#Spring Formal 2020

[fatehbaz]

hello fatehbaz dot tumblr dot com, I seem to recall that years ago you posted an article or articles about the construction of canals in Arizona & the threat it posed to desert cienegas. I tried finding it on your archive to no avail. I did find research about similar circumstances in chihuahua, but not specifically what you posted. i seem to recall that the specific canal was the CAP. does this ring any bells?

Thank you for sticking around and tolerating me for such a long time. Glad you're here. And thank you for remembering the posts (from August 2020) about Cuatro Cienegas in the Chihuahuan Desert.

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Thinking of Arizona specifically, what you described sounds similar to an August 2022 post about ephemeral intermittent streams of the Agua Fria and canals to service Prescott/Phoenix? (Briefly describes progression from early water diversion to grow alfalfa for cattle; then the damming of Agua Fria to make reservoir in 1930s; then the construction of 16 copper mines. Cites an article from Rachel Howard at Edge Effects: "The history of the Agua Fria can be read not so much as a warning but rather a symbol of what happens to small bodies of water in Arizona. This is the state of the five Cs: cotton, copper, cattle, citrus, and climate.")

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From August 2020, might be thinking of this post about the unique endemic Yaqui catfish, an icon of the desert; post described the drying of cienegas (and how the fish is functionally extinct in the US) due to progression of cattle rangeland, farms, and canal diversion? (About how despite popular conception of the desert as dry, "prior to European colonization, the region supported rich waterways and aquatic communities." Post described how, by the 1880s, to service agriculture, "meandering cienegas" were strongly channelized and became deep-etched arroyos. And by 1960s, the pumping of water had meant most cienegas were gone. And by 2016 it was estimated that maybe only 30 of the fish remained in Arizona, a fish sometimes described as the "only catfish native to US west of the Rockies." Which also brings to mind, for me, the 2016 edition of Inland Fishes of the Greater Southwest: Chronicles of a Vanishing Biota from University of Arizona Press.)

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Also sounds similar to this one from July 2020? That one was about cienegas in Arizona, specifically the corridor of riparian habitat (cottonwood, mesquite, etc.) along the San Pedro. Post made criticism of Arizona agencies which managed surface water and groundwater separately despite their physical/ecological interconnectivity. Post made mention of Arizona eryngo (Eryngium sparganophyllum), which only survives at three-ish sites specifically at cienegas within borders of Arizona and one site in New Mexico; couple of years after that post, the US federal government formally recognized it as endangered.

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But in 2020, I also made a series of several posts about Quitobaquito Springs (at Arizona-Mexico border, in the Sonoran Desert) and Indigenous efforts to protect it? (The springs are a rare freshwater ecosystem at Organ Pipe Cactus area. US border wall construction was extracting and pumping vast amounts of water every day. In 2020, major demonstrations were held by Akimel O'odha, Tohono O'odham, and Hia-Ced O'odham. Brings to mind how, in the same area in 2019, Indigenous people brought more widespread attention to how a major global surveillance tech company collaborated with US border security agencies to field-test new a surveillance "command and control center" on Tohono O'odham communities, like a laboratory; the "virtual wall" functions with multiple towers which continuously surveil personal devices, sound, physical movement, etc. In those posts, I also mentioned that the springs at Quitobaquito are also pretty much the only home within US borders to the endangered Sonoyta mud turtle and endangered Sonoyta pupfish. The entire subspecies/lineage of the turtle only lives in maybe 5 sites total.)

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Somewhat related, also made many posts from 2019 to 2023 about Indigenous protection of Oak Flat Chi-chil Bildagoteel in Arizona?

Regarding more recent irrigation and water loss in Arizona, I've posted about Natalie Koch's work in Arid Empire on the impact of diverting water for alfalfa farms and how current Arizona agencies facilitate the "colonial technologies" and market "the desert as a narrative resource"; she also describes how, in 1940s/1950s, the US State Department had a hand in encouraging international petroleum investors to invest in hundreds of thousands of cattle for dairy farms, a network which still influences much water diversion today. Aside from the Sonoyta mud turtle, also brings to mind threatened amphibians in Arizona related to cienegas, like Sonoran tiger salamander (likes permanent or standing water, estimated to survive in about 50 ponds in Cochise and Santa Cruz counties) and Chiricahua leopard frog (also likes the standing water, which is often diverted for agriculture or overtaken by non-native bullfrogs, estimated to survive in maybe 80 to 100 ponds). (Vaguely related but fun: There were a couple of long effort-posts I did about historical distribution range of American crocodiles in mangroves and coastal marshes on far southern edge of the Sonoran Desert general ecoregion before lower Yaqui river was depleted by agriculture.)

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Shout-out to Cuatro Cienegas in the Chihuahuan Desert.

An oasis. A "bacterial lost world." About 300 pools. More than 90% dried-up in historic record; agricultural canals drain tens of millions of gallons of water a year. Home to 38-ish endemic animal species. Not one, not two, but three endemic species of turtles: A slider, a softshell (I love softshells), and the planet's only "aquatic" species of box turtle (I also love box turtles). Home to some of planet's only terrestrial or freshwater populations of stromatolites (bacterial mats composing structures reminiscent of Precambrian era; usually found in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, but here have been isolated from the sea for millions of years). Also home to some of planet's highest diversity of Archaea (taxonomic order of lifeforms potentially "older than bacteria"?).

[renaultmograine]

Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime left Blizzard because he was reportedly tired of fighting with former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, according to those who worked closely with him, the two leaders having butted heads for years regarding the future of Blizzard.

New details about Morhaime's 2018 departure and Blizzard's contentious relationship with Activision come via an excerpt from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier's upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment , which releases on October 8 (the same day Blizzard's first expansion for Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred, launches).

For years, Morhaime attempted to keep Activision, which acquired Blizzard in 2007, at bay. That goal of keeping Blizzard insulated from outside Activision pressure became harder in 2013 when Blizzard canceled project Titan, an FPS MMO that had been intended to be the next World of Warcraft, according to Schreier.

After the project's cancellation, which cost Blizzard around $80 million, Kotick and Activision began to assert more control over Blizzard, including pushing Blizzard to hire a chief financial officer, Armin Zerza, to keep costs in check. Zerza just "kept talking about how to make as much money as possible," according to one former employee, and at one point suggested axing Blizzard's annual BlizzCon fan convention, confused as to why a project with such low profit margins was allowed to exist, according to Schreier's sources. Blizzard announced this year there would not be a BlizzCon 2024.

Morhaime continued to battle Kotick in the following years, defending Blizzard's need for customer service employees and the studio's cinematics team. Following a meeting of Activision, Blizzard, and King leaders focused around the theme of "One ABK," Morhaime feared Blizzard was losing its independence, according to Schreier. He wrote a lengthy email to Kotick in response, stating he believed "preserving Blizzard's culture and magic" was a necessity in order to attract and retain "the best creative talent in the world." He additionally said that it had been "increasingly hard for me to provide Blizzard leadership and staff confidence that Blizzard has a stable future."

In 2017, Morhaime submitted a resignation letter, but was persuaded at the time by Kotick and others to take it back. Following the One ABK meeting in the spring of 2018, Morhaime formally announced his departure that October, saying it was time for someone else to lead.

Blizzard's story would of course continue, but without the man that Schreier said many Blizzard staff worshiped. Morhaime went on in 2020 to found a new game studio and publisher, Dreamhaven. Blizzard, meanwhile, in 2021 found itself embroiled in controversy following an explosive state of California lawsuit that accused Activision Blizzard of systemic sexual misconduct and discrimination, eventually settling with the state in 2023 to the tune of $54 million. Morhaime said in a statement addressing the lawsuit that he was "ashamed."

"To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you," Morhaime said.

In the wake of the lawsuit, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, with Kotick stepping down as Activision Blizzard CEO in December 2023.

[hauyne-sims]

Bohemian lookbook

Disclaimer: This lookbook was created before the eyelash update so some eyelashes used will not work, therefore I didn't include the links

Genetics

Skinblend | Dimples *TSR | Eyes | Eyebrows (Poise eyebrows) | Teeth | Scar (left lower arm tattoo) | Left upper arm tattoo (Pocahontas tattoo) | Right upper arm tattoo (Pocahontas tattoo) | Hairline (hairline v7)

Everyday wear

Hair (Kayleigh v1) | Top | Bottoms | Shoes *TSR | Ring (Larissa ring) | Nails | Earrings *TSR | Necklace *TSR | Eyeshadow (Goddess eyeshadow) | Eyeliner | Blush (Pooja blush) | Lips | Highlighter | Eyelashes (eyelash v5)

Formal wear

Hair | Outfit | Shoes (Leather flats 02) | Rings *TSR | Nails | Earrings | Necklace (Boho charm necklace sun) | Eyeshadow (Bella eyeshadow) | Eyeliner | Blush (Cloud paint blush) | Lips (90s babe lipstick) | Highlighter | Eyelashes

Athletic wear

Hair | Top | Top recolour | Bottoms (Incline leggings) | Shoes | Nails | Earrings (Gem earrings) | Necklace *TSR | Blush (Angelic blush) | Lips (sour fruit lipstick) | Highlighter (Angelic blush) | Eyelashes (eyelash v4 by mmsims)

Sleepwear

Hair (Kayleigh v1 - AxA 2020 by aharris00britney) | Top (Mandy shirt) | Bottoms (Mary pants) | Fingernails | Toenails | Earrings (Gem earrings) | Lips | Highlighter (base game) | Eyelashes

Party wear

Hair (Jennifer hair V1) | Outfit | Shoes (Flat sandals 02) | Rings (Pesuasion ring) | Fingernails | Toenails | Earrings (Sunshine earrings) | Necklace *TSR | Eyeshadow | Eyeliner | Blush (Huegi blush) | Lips (Stockholm gloss) | Highlighter (Peach perfection highlight) | Eyelashes

Swimwear

Hair (Isabel hair by candysims4) | Top | Bottoms | Fingernails | Toenails | Earrings *TSR | Lips | Highlighter (Peach perfection highlight - spring makeup set by inspiredmoodlet) | Eyelashes

Hot weather wear

Hair | Headband overlay | Outfit | Shoes (Butterfly sandals 02) | Rings (Mia rings) | Fingernails | Toenails | Earrings (Strangerville earrings) | Necklace *TSR | Eyeshadow (Kendall eyeshadow) | Eyeliner | Blush (Angelic blush) | Lips | Eyelashes

Cold weather wear

Hair (Jennifer hair V1 - Planet AxA by aharris00britney) | Top (Appaloosa top) | Bottoms (Lucky charm jeans) | Shoes (Giddy-up boots with fringe) | Nails | Hat | Earrings *TSR | Necklace (Boho charm necklace combo) | Eyeshadow | Eyeliner (next day eyeliner by renlishsims) | Blush (Angelic blush) | Lips (All 4 U gloss) | Highlighter | Eyelashes

Poses:

Model pose v.7 by @roselipaofficial

Model pose v.8 by roselipa

VS inspired posing set by @flowerchamber

Shoutout to all the CC creators whose CC was used in this lookbook🤍:

