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@morpho- Were they not aliens in the first episode? I know they weren’t in the film, but I thought they were in the CV series, and it was Cushings doctor who was human. There’s a really good theory about that one here somewhere…

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@Morpho, continuity with the first episode of Doctor Who can be tricky, though. Regeneration didn’t even happen then. I also though she seemed very confused and upset in class for someone raised on earth, she seemed surprised by the difference in her knowledge and understand to theirs.

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re: The TARDIS- how is it done in other languages, anyone know? Do they just put together the first letters in Spanish, French etc? I didn’t entirely get her question, because all the word Tardis is is the acronym, and that’s just the English version, because the translation circuits also translate everything into (modern) English, presumably because that is where One ended up when he first came to earth.
@morpho- I noticed at the end, though, she wasn’t just repeating Bills words. Well, at first she/it was, but with her/it’s (I’m going to stick with her for now) own emphasis, and then she said Bills name. The Doctor might be wrong, there might be more of Heather in there than there was supposed to be. Or it might just be that a general, constant desire to leave is why she was chosen, but a wish to keep a promise and stay with Bill was too specific…

Definately resembles the ship in The Lodger, which reminds me of why I like the Lodger. What happens when the Doctor finds a companion type who just doesn’t want to go anywhere, is happy where he is. (Plus I rate James Corden more highly as an actor than most people. After all, most people manage to accept that Ruth Jones isn’t really an abrasive, belligerent goth in real life…

Re: Bill, one thing I said in the Other Place when people characterised her slowness in grasping that she’s in a spaceship is that really, walking into the Tardis and looking around, ‘a knock through’ is the most logical explanation. When it moved, ‘a lift’ was probably the closest you could get to a reasonable explanation. We know that she’s in Doctor Who, Bill seems like the first companion in a long time who doesn’t. Which makes sense, Amy had been living with the cracks in her walls, Clara hadn’t yet jumped into the time-stream, but timey-whimey, in a way she always had. I do hope Bill stays on for a series or so longer, but if she doesn’t, I think this series might be like Moffart’s great episodes under RTD- a stand alone series rather than episodes (Blink was almost completely stand-alone, The Girl in the Fireplace, and the two library episodes told their stories within that space.) Like I’ve said, I’ve loved his arcs and complexity. But here I think he might well win back some of the whingers, just before he goes.

Though I am also certain that the return of watery Heather will be hinted and foreshadowed, before she returns in the final episode, at which point she will be roundly denounced as a deus ex machina. Which will be fun.

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anyone else notice, when Bill made a noise near the vault, Nardel asked the doctor what setting he left the door on, and the Doctor said ‘friends’ or something? i.e. It’s interesting that she could get down there…

plus, I also think he said he liked that she smiled, rather than frowning, when she heard something she didn’t understand. Excellent qualification for a companion.

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I really, really want it to be Stephen Mangan, if we’re sticking with white male.
But then again, I might not want a Doctor I have a weird crush on.
I’ve only seen Kris in My Family, which is an awful sitcom. If we’re having a sitcom actor, why not Richard Coyle? Did anyone here watch Strange?
Doesn’t matter, not happened yet. I loved Smith, I’m loving Capaldi. Actors can surprise us (Jenna was from Emmerdale after all) and if I don’t like the next incarnation, I’ve had a really good run!So whatever happens, I’ll try not to see my ARSE…

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@everyone- incidentally, the Guardian thread not too bad.
After Moffart doubled down in Sherlock, I did wonder how he was going to approach this last season. I love the complicated stories, the mysteries and insane theories they generate. But I also loved the freshness of this.
@kharis- though of course complicated theories can still be found! After all, Bill was in care, like Danny…
@Thane15- I’m so glad about your mother. And in fact it doesn’t sound so weird- something similar happened with my boyfriend, and yes, at points he felt a little embarrassed too.
Thinking back- will rewatch in a bit. I love the fact that he can still hear her. Just by looking at her photograph. He doesn’t need a ghostly digital presence, he’s had twenty odd years with her at the towers,
I love the idea of- I see him as a kind of resident guest lecturer/visiting professor. Not teaching any specific courses, just giving lectures on whatever he choses. There should be more of that kind of thing at universities. (I’m assuming he sorted out some kind of endowment long in the past to create the post. That is so exactly what I would do if I was the Doctor and needed to hang around somewhere.
So… what’s in the vault?

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Lovely, i thought.
Loved the clockworkeque Nardel, the two doors like those huge mechanical clocks. And the ‘illusion of time’ montage.
I’ve always liked Capaldi’s doctor, but he’s never been quite so doctor as he was when Bill entered the Tardis.
Doctor what?
And the long route to ‘bigger on the inside.
Though I will always love Victorian Claracles ‘smaller on the outside’. Nardels explanation about how to make a Tardis
And the Doctor’s Christmas gift.

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@than15 ack bugger! Yup, condescension. Thinking of @janetteb‘s point about irregular spelling in the 19th century… good times.
Case in point with John Donne: The Canonization.
Another thing people bitch about the Americans for is making new words by putting a sequence of words together. Which is thoroughly Germanic and a fantastic way to proceed
@Jannetteb- Jammy Dodgers seem like they would be awfully fiddly. (Can’t be worse than hot cross buns though.) Could you order them through Amazon or something?

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@mudlark- oh Austen is wonderful for evolving language. The double meaning of Mr Collin’s and Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s ‘condensation’. He means it, or thinks he means it in an older sense, as something admirable in a higher class persons interaction with the lower classes. But when he says it, we read it as the word became, insufferable behaviour. So no one says Darcy is being condescending when he talks to the Gardeners and invites Mr Gardener to fish in his lake, even though even Elizabeth is rather impressed that he does this.

