in fact, at least some of that may be just what her readers have come to love about her work, and how could you know? Who cares what the official critics say, and the author’s detractors — no editor wants to inadvertently kill the goose that’s laying increasingly golden eggs! Seriously — would “50 Shades of S**te” (which began its life as Twilight fan fiction) have sold *more* copies if an editor had intervened to reduce the childish, witless dreck-i-ness of that book? Probably not; and maybe — and just maybe — *fewer* copies would have sold.
The competition for readers in an age of rapidly multiplying media formats is truly ferocious, in what often looks like a headlong race of publishers toward the bottom of the barrel.
25 May 2016 at 03:31 #52531@arbutus Thanks for the thumbs up; and I know just what you mean about historicals (real or fantasized) and absorption in the details. That’s why there’s not just LOTR, but The Silmarillion from Tolkien — he loved all his background detail too much to give any of it up (note also the comparison between the numbers of readers for LOTR and those for the Silmarillion). In genre readership, there’s a faction that just *adores* this sort of deep background. These are the kids who learned to write in beautiful elvish script, with which they adorned the walls of the New York City subway system for a time; who created maps and lexicons and probably fan fiction as well based on Tolkien. Some of them grew up to be Guy Gavriel Kaye; some grew up to be Terry Brooks and The Endless Third Rate Rip-Off of Shanana, Dooby-Dooby-Doo.
There are also plenty of readers who recoil from all that to a position of, “Oh, for God’s sake, just tell me what *happened* and skip the glossaries and family trees etc. that I have to keep flipping back to as I’m reading, just to keep the main characters straight and know what they’re talking about!” I’m of the latter type: I no longer read long fantasy-historicals with hand-drawn maps of non-existent places in front and endless addenda at the back. Life wasn’t too short for this kind of thing when I was a kid; I’m not a kid any more, and now it is.
There’s a delicate balance to be struck, I suppose, but it’s a moving target, varying from reader to reader. And I did write some books with maps . . . but no damn glossaries. Line in the sand, I say!
25 May 2016 at 00:53 #52529@stitchintime Sorry, I was interrupted and didn’t complete post #52528, above. I meant to add that not outlining means that when the story’s done, it needs a *lot* of rewriting to get everything lined up properly, cut-and-paste work for maximizing usefulness and impact of various scenes, and even surgically removing entire story-lines that don’t contribute enough to be worth the time and space they take up. I do, actually, sometimes outline — *after* the initial draft is written, to be able to do revisions on a coherent basis. Besides, I don’t usually know — or want to know — the end until I’ve written one half to two thirds of the story. I start with questions, and follow where they lead.
Many writers who outline extensively don’t do much revising because they don’t need to: the blueprints were laid down clearly in their heads before they began, so they’re essentially filling in the blanks of the outline. They tend, IMO, to start with answers, and their pre-writing outline is like a map to where they want the story to go. This works well for those who are comfortable with it, but it turns me off because (I think) it cuts down on the possibilities for surprises — for me first, then for readers. Surprises keep me from getting bored, or prematurely seeing the ending too soon and (as a reader) skipping and skimming because all the maneuvering to get there feels like mere filler (which it often is, to be fair).
I think starting with questions rather than answers helps me avoid writing propaganda (although for some readers, even raising a hot issue in any way is deliberate provocation and advocacy of the outrageous).
25 May 2016 at 00:30 #52528@stitchintime Drafts of novels — I have a friend and colleague who turns in first drafts, and only goes back over her work according to prompts from her editors; she’s been writing and publishing for decades now, and knows her onions, and they know what to expect from her. I’m only good for about 6 drafts, myself, and then a book feels too stale to work on *without* editorial prompts (and I’ve had some excellent editorial advice over the years that made stories much better than they would otherwise have been). But I’ve gone to many more drafts than that, taking several years to write and revise something complex enough to need all that time. Compare George Martin, GOT, time problems with, for a much more prominent example; a high earner like George doesn’t need to work to schedule. Everybody else does, unless they write as an avocation, not to make a living.
A lot depends on how much outlining and blueprinting you do (in your head and on paper) before you start writing; I never outline, having had one disastrous experience with that technique (it had a happy outcome, though, eventually).
