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@thane15

Holy fuck, that’s unexpected!

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@craig @blenkinsopthebrave

Wouldn’t it be awesome if One is in the vault?

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@nerys

A situation where you have two rooms, and you knock one through into the other (creating a larger space).

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@craig

56386 (and if you browse the Pilot there’s at least one more from @geoffers, iirc) – see 56333 which refers to 56324 vanishing).

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@craig

There does seem to be an issue with vanishing posts – got a notification from @blenkinsopthebrave and the post seems to have gone walkabout (and not in the Jenny Agutter sense).

 

(unless blenky deleted it, obv)

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@nerys @jimthefish

I’m inclined it agree with @nerys re Broadchurch – S3 managed to avoid the plotting stupidities of S2 (although it would be nice is, just occasionally, crime story writers familiarised themselves with the Police & Criminal Evidence Act). But I did quite like the rather contemplative ending tonight.

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@lisa @blenkinsopthebrave

My suspicion is that the Doctor has A LOT of influence at St Luke’s. 50 (or 70) years will get you that. Not many secrets you don’t know. not many kindnesses you can’t perform.

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@whisht

Stephanie Hyam had a part in Sherlock, so I suspect it was just a case of casting somebody they liked and had confidence in.

Very good point about Bill’s self-rescue, which also nicely counterpoints her coming close to “buying a ticket” with Watery!Heather.

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@rorysmith

He leaves broken time lines and plot holes everywhere

Plotholes shmotholes – examples or this is just empty whinging.

@geoffers

lol, i’m genuinely headed into fanfiction/shipper territory!

Shoot yourself now! It’s for your own good.

wouldn’t the bloody tardis be the safest bloody place to stash (bloody) whatever is inside?

Unless it would create a paradox of some kind.

@mudlark

As I have maintained throughout, all the evidence suggests that his memory of Clara has been not been completely obliterated

It has – he didn’t recognise her when she was stood right in front of him.

However, he is very much aware of the hole in his memory where she should be.

Imagine your life and all its events and adventures. Imagine someone your care about, who was not just present but participated,. Now keep all the events and adventures, but remove that person.

Imagine the feeling of loss that might involve. 24 years with River and he finally learned to manage it and even learn from it. And every time he is about to do something stupid:

“You said memories become stories
when we forget them. Maybe some of
them become songs.”

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So what does this look like? Heather or something more….cyber?

 

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@tommo

What is in the vault?

Something that needs a promise…

Promise to keep (and miles to go before we sleep….?)

Poetry and physics.

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@wolfweed

Your dinner’s in the dog 😉

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So, Bill rocks.

Immaculately judged use of Clara’s theme.

So will Bill end up going off with Heather (if rumours about a one-seasoner are true)?

‘cos they can’t kill Bill.

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@Thane15

As @whisht says, I was Thea Gilmore.

You may not appreciate – because, distance – that the coda at the end is Jo Cox MP, who was assassinated by a right-wing terrorist in the run up to the Brexit vote, and the song was written in response to that.

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@Thane15

The “ramp up” is the verbal equivalent of a music crescendo.  The series of beats and repeats progressively builds to the explosion. It gets higher and wider, then it slams down the the point – “there was a  coup”. It is worth watching the TWW for Toby and Sam’s talks about speech making and writing and then watching Sorkin use them in dialogue.

Although this remains my personal favourite Tobyism:

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And the theme tune of the Kingston years…

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@Thane15

Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University) for undergrad – an outstanding teaching institution – and LSE for postgrad (not entirely convinced I would have enjoyed undergrad there – it is a very research oriented place – although I did seminars for the undergrads and they all graduated, so I figure I did something right).

But the music of that period was when 80s pop was approaching it peak.

This was pretty much our theme tune:

“A broken soul stares from a pair of watering eyes
Uncertain emotions force an uncertain smile”

(My brother did studio engineering for The The and said that Matt Johnson is a really lovely fella).

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@Thane15

Marti Noxon the Mistress of Pain! @jimthefish introduced us to that particular term

No he bloody didn’t! (He planned to but some idiot spoilsport confound his plan).

Mad Men is on Netflix, so will get a watch

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@thane15

In my defence, it was quite a bit earlier when I wrote that. 😉 But very impressed that you didn’t let shameless tautology distract you!

Play some Joy Division at the builders. Atrocity Exhibition, say.