Another thought about Americanisation. The ‘z’. They’re just being rather old fashioned. I read so much 18th and 19th century literature it seems quite natural to me.

I’m studying an OU Literature module ‘From Shakespeare to Austen’ which is proving tremendously unpopular with many of the students for have the temerity to expect us to do a substantial amount of independent study, mostly (shocking I know on a literature module) reading! I’m enjoying it, personally. It’s my last module for my degree and one thing I’m going to miss is the access to the online Oxford English Dictionary. One thing we’re encouraged to do is take a word, say in a Shakespeare scene, look up the various meanings and consider which one most closely fits the use in the passage, and it’s amazing how meanings change over time, how different uses remained current at the same period of time, how some words come to mean pretty much the opposite. Obviously the more people reading and writing and distributing their writing, the faster such changes come (and the less stable the changes are sometimes). So the printing press, increased literacy after the Protestant and Catholic reformations, cheaper printing costs, increased levels of schooling for children of different classes, increased meritocracy, compulsory education for all and then the internet have all had an influence. But words still changed when the people reading and writing were a minority. Maybe another thing that has happened is that spoken and written English have come closer together. And of course, English being established as a literary language in the early modern period, the nobility and royalty no longer speaking mostly French, scholars writing in English as well as Latin, and so forth.
(of course, rather than wittering on about this on the internet I could just get on with my next essay…)

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@Missy- for the English language to evolve not into another countries language… isn’t that how English has always evolved? I see the English language as a kind of carnivorous blob, absorbing words and structures from everything it touches.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but to me a ‘garden’ is the space attached to the house with some kind of lawn, and a yard is short for courtyard, enclosed with walls and paved.
I’d fight to the death with someone over the insistence on pronouncing ‘memo’ ‘mee-moe’ rather than the first syllable of ‘Memorandum’, but as a rule I find it best to stay out of pronunciation wars, I’ve lived in South East London, Bath, Manchester and North Wales, and generally, I’ve been the one who speaks oddly.

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re: Bill, I suppose the difference was that Clara’s sexuality was more of a nudge when it came to women- we only saw her romantically/sexually interested in men. Jack was, well, Pansexual, but again it was mostly nudging before Tourchwood, the most serious it got was, I think, in Ten’s goodbye tour where Ten seemed to set him up with Russel Tovey’s character. (I might be misremembering, I was swiftly becoming thoroughly resigned to Ten leaving simply by the length of time he took to say goodbye).
And Vastra and Jenny was arguably (well, I’ve seen it argued) more controversial for involving difference species than for involving the same sex (though as I always say, a sentient humanoid doesn’t make it bestiality). But a lot of people piled on the relationship, calling it bestiality (I was never sure if it was the Lizard or the Ape descendent being called a beast. Jenny didn’t see live dinosaurs growing up). Or calling it abusive. or calling it contemporary political because they were married. Anyway, it contained two newish-unusual things: gay marriage and crossing species (I did say ish).
So I suppose a full time gay companion is a little different, and maybe a little more representative? And built up a little too much, I keep seeing posts on facebook about how it shouldn’t be a big deal, with streams of comments stating irritatingly ‘it isn’t, so why are you still banging on about it’. But that might be about the kinds of pages I follow. I’m sure people are offended.

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Really liked it. And this episode works equally well as the final ever episode, or a kind of re-boot, that I, either it won’t come back, because of the main actor’s film careers, or if it does, the arc’s been resolved. Moriarty is most likely permanently gone (feel a bit sad about that). Now I love a good arc, but they can lose integrity if they go on too long.
I love the fact that everything people bitched about in the last few episodes- they just went all in on them. Yes, we’re sticking to the threat of Moriarty returning. Yes, still more about their relationships. Yes, action scenes and bonkers assassin side plot.
I did feel that Greg and Molly were underused in this season, but Mrs Hudson was fantastic in last weeks episode.

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@Craig-same to you! no worries. Our home insurance is due for renewal late December. We always end up with a few riskey, uninsured days.

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Was that just me or did something weird happen to this site today?

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@missy I loved Mr Huffle, and her use of it is entirely logical- but why would that thing exist? It’s like a child’s toy designed by a cat. Though I do rather want one myself.

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@missy- yes, his grief was wonderfully done. And they managed to make it entertaining at the same time. Though I personally like Last Christmas and The Husbands of River Song more, this was also more of a stand-alone, a sequel to the last Christmas Special, but also something of a re-set. The Doctor handling his grief over River in a more mature way than Eleven did over the loss of Amy and Rory, as though Amy bought out the child in him, but River bought out the adult in Twelve.

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OK, I liked it. The doctor takes 24 years off for date night, fair enough in the circumstances. The doctor accidentally creates a superhero by handing a small child a small object saying ‘I’m a doctor, take this’ more or less. The doctor seems at least as interested in the love story as he is in the threat to earth- well the latter is a Christmas tradition and he’s just seen his wife for the last time, which only happened a couple of times before, maybe…

i said to my boyfriend near the end how I like the fact that with superman Clark Is the alter ego, so I liked the idea of ‘putting on his costume’.

And Matt Lucas is no Catherine Tate, but he had improved.

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@craig: that was brutal! And it did all rather support what Tanya was saying in the detention episode. Her mother actually dies. But I didn’t for a second feel as though April’s mother was going to. She even gets shot in the chest, the weapon is deployed to wipe out all the Shadowkin, and she’s still there. In spirit at least. I think, especially at the age of fourteen, that could really piss you off.