24 May 2016 at 20:40 #52523On lists and organization — I once made the mistake of hiring someone to help me organize my files, on the understanding that she been a file clerk during her time in the air force. She managed to completely screw the whole place up for me within a couple of months, mostly by sticking sub-files *inside of* major files, so that I couldn’t see past the sticking-up edges, and the labels she wrote were all in pencil with such a light pressure that they’ve unreadable with floodlights. I later realized from conversation that she’s the sort of person who has very wide experience, in all the jobs she took on, failed at, and left or was booted out of after too short a time to have learned anything much on the job. I’ve been kicking myself ever since, and will have to get some kind of reliable office help in here to set the place in order. My files, though, are really business files, more than household, so it’s a matter of having misperceived the scale of what needs to be done
@missy “Writing is such a lonely task and quite frankly boring because one knows the story inside out.
Well, I think it has to be said that if you don’t actually enjoy the kind of lone-time that creative work/play requires, maybe writing isn’t really for you. If you know your story so well that it’s become boring, you’ve probably been re-working it over and over for far too long. At worst, you’ve worn out the spark of original inspiration that compelled you to begin; at best, you could probably benefit by setting this work aside and taking a crack at something entirely new, to get the creative drive flowing again and to refresh yourself with new questions to answer.
Many professional fiction authors have an unpublished first novel stashed in a drawer, and after having their second or third book succeed, go back later to cut and polish the abandoned work and get that published at last (or take a later look, recoil in horror, and burn the thing to make sure it *never* gets published). You can overwork any creative effort — book, painting, recipe, whatever — with gloom-inducing results.
Maybe try a short story, some essays for an online publication, some poetry or song-lyrics to tunes you love (sounds as if this kind of work would better suit your schedule than a protracted piece that really needs large blocks of dedicated, uninterrupted time to complete). I wouldn’t keep laboring over a project that’s turning into a chore.
24 May 2016 at 19:59 #52522@miapatrick Of GOT: there really isn’t that much screaming. Or quite as much violence as some critics claim.
A matter of taste, I suppose; and it depends on how much the context appeals to an individual viewer. I have to admit that there’s a ton of (usually more subtle) cruelty on Penny Dreadful (case in point, last Sunday’s episode), and I did consider turning it off during the extended scene with Vanessa in the asylum cell — but I’m glad I didn’t, since it morphed gradually into such a delicate development of the kindness one person can slowly learn to do for another who is in extremis (and then — well, ’nuff said).
And it really does feel, in that series, that the beauties and the horrors are driving passionately *toward* somewhere well worth reaching, whereas with GOT, it feels like an exceptionally vicious gang-war, with occasional time-outs for sight seeing, sex, and bad dreams. Since the real world feels way to much like that most of the time to me these days (the relentless drumbeat of bad news, atrocities, conspiracy, and corruption, I mean), I don’t have much tolerance for it these days in my entertainment. I think I favor less diffuse cast of characters, with tighter focus on a handful of individuals who show a capacity — and have the time, between — for complex thought and feeling, which Penny Dreadful at least counterfeits well.
I am cheery this morning anyway, however — we learned today that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a bastard! A bastard son of nobility, no less — and nobody seems to give a flip! There’s a photo of him (BBC news, I think) in his full regalia and wearing a delightful expression that I read as, “You’re kidding me, right?” Rather endearing, I thought.
23 May 2016 at 22:11 #52489@missy re GOT or which your friend says: there is a lot of bloody (as is blood and gore) violence and sex.
Yep. Lots. But IMO, it’s not so much the presence of these elements as the relish with which they’re handled. Reminds me of little boys (mostly) staring at road kill etc., and torturing small animals (including their younger siblings) to entertain themselves and indulge their morbid curiosity. I avoid the worst of the show when I can, which is often (it’s usually pretty crudely signposted; subtle, this show is not). What keeps me coming back is all the tantalizing intrusions of supernatural forces and events, which I find much more interesting than the endless political scheming and bickering; the latter being a bit too close to home in a US election season, perhaps . . .
I also grant GOT major kudos for including goodly numbers of females in the cast of characters, as people as significant to the plot and the action as the males are. Fantasy fiction usually falls down in this respect, partly because if your model is some form of feudalism and rival kingdoms, it’s going to war all the time, with little interest in women except as prizes, victims, or variable exceptions by virtue of class. Martin has managed to do the war stuff effectively while keeping women in the story as foregrounded characters, not luscious background-candy.
23 May 2016 at 06:35 #52468@stitchintime Thanks for the background info on “Gunner Cade”. That was the first SF novel I remember reading, and I loved it (I was about 10, maybe, and I thought it was kind of simplistic but loved it anyway), but I had no idea that Judy Merrill was in part behind it. There’s a nice library collection of SF dedicated to her in Toronto. She was one of the ancestral gods of the field . . .