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@mudlark

There can’t be that many people who would have got the Joan D Vinge reference…

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@whisht

Heh – Frankie brings back nothing but fun post-grad at LSE memories.

Now, if you want the definitive Springsteen-not-by-Springsteen, this is it:

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@mudlark

Skimming back looking for something else, I just noticed that I referred to The Snow Queen. I did, of course, mean The Snow Goose.

Bit of a difference….

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@Thane15 and Progenitor of Spawn, aka Puro The Statistical Outlier.

That was very amusing.

Never Mind The Bullucks doesn’t quite sound right, does it?

One can, however, drop a bollock.

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@Thane15 @whisht

On the vein of people taken too young: Minnie Ripperton and the rather lovely Les Fleurs:

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@thane15

I was at this gig – the vid doesn’t quite do justice to how utterly spellbinding this encore was.

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@thane15

As you say, big field for someone whose core theme is the abandoned working classes:

This one?

Or this?

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@whisht

Curses! no Nick Cave then 😉

OK, let’s go pensive. Thea Gilmore has a new album out in a couple of months. She put this on Youtube. If the coda at the end doesn’t make you slightly lose your composure, nothing will.

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@jimthefish

Couldn’t be more timely. I will use this as an excuse to plug 13 Reasons Why again. Very on point.

@Thane15

Re short stories

You seem to have been given a time limit, rather than a word limit, which is…odd. If there is a word limit, remember that it is a limit, not a target. A friend of mine can write a complete short story in under 100 words. Seriously. There is an apocryphal legend that Hemingway wrote a six word story: “For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn” (the story about this story is an interesting story).

It can’t be too complex (I am mindful that my stories (those you have seen) try to kick this theory to the floor and give it is good pummelling, but you will be in test conditions so won’t really have time for that sort of existential ramble. So it might help to think it terms along the lines of:

There is a character (the protagonist, who may or may not be human)…

…to whom something happens or who sees something happen (which my be wholly innocent on the part of the antagonist, or may be malicious)…

…which causes a reaction (which maybe be only in the head, or visceral and physical)…

…which has an impact…

…which may not be good…

…which changes the protagonist, for better or worse.

@ichabod has made a couple of interesting suggestions. The soccer tour has promise: a bunch of amiable Aussies go to England for  goodwill trip and get the shit kicked out of them by the Crystal Palace youth team.

Pick a player (try to make it not you): how do they react – anger? fear? – what to the do – retaliate? run? – what happens next? What does he gain? What does he lose?

I am sure ages ago you mentioned witnessing an attack (or accident) on your way from school. Another great source.

Or, you know… your Mum’s a walking medical emergency who suddenly had the Feds turn up on her doorstep to reactivate her super secret agent persona. The PoV of the Fed has great comic potential (how did the world end? Puro was off her skull on methadone!)

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@whisht

OK, I am going to have to bring the big guns out (as if Joy Division aren’t). I give you the ultimate in suicide music, with no hope, no route out:

“Did you forget how to love
Girl, did you forget how to fight”

The Boss is the boss:

 

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*weeps* There is a special corner of hell reserved for child molesters and people who think Morrisey is a poet for his generation….

Sorry – the only person in the Absolute Radio rotation that triggers my off-switch reflex. Despise with the fire of 1000 suns.

To rebalance the karma, here is Selena Gomez covering Only You. A fairly ho-hum cover, but used with absolutely devastating impact in 13 Reasons Why (which she executive produced).

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@mudlark

One of the fascinating aspect of this whole area is that we have the concept of the “Agricultural Revolution” with Townshed and Jethro Tull (Wikipedia, bless it, even says Townshend invented four-course rotation) and the Enclosure Acts in the 18th century.

Except that:

1. Most of lowland England was already enclosed via a combination of piecemeal illegal the Enclosure Act and assarting, with started in the twelfth century. The savage impact of enclosure was mostly felt in the uplands of England, Wales and Scotland.

2. The Romans practiced four and even 5 course rotation, as well as selective breeding.

In late Empire, Roman civil society was peaceful and safe – civilians were not routinely armed and any free man had the chance to educate and work his way into a profession (note the lack of gender neutral language, and mention of slaves!). Roman engineering was peerless, at least in Europe.

When the  Empire quit England it took less that 40 years to revert to warlordism, to move back up the hills from the valleys the Romans preferred (St Albans overlooks Verulamium) and for all that knowledge to be lost for more than 1000 years.