@aharris00britney, @ajduckie, @blogsimplesimmer, @blushchat, @candysims4, @chiefwhiskers, @crypticsim, @dallasgirl79, @deetron-sims, @delis-sims, @dissiasims, @divinecap, @enriques4, @fishgoatsims, @frenchiesimgirl, @ikeaservo, @inspiredmoodlet, @jius-sims, @joliebean, @kotcatmeow, @lamatisse, @madlensims, @minabytes, @mmsims, @museberries, @nesurii, @pickypikachu, @pictureamoebae, @polygraphish-sims, @pralinesims, @pyxiidis, @regina-raven, @renlishsims, @ridgeport, @sagittariahx, @setsuki, @simstrouble, @twisted-cat, @zeussim

[revalinkweek]

RevaLink Week

Complete Promptlists

2020

04.05.2020 - 10.05.2020

- First Date

- Rivalry

- Feathers

- Free Day

- Truth

- Master Cycle

- Archery

________________________________________

2021

03.05.2021 - 09.05.2021

- Time

- Warmth

- Trust

- Courting

- Reincarnation

- Archery

- Parallels

________________________________________

->Revalink Halloween 2021<-

24.10.2021 - 31.10.2021

|| choose your prompt ||

- Revali's Landing || Ancient Armor || Cursed

- Lost Wood || Gossip Stones || Fae

- Typhlo Ruins || Lens Of Truth || Lycanthropy

- Hyrule Castle || Great Eagle Bow || Ghosts

- Temple Of Time || Champions Tunic || Undead

- Spring Of Wisdom || Sheikah Slate || Malice

- Shrine Of Resurrection || Majora's Mask || Mimic / Doppelganger

_____________________________________

-> Revalink Secret Santer 2021 <-

25.10.2021

_____________________________________

2022

❌️😱

___________________________________

2023

01.05.2023 - 08.05.2024

|| choose your prompt ||

- What Are You Waiting For || Formal Dance

- You Can Do Better Than This || Flight Range

- Was It Something I Did || Akkala

- Keep Breathing || Home

- Don't Blame Yourself || Paraglider

- Show Me || Too Close

- It's You, It's Always Been You || Green And Blue

- Bonus: Tears Of The Kingdom

____________________________________

2024

13.05.2024- 19.05.2024

- Rose

- Danger

- Foreign

- Dog

- Hush

- Youth

- Gentle

_______________________________________

-> RevaLink Halloween 2024 <-

25.10.2024 - 31.10.2024

|| choose your prompt ||

- Silent Realm || Scars || Well

- Corrupted || Gloom Hands || Vampire

- Costumes / Outfits || Fog || Bloodmoon

- Food || Fishing || Lost Woods

- Lynel(s) || Masquerade || Dark

- Autumn / Fall || Pumpkins || Farewell / Goodbye

- Campfire || Dubious || Skull Kid

________________________________________

-> Revalink Winter 2024 <-

01.12.2024 - 01.01.2025

________________________________________

-> Revalink Valentine 2025 <-

14.02.2025

________________________________________

2025

1.05.2025 - 07-05.2025

|| choose your prompt ||

- Time Out || Complicated || Support

- First Sight || Horse || Travel

- Fairy || Proposal || Tower

- Miasma || Shrine || Compliment

- Promise || Dance || Moonlight

- Gems || Zoras Domain || Breakdown

- Cold || Korok || Jealousy

________________________________________

Will be updated ...

(Special thanks to @some-internet-stranger for helping out)

[magratpudifoot]

Finished 7 February 2025:h

Bad Dreams in the Night - Adam Ellis

I am currently meant to be writing a conference paper. I have presented at this conference 3 times in the past, and this paper I am avoiding is the 6th proposal that has been accepted.

You may not see yet what this has to do with the book pictured above, but I bet you noticed something weird about those numbers there.

My first two papers went perfectly. I was still fresh enough off of dropping out of grad school (with a 4.0--it wasn't an inability to keep up with the classes that made me peace out) that I was confident in my ability to whip out a 20 minute paper with little trouble.

My 3rd proposal was rejected (I think I tried too hard in my proposal to make star text in Crimson Peak tie into that years's Time's Up theme), but my 4th was accepted, and I was all set to give it--it was finished almost a month in advance of the conference--when the conference, scheduled for the third week in March 2020, was cancelled. I had to resubmit the same proposal for the 2021 virtual conference, and it was accepted and presented after a light overhaul (because the paper was about Harry Potter, and Rowling spent her COVID lockup making clear to the world what those of us in fandom had known for a while. That panel was awfully cathartic.)

So that's 5 proposals, 4 acceptances, 3 papers.

And then I proposed a paper for 2022 on Adam Ellis' Dear David and other social media-based horror fiction that pose as autobiography. This was going to be the first proper paper I had written since grad school that didn't start life as a less-formal convention lecture or a seminar paper. I read books on found footage films and journal articles about parasocial relationships. I dug through r/no sleep with a focus on the comment section of Tales from the Gas Station. I spent so, SO much time making MLA citations for Tweets.

About two weeks before the conference, my kid's school lifted its mask mandates, and nine days before I was scheduled to give my paper, my kid brought home the flu. While I was trying so hard to push through what I initially thought was anxiety over writing my first wholly-from-scratch paper in almost a decade in a tiny apartment with no privacy, I finally realized what was actually causing the writing trouble was brain fog from the flu I had also caught. And so, I had to contact the chair of my department and let them know I wasn't going to be able to attend my panel.

Once I was healthy again, I halfheartedly tried to finish the paper, just for the sake of having something to show for all the research...which was exactly when Twitter was bought by a fascist, which pretty much put an end to me being able to finish any kind of paper about content on the platform.

6 proposals, 5 acceptances, 3 papers

I haven't given a paper in person since 2018. I haven't completed a paper since 2013 that wasn't at least in part based on previous research. And the two intervening years that I spent trying to work on my own writing projects failed to generate anything at all.

But then inspiration struck last spring, and I submitted a proposal in October, and it was accepted, and now I have to fight against ALL that drama, all that failed-writer trauma, all that anxiety about what can and has and may go wrong (I am presenting in Florida about a deeply queer, deeply trans film, and my gf is coming with me for the first time, so...y'know...)

7 proposals, 6 acceptances, 3 papers

All that was background on why it was maybe not a great idea for me to read this particular book by this particular author between research material for my paper that I have barely a month left to pull together. But also maybe I was in exactly the right frame of mind for these quick, haunting stories from someone else who clearly has some anxiety issues.

The ramen comic called me out in a way I am not okay with, though. I have been eating a ridiculous amount of ramen lately.

[libraryofmoths]

Moth of the Week

Bogbean Buckmoth

Hemileuca maia menyanthevora

The bogbean buckmoth/bog buckmoth is part of the family Saturniidae. This moth was originally described under the Hemileuca maia complex or a group of closely related species in the genus of buck moths: Hemileuca. However, by using genomewide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), entomologists such as Julian R. Dupuis have found both Ontario and Oswego County, NY, populations of buck moths were not part of the H. maia lineage. In 2020, Pavulaan stated the bogbean buck moth may be its own species and called it Hemileuca maia menyanthevora.

Cryan & Dirig described the same taxon as species Hemileuca iroquois on April 2, 2020. The names have not yet been formally synonymized nor has one been discredited.

Description The females’ bodies are all black while the males’ are black with a red tip. Both have black/gray translucent wings. In the middle of the wings are a white band that flows from the forewings to the hindwings. Near the top edges of both wings in the white band is a gray and white eyespot. The forewing eyespot is larger than the hindwing spot.

Average forewing length: 29 mm (≈1.14 in)

Males have thicker antennae and females are slightly larger.

Adults are larger than other Hemileuca maia and the white wing bands are much larger than other H. maia

Diet and Habitat Larvae feed mainly on the plant bog buckbean, which is where they get their name. Adult moths do not feed. These moths are only found in calcareous fens where its primary host plant grows.

These moths have a limited range and are only found in ten colonies throughout the world: six located in Oswego County, NY, and four in eastern Ontario, Canada. In New York, bog buck moths can be found in wetlands sheltered by the eastern Lake Ontario dune network.

Mating Mating season begins around fall when the adult moths emerge. Female buck moths lay one large cluster of eggs on sturdy stems of a variety of plant species. The eggs overwinter and hatch the following spring. The eggs are never laid on the bog buckbean plants because they die back each year making them unable to support the eggs over winter.

Predators The eggs of the bogbean buckmoth are parasitized by the wasp Anastatus furnissi. Eggs are also preyed on by small mammals and invertebrates and may accidentally be ingested by white-tailed deer that eat the plant stems where eggs are laid. Egg predation is also observed from mites. All Hemileuca larvae have spines that can injure some vertebrate predators but do little to no to protect against parasitic flies and wasps.

Fun Fact Due to the rarity of this species, bog buck moths are considered an endangered species in New York.

(Source: Wikipedia; SLELO PRISM; New York Natural Heritage Program; Ontario.ca; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Cortland, NY; Federal Register)

@turkeygamemaster

[mariacallous]

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel will leave her post on March 8, having been forced out of the GOP’s national leadership as Donald Trump moves toward another presidential nomination and asserts control over the party.

McDaniel announced her decision in a statement on Monday morning.

“I have decided to step aside at our Spring Training on March 8 in Houston to allow our nominee to select a Chair of their choosing,” McDaniel said in the statement. “The RNC has historically undergone change once we have a nominee and it has always been my intention to honor that tradition.”

The move was not a surprise. Trump earlier in the month announced his preference for North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley, a little-known veteran operative focused in recent years on the prospect of voter fraud, to replace McDaniel. Trump also picked his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to serve as committee co-chair.

The 50-year-old McDaniel was a strong advocate for the former president and helped reshape the GOP in his image. But Trump’s MAGA movement increasingly blamed McDaniel for the former president’s 2020 loss and the party’s failures to meet expectations in races the last two years.

In addition to McDaniel, RNC co-chair Drew McKissick said he would also leave.

The leadership shakeup comes as the GOP shifts from the primary phase to the general election of the 2024 presidential contest. While former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has remained in the race, Trump has won every state in the primary calendar and could clinch the Republican nomination by mid-March.

Trump cannot make leadership changes without the formal backing of the RNC’s 168-member governing body, but McDaniel had little choice but to acquiesce to Trump’s wishes given his status as the party’s likely presidential nominee and his popularity with party activists. RNC members from across the country are expected to approve Trump’s decision in March.

McDaniel was the the committee’s longest-serving leader since the Civil War. The niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and a former chair of the Michigan GOP, she was Trump’s hand-picked choice to lead the RNC chair shortly after the 2016 election. Her profile as a suburban mother was also considered especially helpful as the party struggled to appeal to suburban women in the Trump era.

McDaniel easily beat back criticism from opponents within the “Make America Great Again” movement to win reelection as party chair a year ago. But her opponents’ voices are carrying more weight. The party is also struggling to raise money. The RNC reported $8.7 million in the bank at the beginning of February compared to the Democratic National Committee’s $24 million.

As Trump’s grip on a third presidential nomination tightens, his allies are moving to direct the party’s resources and activists around his campaign.

Lara Trump has suggested that GOP voters would likely want the RNC to cover her father-in-law’s legal bills given that they see the 91 felony counts against him as an example of political persecution. It’s unclear whether the RNC’s 168 members will eventually agree.

And Trump also wants allies who echo his false theories of voter fraud.

That’s a key reason why Trump is believed to have tapped Whatley, currently the North Carolina GOP chair and general counsel to the RNC.

Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by just over 1 percentage point and the state is expected to be highly competitive again this year.