20 May 2016 at 17:09 #52426@winston Penny Dreadful is an amazing take on every Victorian nightmare ever fixed in verbal form for us to play with later — they’ve got a wonderful vibe going between the outrageous cheek of stuffing their story with sweetly twisted versions of the grotesques all bouncing off each other in world-spanning adventures, and then endowing them all with tragic depths that make it all somehow *serious*. Except that the scripts are also *funny*!
Example: Sir Malcolm is discussing rescuing his imperiled werewolf pal with Wes Studi, the latter playing a wise old American Indian warrior (or the ghost or revenant of one); or rather he’s trying to avoid going to try to help, and the Indian is responding with brief brief, portentious remarks warning of an Apocalypse if they don’t go. There’s a pause after the Indian has dropped one of these “mystical” comments, and the white guy says, “Are your people always so cryptic?” There’s a perfectly measured silence of 2-3 beats — Studi moves not one iota, might as well be a carved wooden Indian stationed outside a drug store.
Then he says, “Yes,” without even a twinkle in his eye; but you can her him laughing his ass off, inside.
Brilliant.
ichi
16 May 2016 at 05:35 #52322@missy I’ll certainly be on the watch for Doctor Strange, since I enjoy watching Cumberbatch — he looks to me like an alien, himself — something to do with — physical proportions? Not sure . . . but he’s intriguing. Now he’ll be Strange. I’ll be interested to see what that means, character-wise. I usually don’t have much tolerance for the very crude, obvious character style of the comic book super hero, but mix it with Cumberbatch and who knows?
16 May 2016 at 05:31 #52321@winston Thinking about re-watching some Who this summer, when it’s too hot to go out in the evenings . . . I’m glad to hear that DB paid off for you, again. I think those two seasons will age very, very well.
14 May 2016 at 02:15 #52296@pedant “Political correctness”: a term invented by the obnoxious to belittle the courteous.
Someone once accused Ursula LeGuin (a prominent U.S. science fiction author, for those who don’t recognize the name) of advancing “political correctness” in a public conversation at a convention. Ursula, who suffers fools not at all, snapped back along these lines (I was there, but my recall is not exact): “Yes, I do try to be politically correct: I’m against slavery, the brutal exploitation of working people, ‘jokes’ meant to hold female and non-white people up to public ridicule, and corporate crime, among other things. If you’re not, you might want to ask yourself why not.”
I have heard of situations where people holding such “liberal” values have gone to ridiculous extremes in their efforts to reverse generations of filthy and prejudiced behavior quickly, while the iron is hot; reform often involved over-reach. That doesn’t make efforts to reform outworn shibboleths worthless, absurd, or criminal, IMO, but mileage varies, of course. In my experience, when something is sneeringly dismissed as “political correctness”, that thing is *usually* well worth supporting.
13 May 2016 at 09:03 #52289Hmm; what was the episode in which CapDoc told Clara *not* to explain (?) something to him, because since he knows so much about everything, it would be a lovely change to be the one who *doesn’t* have the answers for once? No wonder he seems a bit chastened in mood at Darillium: he has his wish now, doesn’t he? There’s this “Clara” shaped mystery in his recent memories about whom he knows nothing, no matter how hard he’s tried to learn more. Be careful of your boastful wishes, Doctor. The Moffat-Whoniverse has some sharp, ironical edges in it . . . It’s nice that CapDoc sometimes behaved like an offensive ass in S8; makes this comeuppance feel — earned. How much more amazing S8-S9 look now — a wild, perhaps sometimes completely out of control, gnarly and beautiful aberration in the long DW story! I think I’ll love it forever; have always been charmed by the vagaries that come out of Left Field.
S10 — so tantalizing, off in the distance . . .
13 May 2016 at 07:54 #52288@missy Thanks for the “more M.R. James” — good place for me to hang out for a while. And I second your good wishes for mudlark! On the gay etc. situation, it’s changing rapidly but still rather wildly in flux in many places, but the general trend in the West seems (to me) to be positive. Things are so fluid these days — I bought some art supplies last week at a local store, and came back a few times for advice. The young woman who’d had answers to my questions during several previous visits to the store, said, as she was ringing up my stuff, “You don’t have a partner, do you?” It was a pretty obvious advance. I said, without thinking about it, “Well, I have a husband; he’s been in an Alzheimer’s unit across the river these past two years, so yes, and no, I guess.” She said with quick sympathy, “Oh, I’m so sorry you have that situation to deal with!” “Ah, well,” says I, the way you do; she gave me my change, and home I went.
