#and rory era came after that

[nomaishuttle]

if i had allowed pics of me when i was 13 i could shoe you guys but j literally was proto (character). like my hair my cothes it was so her.

[universalitgirlsblog2]

💖💋🥂IT GIRL ERA 2024💖💋🥂

💋1) Start putting yourself first . Choose yourself Put your own needs and wants first. What do they advice in flight ? First put your oxygen mask and then try to put others oxygen masks. It is not about oxygen masks.

💖2) Get a social media detox. Social media can be very toxic. We often get into fights with strangers or see toxic people in the comment section or compare ourselves with others. Get off Tumblr , Instagram , Facebook etc. It will help you alot.

🥂3)Get rid of victim mentality. Victim mentality can make things worse for you. You aren't a victim of your reality , you are the creator of your reality. Start taking responsibility and control of your life .

💋4) Believe in yourself . Like Elle Woods said , " most importantly you must have faith in yourself." You must have unwavering faith in yourself . It doesn't matter if others perceive you as less , make sure you don't perceive yourself as less. Your opinion of yourself matters the most.

🥂5) Start taking care of yourself. Self care will save you . Always put your self care first. Go to gym or workout at home. Do skincare. Take care of your hair. Get a mini hair spa. Self care will increase your energy and lower your stress levels. It will boost your self-esteem too.

💖6) Create a vision board. You can make vision board on Pinterest or make one in real life. Just make sure it inspires you and reminds you of your goals. Vision boards are very powerful tool.

💋7) Stop focusing on others. Focus on you. Don't think good or bad about anyone . Be focused on how you can make yourself better. If you don't get time to think about others , good ! Focus on yourself. Except the ones who are close to you , you shouldn't think about others or compare yourself . Just focus on how you can get ahead and make yourself better. I hope this made sense.

🥂8) Love yourself. Self love will save you. Listen , write or speak affirmations. Adopt the IDAF mindset , stop caring about others opinions. Don't compare yourself with others. Let go of toxic cycles and people. Be kind to yourself.

💖9) Remember what Jang Wonyoung said ? I DON'T CARE. YOU ARE YOU , I AM ME . ADOPT THIS MENTALITY. Enter your wonyoungism era !! Wonyoung said that if it's something she didn't do , then she doesn't care. That's where her iconic statement " you are you I am me " came from . Start being okay with people misunderstanding you. Don't try to explain yourself and waste your energy.

💋10) Give importance to your education . Education is the most powerful weapon. Read books. Watch documentaries. Study to learn , not just for good grades.

🥂11) Value your time. Realize how important your present moment is. Don't waste time on unproductive things. Do things that your future self will thank you for . Don't do things that your future self will curse you for.

💖12) Have different role models for different things. Let's say for developing a strong mindset , you can look upto Song Jia , Wonyoung or The wizard liz and for academics , you can look upto Hermione Granger , Elle Woods or Rory Gilmore .

💋13) Stop fighting with stupid people. Even strangers online ! Honestly , strangers online can be very toxic , annoying and stupid. Don't waste your energy arguing with stupid people or people who aren't willing to understand or listen .

💖14) Stop looking yourself through the lens of your past self. It's okay if you made some mistakes . Mistakes are the proof that you are trying. Forgive yourself and learn from them. Stop putting yourself down and keep those mistakes as a lesson. Yes you made some mistakes but after those mistakes , you learnt and made yourself better.

🥂15) No more self- depreciating humor. Your mind doesn't know the difference between reality , fiction or a joke.

💖💋🥂This advice is very basic and simple. But this advice will help you alot. Don't just read this post , make sure you follow this. Happy new year !!! 💖💋🥂

[sxljcel]

Difficult night...🩸(Hungry!Rory Keaner x Reader)

First of all, let me know that this is my first one-shot, and in another language that is not my original one! I apologize in advance for spelling mistakes, discomfort to the reader and errors in the plot of the history. Thank you for reading! 🦒

Context: Rory comes to your house after wasting his energy in a fight and without having eaten anything. Without any choice, you must do your part to save your vampire boyfriend.

Warnings: Blood streak, swearing, addiction, Rory herself.

To begin with, that day had not been normal. As your boyfriend Rory had told you, that day he and his friends had a big fight with a group of foreign vampires who had gone to cause trouble in the village. Luckily, they managed to eliminate them in time, but Rory had ended up spending more energy than necessary helping in the fight...

Now, after that big confrontation, Rory decided to call you on the phone to ask if she could come and rest with you that night, since she wasn't feeling well at all. Since you thought it was a simple whim of your boyfriend, you said yes, as long as his mother knew.

In a matter of seconds he was already knocking on your bedroom window. He seemed really agitated, although you were aware that that wasn't possible.