Whatley has taken credit for hiring an army of lawyers ahead of the 2020 election, which he has said stymied Democratic efforts to commit voter fraud that year. There was no evidence of any intentional efforts to commit widespread voter fraud in multiple investigations and court cases.

Whatley also has strong connections to the political establishment. His resume includes experience as an oil and gas lobbyist and links to establishment figures like George W. Bush and former Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.

[nicklloydnow]

“There is a remarkable difference between Yerevan’s response to the most recent outbreak of violence and Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, as well as its subsequent border clashes. Back then, Armenia, as a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), appealed for military assistance from the alliance. Now the Armenian authorities have not even made such an attempt.

(…)

CSTO was established in 2002 as a collective security organization in the post-Soviet space. From the very beginning, Russia has played a leading role by contributing a disproportionate share of its funding, and providing military resources and infrastructure to other member states in return for their support of Moscow’s policies

Accordingly, the organization only included countries that were willing to cooperate with Moscow. Today, CSTO consists of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan joined the organization in 2006 after an uprising in the city of Andijan the year before, when Uzbek government forces killed hundreds of unarmed protesters, but suspended its membership in 2012 as it pivoted its foreign policy away from Moscow.

The main formal rationale of CSTO was to provide military security through the mechanism of collective defense, which obliges all members to come to each other’s aid when attacked, as stipulated in Article 4 of the ogranization’s Treaty. In this respect, CSTO has some similarities with NATO, as Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty requires the same kind of collective defense.

However, after the color revolutions that led to the overthrow of several incumbent post-Soviet regimes in the mid-2000s, CSTO was given a new goal: to support the existing, mostly authoritarian political regimes of its member states. This aim was only reinforced after the Arab Spring, which saw the toppling of dictators and the eruption of civil wars across much of the Arab world.

(…)

Armenia’s disillusionment with the CSTO is rooted in the organization’s refusal to help when war with Azerbaijan broke out again in 2022. However, unlike the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, Azerbaijan directly attacked Armenia’s sovereign territory during border clashes last year. Yerevan must have expected that Russia would have no choice but to call on other members of the alliance under Article 4.

But Russia did not come to Armenia’s aid. Having launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia was in no position to help its ally when it was directly attacked, as it was itself attacking a sovereign independent state for bogus reasons.

Armenia learned this lesson and began to reorient its foreign policy toward a new powerful ally — the United States. In September 2022, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Armenia, thus becoming the highest-ranking American official to visit the country since its independence. And in January, Armenia refused to host CSTO military training. This past week, it held a joint training exercise with American troops.

At the same time, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan confirmed that Armenia will come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.”

“Russia’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine means Armenia can no longer rely on Moscow as a guarantor of its security, even as fears grow of a return to open conflict with Azerbaijan, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told POLITICO in an interview.

Pashinyan’s unusually pointed criticism of Russia’s inability to act as a policeman in the Caucasus only compounds a sense the Kremlin is losing its influence — and once much-vaunted superpower status — across former Soviet republics that Moscow once saw as its stamping ground.

(…)

“As a result of the events in Ukraine, the capabilities of Russia have changed,” Pashinyan said, acknowledging that Moscow was seeking to avoid alienating Azerbaijan and its close ally Turkey, both of which have risen in strategic importance for the Kremlin since the start of the Ukraine war last year.

(…)

Inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders but controlled by its ethnic Armenian population, Nagorno-Karabakh has been the scene of two wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Russia stepping in on both occasions to guarantee its security.

Now, it seems Moscow’s ability to guarantee the status quo is evaporating.

(…)

The frustration with the failure of Russian forces to help forms part of a pattern of worsening ties between Moscow and Yerevan.

Last week, the Russian foreign ministry said it had summoned the Armenian ambassador for a “difficult” conversation over what it described as a string of unfriendly steps, citing a decision by Yerevan to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine for the first time, with Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan, making an official visit to Kyiv. Armenia has also withdrawn its representative to the Moscow-led CSTO military alliance of which it is a member, having previously accused the bloc of failing to act on its requests for support after Azerbaijan launched an offensive across the border last September.

Instead, it has invited U.S. soldiers to stage joint drills in the country as part of exercises codenamed Eagle Partner 2023. Russia has hit out at the decision.

(…)

At the same time as acknowledging the need to break reliance on the old ally in Russia, Pashinyan admitted there was a long way to go before Western countries could be seen as offering the full support Armenia needs.

“Our partners, the EU and the United States are also supporting us when it comes to democratic reforms agenda,” he said, before adding: “I cannot say that the support and the help that we are receiving is sufficient to serve our objectives and our agendas.””

“Russian peacekeepers stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh were killed during shelling, the Kremlin said Wednesday. This has dealt a blow to the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as Azerbaijan claimed control of the breakaway region following a brief military offensive.

(…)

The news comes as the CSTO, founded in 2002, appears to be peril against the backdrop of flaring violence in the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. This is led by ethnic Armenians in the region, and is recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan. The CSTO is a military alliance of six post-Soviet states—Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan—that has been likened to a smaller version of NATO.

(…)

Pashinyan has decried CSTO inaction and a tepid response from Russia after triggering the security bloc's Article 4 in September 2022. This declares that any "aggression against CSTO member states is considered by other participants as aggression against everyone."

(…)

Mark Temnycky of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) said in analysis on September 6 that, two decades after it was founded, CSTO is "fracturing, emphasizing the Kremlin's weakening hold on its neighbors."”

“Despite Russia’s ironclad commitment to defend the other member states from aggression, as is specified in Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty (akin to NATO’s Article 5), Moscow’s support never came.

Pashinyan noted that, thanks to Russia’s absence, Armenia and Azerbaijan have had to seek the help of Western institutions like the EU to come to a peace agreement, as “the security system in the region” — i.e., the CSTO — “is not working.”

Pashinyan threatened to have Armenia withdraw from the alliance completely.”

[quotesfrommyreading]

Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told the American public that “we have broken COVID’s grip on us.” Highlighting the declines in the rates of COVID deaths, the millions of lives saved, and the importance of remembering the more than 1 million lost, Biden reminded the nation of what was to come: “Soon we’ll end the public-health emergency.”

When the U.S.’s state of emergency was declared nearly three years ago, as hospitals were overrun and morgues overflowed, the focus was on severe, short-term disease. Perhaps in that sense, the emergency is close to being over, Deeks told me. But long COVID, though slower to command attention, has since become its own emergency, never formally declared; for the millions of Americans who have been affected by the condition, their relationship with the virus does not yet seem to be in a better place.

Even with many more health-care providers clued into long COVID’s ills, the waiting lists for rehabilitation and treatment remain untenable, Hannah Davis told me. “I consider myself someone who gets exceptional care compared to other people,” she said. “And still, I hear from my doctor every nine or 10 months.” Calling a wrap on COVID’s “emergency” phase could worsen that already skewed supply-demand ratio. Changes to the nation’s funding tactics could strip resources—among them, access to telehealth; Medicaid coverage; and affordable antivirals, tests, and vaccines—from vulnerable populations, including people of color, that aren’t getting their needs met even as things stand, McCorkell told me. And as clinicians internalize the message that the coronavirus has largely been addressed, attention to its chronic impacts may dwindle. At least one of the country's long-COVID clinics has, in recent months, announced plans to close, and Davis worries that more could follow soon.

Scientists researching long COVID are also expecting new challenges. Reduced access to testing will complicate efforts to figure out how many people are developing the condition, and who’s most at risk. Should researchers turn their scientific focus away from studying causes and cures for long COVID when the emergency declaration lifts, Davids and others worry that there will be ripple effects on the scientific community’s interest in other, neglected chronic illnesses, such as ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome), a diagnosis that many long-haulers have also received.

The end of the U.S.’s official crisis mode on COVID could stymie research in other ways as well. At Johns Hopkins University, the infectious-disease epidemiologists Priya Duggal, Shruti Mehta, and Bryan Lau have been running a large study to better understand the conditions and circumstances that lead to long COVID, and how symptoms evolve over time. In the past two years, they have gathered online survey data from thousands of people who both have and haven’t been infected, and who have and haven’t seen their symptoms rapidly resolve. But as of late, they’ve been struggling to recruit enough people who caught the virus and didn’t feel their symptoms linger. “I think that the people who are suffering from long COVID will always do their best to participate,” Duggal told me. That may not be the case for individuals whose experiences with the virus were brief. A lot of them “are completely over it,” Duggal said. “Their life has moved on.”

Kate Porter, a Massachusetts-based marketing director, told me that she worries about her family’s future, should long COVID fade from the national discourse. She and her teenage daughter both caught the virus in the spring of 2020, and went on to develop chronic symptoms; their experience with the disease isn’t yet over. “Just because the emergency declaration is expiring, that doesn’t mean that suddenly people are magically going to get better and this issue is going to go away,” Porter told me. After months of relative improvement, her daughter is now fighting prolonged bouts of fatigue that are affecting her school life—and Porter isn’t sure how receptive people will be to her explanations, should their illnesses persist for years to come. “Two years from now, how am I going to explain, ‘Well, this is from COVID, five years ago’?” she said.

A condition that was once mired in skepticism, scorn, and gaslighting, long COVID now has recognition—but empathy for long-haulers could yet experience a backslide. Nisreen Alwan, a public-health researcher at the University of Southampton, in the U.K., and her colleagues have found that many long-haulers still worry about disclosing their condition, fearing that it could jeopardize their employment, social interactions, and more. Long COVID could soon be slated to become just one of many neglected chronic diseases, poorly understood and rarely discussed.

  —  Long COVID is the emergency that won’t end

[hislittleraincloud]

I just wanted to contribute to your recent ask, if that's okay and I will be hiding behind an anonymous face, so apologies in advance but I'm anxious about backlash from others since I'm active in the fandom and I may piss some people off.

I agree with your statements about the incorrect use of nicknames toward whichever partner Wednesday is paired up with, it makes me cringe so much, especially with the 'Cara Mia' because like you, I cannot see Ortega's Wednesday using the same pet names that her parents use. Some people go ridiculously overboard with it, and I really enjoyed your breakdown over the incorrect use of the French pet names. Wednesday despises the sappy love between her parents, I highly doubt she would mimic that.

I've seen your posts pop up occasionally, I like some of the art you share, and I did try reading your story out of curiosity. But it did make me uncomfortable with the underage stuff due to past experiences, and that is okay for me to admit and doesn't mean you're a bad person for writing it. It's a fanfiction ffs, the same people upset about your pairing are probably having wet dreams over Wednesday murdering people or some other illegal shit 🤷‍♀️

I have respect for you as a person and writer, and how you've brought awareness to the transphobic nature of some fics, we don't need that in this fandom.

Nothing better to offset anon hate than anon respect. 💖✨

It's always okay to drop anything in my inbox if you're afraid of backlash due to popular shipping, but "YOU PERVERT, IT'S R#PE!!!" judgement should not be faceless. 🥹

It's also always okay to give reason to why any fic or pairing is something you avoid due to trauma, and you shouldn't have to say that aloud. At least, you don't to me. I sincerely hope that my post didn't come across as "U MUST READ MY SHIT NO MATTER WHAT BEFORE YOU JUDGE IT" to those (like you) who have terrible trauma surrounding the subject/content. If you have such trauma, then my tags should've been a warning, and I completely understand why you would not want to read it.