What interests me, in retrospect, is that no apologies or hemming and hawing followed, because neither of us felt a need address her initial mis-perception that I was gay. I wasn’t surprised (it’s not the first time) or perturbed, since I’m more the rangy, casual-clothes and short gray hair kind of older woman than the permed, made-up “cougar” of modern folklore, and it’s actually rather flattering to be hit on, by *anybody*, at 76! Mainly, I really liked the tone of the exchange — so different from in days of yore . . . No nervous anxiety, no disapproving glances from bystanders, none of that stuff. It’s a new day, at least in some places and settings.
I like it. I hope she finds herself “a partner” soon. As for me, it would have to be someone incredibly special before I’d be at all interested. Age has its privileges, and not giving a damn about pairing up again is one of them. Re being PC or not about such things, who’s to say, really?
13 May 2016 at 07:10 #5228712 May 2016 at 18:03 #52271@missy I have extra bells, too, in case yours have been mislaid during this long wait . . .
12 May 2016 at 18:01 #5227012 May 2016 at 04:09 #52265@stitchintime Nah; the yeti deserves better than that strutting gas bag! Well, truth be told, everybody deserves better. P.T. Barnum, reincarnated as the quintessential Evil Clown who turns everything around him into a sinister circus of fools. Yuck.
12 May 2016 at 04:05 #52264@kbranagh Yep, lovely, isn’t it? A light-hearted romp with a sad but accepting ending.
12 May 2016 at 02:33 #5226311 May 2016 at 06:22 #52254@arbutus I suspect that with the anxieties and frustrations of S8 and S9 burned through and put away, maybe we’ll see a bit more of the sharp edge, but in S10 it will be directed outwardly, not a matter of painful self-interrogation, so — more snarky comedy, less angst and bitterness, will go nicely with a more confident and optimistic CapDoc and still give Capaldi chances to exercise his Malcolm Tucker side.
Well, one can hope.
11 May 2016 at 06:06 #52253@arbutus Sad, and bad for us as a culture. A lot of men seem to be so insecure about the adequacy and focus of their own sexuality that they shy away from any degree of ambiguity or blurring of boundaries between this type of love or that type of love — complexity of any kind, really, around the subject.
10 May 2016 at 10:21 #52246@missy Well, no, I think it’s pretty easy. A psychopath is mentally ill, a psychotic who lives his or her life in a world of internal delusions (“My dog told me to do it”, Son of Sam, murderer of courting couples). They’re nuts. They’re the aluminum hat brigade who need to be medicated if they’re let out on the street.
A sociopath is maladapted to live in human society because of an inability to recognize others as beings as real and significant as his or her own self, ie he has no empathy, can’t even imagine feeling what others feel because their feelings aren’t “real” to him but a pretense, a hypocritical charade. They think that normal talk about empathy and sympathy, but are lying; to them, everyone has the same feelings as the sociopath, however they disguise them (this is the common pedophile’s defense, look it up: “Everyone wants to behave as I behave, only they don’t have the guts, but I do” is a common theme heard from these people. “I am the one being true to human nature; they are hypocrites and liars, too weak to give in to their true inner natures.” Ask the cops and psychiatrists who deal with these people. To them, only the ego-self is real, significant, worth advancing and protecting). It’s a physiological deficit in the brain. That’s the best “explanation” I’ve been able to find. And there is no medication for this disorder; it’s a brain structure problem.
Modern sloppiness has conflated these two words, IMO. Too bad; the distinction was useful. Now, they are used interchangeably about people with very different roots to their aberrant behavior.
10 May 2016 at 09:11 #52242@thephantomtollbooth Good luck with your project — check reddit for lots of what I think you’re looking for! People there set up odd theories as discussion subjects, which (if you check the comments) can give you an idea of how common a theory is, and what kind of support it has.
@pedant I’ve come to think that true sang froid is widespread in northern Europe — that’s a tough environment, the north, in all its manifestations, and particularly in rural areas where the task has always been to survive the weather and stony soils, and do what has to be done to support that survival without complaining (we have similar conditions and attitudes in the harsher north of the US, and Canada).
Maybe the ruling classes react to getting beyond that struggle for bare survival by taking that stubborn, tight-lipped endurance and “refining” it, and partly justifying their position by pretending to have a higher level of these stoic virtues than the “mere” peasantry has. In fact, some really do have it, some don’t, I would think, though the working folk have a lot less choice in the matter — miners, fishermen, farmers, stockmen, all need it just to manage the risks in their lives (in the States, too, that’s the deal — our highest work related accident rates are found in rural areas, usually related to the heavy machinery it takes to run a farm or a fishing boat or timber business these days).