Miss Quill’s pregnancy, I think, won’t be the end. She already noticed that there only seems to be one inside there- and after all, it would be a mixed-species baby, and (I can’t remember his name) but the father seems to have come from a more nurturing species. She’s also the most interesting and nuanced character. I liked the development between her and Tanya, it wasn’t just Quill being bludgeoned with protective instincts, it was that the human girl started acting like a warrior. I mean, I’m not sure that a bit of training in the school hall with a pregnant alien would really enable her to fight off shadow warriors without a weapon, they do seem extremely vulnerable to kicking.

I’m nervous even to mention that bit at the end, but bloody hell! Just when it started to look as though the Governor’s were sinister and dangerously pragmatic but perhaps ultimately on the right side.

I think the actors playing April and Ram were set an especial challenge here, playing people battling the end of their world, while in the throes of personal grief. Of course Quill and Charlie have lost more, but just thinking about the timing- which leads me back to April, really. Current predicament not withstanding, and of course, her father did try and kill her and her mother, but she seems to have a kind of hero-protection going on. I hope they don’t keep on making her too special, with her musical abilities, Ram falling almost instantly in love with her, noble sacrifice of her life, her darkest confession is that she doesn’t love her brand new boyfriend as much as he loves her, it could start to irritate.

 

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Definitely best episode. Class has always been better, in my view, with Quill on screen. To be fair, the actress is a lot older and more experienced than the rest of the cast. She made Coronation street quite watchable for a while. She almost made Steve MacDonald watchable for a while!

I liked (well not like exactly) the trick with the gun in the end. I’m not sure it was set up so she would always win, it seems like the idea is that the person who actually tries to kill the other/succeeds in over powering the other, would be the one to die. So, possibly, the more dangerous warrior is disposed of? Or, slightly different idea, the most cold blooded?

So why did ‘war itself’ seem to snap back into the pissed-off teacher state she was so disguised by? Presumably she still needs Charlie to open the cabinet, but does she need more from him than that? It did seem to me last week, in confession mode, he expressed a lot of guilt about the shadow cabinet, but still none about the position of the Quill within his society. Or the fact of enslavement as punishment. And is she going to find the Shapeshifter’s niece?

One thing I particularly liked was the part about eating mothers. Outdated, she says, and medically unnecessary. Her people have sworn off religion, but still follow a rather gruesome ritual she didn’t seem much keen on. Does this make Miss Quill something of a progressive among her people? I’d actually rather like to see her as the Doctor’s companion.

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@Arbutus- yes, just woke up to that. Fucking 2016…

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@JanetteB- interesting quote, who was it?

I think, from a non conservative side, I’d put it like this. Simple, selfish arguments have a punchy power. Appealing to more direct self interest is easier. ‘Take our country back’ sounds more powerful than ‘most of the votes in the EU go our way’. ‘This much a week goes to the EU’ than ‘actually when you consider trade deals etc, and the funding the EU gives out, Wales financially benefitted from EU membership.’ ‘British jobs for British people’ than ‘actually, nationwide, immigration has no impact on employment levels, and how exactly are you trying to define ‘British’ anyway?’

Corbyn appeared to lack conviction for the EU because he isn’t a great fan. So his argument was rather negative ‘do you really want these people (Torys) to rewrite UK law?’ and the positive aspect ‘giving up all our influence over the EU is not going to improve it’ came across as weak. They were valid reasons to vote stay, but people wanted fist pumping. Clinton was more qualified for the job. Trump isn’t remotely qualified for the job. It lacks zing.

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@Thane15- thank you for your lovely words. Just a morning bitter ramble, really, when I should be studying Spencer’s ‘The Faery Queen’. Quite appropriately, I’m studying (or should be) a passage where people come across a personification of Despair, who attempts to talk them into suicide by using their weak points. Despair is about right, around now.

Clinton is a little shady, that can’t be denied, but trying to untangle that from the misogyny thrown at her. You’re right about the deep voice thing. If she didn’t have a fairly, for a woman, deep voice, can you imagine what they would have said instead? Shrill, most likely.

I think we are seeing, in both the USA and the UK, a nostalgia from some past golden age of self sufficiency. People wanting to go it alone. And I’m not the biggest fan of globalism. But it’s naïve. And a man who thinks it’s ‘smart’ rather that wildly unethical, to avoid paying taxes is not the man to reboot the USA’s economy.

Think to the positive, Trump has considerably less support from his own party than Obama did, and Obama’s hands were often tied. He’s not going to get to build a wall. It just scares me because there are people in my nation who think that the Prime Minister should have had the right to make a promise to the people that went against British law (i.e. make the referendum binding without Parliamentary voting on it). What people often forget about fascism, is the popular support that put the dictators in place. It’s the cutting out of the middle men of the independent Justice system and the constitution, making the people in the street feel empowered and stirring them up, tapping into resentments and sending them after  scapegoats. That isn’t, for example, to blame the German population for the Nazi’s. But mankind is considerably less intelligent as a mob than as individuals. Power tends to corrupt, and that includes the feeling of power that can come from being in a large, noisy, angry crowd.

Right, back to the cave of despair. I’m also studying Shakespeare. You know one reoccurring theme? Fear of someone who has popular support, especially someone who can control the crowd. Not such much the elite fearing the general population, as one member of the elite fearing another member of the elite who could mobilise the general population to their own ends.

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@thane15, @janetteB- just woke up to what feels to me, here in Britain, like the sequel to Britix: Amerix: this time it’s global.

I try to console myself with the thought that I do truly believe there were thinks Obama wanted and intended to do, but was unable because of the need of his parties support, cross party support etc, so if he couldn’t do all the good he wanted to do, then maybe Trump can’t do all the bad? In neither the USA nor the UK, do ‘the people’ have any real power other than selecting the people who have the power to cast votes. Things are getting ugly over here the more that is pointed out to them.