Hm, I'm also agreeing w the whole subject matter in general thing. I've seen a few fics where Wednesday is r#ped and/or tortured (usually by Tyler or Gatesmonster), but apparently others do, so whatever. 🤷🏽‍♂️ I can't impose on others my severe judgement on what gets others off (in terms of fiction and fictional characters), I can only say that Wednesday suffers enough mentally on a daily basis that I hate adding to that, or seeing it. N/C Wednesday is still precious to me, no matter how tempting it can be to smack her around a bit/knock her off her high horse (I was pleased though, when in canon she got her brow nicked...she hadn't had any reason to attack Bianca before then, aside from her calling her a psychopath (as if not everyone in the school already thought she was)...she was being a narc little asshole during the fencing scene).

As for the rest of it, I really didn't say anywhere that Wednesday shouldn't come up with any cute pet names for Enid, even suggesting that she could be creative enough to make her own compound words like "my little lupinette" (to me, something like that would make her bond with Enid much more tailored to whatever Enid brought out within her while distancing herself from becoming Mommie Dearest enough). Borrowing directly from them just... 💀 AB Wednesday is currently even more formal and uptight than any Wenclair Wends but is slowly learning, and in one upcoming scene she calls Donovan "Jim". My readers will see why (🤣🤣🤣).

Aside from crafting this Satisfying Universe, I had to sit and watch malignant psychopaths destroy the hopes and dreams of my fellow 🏳️‍⚧️ people in Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Missouri, etc. this spring and throughout the summer, so I'm especially peeved when I see anything that could be construed as trans exclusionary in here. I lost the Potter fandom to it in 2020 when JKR came out full TERF, even though we all kind of suspected it before. We never, ever had "Draco Malfoy x AFAB reader" or "Hermione Granger x AMAB reader" labeled fics. We didn't care what you were born with, genital-wise. Fiction is and will forever be an escape, so let's try to keep it that way. 🫠✨

Anyway, thanks for the message. I'm only sad that you feel like you need to hide, or that anyone feels like they need to hide. I understand it though.

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who 10 for 10 Part 10/10: Series 10 (900th Post Special)

2016, my final year of high school, was a wilderness year for both BBC Doctor Who and my personal project, though there were a lot of things going on behind the scenes. While Steven Moffat was working in full gear to prepare to wind down and hand things over to Chris Chibnall, I was putting my ideas together to relaunch my personal project after a two-year hiatus, adapting the three series of the Capaldi era while creating spinoffs to retell the past, connect the present and forge the future; a bit of a broad strokes reboot, if you will, considering the conflicting continuities of past writers and ideas. At the same time, Moffat created Series 10 as a bit of a reboot (at least for the first five episodes) to help bring in new fans in an attempt to end his tenure on a high note.

2017, my first year of university, was the year of peak internet drama for me, but it was also the year when my personal project reboot took off. Although my interests were beginning to shift from Doctor Who to tokusatsu and I was beginning to grow distant from the friends who I wanted to be with and the friends who were happy to be with me, my drive to tell new stories kept me slowly powering through as my personal project continued for 6 long years. It was that same drive (and other antics) that led me to win an award for “The Next Doctor Who” at my Year 12 formal (even though I was already the Doctor), an award that I look back with pride amidst the cringiness.

My era of Doctor Who was about to end, but my true era of Doctor Who was about to start. Let’s jump into the retrospective for Series 10 and send off a series that I promised for two years and finally got around to doing this year.

Also, before I go on, I'd like to point out that this is my 900th Post Special. It would have been really fitting for this post to be the 1000th Post Special, but sometimes things just line up differently. Anyway, onto the retrospective.

1. The handover

As work on Series 9 went on, Steven Moffat was prepared to finish his tenure on Doctor Who with the 2015 Christmas Special, The Husbands of River Song, which was originally planned to be his final episode. Chris Chibnall was coming out as a likely successor and there was no equivalent for Moffat in his era like in the RTD era (Moffat wrote 6 episodes in the RTD era before becoming showrunner); the non-showrunner writer who wrote the most episodes in the Moffat era was Mark Gatiss with 7 (2 more in the RTD era), but he was close with Moffat and so he would likely decline the offer to become showrunner. The next best choice, therefore, as the non-showrunner writer who wrote the second-most episodes in the series, would be Toby Whithouse with 6 (1 more in the RTD era). Chris Chibnall tied with Peter Harness and Jamie Mathieson as fourth-most with 4 each (including co-writer credits), but Chibnall wrote one more episode in the RTD era and he was the head writer for Torchwood, writing 8 of the 26 episodes in the first two series, so it’s reasonable that Chibnall would be the likely successor for Moffat.

Sometime in August 2015, Moffat met with Chibnall to formally offer him the showrunner position on Doctor Who. However, when he learnt that Chibnall was deeply immersed in developing the third series of Broadchurch, Moffat elected to stay for another series so as to give Chibnall time to work on it. As such, that meant that he would write the 2016 Christmas Special as well. The news of Moffat’s departure was announced at the start of 2016. Peter Capaldi was offered by Chibnall to stay on for Series 11, but he decided to resign with Steven Moffat as well. Production of Series 10 was delayed to the summer of 2016 for a spring 2017 broadcast, leaving fans with a full year between the 2015 and 2016 Christmas Specials, the longest on record for the revived series until the two year gap between Series 12 and 13 (Flux) in 2020-21. This gap was apparently to allow Chibnall to form his own production team, though other elements, such as Moffat’s commitments to the production of Sherlock and sporting events like the Euros or the 2016 Rio Olympics, could have been contributing factors.

Just before Capaldi’s departure was announced in January 2017, Moffat learnt that Chibnall didn’t want to start his tenure as showrunner with a Christmas Special and that he wanted to launch the Thirteenth Doctor with a full series. With no guarantee that the Thirteenth Doctor would be cast before production on Series 10 was finished and a fear of Doctor Who losing its place in the festive season schedule, Moffat and Capaldi committed to work on the 2017 Christmas Special and for better or worse, all was well until Chibnall decided to move the Christmas Specials to New Year’s Day.

2. #WhoviansAU

Back from 2005 to 2011, once you finished watching a new episode of Doctor Who in the UK on BBC One, you would turn over to BBC Three to watch Doctor Who Confidential. In Australia, we had something like that; the episode would be available on ABC iView on Sunday morning, right after it premiered in the UK, then it would be broadcast on ABC1 that night and then after that, a talk show called Whovians would be broadcast on ABC2 (later renamed ABC Comedy and now ABC TV Plus).

Whovians was a comedy talk show hosted by “Doctor Who superfan” Rove McManus along with a panel of Australian comedians. During its first season they also had interviews with some of the cast and crew from the series. They even had an interview with former Australian politician George Christensen, and regardless of what you think about his opinions on lockdowns or vaccine mandates/passports (or anything else, really), he did a pretty badass thing and that was presenting a motion in Parliament to encourage the BBC to film an episode in Australia to celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who in Australia (the first episode was broadcast on different days in each state from 12 January - 11 June 1965). There was a small scene and a brief shot of Sydney inserted into Series 10, but the scene was filmed in Cardiff with a greenscreen backdrop to give the illusion of the Sydney Opera House, which was an okay compromise, I suppose.

Before filming each episode of Whovians, the hosts and the audience would watch the original episode subject matter before they filmed the talk show episode itself. Sometimes they would even get an early copy of an episode, which is kind of baffling since if, as panellist Adam Richard claims, they filmed on a Sunday afternoon for broadcast that night (with little editing), then the episodes would have been up on iView already, though I suppose given that the next two series would have their first TV airings on Monday or Thursday nights, it’s kind of understandable.

The series continued to run alongside Series 11 and 12 (without the Festive Specials even though they did do an episode for the 2017 Christmas Special), but no series was produced for Series 13 (Flux) presumably due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Newcastle local division of the Doctor Who Club of Australia organised their version of Whovians on Zoom on Monday nights after each episode aired on ABC (TV Plus). Currently, the future of this series is unknown after the ABC lost the rights for future episodes to Disney+ and all the episodes are no longer available on iView, making this a lost series until someone makes it available. To me honestly, I’m not too fussed. The show was okay, but fans or not, I just wasn’t a fan of watching a bunch of nobodies giving their half-boiled opinions on a show like Doctor Who. I don’t think I continued following the series after the first one.

Feel free to check out Crispy Pro’s video on Whovians for more information on this talk show.

3. The Nardole Saga (and companion introductions)

Series 10 as a whole, along with the 2015-2017 Christmas Specials, form what I would like to collectively call “The Nardole Saga”, which is how I packaged Series 12 of Doctor Who for my personal project. This is of course, because of the involvement of Matt Lucas, who played the character of Nardole, originally working for River Song before having his head incorporated into King Hydroflax’s robotic body, then having it extracted and given a new body from spare parts, some cybernetic and some cheap, like his lungs, then becoming the Doctor’s companion, or rather, assistant, some time after.

Another notable thing to note is that Matt Lucas is a gay man, making for a more progressive TARDIS team when they were joined by Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts for Series 10; her character would be portrayed as an openly gay companion (like Jack Harkness wasn’t “openly gay” when he was introduced, oh but I guess being pansexual doesn’t count, but then again I think Moffat has some contempt for Torchwood) before Mackie came out as bisexual in 2020.

Lucas had enjoyed his time filming The Husbands of River Song and expressed an interest in returning. Since Moffat wanted a second supporting character for his reboot setting, he decided to reintroduce Nardole in a handful of cameo appearances, but when Moffat learned that Lucas was willing to commit more time to the series than he expected, he gave Nardole more appearances and even decided to reintroduce him in the 2016 Christmas Special, The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

I don’t have a lot to say about The Return of Doctor Mysterio. It’s about a boy who becomes a Superman-ripoff superhero known as The Ghost when a young Grant Gordon swallowed a gem the Doctor wanted him to hold while he tried to solve the time distortions in New York. It’s amusing to me that the characters of Lucy Fletcher and Mr Brock were played by UK actors who resembled Brittany Anne Pirtle and Najee De-Tiege, who played Emily and Kevin in Power Rangers Samurai, but I suppose it would have cost them more to cover flights and work visas. Also, Justin Chadwick and/or Brittany Anne Pirtle Charity Wakefield should have been credited in the opening credits. I swear, Peter Capaldi’s name holds for a couple of seconds, then there’s nothing else for a bit and then Matt Lucas’ name comes up after the Doctor’s face. I know the 2016 Christmas Special was produced as part of Series 10, but that’s no excuse. Then again, the production team were never consistent with their presentation of the Capaldi era title sequence anyway.

When Pearl Mackie’s casting was announced on 23 April 2016, the production team released a minisode on YouTube based on one of the audition pieces called Friend from the Future. Moffat wrote Bill’s debut episode, The Pilot, to make the minisode fit into the series, then most of the minisode’s dialogue was cut either for pacing or unimportance; he would later claim on The Fan Show that he ultimately deleted the scene because the audience was already introduced to Bill and so he didn’t need her to be introduced again in the episode itself. However, I honestly think the scene should have been included in the episode because not all new audiences will go out of their way to watch the minisode before watching The Pilot and as I’ve implied before, there’s no reason why such deleted-scene minisodes should have been deleted from their respective episodes in the first place.

4. Diversity, inclusion and whiny SJWs

OK, we need to address one of the big talking points about Series 10. Many critics of the Chibnall/Whittaker era who say that the series became woke with their era cite the roots of this to Series 10, though defenders may cite this to way back in 2005 or even 1963 as a rebuttal. In my opinion, the revived series has done politics more subtly before gradually becoming less subtle and more in-your-face over the years to the point where the Chibnall era lectures the audience about current-year politics to the point that they forgot to make the surrounding story entertaining.