The owner classes fetishize stoicism as part of their claim to be as much “of the land” as those who do most of the actual work on it, and to be superior at it, too. I think it’s partly to make themselves seem like natural leaders of their “inferiors” in stressful and dangerous times, the way your feudal overlord used to shelter everyone behind his castle walls and then lead the men at arms out to engage the enemy — though challenging situations are much larger and more out of local control than they used to be, not usually just the baron next door suddenly at your gates with *his* men at arms, Game of Thrones style.
I’m not claiming to be any sort of expert on UK and class so this is just theory, but that’s how it looks to me. Super simplistic, of course; but anywhere near real, do you think?
@puroandson (PuroSolo) “fanfic” is, as I understand it, the overall label encompassing fiction about a favorite show or even characters from different shows brought together in some fictional context, to tell new stories that fill in gaps that the fans find compellingly in need of filling. “Slash” is the erotic sub-genre of fanfic, and, I am told, began with (mostly female and/or gay) fans setting out to write stories exploring their sense that erotic tension that clearly existed between characters in the series was being deliberately avoided or censored by the writers and producers — so why don’t we write that part ourselves?! As long as it’s not commercially exploited, copyright etc. is not infringed. The first “Slash” fiction that I’m aware of was original stories by fans about erotic relations between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. This became known as K/S fiction; note the forward “slash” between the letters.
It got very raunchy very fast, and other pairings from other shows sprouted their own versions (Emma Peel/Mr. Steed, Starsky/Hutch, Batman/Robin, etc.). And it’s been roaring along ever since (tons if for various pairings from GoT, for instance, or One Upon a Time, or — you name it — Doctor # whatever/the Master, Clara/Missy, and on and on, including controversial real-people Slash which usually combines the personas of public figures, sometimes with fictional ones). And no doubt lots more — I’m don’t keep up to date on it, though there are several academic studies out there by people who do).
“Fifty Shades of Drek” began, I’ve read, as Twilight fanfic. Gabaldon’s Highlander series began, if you can believe it, as DW fanfic (the immortal time traveler + Scottish highlands). Writers of this material by and large, though, don’t do it for money (since you can’t legally profit from it unless your disguise your fanfic so heavily that it can be sold as original variations on a common theme — in literature, ideas are not copyrightable, any more than titles can. Alfie Bester’s “The Stars my Destination”, a pretty damn brilliant riff on “The Count of Monte Christo”, was an award-winner and rightly so (excellent book, terrible gender politics though — Alfie had bad divorces, as I recall). That’s ff of a kind, too.
This is why I can’t bring myself to condemn “fanfic” wholesale. It’s an outlying, rebellious, and often extreme area of the long conversation of stories, one to another, that makes up literature; and sometimes an exceptional example becomes very mainstream indeed (“Ulysses” by Joyce as fanfic of “The Odyssey”?). Most of it is dreck; but so is 90+ % of the fiction published today, IMO.
But for Slash, specifically, you need a strong stomach if you’re sensitive at all about sex and gender politics. The writers use it to talk freely about transgressive issues in these areas, issues that they want to see explored openly and honestly in their favorite shows, but that usually aren’t even acknowledged there. I feel I have to honor the impulse, even though I can’t often slog through the results (too much tv and not much actual reading of high quality literary fiction usually = execrable writing; sad but true, and not just about fanfic either).
Ugh, too long — signing off, and thanks for your patience.
9 May 2016 at 08:24 #52233@missy I saw a very similar study referenced on a Tv program here just recently. It’s very interesting indeed; I’ve been reading about the stuff since I was a kid — abnormal psychology always fascinated me. I remember one book by a psychiatrist on the subject in which he told about a patient of his who, as a boy living in some posh and horsey area of Connecticut, used to take his horse out at night and go jumping gravestones in the local cemetery . . . that stuck in my head, all right!
Of course that doc didn’t have brain scanning equipment handy; but I’m not surprised that they’re now finding physical commonalities in the brains of people identified by their behavior as psychopaths (though I dislike this word because its usage makes no sense to me — a psychopath, seems to me, is a genuinely crazy person in that he kills you because he really and truly believes that you are a dangerous Orc from Middle Earth; a sociopath kills you because he’s bored, or because he stands to gain from your death, and feels nothing about it since he has no empathy so he can’t imagine your pain and loss as experienced from inside, only his own pleasure in killing you. I think these distinct meanings have been blurred together now, and it’s a loss to the language, but there you are).
9 May 2016 at 08:11 #52232@theconsultingdoctor Oh, I absolutely agree with Moffat on this hyper-sexualization of *everything*, even when that’s not actually what a story is about.