What’s really frustrating is that the right seem to be going for the ‘anti-establishment’ (in brackets, people like Farage and Trump with their massive fortunes and connections are all talk about being anti-establishment) while the left keep coming up with rather more radical alternatives, then losing their nerves or undermining them.

Centre left only seems to work if the right stay close to the centre too. And I’m getting tired of the sides I support sticking to such small, negative arguments: The Remain campaign focusing on all the Bad Things that might happen if we leave the EU, not on the benefits and disproportionate amount of sway we had in the EU. Clinton’s campaign seemed to increasingly focus on what a pig Trump was, and while the two are in no way commensurate, her husband didn’t really help there. I have a feeling by the next UK election, the Labour party will once again be putting up a candidate who is Not As Bad As The Tories. That’s not inspiring, and the population are not as enamoured of Blair as the PLP are.

Obama was elected on a message of hope. In retrospect, there could only have been disappointment. But to go from him to Trump…

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@pedant- true- though I did say ‘relatively’. As in, he didn’t feel compelled to stay and chat. Given that he is one of the three who qualified for night visits, it’s interesting that he seems to have moved through his stages of grief (complicated with nasty flashbacks and seeing another horrific death not long after) more quickly than Miss Quill and Tanya. Which makes Miss Quill’s visit intriguing, especially given that Charlie only seemed to get a flicker. Because Charlie seems so nice, unless you consider that everything he did to protect April previously put Miss Quill under equal danger to himself, with out the  option of refusing it. And the fact he’s just performed a masterclass in equivocation on the subject of ‘do you love me too?’

So what stands out for me in this episode is that Tanya is still processing her grief (two years is a short time when it comes to the death of a parent) but is very strong (I agree about the poker player), Ram is rebounding right about now, that’s going to have repercussions, and Miss Quill is more moved by the death of her sister than Charlie is about his own family.

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I found this episode very interesting in places. A little boring in other places, I don’t think I was really in the mood to hear about other people’s messed up families and griefs ect, there were a couple of moments when I thought ‘oh please don’t start talking again’- but all the information, I think is relevant and important.

A strange thing about class is this kind of acceleration. People have pointed out how the first episode ends in a prom, almost like the end of a season/series. In fact, episode one was almost like an entire series in one episode, with, obviously, some bits left out. This episode felt rather season-twoish, where the writers decide to be a little more adventurous- it seemed to be in real time, or almost, delving back into the character’s backstories.

I found bits a little- well I was unsure. Were they implying that of all the people on earth at that moment, Tanya’s grief is the most powerful of all the power sources? And that no one else had ever had so much anger mixed in to their grief? But then, if this was their first attempt at the human species, she might have been the closest really strong grief. And maybe human’s are the most angry grievers they have encountered? Probably not been to Gallifrey, then.

What I liked is that we saw three people being tempted. Miss Quill (I only just discovered she’s Becky from Coronation Street! I don’t watch soaps regularly,  but she always was a standout actor in that.) Ram, and Tanya. Ram’s relatively easy escape is interesting. Of course, a schooldays girlfriend isn’t such a longstanding bond as a family member. Did Rachel shout for him to run because he had tried to cut one of the lines? Was that anger or protectiveness? Are they just a trap, mindreaders, or do they have something of the person who is dead inside them? Miss Quill seemed more tempted. She might have just been passing time till his lordship got up and was then under threat. But she also seemed quite angry, more at someone portraying her sister as ‘nice’- such an insult, than as a part of her grief. Tanya was quite sceptical, then she seemed more tempted by ‘we’ll end all your suffering’ than she was by ‘touch my hand so you can find me when you die.’ Was she banking on the power of her anger? Nice nod to Eleven, anyway.

Charlie, his boyfriend (sorry, I can’t remember his name, but I was glad to see a bit of the old ‘gay agenda’, aka portrayal of non heterosexual relationships in mainstream television, aka the sky literally falling in for Express readers) and April aren’t, apparently, such targets. The boyfriend and April’s grief would relate to people still alive, their father’s have hurt them, and are alive. So Charlie? Why didn’t it fully materialise? Didn’t his whole family die? Does what he says about love (more of a combination) apply more to him and his family than Miss Quill? How different are their worlds and cultures?

Sorry about the long post, but I have a TMA due in tomorrow, a (depressingly, still, at the age of 37) bedroom to tidy and just so many other things going on that drain my energy to deal with either of the above. But I have dogs, so it’s all good, really.

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@puroandson- I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth but I personally saw @juniperfish‘s ‘you’re right’ as ‘yes she did imagine them all in school uniform’ (as @mudlark points out, sign of a very literal imagination. Almost disturbingly so.) or ‘yes the Doctor did say he was punishing her for her crime on earth not on her old planet’.

Like you I’ve always found this a very egalitarian site and I’m sorry if you felt snubbed (or, worse, felt your mother had been snubbed) but I really don’t think that was the intention. We have to take great care while talking on the internet, without eye contact and tone of voice, and with such long gaps between comments, and every sentence, being written down, seeming so much more significant than when one is spoken. I’m slightly intimidated, sometimes, by the extent of knowledge and experience of some of the members here (they are also a significant part of the draw of this site for me.) But I’ve seen you hold your own, on your own, several times, and I always enjoy the @puroandson postings.

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@juniperfish- I would have thought ‘Prince’ was a translation- she was also picturing them all as teenagers, as I remember, and wearing school uniforms. There are hints that the rebellion wasn’t unjustified – I noticed that is isn’t that that the doctor is punishing her for- so some kind of hereditary ruling class could make sense.