When casting for the Doctor’s new companion, it was apparently agreed that only actresses of colour would be considered in an attempt to follow the BBC’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, which from 2016 to 2020, involved an on-screen portrayal target of 50% women, 8% disabled people, 8% LGBT and 15% ethnic minorities. Critics of such diversity quotas may argue that (white) men are becoming disenfranchised by such pandering measures, particularly when certain women and ethnic minorities push political correctness by way of accountability and compensation for past systemic injustices during a time when the world has never been more equal than ever before. Another argument used by critics is that such measures focus on identity rather than talent, apparently undermining the principles of a meritocracy, though I have to wonder how people can see talent beyond identity if they only focus on identity and not talent. It’s probably how we got such a mediocre cast in the Chibnall era and how RTD picked Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor when he already had someone else in mind.

It’s been said that Steven Moffat has received criticism during his time as showrunner for being sexist, racist, homophobic, everything that SJWs can think of under the sun and that he had to learn how to be woke in order to appease those critics. If you don’t believe me then I’ll leave a bunch of links below. By the way, a little disclaimer - the following links were compiled by Burrunjor, who has written super-long blog posts about the state of Doctor Who if you care to read through them. I don’t endorse his opinions nor do I agree with much of them.

Article 1: Why Third Wave Feminism and Social Justice Warriors Have Ruined Doctor Who

Article 2: What I Would Have Liked To Have Seen In The Peter Capaldi Era

I know the same can be said of the so-called NMDs in the Chibnall era (not that the above feminists and SJWs weren’t the NMDs of the Moffat era) but when I see stuff like this I just think, “God, can’t we all just enjoy something without expecting the production team to pander to whiny niche corners of the audience?” As I said in my concluding post for the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews:

RTD is someone who has been woke from the beginning, yet knows how to subtly incorporate politics in a way that still makes the episode entertaining; Steven Moffat is someone who had to learn how to be woke judging from the reception of Series 10; while Chris Chibnall is the r/FellowKids version of woke.

It might look like I’m siding with anti-SJWs with what I’ve written so far about the wokeification of Doctor Who in Series 10 (maybe also in the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews), but I’m more of a centrist who tries to get things from both sides in order to help the other side understand why they feel that way (and in some cases why they’re wrong).

Another point of contention is that Bill Potts’ homosexuality was “shoved down our throats”. Now, I didn’t really notice it or mind it while I was watching the series, but I wanted to see the extent of this for myself. Two users on Reddit’s /r/Gallifrey board have done separate studies on the sexuality of the revived series companions, but I wanted to do my own independent study because neither of them have provided detailed evidence of what was said in which episode to emphasise a companion’s sexuality. Going through the transcripts for Series 10, here are the references and inclusions of Bill Potts’ sexuality:

The Pilot: Bill is introduced from the outset to be a lesbian. At the start she talks about giving a girl extra chips because she fancied her. This scene: Moira: “You need to keep your eye on men.” Bill: “Men aren’t where I keep my eye, actually.”

Smile: N/A

Thin Ice: “So the Tardis has dresses and likes a bit of trouble? Yeah, I think I’m low-key in love with her.”

Knock Knock: This scene: Paul: “Bill, if you get scared in the night, you know where I am, yeah?” Bill: “What?” Paul: “Just if you need any er, of my help, or my whatever, you know?” Bill: “Yeah. Er, I get that you’re into me, but, um, sorry, you’re not my type. It’s just, er I tend to go for girls, usually, so…” Paul: “Oh. Oh, right! I was never in with a chance. Awesome!”

Oxygen: N/A

Extremis: In the Shadow World, Bill is shown on a date with Penny before they are interrupted by the Pope at the former’s home.

The Pyramid at the End of the World: On the Doctor’s suggestion, Bill goes on a date with Penny. They are back at Bill’s home when they are interrupted by the Secretary General of the United Nations and his soldiers.

The Lie of the Land: N/A

Empress of Mars: N/A

The Eaters of Light: This scene: Bill: “Ah. Lucius, er. Right, listen. There’s um… something I should explain.” Lucius: “What?” Bill: “This is probably just a really difficult idea. I don’t like men… that way.” Lucius: “What, not ever?” Bill: “Nah. Not ever. Only women.” Lucius: “Oh. Alright. Yeah, I got it. You’re like Vitus, then.” Bill: “What?” Lucius: “He only likes men.” Vitus: “Some men. Better looking men than you, Lucius.” Lucius: “I don’t think it’s narrow-minded. I think it’s fine. You know what you like.” Bill: “And you like both?” Lucius: “I’m just ordinary. You know, I like men and women.” Bill: “Ha! Well, isn’t this all very… modern.” Lucius: “Hey, not everyone has to be modern. I think it’s really sweet that you’re so… restricted.” Bill: “Cheers.” Lucius: “We can be friends, though. I did save your life. That means we’re friends forever.” Bill: (laughs) “Yeah. I can deal with that.”

World Enough and Time: N/A

The Doctor Falls: This scene, just before the final battle: Doctor: “So, if there’s anything we ought to be saying?” Bill: “I can’t think of anything. Can you?” Doctor: (thinks) “No.” Bill: “But, hey, um… you know how I’m usually all about women and… and… kind of people my own age?” Doctor: “Yeah?” Bill: “Glad you knew that.” Later, at the end of the battle, Heather returns to turn Bill into a sentient oil creature like herself before they bring the Doctor to the TARDIS and leave.

Twice Upon a Time: The following exchange between the Captain, Bill and the First Doctor: Captain: “So basically, we’re trying to track the Glass Lady, yes?” Bill: “Basically.” Captain: “A striking looking creature. Quite beautiful, really, isn’t she?” Bill: “Yeah, if you like ladies made of glass.” First Doctor: “Well, aren’t all ladies made of glass, in a way?” (laughs) Captain: (laughs) “Very good, sir, very good.” Bill: “Are we now?” First Doctor: “Oh, my dear. I hope it doesn’t offend you to know that I have some experience of the er, fairer sex.” Bill: “Me too.” Captain: “Good Lord.”

Now, from the above list, we can see that Bill being lesbian is only mentioned once or twice in some and depictions in a couple others doesn’t take up a good chunk of the episode, except maybe for The Pilot but that’s because the plot called for it. Not all episodes in the series have such depictions or references to Bill’s sexuality, though I might have missed some while writing this. As such, having references to Bill’s sexuality in almost every episode might be on-the-nose, but I don’t think it counts as being “shoved down our throats”.

However, Bill being a bit of a woke progressive and possibly an SJW, however, I can sort of get behind because she’s young, black, lesbian and she works at a university; my position would be strengthened if she were actually a student there. Again, I’m going to list some references from each episode of Bill being progressive, though keep in mind that some of them are more general:

The Pilot: I’m a bit meh on this, but… Heather: “There’s a puddle over there, but it hasn’t rained for a week.” Bill: “Yeah, but, well, you know, half the students here are blokes.”

Smile: “Is there going to be food sexism even in the future? Is this bloke utopia?”

Thin Ice: From the start of the episode: Bill: “Wait, you want to go out there?” Doctor: “You don’t?” Bill: “It’s 1814.” (points to her face) “Melanin?” Doctor: “Yes?” Bill: “Slavery is still totally a thing.” Doctor: “Yes, so it is.” This one’s more general and sign-of-the-times, but… Sutcliffe: “Who, who let this creature in here? On your feet, girl, in the presence of your betters!” Doctor: (punches Sutcliffe) “He’s human. Thirty one years of age. Low on iron.” Bill: “Yeah, that was pretty convincing racism for an extraterrestrial.” Doctor: “My thoughts exactly.” Same with this one: Doctor: “Er, you, boy! Remind me, what’s your name?” Perry: (mouth full) “Perry.” Kittie: “Perry. His name’s Perry. Why?” Bill: “Apparently, Lord Sutcliffe’s long-lost heir can’t be a girl.”

Knock Knock: N/A

Oxygen: Bill gets called a racist when she is startled by Dahh-Ren’s appearance. “Look, for the record, I’m not prejudiced. I’m usually on the receiving end.”

Extremis: Bill tries to walk in front of Nardole. Nardole stops Bill from doing so, but she says, “Yeah, totally not happening” before Nardole tells her that just as he is officially authorised to “kick the Doctor’s arse,” he will happily do the same to her if she doesn’t follow his instructions. Bill doesn’t react negatively to Nardole’s comment, but she asks him if he is “secretly a badass”.

The Pyramid at the End of the World: The Secretary General tells Bill that he wants to speak to the President, referring to the Doctor as the appointed President of Earth. Bill does not know this and thinks that he is talking about Donald Trump, to which she says, “I don’t know the President. How would I know the President? I mean, I wouldn’t even have voted for him. He’s… orange.”

The Lie of the Land: N/A

Empress of Mars: Colonel Godsacre laughs at Bill when she tells him that she and the Doctor are “sort of police”. Bill says, “Listen, yeah? I’m going to make allowances for your Victorian attitudes because, well, you actually are Victorian.”

The Eaters of Light: N/A

World Enough and Time: N/A

The Doctor Falls: N/A

Twice Upon a Time: Upon meeting Bill, the Captain initially believed that her life was being offered in exchange for his own and offered it to the glass woman, but Bill said that it was “totally not happening”. The aforementioned exchange between the Captain, Bill and the First Doctor. This: Bill: “You’re an arse. Do you know that? You- you- you- you’re a stupid bloody arse.” Doctor: “As I have always respected you.” First Doctor: (opens TARDIS door) “If I hear any more language like that from you, young lady, you’re in for a jolly good smacked bottom.” (goes back inside) Doctor: (shocked) “Can we just pretend that that never happened?” Bill: “I’m a broad-minded girl. I mean, I know we have this whole professor-student thing going on…” Doctor: “Can we just never, ever talk about this again?” Bill: “Yeah, I hope we talk about it loads. (chuckle) I hope we spend years laughing about it.” Bill offers to look after the Captain in the First Doctor’s TARDIS: Bill: “I’ll look after him.” First Doctor: “Good girl, quite right. Now, young lady, I don’t want to have to repeat myself.” Bill: “I don’t think any of us want that.” First Doctor: “I’ll see you both presently.”

Once again, I might have missed some references there, but an important thing to note is that Bill wasn’t the only character saying progressive things in Series 10; the Doctor had his fair share as well and there might have been other characters doing the same.

If we combine the references and depictions of Bill’s sexuality with the references of Bill being progressive, a few gaps are covered but there are still episodes where neither Bill’s sexuality or progressiveness were referenced. As such, the claim that Bill’s sexuality alone was shoved down our throats is a bit exaggerated, but if you want to combine that with her progressiveness and say that Bill’s progressiveness was shoved down our throats, by all means go for it. Some might see it as a negative thing, but that wasn’t really my line of thinking when I was watching the series as it aired. It might feel like Moffat wrote Bill the way he did because of the criticism he received about his era and it’s quite understandable, but I can’t help but think that it contributed to the declining quality of the series in the Chibnall era. Also, holy shit, this one point is 5 pages long when I drafted it in Google Docs. My rant about Hong Kong in the last instalment only took up 3.