@arbutus Exactly, re the long-standing tradition of “buddy” movies (I meant to do a post just about that, but you’ve done it, so thanks). The deeper exploration of non-sexual but powerful bonds between “miss-matched” pairs is an old trope in SF — “Enemy Mine” or the better-known “Left Hand of Darkness”, for example. That’s part of what women writers (and some unusually flexible-minded men) overtly cracked open in the SF/F fields in the seventies when they — when we flattened the Old Boys’ walls of fascinating technology and macho values to let in the *other* half of human experience, the female half *beyond* “Get us some coffee, Nancy, will you, from the nourishment replicator, while I explain my complicated scientific ideas to you.” Naiomi Mitchison was an early female bounds-buster, with “Memoirs of a Spacewoman”; sex with Submariner, as it were, in a swimming pool . . .
Not that some men hadn’t made their own inroads — Ted Sturgeon was famous for it after “The World Well Lost”, a story of two male spacers in love written in the fifties, I think. Why not? It was “just” trivial adventure-fantasy for boys (and some weird girls) in those days. Things have changed incredibly fast now, so of course we’re going too far in reading sexual shenannigans into all sorts of fictional paired relationships, same-sex or otherwise. I don’t think 19th c readers tened to question heroic but very warm and committed “manly” friendships in fiction, or female characters who expressed deep girlish friendship with a kiss on the lips. Now it’s innuendo 24/7, which is, I think, exactly the challenge that Moffat took up in S8 and S9 of DW, as well as in “Sherlock”. It’s that kind of time: boundary-busting, querying everything, for our own rebels, while reactionaries look on in horror. And *now* who’s gibbering?! ‘nother glass of wine, and lights out.
9 May 2016 at 07:44 #52231@puroandson Oh, thanks for the suicidal zygon scene — forgot that one! It certainly belongs in our catalog of CapDoc’s sympathy and empathy. And of course there are those moments when he recoils from his own softer feelings into harshness as a way of avoiding being overwhelmed, best example in Dark Water, after “Do you think I care for you so little” — she’s about to melt into a puddle of miserable, self-loathing goop, and he turns his back to get a grip on his own feelings and then turns back and starts snapping at her — to get them *both* firmed up for an assault on “Heaven” to look for Danny. I know, that’s about Clara, but it’s not that far from taking child Davros’s hand on the battlefield.
@arbutus Love the idea of a teenaged sort of hormonal storm knocking the Doctor for six after that totally unexpected regen! Perfect! And it works perfectly with the all-or-nothing commitment to Clara, too — a version of the hormonal teen’s headlong romance above and beyond all things, gallant knight to beautiful damsel (but it’s *now*, so she’s brave and capable, too). Lovely. That’s our extravagant space-strider, isn’t it? Sometimes, anyway.
9 May 2016 at 03:01 #52221@mersey Please, reveal me the secret, when exactly 12th was a) sympathetic, b) empathic
[First, I’m not always sure I’ve got what you mean to say exactly right, but I never think of it as nonsense.]
Second: off the top of my head: of the dinosaur; “Look what I did to her!” The Doctor’s face after whassername, the woman who takes others’ appearance at will, dies — it’s a few seconds, but he’s clearly horrified and sorry. The break in his voice at the end of MotOE, “I couldn’t save Moorehouse. I couldn’t save Quell.” Flatline: “Sometimes the wrong people survive.” His manner with the child Davros on the battlefield — took his hand, for god’s sake, to reassure him! The softening of the voice to deliver the translation of the baby’s crying in Girl. The biggie, though, ” . . . more screams than anyone could count!” That whole speech us about the sufferings of the dying in war — it’s not his own screams that haunt him. It’s theirs.
Anyway, lots; and yes, his emotions/distancing are in a pretty wild tarantella in S8, “chaotic” as you say, reflecting (IMO) the chaos of his newly-regenerated mind and hearts. You could consider S9 a drive right through that developing sympathy/empathy for others to the extreme of obsession’s negative pole: you lose feelings for any others *except* the One who is your obsession, and that makes you destructive and callous in your actions, as we see. He’s regained some balance, and steadier feelings with it, but then obsession narrows his focus again and he cares nothing for anyone’s pain but Clara’s.
By the end of S9, as I see it, the Doctor sees this, and reacts against it (“Look what I did, for fear of losing you”). “Never be cruel or cowardly, and never give up” becomes “Never be cruel or cowardly, and if you are, always make amends.” The difference is a measure of his growth: the old version is all about the Doctor — *his* actions, *his* personal honor and strength demonstrated by his actions to himself and the world. The substitution of “always make amends” suddenly puts the people affected by his actions right up there in prime time, as those who must be honored as having the right to judge his behavior toward them: if the behavior has been a failure of his own ideals, amends are owed to them more than to his own self-regard or his own reputation.