Take all that it is is not hard to let the mind drift to a scenario where the Romans were one blast furnace away from an industrial revolution.

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@mudlark

do steal the rain, and most of what they do not snaffle gets deposited on the Midlands,

Orographic rainfall, doncha know. Warming maritime air rises when it hits the uplands, expands and cools, therefore condensing into rain or snow. Once over the mountains, it descends and warms, meaning it has less moisture but can hold more – so less condensing unless some nice frontal system turn up.

When the wind is from the east, they may be colder but they are also coming from Eurasia, so they are much drier. East Anglia says (relatively) dry either way. But there has been enough to irrigate all that lovely, fertile, glacial boulder clay.

You are in grave danger of tipping me into full Geographer Mode. Cromer Ridge = terminal moraine and the Thames used to flow through the Vale of St Albans…..STOP NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

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Also, this:

interesting that LGBT characters being present in a fictional universe is considered political, but being strangely absent isn't.

— Snow Wight (@crimefish) April 7, 2017

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@mudlark

East Anglia is ….officially classed as ‘semi-arid’

Hmmm. Not really. I’ve seen the claim, but official the whole of the UK is still classed Temperate Oceanic. I do not for one second doubt that climate change will get it there (nor that some micro-climates are well on the way), but those calling this early are making the cardinal error of conflating weather and climate. Semi-arid is places like Arizona, Southern Spain, the Canaries and East African savannah.

Of course, everybody knows that the real problem is that Wales is stealing all the rain.

Sundance lived to a good age, though, and in his later years used sometimes to come home at night smelling of expensive cigarettes and perfume.  My mother never did discover where he had been, but it led to some fantastical speculation.

Now there’s a short story that is screaming to be written.

@missy

You said, in a nutshell “we stop taking about it,  just get a long…?”, which suggested either the reasoning skills of an 8 year old, or the stirring skills of someone with a few more decades  on the clock. As a statement it its right up there with your earlier wilful blindness to racism. We talk about sexuality now because it was swept under the carpet – or actively vilified – for centuries and we are not even close to making up the damage.

So grow up or stop stirring.

 

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@miapatrick

people bitch about the Americans for is making new words by putting a sequence of words

Absofuckinglutely!

(Oh come on! You just left that dangling there!)

@janetteb

The Co Op is you shrine for all things Dodgerish.

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Pardon the mini-splurge, but the series I refer to in the TV thread includes are surprisingly effective cover of this classic original

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Right. So. @All, but principally @Thane15 and New Improved Drug Free Puro.

Netflix.

13 Reason Why

Apparently based on a YA novel of the same name.

Watch it. Heartbreaking and arguably important.

A strong cast backed by the most understated use of music means that, when it needs to, it can go to the darkest of dark places without flinching and without mercy.

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@mudlark ***applause***

As in ‘the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter’

If you are not already familiar I will leave the joy of discovery to your own research.

My parents’ most trusted friend – not a blood relative but Auntie Miff, nonetheless – may well have been the last speaker of the Hertfordshire accent, when she passed a couple of years ago, not long after get her telegram from Her Maj. The accent, along with those of Essex (read The Snow Queen), Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Kent were obliterated by more the 1 million people moving from London after WW2.

My general view on whether a linguistic change is bad is framed by the question “does it cause us to conflate terms that are accurate with terms that are precise”. The idea that precision is in any way an equivalent to accuracy is at the root of almost all of our broken public discourse. And, of course, the people doing it – Dacre, Murdoch, Desmond etc – know exactly what they are doing.

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(Moved out of the news thread)

@missy @miapatrick

I repeat, the English language is going to pot.

This is stampy-footed nonsense. I admit get mildly irritated by English people who think ‘soccer’ is an Americanism for football (It’s not and when I grew up soccer/ footie/ football were used interchangeably on the playing field and in shops. It only became associated with the US with the founding of the (now defunct) North American Soccer League. But it is good English slang exactly like ‘rugger’ for rugby football, and coined before WW1.)

But so what? Slang changes all the time and sometime it drives wider linguistic change.

@janetteb

 It really annoys me when my boys use Americanisms

Hmm:

A very firm stand ought to be made against placate, transpire, and antagonize, all of which have English patrons.