5. The Vault

The main mystery for the first half of the series revolved around the Vault and the mysterious inhabitant within. Speculation was rife as to who was actually in the Vault; I remember someone on Whovians speculating that it might have been a past or future incarnation of the Doctor, unknown or otherwise, and Moffat had considered Davros being in it, however he ultimately decided to use Missy, and her character development would be the focus of the second half of the series. Series 10 gave quite a bit of focus on Missy which made up for her lack of appearances after the Series 9 opener.

Following his date with River Song on Darillium, the Doctor was called to a planet where Missy had been tried and sentenced to death, and the Doctor was to act as her executioner, after which Missy’s body would be placed into a Quantum Fold Chamber for a thousand years under constant guard. A priest interrupts the execution and a brief pause for divine intervention is approved, during which the Doctor learns that Nardole had followed him from Darillium to deliver a message of disapproval from River. As such, the Doctor swears to look after Missy’s body for a thousand years before proceeding to execute her anyway, but when the other executioners find that she is still alive, the Doctor reveals that he fiddled with the machine because Missy was his friend. When the chief executioner voices his outrage, the Doctor has him look up himself in the Fatality Index under “cause of death”; the ensuing results scare the executioners away and the Doctor and Nardole place Missy into the Quantum Fold Chamber, eventually going on to settle at St Luke’s University in Bristol, guarding what would now be known as the Vault for at least 70 years.

Nardole took up the responsibility of holding the Doctor accountable to his oath and would be dismayed, even outraged, when the Doctor went off-world with Bill, even to another time. The Doctor even gave Missy things like a piano, much to Nardole’s dismay. Eventually, the Doctor had no other choice but to enter the vault and consult Missy about the Monks. Following this, Nardole had to seek Missy’s help at one point when the TARDIS went back to Earth and he couldn’t get it back to the Doctor. Later, the Doctor would let Missy in the TARDIS but would essentially trap her in it while preventing her from operating it as well. I know Nardole may have had good intentions but the whole thing just made him a bit annoying in my eyes.

6. Truth

The highlight of Series 10 for me was the Monks three-parter, jointly written by Steven Moffat, Peter Harness and Toby Whithouse. It was highly inspired by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and his conquests against “fake news”, something that ironically rang true when he was elected late that year. However, given the state of current affairs in the years after Series 10 aired, this could ironically apply to Joe Biden and the left as well. This is what I feel is the problem with implementing current year politics in media; even if there are people who might like or not like the politics being shown, those politics might not age well in the years to come. Refer to my rant from the last instalment about the Zygon two-parter.

The background of this arc begins in Oxygen when the Doctor is rendered blind after he exposed himself to the vacuum of space to save Bill and get her to safety. Nardole is apparently able to restore the Doctor’s eyes at the end, but as he berates him, the Doctor reveals that he is still blind.

In Extremis, a shadow version of the Doctor gives the Doctor a message through his sonic sunglasses. In that world, there is a book known as Veritas that contains a truth so true that anyone who ever read or translated it committed suicide. The Pope brings the Doctor to the Vatican so he can read it for himself. Bill and Nardole discover a room with doors of light leading to locations of international importance, such as the Pentagon, the Vatican, CERN and the White House. Bill and Nardole learn about the shadow test from the people at CERN while the Doctor manages to listen to the Veritas despite being pursued by the Monks.

The Veritas is a story of a demon who wants to conquer the world, but because he needs to learn about it first, he creates a shadow world with people who think they are real. The shadow test involves people bringing up any number in any particular order and the results will always be the same because they are all in the same simulation. It works kind of like a predetermined algorithm in programming as in coding, there is really no such thing as a “random number”. The people committing suicide as a result of learning this is like people trying to break the cycle and rebelling against the programming.

Moving onto The Pyramid at the End of the World, the Doctor is summoned to Turmezistan (from Series 9) to investigate a pyramid that has appeared in the middle of a war zone between the Americans, Russians and the Chinese. They try to attack it from the air and from the water, but they prevent the attacks and rescue the soldiers. The Doctor learns that the Monks have simulated various scenarios of Earth’s future, detected a catastrophe in one and offered to stop it from happening, but the Monks must have pure consent out of love without fear, strategy or agenda; as such, the UN Secretary General and the American, Russian and Chinese soldiers fail to provide the right consent and are disintegrated.

Somehow, the Doctor manages to find a lab which is the accident the Monks have been waiting to happen; a misplaced decimal point created a bacteria that turns any living thing it touches into gunk. He sends Nardole back to the TARDIS while he creates a bomb to blow up the lab before it vents the bacteria out into the air. However, once he sets the timer on the bomb, the Doctor is unable to get out because the door uses a combination lock with no raised numbers or braille, the sonic screwdriver can’t manipulate the lock, it can only be opened from the inside due to the emergency protocol (because the lab person clearly messed up the numbers after she went through, the fucking dick) and Nardole is incapacitated due to the effect of the bacteria on his cheap lungs. The Doctor finally reveals to Bill that he has been blind all along and despite his protests, Bill gives her consent to the Monks in exchange for the Doctor’s sight, allowing him to escape.

Six months later in The Lie of the Land, Earth is under full control of the Monks, with transmissions and broadcasts being used to maintain their retconning of history to the population. As Bill talks to an imaginary fabrication of her mum as a coping mechanism, there is something I should point out. Bill’s mum died when she was just a baby and there is no mention of her dad (starting the hate on single fathers early, eh, Moffat?); Moira brought her up for presumably as long as she could remember. Bill’s mum apparently hated having her picture taken (how would she know this if she died when she was a baby, keep in mind that no other family members are mentioned) and when she brought this up to the Doctor after he failed to give her something for Christmas, the Doctor went back in time, took some pictures of Bill’s mum and left them as a present for Bill, which led her to form the imaginary fabrication of her mum. This plays a role for Bill in the finale and looking back, I think it might seem a bit less contrived if Bill had photos of her mum since she was a baby and what the Doctor actually took was videos of her to give Bill some voice samples. But then again, given my parents, you know what they say about meeting your heroes.

Nardole, having been incapacitated for six weeks, manages to find Bill and they set out to find the Doctor together, having spent the rest of the time “finding” him. They find the Doctor on a prison ship, but he has apparently joined the Monks. During the ensuing confrontation, Bill takes a gun and shoots the Doctor. The Doctor proceeds to regenerate, but he was actually faking it as he reveals that the bullets were blanks; the Doctor spent six months deprogramming people and exchanging their ammo, that is, with the exception of Dave.

Anyway, the Doctor and Bill briefly go back to the university and visit Missy in the Vault to discuss the Monks. The Monks take on the forms of a populace to get someone to consent to their help, then they create a psychic link with the person that makes them the anchor to keep them in power, making them the lynchpin. But since the brainwaves of that person wouldn’t be enough to cover the entire planet, they put up statues of themselves as transmitters to boost the signal. The lynchpin goes on through the person’s bloodline for generations until it stops somehow. Missy’s solution is to kill the lynchpin, which she learns is Bill, but since it would take ages, her other solution is to make Bill into a braindead vegetable so that her residual brainwaves blot out the false memories.

Opting for another solution, the Doctor and his group head for the pyramid which had been moved to London. They make it to the broadcast chamber, with the exception of Alan whose deprogramming failed due to an accident caused in a skirmish with the Monks and had to be knocked out with a Tarovian neck pinch from Nardole. Confronting the Giant Monk at the centre of the fake news, the Doctor tries linking into its mind to override the transmission, but he is unsuccessful. Bill decides to link into the Giant Monk’s mind herself, despite the Doctor’s protests, and she uses the image of her mum to open the minds of everyone in the world, causing them to rebel and the Monks to flee. So that’s how we defeat the Monks then, transmit the image of an imaginary friend (who happens to be a beautiful woman) across the world. Wouldn’t it have been creepy if that image was of someone’s crush and it got transmitted across the world? Ahahaha I’m fucking brain damaged lmao.

All in all, the Monk trilogy was pretty good, despite criticism that the third part fell off. It might have been better had Moffat actually co-written the third part like he did the second, or better yet, if all three episodes were an actual joint collaborative effort, but Steven Moffat’s mother was in hospital while he was writing his parts of the trilogy; he ended up having to type up the final draft of the second part at his mother’s bedside because there were only days left before the two episodes were to begin filming and production couldn’t be pushed back to later.

To highlight the parallels to Donald Trump, the Monks were villains who had good intentions, but they used underhanded techniques to maintain power over the populace such as using memory police to arrest people if they began to realise that they had only come to power recently instead of being there since the beginning of Earth. What other powers the Monks had is unknown since we never really see them in use. Speaking of which, how different would the world have been if the Monks had stayed in power, other than a retconned history and memory police?

In spite of this, Australia was largely protected from the Monks’ fake news thanks to the efforts of UNIT, the Power Rangers, the Kamen Riders, the Ultramen and the Space Sheriffs, but that’s more of a personal project thing.

7. Doctor Gatekeeper

Before I go on to talk about the finale, I want to talk a little bit about the state of the fandom since the airing of Series 10.

There’s been quite a bit of gatekeeping happening in various fandoms over the years, with people being told they’re not a (true) fan of something of they like or don’t like a certain thing, or if they express opinions about something which are apparently bigoted, then they’re not a (true) fan as it were. Let’s face it, I hate people who do this because they don’t know to what extent the other person is a fan of the thing. My bottom line is that a fan is a fan if they say, claim or believe themselves to be one. Though I believe there should be a certain expectation of knowledge as to what the source material is, the kind of fans it attracts and the culture that they thrive in, gatekeeping people from a fandom is detrimental to the tenets of fandom, which is people sharing their interests and passions with other people who have similar interests and passions.

At the 2017 BFI & Radio Times Television Festival, there was a Doctor Who panel with Steven Moffat, Brian Minchin, Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie. A fan revealed that they had been the victim of cyberbullying after being on set with Capaldi in the TARDIS some weeks prior and asked “the Doctor” what he felt about bullying and how he would fight it. After a kind comment from Moffat, Capaldi had this to say:

The essence of Doctor Who is kindness, you know, that is what really is underneath all of this; it’s that this is a person who moves through time and space and history, and all kinds of situations, and reacts to them, ultimately - despite the different way, the different versions of him may appear - he reacts with kindness. And that is how everyone who is involved with Doctor Who should be and how everyone who is a fan of it should be. If they’re not kind, they’re not receiving the show in the proper way and they’re not really a fan of it.

You can watch the panel, timestamped to the question being asked here.

In the Doctor Who fandom, people tend to point to comments like this as a justification for gatekeeping “bullies”, but in the end, this is just Capaldi’s own opinion. Maybe we can agree that the bullies are missing the point of the morals the show teaches the audience about, but we live in an age where it’s difficult to distinguish well-intentioned people from bullies, particularly with politics as polarised as it is to the point where both sides may not be right about some things, but they might not be wrong about other things either, hence my opinion on why gatekeeping is bad.

8. A perfunctory Time Team

This is more of a Chibnall era thing, but I just wanted to touch on how attempts from the production companies or their affiliates to participate in a show’s fandom can sometimes come off as out of touch.

In Doctor Who Magazine, there is a feature known as The Time Team. Three iterations of this team were featured over the years; the first team reviewed the classic series and TV movie from 1999 to 2009, then a second team reviewed the revived series up to The Almost People from 2011 to 2017. Following this, a third team, with more members than the last two teams, would make their debut in 2018, but instead of continuing to review the revived series episodes in order, they would review episodes based on a particular theme. Their run ended in 2019 and with it, the Time Team segment as a whole.