Rory shuffled towards you and wrapped you in a tight hug as he inhaled your delicious scent. Then, you both talked about your days and just lay down together in your bed, you to sleep and him to try to clear his mind of what happened...

In the middle of the night you woke up suddenly, to the grunting and movements that Rory kept making next to you. When you turned around, he had his back to you, squirming with concern. You asked him if he was okay, and he answered:

"I'm so hungry... My stomach is bothering me more than usual!"

You tried to find the logical solution, but you didn't know what your boyfriend was really going through. "And why don't you go hunt something outside? I'll wait for you here."

"That's the problem. I already went hunting for all the squirrels and rats I found out there but nothing seems to be working. This is seriously starting to hurt."

You thought as you saw your boyfriend still with his back to you. Remembering how I had told you the story of that afternoon with the vampires, the only idea that came to mind was that Rory's hunger She was more serious than a couple of small animals. Maybe something bigger could help him... Something more applied to his «needs».

"Rory, look at me."

He refused, shaking his head. You knew him too well to know that he had his eyes closed.

"Rory, look at me now! Please"

De la manera más lenta y abrupta de la historia, Rory se giró con los ojos cerrados y las manos hundidas en el pecho. Parecía estar sufriendo mucho. Dudaste antes de proponerle tu idea, ya que sabías que era arriesgada, pero ya no podías ver a tu novio así sin hacer nada al respecto.

"Rory, I want you to bite me."

Your boyfriend opened his eyes wide, almost looking into your soul, as he frowned and sat on the bed, moving away from you.

"What!? Are you crazy? No! I'm not going to touch you even a hair"

"Rory, you're starving! And I have the blood you need." You got up to sit next to him, but he walked away almost instantly, crashing his back against your window next to the bed.

"Don't say it! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Rory covered her ears and closed her eyes tightly again.

"Rory, don't be childish." You removed your hands from his ears and stared into his eyes until he opened his. He looked scared, you could see it in his face.

"I don't want to kill you, I don't care how hungry I am, I'm not going to touch you!"

"You're going to have to do it if you don't want to starve yourself, although I don't know if that's possible..."

Rory looked at you suspiciously, because he knew that he didn't have good self-control when it came to human blood, much less one that smelled so good and was in abundance for him.

"But if I leave you dry and I can't save you? I would never forgive myself."

"Rory, let's be honest, you have fallen in love with a different girl every day of your life before we met. If something happens to me, you'll most likely forget it within a week." Rory made the most offended face she could muster at that moment, scowling like an angry grandfather.

"No! How can you think that about me? I love you!"

"I love you too Rory, so stop make this harder than it already is and suck my fucking blood!" Without thinking twice you took Rory's face in your hands and brought his mouth closer to your exposed neck, letting all your scent hit Rory's nose like a bullet, stimulating him immediately pulling his sharp fangs out of his mouth and rubbing them against your bare skin.

"Ah... Don't make me do this!" He moaned as his hand intentionally landed on the other side of your neck, squeezing just enough to leave a mark. His voice trembled like his entire body, and it sounded deeper than usual.

"Hurry before I regret it, Rory."

They remained silent like that, you waiting and him undecided about what to do. He breathed deeply into your neck, inhaling as much as he could of your lovely scent that was so hypnotizing to him.

"Do you promise that if anything goes wrong... Your spirit will torment me for the rest of eternity until I am killed?" Rory murmured, reaching your ears as a final surrender.

You smiled silently, tilting your head further to the opposite side, giving him more space to bite. "I promise you"

The silence stretched before Rory pulled away from your neck roughly. You pulled away from him disappointed.

"Wait, I better bite you somewhere else, I don't want to sink my teeth into your jugular by accident..." Rory took your bare arm and caressed it as if it were a soft cloth. He brought his nose close to the veins in your wrist and sniffed deeply at their aroma, sighing heavily as if he were getting high with your smell. "Have I told you how delicious you smell? You're like my personal brand of kryptonite..." Rory left the long kiss on your hand, leaving a small path towards your knuckles and then returning to your wrist.

"You couldn't last a minute without saying something nerdy, right?"

"I'm sorry, I had to take advantage of the opportunity..." He smiled at you with his glistening fangs out and his eyes locked with yours before returning to your forearm.

Rory licked her lips before opening her mouth wide near your forearm just below your marked veins on your wrist. You closed your eyes with sneakers and waited for the pain. "Promise me you'll scream if it hurts."

"Yes Rory, I get it!"