Anyway, I quite liked it, for a beginning- hopefully the fact it’s on bbc three means that it should get a bit of time to bed in.  How well it does might give an insight into how many teenagers are watching Doctor Who at the moment, and it should benefit from this endless wait for new episodes. (Doctor Who is actually making me look forward to Christmas for once…)

I really liked that they made one of them a young carer. There are a lot of young carers with very little support so I think it could be helpful.

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@Ichabod- thank you!

Re the boyfriend (actually husband, I somehow forgot that despite having attended the wedding) do you want to know the worst part? He’s army, working in London these days, in anti-terrorism. I can’t even… but yet why does it make a difference that the human rights stuff comes from here?

And with @puroandson- re cars- we have a smart car! The parking is amazing- a disabled space at the hospital no longer a parking space because a path cuts across the back half of it- no trouble, still fit. You can park head on at a pavement because there are plenty of cars as wide as it is long. And it’s only a two seater, a bonus a person can probably only really appreciate if one happens to live with my mother…

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So PIP- personal independence payments haven’t yet seen fit to inform us whether or not they’ve accepted our claim. But the council tax people have. Enhanced rate for both care and mobility.

It just feels good to be believed and taken seriously.

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Anyway, onwards and upwards. Got a load of concrete blocks to move from the wall and post in the front garden I knocked down the other weekend. Boyfriend asked me about moving it yesterday, and I looked at them and said it looked like a job for beer to me. So that’s my afternoon today 😉

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@puroandson- Thank you and ooh, that sounds nice, and it is the weekend! (sort of).

The good thing with the OU is for the first half- the continuous assessment, we get very detailed comments, both as notes on the submitted assignment and in the summery the tutor sends (it’s to make up for less face to face) which is very useful. For the final part we don’t, just a general summery of all the assignments they’ve received.

I’ll admit I’m a little unhealthily obsessed with the % marks. I’m glad the way this has worked out really because I knew I could have got a higher mark if I had stuck to the short story form for the EMA and I’ve been beating myself up for taking the gamble- I worried that I wouldn’t get as much out of the creative writing module as I could because I’m aiming for a first for the degree. You could tell the difference between the people taking it as a stand alone, just to learn what they could and the people who were doing it as a part of a degree so needed the marks, and I found myself envying the former. So I took a risk and, phew, degree result unharmed.

As for the EU, my position on the whole thing is curled up on the floor with my arms covering my ears, rocking slightly. And frustration that the Remain campaign concentrated on the risks of leaving rather than the benefits of staying. The risks of leaving were and are the loss of the benefits of staying, but it seems that everything was done in the negative. My boyfriend’s sister was extremely happy that her husband (who voted leave) had to stay in London the weekend after. She was fuming with him because it turned out he voted out because he wanted to scrap the human rights stuff. That was the only reason. Then she pointed out to him that the convention on human rights came from us. Which apparently makes all the difference to him, and he would have voted in. There was not enough understanding of the issues. Never mind. This floor is very comfortable and I can hear my own heartbeat.

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Hi everyone, just had a little good news in this bleak time – I got another distinction, this time for the level three Creative Writing module for the OU. This actually makes it all distinctions save for one 30 credit module where I just missed it, and one module to go, so yeah, I’m happy, but but but!

I have a feeling I’m really boring because I’ve had this conversation on here before, but this time I only got 82% on the final assignment. On OU modules the final assignment, or the exam depending on the module, makes up 50% of the overall score, and I’m sure you’re supposed to get at least 85% to get a distinction. Like I said, I’ve been here before, but that was with a score of 84%. For the rest of the assignments, which make up the other half, I got an average of 91%, so I’m not entirely saying I don’t think I deserve a distinction, but yet again, I’m worried that the fact I have dyspraxia got me special treatment. I’m also a little sad because I took a gamble on doing a radio play for the final assignment because I was quite interested in writing radio plays. I should probably stick to short stories.

I should also probably just shut up and be happy with my distinction! And I was writing that final radio play whilst filling out the dreaded PIP form, then preparing for and undergoing a PIP assessment (for my boyfriend) which, if I had been able to tell them about as special circumstances, I would have. But a lot of people doing OU courses are struggling with all sorts of things, that’s kind of the nature of it.

Anyway, it’s good news. One module to go, and all distinctions so far except one 30 credit module where I just missed it. (I think in that case I got 82% in the exam, which is probably why this is worrying me a little.) Just feel a little flat about it. But happy, I suppose. Relieved, at least 🙂

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@pedant, @puroandson, @bluesqueakpip, @missy-

The tutor that was sent to me when I got my Disabled Student Allowance through the OU lent me the book he had self published with a friend through amazon. What got me was that it clearly wasn’t finished. When I pointed out that it was in the form of a novel but wasn’t really a novel- there was some kind of story there but there certainly wasn’t a plot, a series of things happened to the protagonist but nothing was really followed through, he agreed and said that, on reflection, as it was supposed to be a kind of self help manual drawing on Alice in Wonderland (not that Alice featured beyond the chapter headings much) making it a series of isolated chapters/stories would work better. He said he talked to his friend and they decided that in fact they didn’t really want to be writing a novel exactly. I just found it really strange that it was published when it was still in such an early stage of development. And when I pointed out that he had footnotes coming up in the middle of the page rather than separate at, well, the foot of the page, he brushed that objection aside. Bloody hippies…

(He also didn’t understand my insistence that in the short stories I was writing, my fictional world should have to follow the rules of the real physical universe, and didn’t understand why I refused to put ‘beautiful’ into a physical description of a Greek vase I had to write. Really more of a life coach kind of man than a tutor. Lovely bloke, though. I ended up leaving him to chat to my boyfriend about Ukuleles for the hour a week. But I digress.)