When they were announced, the Time Team were criticised for being diverse in everything but age, with the average age of the whole group being 22. They were also criticised for being biased as one of their members, Claudia Boleyn, was an outspoken feminist (she would leave after six issues due to “differences” with editor Benjamin Cook, though some speculate that it might be because Cook didn’t like her criticisms of Moffat’s writing), while another member, Christel Dee, was previously the host of The Fan Show and at the time, the digital marketing manager for BBC Studios, focusing on the marketing for Doctor Who Series 11, putting a bit of nepotism into the mix.

Finally, and this may be a bit subjective, but some members of the Time Team were also criticised for not respecting the classic series, with Miles and Luke saying that it relied heavily on cliffhangers and they were “cheap tricks” as a result, while Christel stated that she watches the classic series at 1.5 speed. Honestly, I don’t find the classic series interesting to watch because the presentation of the episodes wasn’t as vibrant and/or coherent than the revived series episodes (due to the production standards and broadcasting systems of the time), but I’m not going to slag it off because of that and if I really had to watch the episodes, I’d put some subtitles on because maybe then I’d find the stories easier to follow, not watch it at 1.5 speed.

Did you follow the Time Team and their commentary and if so, what did you think of it? Feel free to let me know.

9. The Fall of the Doctor

A couple of weeks before the series started, John Simm was announced to be returning as the Master. Some people say that the announcement spoiled his return when he was revealed in the series finale, but who cares, the Master was back and we would finally get an explanation for the Harold Saxon Master’s regeneration into Missy.

Following a teaser of the Doctor’s regeneration, World Enough and Time (a strange title for an episode) begins with the TARDIS on a colony ship reversing from a black hole. The Doctor sends Missy with Bill and Nardole in an effort to test her rehabilitation to the good side. An alien named Jorj comes out with a gun, saying that “they” are coming up because of Bill’s presence as a human. The Doctor comes out as well and during the ensuing confrontation, Bill is shot through the abdomen. As a group of Patients take Bill’s body away into the lower levels of the ship, the Doctor, Missy and Nardole try to get a hold of the situation with Jorj; originally, there was a skeleton crew of 50 people alongside Jorj, but when it was being drawn into a black hole, 20 engineers were sent to reverse the rear thrusters. Soon after, the Patients arrived and took the rest of the humans away, leaving Jorj behind as he broadcast a distress signal. It became evident that in the space of two days on Floor 0000, centuries had passed on Floor 1056. By the time the Doctor and Nardole got to Bill over two hours after their arrival, ten years had passed for Bill and she had been converted into a Mondasian Cyberman as the first subject of Operation Exodus thanks to the machinations of a man called Razor, who was actually a disguise for the Master, who had encountered his future self as well.

The story continues in The Doctor Falls and I can’t believe they missed the chance to call it The Fall of the Doctor. Whatever, I’ve corrected that for my personal project.

The Doctor is tied up while the Master and Missy taunt him, but unbeknownst to them, the Doctor reconfigured the Cybermen programming to target Time Lords as well. As Nardole finds an escape ship, Missy knocks her past self out and the Doctor is electrocuted by a Cyberman, though they eventually manage to escape to Floor 507 with Bill.

On Floor 507, the humans have been defending themselves from the Patients, or prototype Cybermen, even putting some of them up as scarecrows. Although Bill has been converted into a Cyberman, she has been able to retain her sense of humanity following the six months living under the Monks. Nardole helps the humans fortify their defences while the Doctor, the Master, Missy and Bill find some lifts so they can evacuate the humans. Missy summons the lift and a weapons-grade Cyberman comes out, which they quickly kill. Since Floor 1056 has had many years to build up an army of Cybermen, they can only go up a few floors as the attack phase of Operation Exodus begins.

Missy learns from her past self that after the Time Lords cured the drumming in his head and mutually kicked him out of Gallifrey, he landed his TARDIS on Level 1056, too close to the black home, and blew out his dematerialisation circuit going too fast before a scary lady made him promise to always carry a spare dematerialisation circuit, which turns out to happen as Missy gives the spare circuit to his past self. The Master and Missy decide to leave, but as Missy brings her past self to the lift, she gives him a hug and fatally wounds him, giving him enough time to get back to his TARDIS before regenerating. As Missy says that it’s time to stand with the Doctor, the Master denies this and gives her the full blast of his laser screwdriver, rendering her unable to regenerate before the Master descends back to Floor 1056. At the time I was okay with seeing the Master dead for good, which led me to be bewildered when Sacha Dhawan became the Master in Series 12. After thinking it over, I realised that the Master would never rob himself of chances to spite the Doctor, plus, now that he knew that he and his future self would end up killing each other, he would somehow be able to put a contingency plan in place that would allow him to survive past his Missy incarnation. Also, I think it’s good that we never actually see the Saxon Master regenerate because in my personal project, I have two other incarnations of the Master that came between him and Missy and actually seeing him regenerate would have really screwed things up.

With the Doctor now determining that the Cybermen will plan a bigger assault now that they know that they are a military target, he sends Nardole away with the other humans to Floor 502 while he and Bill make their last stand against the Cybermen. As the Doctor is continually blasted by a Mondasian Cyberman, he detonates the whole Floor 507, destroying most of the Cybermen for the time being. When Bill finds the unconscious Doctor and weeps over him, Heather arrives and turns Bill into a sentient oil creature like her. As they take the Doctor into the TARDIS and set it in flight, Heather reveals to Bill that she could make her human again, or they could travel the universe together. So once again, another companion’s death is undone like Clara’s was in Series 9. Bill and Nardole would make an appearance in a Doctor Who: Lockdown! short in 2020 for the tweetalong of the two-parter (set during the pandemic with a reference to Black Lives Matter, no doubt), plus the novelisation of the 2017 Christmas Special reveals that Bill decided to become human again, living with Heather before dying of old age, essentially rendering her previous death redundant.

The Series 10 finale was the start of a great send-off to the Moffat era and the revived series so far following all the returning characters and references in Series 9. It featured the return of the original Cyberman design alongside the Cybusmen after having very few returning elements from the classic series, though other Cybermen designs from the classic series did not make an appearance, making it less of a tribute to the Cybermen than Asylum of the Daleks and The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar was to the Daleks. However, it did acknowledge the differing origins of the Cybermen and explain it off as parallel evolution. We also get some archival shots of the revived series companions as well.

The TARDIS landed on the South Pole and the Doctor began to regenerate but he stopped himself from doing so, saying that he doesn’t want to change because he can’t keep on being somebody else. It is then that the Doctor encounters a distant yet familiar figure, namely his original incarnation, the First Doctor…

10. An extra epilogue

The 2017 Christmas Special, Twice Upon a Time, is a crossover with the First Doctor’s era, featuring David Bradley as he actually played the First Doctor instead of the actor who played him, William Hartnell, as shown in An Adventure in Space and Time. The story takes place towards the end of the First Doctor’s final story, The Tenth Planet, with about a minute’s worth of reconstructed scenes filmed as much of the story’s fourth episode remains missing, though much of it did not end up being used in the end.

As the Twelfth Doctor converses with the First Doctor, time suddenly stops as the two of them are met by an army captain (played by Mark Gatiss no less), who was about to die in Ypres 1914 when time stopped for him and he was transported to an unknown ship, only to end up on the South Pole as well when a timeline error occurred. The three of them enter the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS and it gets transported into the spaceship, where the First Doctor tries to speak to whoever took the Captain before the Twelfth Doctor reunites with Bill, who he suspects to be a duplicate. Upon learning that a glass woman is the one behind the recent happenings, the Doctors escape the ship with Bill and the Captain and they head to the First Doctor’s TARDIS.

The Twelfth Doctor begins to track the identity behind the glass woman and heads to the weapon forges of Villengard at the centre of the universe, where he meets with Rusty the Dalek (from Into the Dalek) and learns from the Dalek Pathweb that the glass woman is modelled on Professor Helen Clay of New Earth University, founder of the Testimony Foundation that travels through time and extracts people who are near the point of their deaths to extract their memories before putting them back without any memory of the process. Those memories would then be used in glass avatars so other people can interact with them. As such, the glass woman is actually a misunderstood villain because the intentions of her and her foundation were not malicious. Bill is also revealed to be one of those glass avatars as time stops again and the Doctors are told that the Captain needs to go back to his place in time to die.

The Twelfth Doctor requests that he and the First Doctor take the Captain back because it was their fault that he ended up at the South Pole due to them trying to die twice. The Captain is taken back to Ypres 1914 and he requests to the Doctor that he look in on his family, at which point they learn that he is Captain Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart. As the Captain’s memories of his encounter with the Doctors are erased and time restarts, there is singing from both the British and German sides; it turns out that the Doctor made a slight adjustment by a couple of hours because it was Christmas and both the British and German soldiers decided to stop fighting and celebrate.

As the armistice ends, the First Doctor leaves as he prepares to regenerate while the Twelfth Doctor takes a walk with Bill. The Doctor continues to doubt that Bill is real, which leads her to kiss him as she returns his memories of Clara, who also briefly returns to greet him. Nardole also appears as well and the Doctor gives the glass avatars of his companions the proper goodbye he never got to give. He heads back to the TARDIS and accepts that regenerating again wouldn’t hurt the universe before he regenerates (with a different effect to the one used previously). The Thirteenth Doctor emerges and the TARDIS begins malfunctioning, disappearing in an explosion as she falls over Yorkshire.

Twice Upon a Time was a pretty heartfelt episode and some decent filler, but amidst all the progressive references being carried over from the rest of Series 10, there was one thing that didn’t sit right with fans and that was the characterisation of the First Doctor, as he seemingly acted somewhat misogynistic and more in line with men from the 60’s. Even the version of the First Doctor in The Five Doctors, played by Richard Hurndall, wasn’t that obnoxiously repetitive in his misogyny to the point that he can be written off as just acting like a demanding old man. It’s like Moffat deliberately wrote him that way to show everyone how progressive he and Bill are. In the novelisation, which was written by Paul Cornell instead of Moffat, the First Doctor’s misogyny was played off as him purposefully pissing off the Twelfth Doctor (like what happens in other multi-Doctor stories), which frankly, is an absolute cope given how Cornell’s in the same ilk as Moffat and RTD.

Despite the clear shift in current year progressiveness compared to previous series, Series 10 was a rather decent series for something that essentially had to be thrown together. It also served as a great farewell to the Moffat and Capaldi eras and also, ironically, the quality of the revived series as a whole.

With Moffat’s departure, the nepotism of the Fitzroy crowd, represented by many writers of the Doctor Who fan club who met at the Fitzroy pub like Moffat, RTD, Gatiss and Cornell et al, had ended. However, the series would continue to be headed by another one of their ilk, Chibnall, alongside an actress hired out of diversity and nepotism, Jodie Whittaker (who worked alongside Chibnall on Broadchurch) and a new team of amateurish writers that would see the series falling to mediocrity and later, utter disrespect. Though the series would see another peak due to the prospect of a female Doctor, audiences gradually became disinterested as shown by the ratings. Eventually, RTD decided to make his return and possibly Moffat as well, showing how much the Fitzroy crowd nepotism was better to the fanbase given what we had seen in the Chibnall era.