"Okay...Anxious"

You felt Rory's teeth graze your skin, making it crawl completely. Suddenly the stinging pain began to spread through your forearm, as if a large wasp were stinging you. Then he began to suck the blood like a syringe. Rory grunted in pleasure as he increased the pressure on his hands on your arm, deepening his bite at the same time. You weren't going to lie to yourself, it hurt, it hurt so much, but you knew that your boyfriend's life depended on this and your joy at being able to help him outweighed your pain.

Rory for her part seemed to be enjoying the moment now, starting to let strings of saliva fall from your forearm onto your sheets as she swallowed drop by drop of your precious nectar.

You began to feel dizziness that intensified until you began to see blurry. With all your strength you raised your other arm towards your boyfriend's blonde hair and pulled him in the opposite direction to your forearm. Rory seemed to object for a moment, growling like a cat with a steak in its mouth, the feeling inside your veins unsettling. You hit his hair a couple of times and pulled his hair until ripping out a few strands of his hair, that's when he stopped and released your arm from his teeth.

"Ouch! Why did you do that? I told you to scream if it hurt." Rory rubbed his head where you had pulled out the small strands of hair. His bloody teeth gave you a bit of an impression, although you always thought your boyfriend looked sexy in blood. running down his lips and chin.

You had trouble speaking, your eyes felt heavy, and the bite continued to bleed. You tried to speak but nothing but incomprehensible moans came out of your mouth. Finally your head fell into your hands of Rory.

"Oh no! No, no, no, no. Wake up, don't close your eyes, talk to me darling, tell me you're okay!" Rory patted your cheek as she opened her eyes and shook you, she was panicking. She ran out and came back a second and a half later with a bottle of water and a bag of chips.

"Here! Drink it all" Rory held the bottle for you since you were too weak to hold it yourself. You spit out the water when you almost drowned and wet his entire sheet, again.

"Don't worry, do not worry everything will be fine" You smiled at the thought that Rory was giving you words of support. "Pretend you know what you're doing, don't panic Rory" Your face couldn't show all your disappointment at all.

The rest of the night passed with Rory bandaging your wound, leaving kisses on it and all over your body while you tried to regain strength with the food that he brought you from time to time. You knew he still wasn't completely satisfied since vampires always thirst for blood, but at least the pain was no longer present in either of you.

"Precious, thank you for saving my life. I swear that your blood is the most delicious I have ever tasted after Ethan's blood."

"At what moment did you-?"

"Shh, don't waste your little energy on stupid questions. Better rest, sweetheart."

Rory covered you with the warm sheets of your bed as he cradled you in his chest and caressed your cheek gently. From that moment you knew that he was not capable of killing you even by accident.

[autisticlenaluthor]

Hi, my name is Rory, I’m going to the Eras Tour in Amsterdam on July 5th and if you guys could somehow help me get this to @taylorswift / @taylornation - it would mean so much to me

Three years ago, I went from being perfectly healthy, to watching my body and my health rapidly deteriorate. My entire world got turned upside down— I lost the ability to eat, drink, and even stand for more than a few minutes.

I don't remember much from when I first got sick. But I know I listened to Mr Perfectly Fine on a loop almost every day because it was the only song that could capture how I felt. I've known and loved Taylor's music since I was six-years-old and first heard the album Fearless. i remember the first song I ever heard (love story) like it was yesterday; but somewhere during that time, her music became like therapy for me.

Since 2021, I've been diagnosed with three incurable diseases. two of these are rare, and one is predicted to only get worse with time. I've spent countless days inpatient on the peds floor receiving treatment, tests, and surgeries. And through all of it-- I've leaned heavily on Taylor's music.

My mom bought our Era's tour tickets last summer during the Europe pre-sale. I was in the hospital at the time and immediately told all of my nurses, doctors, dietitians and basically anyone who came into my room, that a year from then, i'd be seeing taylor swift. Whenever I could get out of bed, I was in the playroom with my child life specialists, making friendship bracelets to give out to other Swifties at the show. The thought of going to the Eras Tour singlehandedly kept me going through the hardest time of my life. And it's kept me going ever since.

Months later, I was hospitalized again, right before the release of 1989 TV. I'd been admitted the day after seeing The Eras Tour Movie in theaters (I was in theater 13, row 13!!) and I remember being so relieved that I hadn't had to miss it.

I had become known by most of the nurses as "the Taylor Swift girl” and the night before another procedure, I stayed up until midnight with everyone else so I could listen to 1989 TV. Hearing those songs-- I felt the happiest I'd been in so long. I felt normal again. I was sick and I was alone but I was connected to every other person who'd stayed up with me and that feeling was indescribable.

Taylor gave that to me, and so much more.

Over the course of my journey, I've listened to Sparks Fly to keep me calm while my doctors inserted feeding tubes down my nose. Whenever I have to be put under anesthesia, I have a nurse put her music on shuffle so I can listen to it as I fall asleep. When I had my big surgery in December, the last thing I remember was Bad Blood playing in the OR and saying "this is a funny song to have surgery to".