My point, I think, is that editors indeed should remain a part of the publishing process, even if publishers themselves become less important. The whole concept of a publisher came up, I think, with the printing press, but also the idea that someone is investing in your work, rather than someone very wealthy putting out a book. I think the difference with self publishing is that there is no one else with a stake in your work- if you just hire an editor,  they get paid regardless. That said, a lot of successful writers end up with less and less editorial help, and this sometimes shows. I don’t know if a writer is ever the best judge of their work. It can look boring or trite because it’s so familiar to you, it can be utterly confusing to other readers for the same reason.

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@Arbutus- I’d love to get one of those little hoover-droids. But mostly to wind up the dogs. They’d probably kill it. When we had carpets and nine dogs, I was forever vacuuming. We switched the Vinyl flooring, I don’t think I could go back to carpets. Sounds like you have quite a sporty family?

Everyone re-backups. I have an external hard drive somewhere, and my laptop has a onedrive thing. I never use them I’m afraid. I do print out every finished draft (to work on on paper and then re-type.) I email a lot of work to people for advice, and post them on closed forums for feedback. I have in the past lost a lot of work. One through the laptop being stolen, one through burning out, one I physically still have it, but the lid of the laptop is broken. I only really use my laptop as a word processer or to access the internet.

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@missy- the Nicorette inhaler things work for some- but I take it it hasn’t stopped you from wanting to smoke? A vape feels a lot more like smoking. I actually enjoyed smoking, and with a, e-cigarette, you still inhale and exhale a cloud, only a cloud of something that doesn’t linger, and smells a lot nicer, vapour rather than smoke. I think they work because a part of smoking addiction is with the act of smoking, as well as the nicotine. Plus the Nicorette things are almost as expensive as cigarettes, e-cigarette liquids are much cheaper. To be honest, the reason I made the switch was because my boyfriend, in his idiocy one night switched my shot of Sambuca with a shot of his oramorph (morphine sulfate). I felt so sick the next day- I think I might be allergic to opiates- I couldn’t face smoking a cigarette, and I had bought an e-cigarette to try the night before. I don’t recommend that as a method though. And nowadays my boyfriend’s medications are kept in a cupboard he can’t reach because of his shoulder problems.

@pedant- I actually quite like Windows 10. At least it’s banished the apps screen out of my sight. I prefer it to windows 7 and 8. The time I was uploading it was the most terrifying hour of my life. The computer kept talking me through out it, I think it was supposed to be reassuring, but it was just creeping me out and reminding me that things could go horribly, horribly wrong.

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@janetteb,@Arbutus: my housework schedule runs thus: someone is coming to the house (I insist on an hours warning; I resent the assumption that my house is permanently in a visitor ready state). Clear surfaces (random draws are great for that) sweep up sand and dog hair. Mop. Visitor leaves. Things pile up again. I plaintively ask how the kitchen gets so messy in such a short period of time. Mother washes up. I re-wash her washing up. Foodstuff gets thrown into the larder. Twice a year I reorganise the larder. The order lasts for about a week. The good thing, since we moved, is that there is almost no mud, but lots of sand. Sand on the floor isn’t as bad as mud. The worst thing is my desk, because I do work better with a nice tidy desk, but how do you make it stay that way? Until recently we’ve had at least one very elderly little dog who I have had to chase around with the mop and bucket, but nowadays I have, unfortunately, a lot more time on my hands. But I’d rather use it to take the dogs for a walk, and saw up bits of tree that have washed up on the shore for firewood and load them up on my boyfriends mobility scooter than tidy the house…

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@missy- apologies- I forgot you weren’t in Britain. I don’t know where you live in Australia but a quick google search showed me there are shops over there- some refer to vaping, some e-cigarette, one called ‘whysmoke’. Incidentally, though I tend to stick to menthol and cherry flavour (I used to smoke cherry menthol tobacco) on the ground of I’m not a child and if I want sweets, I’ll eat sweets and not smoke them- there is a Ginger Bread flavour that is rather nice…

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@Ichabold- what did you think of the latest episode? Apparently ‘the feminists have taken over’  according to the ever understated reactions of some commentators… I do agree it gets too much. Really what I’m responding to is the idea that it’s all about the sadism and watchers are mini sadists, when there is more. And it has lost its way on occasion. For example, one little sadist made sense, with his background and circumstances, you could see how it came about, but I still think more could have been done with dialogue. The second little sadist also made a kind of sense, but… too much, overkill. You can show people going through horrific things and the changes it makes without so much detail.

The archbishop of Canterbury is a bastard? Of nobility? I think my grandmother was descended from a noble bastard. That is rather fun, and bless him (and everyone else) for that reaction.

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@missy, @ichabod, @winson – there really isn’t that much screaming. Or quite as much violence as some critics claim. The show features a couple of young men who really are like boys pulling wings off flies. But there is a balance. The last episode (though you’d need to watch it from the start to get the impact) was in my opinion GOT at its best. In some places better than it has ever been.

@ichabod, yes, what they’re doing with the supernatural is the main thing I like about it. And the history- the two are linked.

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@missy – A Song of Ice and Fire (which is the book series from which the program is made) is very informed by medieval times. I like it when writers who want to use a medieval setting, but don’t fancy the ton of research an historical series was require to be any good, so they make a fantasy as well. Which also allows dragons and such like. But the writer does use the medieval setting well, he’s used a lot of influences from European history and also done quite a good job of creating a world like that, but without Christianity and its positive and negative effects.