Who is he thinking of? In the context of the immediate situation, Donna, and Clara as her stand-in, the person he was about to treat as he treated Donna. A huge change, I’d say, and a statement of empathy with others on the level of principle. It’s a place that S8 and S9 have been driving him — and on the basis of that insight (that when others are involved, they’re really there too and their subjectivity is as real as his own), I think now he *can* be that happier, less broody and snarky and more confident Doctor I sure am also ready for in S10.
8 May 2016 at 05:01 #52207@puroandson Thanks for those kind words! And yes, the cultivated appearance of unshakable sang froide is, from what I can tell, a given for the British upper class, and a measure for telling the “blue bloods” from vulgarly anxious and expressive arrivistes. What good is class without “You can tell at once that he’s not one of us”?
@theconsultingdoctor No problem, truly. We do happen to be well into a Mercury Retrograde right now, which operates (astrologically speaking) as a delaying and distorting device affecting communication at all levels, plus tech breakdowns and necessary mends, an opportunity to slow down and look backward toward re-addressing jobs left undone. Don’t ask why, it makes no more sense than the rest of astrology, but in my experience is does work, to the extent that cutting everyone more slack than usual (self included) is a usually helpful. Not to worry.
8 May 2016 at 04:43 #52206@puroandson I think there are lots of honest-to-goodness “high-functioning psychopaths” in finance and banking, the upper reaches of dominant corporate circles, and anyplace where massive amounts of money are made via a finely adjusted balance of high intelligence and the cold ruthlessness that comes with the inability to feel empathy that’s the defining characteristic of psychopathy, IMO. Not to mention the most successful “businessmen” in the drugs and guns trades, human trafficking, and vice.
I mentioned Mycroft in this connection because he seems definitely to be engaged in government skulduggery, and unbothered by it in any way. He has found a way to put his psychopathy (if I’m reading him correctly) and brilliance to work in a way that rewards instead of punishing him for ruthless behavior. I’m judging strictly by demeanor and delivery here, of course — and consider that many, many ruthless men are famous for how loyal and loving they were known to be to their own family members, so his looking after Sherlock is an unreliable indicator. (I’m thinking of Josef Fouche, creator of the French Secret Police in Revolutionary France, commonly known as “The Butcher of Lyons” for exactly the kind of actions you imagine, and famously devoted to his own family. Or, closer to home, Dexter Morgan.) The Other Holmes Show, “Elementary”, uses this problem very well, only it’s Sherlock’s father (John Noble) who’s the HFP, dabbling in gun-running and wars, for which Sherlock hates him.
For a contrast, think of George Smiley as played by Alec Guinness. That character does the kind of thing that Mycroft does at a higher administrative level, but clearly carries the weight of the implications of this on his emotional shoulders (Guinness was himself a devout Catholic). UK Sherlock stays clear of Mycroft when he can, but maybe not because he hates that remote, superior willingness to destroy the lives of others for his chosen “good cause” (the Empire, of course), but because he both admires Mycroft’s lack of empathy — and also dreads recognizing that he already has? Maybe he only *aspires* to be a HFP, with what he imagines as the emotional painlessness that goes with it.
8 May 2016 at 01:58 #52198Oh, and where might I find “Happy Valley” on line? I’ve heard a lot of good about it, but it’s not being carried by any broadcaster or network in my area (the American southwest).
8 May 2016 at 01:56 #52197@puroandson It took me a while to warm to Grantchester, but I wound up really enjoying it! Well, it’s hard not to enjoy pretty much anything with Robson Green — a very notable presence, that one. I’m looking forward to more.
8 May 2016 at 01:53 #52196@theconsultingdoctor OOps, sorry — electronic tone fail? I didn’t mean to offend. “What’s the big deal?” was a question to other characters in the story whose reactions to Sherlock seem to provoke this need for him to explain himself this way. In any case, apologies for my own verbal clumsiness.
7 May 2016 at 23:08 #52193@theconsultingdoctor Well, friendship is fine too — though it would be a sort of adolescent boy-worships-superior-boy thing, seems to me — Watson’s adoring glances, usually shot to put Holmes’s face higher on the screen than his — makes that abundantly clear, IMO. No sex need be involved, but I’d put Watson as much in the “devoted follower” category as that of “BFF”.
