improbabledreamgirl

[improbabledreamgirl]

rb to save prev from The Horrors

[improbabledreamgirl]

the plot chickens (becomes scared of its own premise)

[improbabledreamgirl]

You know how some people have a “Roman Empire”—like, the thing they think about at least once a week even when no one brings it up? Mine is Delia Derbyshire.

This woman joined the BBC in 1960 and was so good at sound editing for classical music that she could literally see where the trombones were on a vinyl record. Like she’d just look at the grooves and be like, “There they are.” People thought she was doing actual magic. She basically said, “Yeah, I am,” and walked into the BBC Radiophonic Workshop like it was her birthright.

She didn’t wait to be assigned to the Workshop like everyone else. She just said, “I want this,” and got it. By 1962 she was creating entire soundscapes and electronic music for hundreds of BBC radio and television productions.

Then in 1963 she casually created the Doctor Who theme—one of the first pieces of music ever made entirely with electronics. It completely changed the landscape of TV sound design. She took Ron Grainer’s notes and turned them into something nobody had ever heard before using tape loops and pure experimentalism. When he listened to it, he literally said, “Did I write this?” And she, ICONICALLY, replied, “Most of it.”

He wanted to credit her. The BBC said no.

She was a woman in a deeply male-dominated space. And not just “wow, there aren’t many women here,” but like explicitly—officially—“women don’t get creative credit here.” Engineering was seen as men’s work. Sound design was men’s work. Women were allowed to assist, to type memos, to splice tape if a man told them where. But they weren’t allowed to author. They weren’t allowed to be the genius in the room.

So they handed all the glory to Ron Grainer.

She wasn’t paid royalties. She didn’t get a credit. She didn’t even get her name on-screen. Not for fifty. actual. years.

Delia also composed music for other BBC programmes, including the Blue Veils and Golden Sands, The Doctor Who story Inferno even reused some of her music that had originally been made for other productions—because that’s how good her work was. It got recycled because nothing else came close.

She hated the remixes of the theme they did after 1980 because they kept sanding down the weirdness, the dissonance, the edge—everything she had fought to put into it. 

So yeah. Delia Derbyshire is my Roman Empire. Every time I hear the Doctor Who theme, I think about her physically slicing tape by hand and looping it to build something no one had ever heard before—and I just sit there like: 🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡

(When I have enough time I'll make a post about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a whole because it is so fucking cool.)

[improbabledreamgirl]

obsessed with screenshotting things i will never look at ever again

[improbabledreamgirl]

Imagine reading this sentence at the start of the eras tour

[improbabledreamgirl]

i am massively overdue for a very very good week where not a single bad thing happens and everything is easy

[improbabledreamgirl]

i’m like if pinocchio was a girl

[improbabledreamgirl]

giving you a reconstruction of a missing classic who episode where i edited out all the bits i don't like

call that doctored who

[improbabledreamgirl]

all my love to other autistic people who just know jack shit. the ones who have no "infodump" locked and loaded, nothing they can rattle off the top of their head. the ones who have a specific interest in certain things but still not knowing a lot about it. autistic people who will never be able to memorise fun facts about something no matter how fundamental it is to them as a subject. the point of autistic interests are not being a secret expert on random shit, you just like it a real big amount

[improbabledreamgirl]

[improbabledreamgirl]

i am NOT interested in the divine feminine. i will jerk off for 3 hours straight and eat 10% of my bodyweight in smoked meats and cheeses.

[improbabledreamgirl]

I think it’s funny how the PJO book (The Sea of Monsters) based off of the Odyssey (which took place over the course of 20 years) is shortest in the original series, both in the amount of pages in the book, but also in the amount of time that passed in the story itself 

[improbabledreamgirl]

I think when you correctly identify a trauma that is the base of a woe of yours it should just disappear. It should be like "aaahh. you got me" and vanish and leave 100 dollars behind

[improbabledreamgirl]

Annabeth Chase has gremlin energy if you really think about it, and I'm tired of people pretending she doesn't, it just shows itself differently in comparison to other characters. Like you really think a girl who ran away from absent father and family in general, idealized her god of a mother, was raised by three (technically two given Grover's actual age) other kids while on the street, then by a bunch of other kids in a camp, and regards a half horse guy as a father figure would be normal? Would be the most stable of the friend group? No, and that's why she's that girl. Put some respect on her name.

[improbabledreamgirl]

Another thing about the plummeting birth rate in America is that America is just not a pro-natalist country. No paid maternity leave. No paid paternity leave. Children are treated like burdens. Why the fuck would you have a kid if you’re seen as ‘flakey’ for leaving work early to go to their kindergarten graduation? When you live in this ultra individualistic capitalist hellscape, there is no room for a child.

[improbabledreamgirl]

ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴘᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏꜰ ᴀ ꜱʜᴏᴡɢɪʀʟ

[improbabledreamgirl]