I can see why people have more problems with the invented brutality of a fantasy series, in comparison to accounts of actual brutality of the past. I did have a history teacher who disliked the horrible histories series, especially the ‘terrible Tudors’ because, he said, ‘these were real people’. I took from that that people ought, when approaching real historical figures, to approach the subject seriously- in his view at least. And also that he had never fully recovered from studying under Starkey, known Tudor botherer. I’ve meant to look at the Plantagenet’s. How do they treat Richard III?

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@missy – vape shops are found on most highstreets nowadays- its one kind of shop that really benefits from walk in trade rather than internet orders. They tend to have a lot of vinyl’s on the windows and are called things like ‘such and such a place vape’ or ‘such and such a place eciggerettes’. I’ve come to notice them like I used to notice tobacconists.

Mmm ginger cakes- I use stem ginger I syrup and add the syrup, that’s my addition (as well as doubling the spices) to the BBC recipe- I get most of my recipes from the BBC site, so feel a little unsettled at the talk of removing it.

and @puroandson-  I happened to come across a quote of J K Rowling’s tweet when asked how she balanced motherhood and writing (I don’t know if the two can be divorced, in her case) ‘I gave up housework. It wasn’t a great struggle, to be honest.’ just found that today, appropriately. I don’t mind housework with audiobooks (though I would rather do a jigsaw) because then I feel it isn’t wasted time. The house will get untidy again, but I can’t unlisten to the book.

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@missy – yes, I’m very proud of my Ginger cake. I’m actually trying to cut down on carbs and sugar, because they make me tried. And my boyfriend is trying to lose weight because he can’t burn a lot off anymore. So I only make it when we have guests, but it never lasts very long. Yes, there are many distractions in the world, one really doesn’t need to resort to housework!

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@missy- so very much cheaper, around now at least. The ones in the chemists tend to be the ones that look like cigarettes, aren’t refillable and aren’t very good. Most shops that sell cigarettes sell basic kits for about £12, and they’re OK but not great. If you’d brave the vape shops, with all their nerdiness, or I believe the VIP brand is quite good and have their own outlets in towns, you can get one for between £20-35 (but think of the cost of a single packet of cigarettes) and a couple of bottles of liquid which can cost up to about £10, but if you only smoke about twelve a day, as I think you said, that lot could last you weeks, for the cost of what you probably spend in one week, and after that the costs are pretty low as  you only have to refill the liquid. If you get the basic kit, you have to replace the head for every bottle of liquid you use, which is about £5, less hassle, with the more expensive ones, you can just take them into the shop and the vape-spotters will usually be very nice and change the stringy thing they keep telling me the name of.  Now I’ve made it sound very hard work! If you’re interested, I’d go into a vape shop and ask. I’m making fun of them but the people who specialise in selling them are very evangelical about the whole thing, and every shop I’ve gone into, they’ve been lovely.

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@Arbutus- I have found studying the only way to force me to work, especially the creative writing modules. I’ve just finished one and trying to keep going with the writing until the next module starts. I love writing, but not always while I am doing it. Sometimes people say things like ‘Oh I’d love to be a writer’ and I think, especially when I’m finishing a piece ‘well if you were, you probably wouldn’t.’ Which is partly what I think you mean by mental space. A writer is a writer, published or not, but extrinsic motivation does seem to play an important part- practical reasons, like making money or finishing an assignment. I have actually made money out of writing now- I won £500 for my level two Creative Writing module- which isn’t the same as being published but it’s a pretty nice feeling 🙂

 

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@missy- ah, but though I don’t deny the blood and gore. There is more to it than that, and it is the other things I watch it for. The Medieval period was itself rather bloody- I wouldn’t want to watch someone being hung drawn and quartered. People used to watch quite gory executions, for entertainment, I suppose the point I want to make is not all (some, and yes we do worry about them) of the people who watch Game of Thrones watch it in the same spirit as that. Most of us- I expect your friend included- tolerate it in parts, in other parts find that it serves the plot and setting. But if you really don’t care for seeing these things on the screen, it would be rather heavy going.

@Arbutus- Thank you! Though I’ve just read it back and the typos make me wince… Indeed some people do seem to like it for the sex and violence. I’ll admit that my watching of it has been enriched by reading the Guardian episode blog by Sarah Hughes. Although the blog is about the TV version she, and many of the commentators, have Read The Books. (How do you know if someone has read the books? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.) This means some of the talk boarders on spoilers, but I like it in the way I like reading discussions of Old Who on here, it gives me a lot of background and makes some things in NuWho make sense which I might not have picked up on. The books are not, by all accounts, well written, but the world building, characterisation and, in the first few at least, plotting are wonderful.

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@pharellman in defence of Game Of Thrones- which I know has few if any other fans on here.

I can tell you what I like about it. One thing is the very human moments it shows between characters. They have, in each season, and to with varying success, pairings between two characters whose interests don’t join up, they don’t trust each other, but contain moments of warmth as well as conflict.

Another is the history. Both book and series begin long into the major events of the world. The story begins a generation after what you might think would be the story, a rebellion, someone seized the throne. In the first episode there are hints that the circumstances leading to this are not quite what the official story says. All the events that kick off the story are direct consequences of what happened and choices that were made, every character is formed by decisions made by them or for them at this time. And now, on season six, we are finally getting to what really happened at this time. But the underlying irony of the series,  is that the events of a generation ago are not as important as people think. People are jostling for control of the throne that was seized from one ruling dynasty, and few people (though the number is increasing) are really thinking about what really matters- why this disposed dynasty swept in from abroad and sized the throne/were able to seize the throne in the first place. There is a huge wall of ice (which seems clearly to have been built by a more advance civilisation than that currently in existence) supposedly to keep out tribes of people who refuse to live under the feudal system. There are men sworn to spend their lives protecting the wall and keeping these tribes out. In the first episode there is another reason given for the wall. This is disregarded, but this real cause is shown more and more as the story progresses.