The “high functioning psychopath” is ludicrous, really, since at worst Sherlock is “high-functioning social misfit”, with *plenty* of strong feelings (including affection) the *lack* of which pretty much defines a psychopath or sociopath. The latter do not have feelings, let alone empathy, and the articulate ones will say so right up front and without any embarrassment. Brain studies (mostly conducted on long term inmates of prisons for violent offenders) show actual brain deformation (essentially bad DNA code inhibiting the development of important areas of the prefrontal cortex, as I recall — Morgan Freeman’s series about “God” just ran an ep about evil that covered this in some detail). Sherlock has had strong feelings that he can’t cope with all his life, so he represses them fiercely and uses “high functioning psychopath” as a (ridiculous) cover story to excuse the resultant air of cold detachment.
It’s a nagging irritation that nobody seems prepared to call him on it. His usual attitude seems to be a common model of not dealing with emotional life for upper class British men and women, at least according to fiction by and about them), what’s the big deal?
7 May 2016 at 08:14 #521867 May 2016 at 06:37 #52177@theconsultingdoctor I watched it twice, once with the sound turned off so that I could pay attention to the words and the images (too many layers of input for me), and found it affecting, yes. My goodness, I can certainly see why the tumblr people insist that there’s a love story going on there — it’s certainly framed that way visually in the shots and sequences chosen to support that interpretation. If that was all I’d seen, I’d be arguing for that meaning, too.
I liked it, but I can’t say truthfully that it left me sad. I enjoy “Sherlock”, but haven’t hooked into it the way I have with DW; but then, I seldom do get that wrapped up in TV drama — I don’t give bleep about anybody much in Game of Thrones, for example, even though I think the actors are mostly excellent and the writing is — efficient. Well, that’s me . . .
Funny how that works. I’m reading Liz Hand’s new book, “Hard Light”, with a punk heroine tangled in modern developments of an early and serious immersion in the punk sub-culture, and she (and most of the characters) are people who put me in a blank state of wondering why on earth anyone would do such painful and destructive things to themselves and to everyone around them including the ones they supposedly “love” — but Liz is brilliant, and I’m hooked on the story, which (as with the first two books of this heroine’s sago) grounded in seriously dark and mysterious supernatural-type things deeply rooted in the past.
Maybe “Sherlock” just annoys me because he keeps on about being a “high-functioning psychopath” when he’s clearly nothing of the sort. Mycroft, now . . . maybe . . . !
7 May 2016 at 06:15 #52176@arbutus I rather like the idea of Bill’s relationship with the Doctor starting off a bit less warm and fuzzy. It would be rather fun, in fact
I’d be happy with that too.
7 May 2016 at 01:01 #52169Oh, yes — link to the Sad Sherlock? Sad works for me. Usually.
7 May 2016 at 01:00 #52168@theconsultingdoctor Yes, I think it’s a particularly successful example of the sub-sub-sub genre of fan fiction, and stands as a quiet rebuke to the common charge that fan fic is rubbish even at its best. Of course a lot of it *is* rubbish, if literary quality and consistency with the original characters is your standard. Even even the junkiest of it, though, serves *someone’s* needs, if only the author’s, so to that person, at least, the story is important and successful. I think judgment of these things depends on whether or not you care to add depth and breadth to your assessment (much like moral judgments being more and more subjective the more time-dimension you add to your perspective).
At any rate, as a sometime teacher of fiction writing, I’m always delighted to find a gem in a heap of general mediocrity (although having the imagination to publicly put your mind into the mind of someone else’s character by writing a fan fic is, to me, already putting yourself beyond the majority that neither cares nor dares to accept that vulnerability).
At any rate, I go mooching around in fanfic from time to time, usually disappointed, but always hopeful.
6 May 2016 at 23:42 #52167@pharellman What’s wrong with cooking, and kind of “some cleaning house” housework? Sometimes it’s even relaxing after whole day of tired life.
It took me many decades to give in and admit that much as I hate washing the dishes, once I’ve actually driven myself to do it, it’s a very soothing, pleasant way to spend some time.
6 May 2016 at 23:38 #52166@arbutus I think Donald Trump is his own focus group.
And his own Companion, too. Well, nobody else should *every* be stuck with that job, unless they are willing to endure it in order to come out well-fixed for money for life.
@missy Perhaps he should have been suffocated at birth?
Alas, it is too late . . .
Ichi
6 May 2016 at 23:34 #52165@arbutus CapDoc shows up strongest when he is challenged. He can use a few well-chosen, acerbic words to put them in their place!
Yes — but you have to be careful, or you get people whining that the Doctor isn’t supposed to be “mean” to his companion, let alone to be seen to be “putting down” a female companion. It’s a tricky line to walk, and I wouldn’t want to be the one in charge of any of that . . .
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