If I had to compare the showrunners of the revived era to main writers and producers in tokusatsu, RTD would be like Naruhisa Arakawa and Yasuko Kobayashi with Naomi Takebe, Moffat would be like Gen Urobuchi (the Japanese Moffat) and Yūya Takahashi with Takahito Ōmori, while Chibnall would be like Toshiki Inoue and Shōji Yonemura with Shinichirō Shirakura. Neither era is perfect (some more than others), but in the end, the fandom’s collective appreciation of the series is what continues to bring us together (or rather should).

Doctor Who 10 for 10 has reached its end. I would like to thank everyone who liked the posts and read through this series that clearly got longer and longer with each instalment. For a couple of years, I wasn’t sure when I’d finally be able to get around to starting this series, but now I’m glad to have finally finished it, even if it took longer to write than I originally thought. If you want to read about my thoughts on the Chibnall era as it progressed, check out my Thirteenth Doctor Reviews. I also cover the details of my personal project in the Kisekae Insights series, so please feel free to check that out along with the other content I have to offer. Otherwise, I’ll be back to review Doctor Who with the 60th Anniversary Specials and Series 14, so I’ll see you all then.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By Jonah E. Bromwich

A lawyer from one of Manhattan’s most prominent law firms will lead the appeal of President Trump’s criminal conviction, according to court papers filed on Wednesday that formally announced the appeal.

The participation of the lawyer, Robert Giuffra Jr., a co-chair of Sullivan & Cromwell and one of New York’s better-known appellate lawyers, adds muscle behind Mr. Trump’s long-anticipated attempt to overturn his conviction. He was found guilty last year on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Mr. Giuffra’s involvement underscores how New York’s legal power players have warmed to the president. Mr. Trump was spurned by lawyers from major firms when he left office four years ago, but his second victory has brought about a sea change. Many large corporations and business leaders have lined up to support the second Trump administration.

“President Donald J. Trump’s appeal is important for the rule of law, New York’s reputation as a global business, financial and legal center, as well as for the presidency and all public officials,” Mr. Giuffra said in a statement. “The misuse of the criminal law by the Manhattan D.A. to target President Trump sets a dangerous precedent.”

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, declined to comment.

In a seven-week trial last spring, the district attorney’s office persuaded a jury that the president had approved the falsification of records to disguise a scheme to hide three potentially damaging stories from the public during his first White House run in 2016.

To conceal the last of those stories, prosecutors argued, Mr. Trump dispatched his fixer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who told the jury her story of sex with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen was then reimbursed in 2017, leaving a paper trail of 34 documents that prosecutors said were false business records.

Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, fought the conviction, but the president has named both men to high positions in the U.S. Justice Department. Now, Mr. Giuffra will face off against the district attorney’s head of appeals, Steven Wu, as the case is heard by a midlevel appeals court in Manhattan.

The case presents various issues for the court. Falsifying business records is a felony only if the records were faked to conceal a second crime. In Mr. Trump’s case, prosecutors argued that second crime was a violation of state election law that prohibits a conspiracy to promote a candidacy “by unlawful means.”

That complex legal theory was approved by the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, and a federal judge who evaluated the case, Alvin K. Hellerstein, took no issue with it. But it may be vulnerable to the scrutiny of appellate judges.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have also argued that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity last summer — a decision that fatally delayed a federal criminal case in which Mr. Trump was accused of working to overturn the 2020 election — invalidates some of the trial evidence.

Another vulnerability may spring from Ms. Daniels’s testimony. After her first morning on the stand, Mr. Trump’s lawyers moved for a mistrial, arguing that her graphic testimony about sex with their client had prejudiced the jury. Justice Merchan said that while he agreed that Ms. Daniels had said things “that would probably have been better left unsaid,” a mistrial was not warranted.

This month, Justice Merchan sentenced Mr. Trump, but gave him what is known as an unconditional discharge. The sentence carries no penalty, but formalized the president’s status as a felon. That status will stand until the appeal is decided.

Mr. Giuffra, and the other two Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers handling the appeal, Matthew Schwartz and James McDonald, all clerked at the Supreme Court and are partners at the firm. Their decision to take on the appeal is the latest link between the firm and the president. Mr. Trump named Jay Clayton, another partner, as his pick to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

The posture of the firm echoes that taken by high-profile business leaders across the country. But it is not wholly without risk: Some clients might look askance at any affiliation with a polarizing president.

Mr. Giuffra, who donated to Mr. Trump’s campaign and other Republican causes, was under consideration to represent Mr. Trump during his first term, but ultimately did not join his legal team.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.16 (after 1910)

1913 – Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan writes his first letter to G. H. Hardy at Cambridge, stating without proof various formulae involving integrals, infinite series, and continued fractions, beginning a long correspondence between the two as well as widespread recognition of Ramanujan's results. 1919 – Nebraska becomes the 36th state to approve the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. With the necessary three-quarters of the states approving the amendment, Prohibition is constitutionally mandated in the United States one year later. 1920 – The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France. 1921 – The Marxist Left in Slovakia and the Transcarpathian Ukraine holds its founding congress in Ľubochňa. 1942 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany begins deporting Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to Chełmno extermination camp. 1942 – Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard. 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker. 1959 – Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 205 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Astor Piazzolla International Airport in Mar del Plata, Argentina, killing 51. 1969 – Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before. 1969 – Space Race: Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of crewed spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk. 1979 – Iranian Revolution: The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt. 1983 – Turkish Airlines Flight 158 crashes at Ankara Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, killing 47 and injuring 20. 1991 – Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War. 1992 – El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, Mexico ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives. 1995 – An avalanche hits the Icelandic village Súðavík, destroying 25 homes and burying 26 people, 14 of whom died. 2001 – Second Congo War: Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards in Kinshasa. 2001 – US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War. 2002 – War in Afghanistan: The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban. 2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry. 2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state. 2011 – Syrian civil war: The Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) is established with the stated goal of re-organizing Syria along the lines of democratic confederalism. 2012 – The Mali War begins when Tuareg militias start fighting the Malian government for independence. 2016 – Thirty-three out of 126 freed hostages are injured and 23 killed in terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on a hotel and a nearby restaurant. 2017 – Turkish Airlines Flight 6491 crashes into a residential area near Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan, killing 39 people. 2018 – Myanmar police open fire on a group of ethnic Rakhine protesters, killing seven and wounding twelve. 2020 – The first impeachment of Donald Trump formally moves into its trial phase in the United States Senate. 2020 – The United States Senate ratifies the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement as a replacement for NAFTA.

[mysterymirrors]

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[aftaabmagazine]

Publisher's Introduction to "The Collected Works of Qahar Asi"

Beyond the Verse: Unveiling the Man Behind the Poet

No formal biography of Qahar Asi (1956-94) exists. Yet, like a puzzle, his life can be pieced together through scattered articles, videos, interviews with colleagues and family members, and audio recordings, a few of which are available in English. In this brief exploration, I aim to illuminate the enigmatic figure of Qahar Asi, delving into critical moments of his life and his impact on contemporary Farsi poetry by sourcing an introduction to his collected works.

The 2013 publication of "The Collected Works of Qahar Asi" offers glimpses into his life. We learn of the encouragement he received from his responsive high school Farsi teacher, شیراحمد حق‌پناه Sher Ahmad Haqpanah, himself a poet and author. 

Asi's development was further shaped by the mentorship of Sufi poet حیدری وجودی Haidari Wujodi and later his classmate نوذر الیاس Noozar Elias at دانشگاه کابل Kabul University. 

After graduating, his poetry took on a decidedly political tone. It protested the Soviet occupation and, at times, offered panegyrics to the resistance, as seen in his poem مردان عشق "Men of Ardent Devotion," which he recorded a video recitation. Yet, he was bitterly disappointed when these same resistance forces entered Kabul, engaging in acts of violence, destruction, and cultural erasure.

A reviewer of this collection remarked, "One notable feature of this collection is the removal of duplicate poems that had appeared in multiple collections. Additionally, poems written in local dialects are presented in their original form, with a glossary at the end of the book explaining any unfamiliar terms."

The collection also features unpublished poems, raising questions about whether Asi intended them for print—some may be unfinished drafts, while others, perhaps deemed too radical, never passed the Kabul censors' scrutiny. The book remains a rare find abroad, and it's unclear if subsequent editions have been printed since its initial publication.

— Farhad Azad, Spring 2024

- - -

This is the editor's introduction from the Collected Works of Qahar Asi, editor's Ahmad Maroof Kabiri and published in 2013 in Mashhad, Iran, by Badakhshan بدخشان Publications:

Born in the village of Malima in Panjshir, Qahar Asi entered this world on the fourth of میزان Mizan, 1335 (September 26, 1956), into a family of modest means. After early childhood, he began his education at the village mosque, followed by formal schooling at the Tanbana elementary school at six. His family later relocated to Kabul, where Asi attended the Abu ابوریحان بیرونی Rayhan al-Biruni Middle School and لیسۀ غازی Ghazi High School.

During his high school years, Asi's poetic talents began to flourish. His teacher, Sher AhmadAsi'sanah, recognized and nurtured his budding abilities, encouraging him to write more and refine his craft. At the end of each Farsi language and literature class, Asi would share his verses, earning the admiration of his classmates. This early recognition, a testament to his raw talent, laid a solid foundation for his future as a poet, inspiring him to continue his poetic journey.

In late 1358 (late 1979), Asi met Haidari Wujodi (1939-2020), a Sufi poet and mentor whose guidance in literature and mysticism profoundly influenced him. In early 1359 (1980), Asi entered Kabul University, a pivotal environment for his poetic development. He crossed paths with Azim Herati (Noozar Elias), a poet from Herat. Asi’s mastery of the quatrain poetry forms can be traced back to Elias’ influence, evident in their shared emotional depth and evocative imagery.

By 1365 (1986), Asi's intellectual and literary development had significantly accelerated, leading to a newfound maturity in his poetry. During this period, he arose as a pioneer of protest poetry and committed himself to literature, shouldering the pain of his people and their vulnerability. He evolved into an authentic voice of their suffering, and his poetry was a raw and resolute narrative of the human cost of conflict.

On a fateful Wednesday evening in Mizan 1373 (September 1994), a rocket explosion in Kabul tragically cut short Asi's life. He embraced martyrdom, joining the ranks of those whowAsi'sd sacrificed their lives for their beliefs.

Asi’s published works, both poetry and prose, include: “The Crimson Flower Collection,” “Melodies for Malima,” “The Garden of Lovers’ Divan,” “My Ghazal and My Sorrow,” “Alone but Everlasting,” “From the Island of Blood,” “The Beginning of an End,” “Of Fire, Of Silk,” “The Year of Blood, the Year of Martyrdom,” and “The Collected Works of Qahar Asi.”

Asi’s poetry, rich in thematic depth and purpose, represents a fresh current in Farsi literature. He pioneered a bold and dynamic style, championing a more authentic and impactful art form. His verses seamlessly blend the unique spirit of his homeland with universal narratives, incorporating elements of humor, heroism, and realism. This unique blend of local and universal themes in his poetry invites the audience to connect with his work on a deeper level.

Asi’s poetic forms are diverse and varied, unrestricted by any rigid framework. He excelled in free verse and traditional classical forms, showcasing his versatility and talent. This duality in his poetical structures strengthens his poetic originality and demonstrates his exceptional capabilities, intriguing the audience with his creative approach to poetry.

In essence, Qahar Asi was a fearless poet, a true champion of the people, and a visionary who yearned for an open and humane society.