To me it is a story about forgotten history. It is a fantasy story that begins with most people no longer believing in magic. The dragons died out, the real threat from the north is an old bogey story. The old, nature religion has almost completely been supplanted by a new theology based faith, and there is a of cult religious fanatics whose god can actually produce powers.

So there is the story that stretches back a generation. There is one that stretches back to hundreds of years before. There is also the older organ story of this continent. There were cultures that existed before the ancestors of the current inhabitants came to Westeros and places where they inherited these older faiths.

The closest the story has to a hero is a coinflip between being wise and benevolent or batshit crazy and dangerous. There is at this point no realistic ending that would not come with great devastation. But there is also at times a great deal of warmth in this story. It gives a pretty grim portrayal of human nature, there are (though these have decreased over the years) scenes of ‘sexpotion’ which we could all do without, and there are some (though this is not all of them) gratuitous scenes of violence. But in essence it is about a continent fracturing and infighting over the throne, when, if they understood their history, they would be joining together and fighting for survival. It’s the slow drip of historical information that keeps me interested more than anything else, and the tension created by the readers/audience able, from a distance, to see the bigger picture unfold while the characters are too small and close to the action to see it.

Plus I like dragons and direwolves. 😉

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@missy – sorry for the attempt to convert you, but have you considered e-cigarettes? If you get a good one (and tolerate a fair amount of waffle about coils) the effect on inhalation is very close to cigarettes. The chances of second-hand inhalation are far far smaller, and as I far as I can tell only carry the dangers of inhaling small amounts of nicotine. Unlike cigarettes, the evidence disappears in under a minute, they are very much cheaper. I’ll admit I’m not prepared, as yet, to do without nicotine but I’m glad to have those other chemicals out of my life.

I know there are lifelong smokers who escape any damage and non smokers who get lung cancer. But to me its all about the effects. I cut down on drinking when I began to feel the effects the next day. I’m glad not to smoke because I don’t wake up during stressful times in my life with my mouth throat and lungs feeling decidedly unpleasant and my teeth look better. We both know smoking makes the brain feel better. But it’s a dependency. There was a scene in the first series of Mad Men where one of the company owners says to the other ‘you shouldn’t smoke so much, it’s a weakness’ because if you end up in a negotiation situation with someone and cannot smoke, you will end up keener to get out of the room than someone who does not smoke.

This is a proper pub isn’t it! Debates can get a little intense. Only with that sometimes nerve-wracking sensation of loading comments into a void and waiting for a response and not being able to check peoples facial expressions and make eye contact. (Which I’m only just getting the hang of anyway, to be honest.)

@Missy- displacement activity? My mother used to have a fridge magnet that said ‘writers have immaculate houses’. (not true in her case.) Nowadays, however, I think ‘writers have a lot of forum discussions’ might work better. That’s why, when I’m doing a course, I tend to disappear from here for a while (except when I feel like a bit of a public cry, as you know!) But also baking. I do a mean Plum and Ginger cake when deadlines are looming…

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@puroandson- might just be a taste thing. We’re on episode ten and love it.  There is a series arc which is building nicely through the whole, rather than it just being ‘story of the week’. And part of me, I’ll admit, is just mesmerised by the detective’s lovely shirts and jumpers. Seriously, it’s very well and cheaply made, his wardrobe must take up a chunk of the budget.

What I like about it is that most of it could almost have been written about vampires. Only we’re used to sympathetic portrayals of vampires. Main reason for this I think is that Zombies are usually these mindless creatures. ‘Warm Bodies’ was quite interesting, but even then they had to slow the main character down. The tension in ‘IZombie’ for me, comes from the fact that there isn’t any glamour to it (aside from her pretty emo look.) If they don’t eat brains, they don’t just turn into killers, they turn into ugly, disgusting, brainless killers.

I’m trying to remember what happened when, I think there is an interesting twist coming your way, and a source of conflict. Because zombies are always evil… and there are evil zombies. I would try a few more, if I were you, and then, if its not for you, there is plenty of good television out there. I’m also really enjoying the chemistry between the lead characters, (the one’s in the credit sequence, which, by the way, masterfully summarises the pilot episode in a few frames) the way they say things to each other, make eye contact and smile and react.

@pedant- I should probably check, but I take it this is from a comic, which they retain in the scene beginnings. Have you seen the comic? I’m weary of looking it up because I don’t know how close it is to the series.

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@puroandson – well, purosolo at first – ah, I probably would not have commented if I had thought it was the kind of position you tended to take. Thank you for your gracious response.

As for vaping- it is, if not harmless, considerably less harmful than smoking. Less antisocial (the vapour disperses where smoke lingers). Less addictive, weirdly, I sometimes go a couple of days without it, and only realise because I become- either agitated or unpleasant. Recently I’ve been using it quite a lot, but hopefully my stress levels will go down now. There is a worry of younger people taking it up- it’s cheaper, liquids come in all kinds of exciting flavours (I stick to menthol) – including people who might not have started smoking properly. But teenagers not taking up smoking is A Good Thing, so I suppose it is a balance. It’s all gone rather nerdy, you walk into a vape shop and its full of men in their thirties and twenties talking about ‘coils’ and technical jargon, the kind of people who usualy talk about ‘sub woofers’ etc. So at least it’s never going to be seen as ‘cool’…

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@pedant- we’ve just started watching izombie! It’s fantastic. I didn’t realise the Veronica Mars connection, but makes sense now. It’s hard to do something fresh with the whole zombie genre.

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