We quote two sentences from the first page of a story, and remark that in pre-Kipling days none of the words we italicize would have been likely; now, they may be matched on nearly every page of an ‘up-to-date’ novelist:

Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped, honey-coloured 2 rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing.—Kipling.

Far out, a three-funnelled Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in from the deep sea.—Kipling. (HW Flower, The King’s English, 1908)

See how absurd that seems, now? None of those would even be recognised as Americanism today. By the time the surviving Fowler published Dictionary of Modern English Usage 20 years later, such absolutism had all but gone. His essay on the split infinitive is, well, definitive.

Besides, it works both ways. The time will come when Americans don’t even recognise ‘wanker’ and British slag. Thank you James Marsters! And then, of course, there is this: cultural imperialism, eh?

And Missy:

There is far too much emphasis put on Gay and Straight nowadays.

When you have met a few people who have been queer-bashed you can make idiotic statements like this. Until then, stop it.

Besides, redundant capitalisation is a much greater offence than using foreign slang.

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@mersey

Nobody here would dispute this statement:

Sexuality shouldn’t be discuss as something sensational.

In fact that is exactly what Moffat said.

But he knows the British tabloids and their willingness to use any stick to beat the BBC with. It is not just The Sun or The Mirror, but the Daily Mail, one of the most hateful publications around. Its willingness to use any pretext to stir it up is long established, and forcing he issue now makes it harder for them to wield effectively it when the show is  on the air (one thing tabs hate is stale news).

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@mudlark @miapatrick

And the discussion is this week, not with the show on the air – a very smart bit of PR management (also @mersey).

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@mersey

You underestimate the ability and willingness of the tabloid press to stir up trouble, on any pretext, for the BBC. Moffat has spiked their guns.

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This made me LOL. LindaLee’s politically engaged colleague:

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@thane15 @missy

Let me rephrase: It beggars belief that the interview went out without Moffat’s approval, most likely because he wanted the debate to happen now rather than when the show is on the air. My sceptical tendencies lead me to avoid absolute language, except for ironic effect.

English is not going to pot, and it is beyond silly to claim it is. It is a living language and is in constant flux. There are horrible interjections for PR-speak, but that is just a cost of doing business and to resist this is to be Cnut (except, of course, he knew he couldn’t turn the tide back and was demonstrating this to sycophantic courtiers).

My pet hates are:

• “reached out” as a synonym for “tried to contact”. You only reach out if you are Diana Ross or The Four Tops.
• “begging the question” used to mean “raising the question”. You can look that one up, but the phrase comes from a similar root to “beggars belief”.

Well, that and readers being too lazy to learn the correct pronunciation or Machynlleth.

Not that change is a new thing:

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@xad4 @Thane15

And Monty and Glesni arrive back on the same day. Let shenanigans begin!

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Moffat has said more than once that no Dr Who material goes out without his say-so (which is why he does not consider trailers to be spoilers), so I very much doubt that the Pearl Mackie interview was done without his approval.

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@joshamus @ichabod @craig

Now that’s what I call a gay agenda….

(If Moffat’s writing – all the way back to Press Gang – has a consistent theme it is about loneliness and the desperate need to companionship and how connection makes us better, being isolated breaks us. The many and varied ways he has found to explore that, to riff time and again on the same theme and not get stale, not be bound by convention, are what make him a great writer.)

Lynda: This is life. No guaranteed happy endings.

(That’s especially for you @missrori)

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So here’s one many won’t be familiar with, but he lived where i now live. Clem Curtis sang with The Foundations on Baby, Now that I’ve Found You, which you will know and is thought to be the first number 1 in the UK by a multi-racial band.

And this interview, just two days before he died, is astonishing in its generosity of sprit: paradise

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(Oh, I was a total div – Lost Works is the same one I linked to! Blame the BBC search engine…

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@whisht

Indeed, Blue Veils is perhaps her masterpiece, (other than..well…you know…that one… ;)) – there are a couple. Radio 4 has Sculptress of Sound (Ep 22) (also this, which I did not know about until searching just now) and a play with Sophie Thomson called called Blue Veils and Golden Sands that deals with her return from disillusion (thanks to a persistent fan) and early death. Very good and I could probably arrange for it to fall off the back of an internet.

One of the most important people in the development of electronic music – a good decade ahead of Kraftwork – and nearly forgotten but for an eccentric Sci Fi fan base.

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