All of this is to say, Taylor has given me strength and hope during the worst part of my life, and she continues to do so. Her music is truly everything to me and getting to go the the Era's Tour is already a dream come true on it's own. And if it's possible - being able to receive the 22 hat and give Taylor a friendship bracelet would make all of that pain feel worth it. It would mean everything to me.

if you could reblog this and tag @taylorswift and @taylornation I'd appreciate that so much!! thank you to everyone whose read this far, and everyone whose shared this <3

EDIT: I’m going to be in section 119, row 20, seat 11

also if anyone is interested, I included some pics of the mentioned moments below the cut!

seeing the eras tour movie the day before having to be admitted, and then making friendship bracelets for tour in the hospital

the mirrorball is hung in my room for good luck

the bracelets i’d started making in the hospital, right after getting the tickets

and the day of the 1989 TV release - id stayed up until midnight to listen to the album, and then had my anesthesiologist play ‘Style’ for me to play while they put me out for my procedure

[the-overreactress]

I didn’t watch Gilmore Girls as it aired, and there are definitely people out there (likely some of my mutuals!) that watched it in 2000-2007. (For the record, I started watching it in syndication sometime around 2008.) But the thing is…I notice more and more that the show is intentionally misinterpreted or dissected using the standards and ideals of the 2020s. And you know, that tracks because it happens a lot with shows made during the 90s and early 00s. (Looking at you, 7th Heaven 😬)

I just…I feel like we also have to understand the cultural context for why a show like Gilmore Girls or any of the other WB teen dramas were made. The WB channel was created in the mid-1990s for several business related reasons, but one of them was to compete with teen programming made by UPN and Fox. The WB went through a lot of iterations (e.g. picking up Sister, Sister, original: the Jamie Foxx Show, Buffy, Felicity, Dawson’s Creek), but it’s primary focus at the time was making content for teenage girls. Gilmore Girls was the channel’s saving grace after a dip in viewing in 1999 until 2006 when the CW was formed with CBS.

Everyone has likely heard the story that ASP actually came up with the premise of Gilmore Girls on the spot when in a pitch meeting at WB, and it all evolved from there. The thing is…I just…other than the Connecticut setting and the WASP-y Gilmores, the references, music, and jokes of Gilmore Girls are entirely unique and pay homage to a bygone era of comedy. They’re also products of their time, both in positive ways and negative ones (i.e. any of the fatphobia jokes).

However, there’s not anything basic or cliched about having the likes of The Shins or any of the other alt/indie bands Lane, Rory, Jess, et al. listen to on a tv show in that era. In terms of music/soundtrack, Gilmore Girls is actually fucking stellar and better than the vast majority. You have to imagine Amy and the other music supervisors really knew what the fuck they were doing. (I’d kill for a biopic showing the making of Gilmore Girls from this angle!) Lorelai has peak Gen X taste, while Jess, Rory, and Lane are part of that really cool generation of Gen X/Millenial cuspers who got the best of the 80s, 90s and 00s underground.

Watching Gilmore Girls practically requires you to build up a certain level of pop cultural literacy. It’s actually why re-watches of the show are so great. You see and hear things you may not have seen or heard when you were 11, 15, 18, or even 28. I just wish this part of the show was given more attention and credit, in addition to the plots, characters, and fashion. It’s just as much part of the iconography of Gilmore Girls as the other things (if not more!)

[insxghtt]

do you hate me? — euronymous x mean girl!reader

Maybe Euronymous liked you more than he should.

warnings: beating nazis i guess (you'll understand). mostly fluff as always.

this is a fanfic for RORY CULKIN ONLY. i don't even know the real story of mayhem really, i just watched the movie and to be honest i didn't even like it so....... idk sorry, i am in my rory culkin era and i will make it everyone's problem.

The first time Euronymous saw you, you were not in a good mood.

Well, it was difficult to ever see you in a good mood. You came from a not so loving family, so you learned how to defend yourself from a very young age. It’s not like you chose it, you just learned that there were two types of people in the world: the ones who fight, and the ones who get hurt. It was about survival, so you did what you had to do, you built your walls and they were fucking strong.

Some people would be surprised. Euronymous was. You didn’t look very threatening, that was a fact. You liked pink, you loved makeup, you had a sweet smile. It's why he felt so confused when he first saw you walking inside his record store.

Your hair was tied in a bun, your earrings were golden, the pink shirt you were wearing ended just above your stomach, showing off your belly piercing. Your boot-cut jeans and high heels completed your look. You were definitely not fitting in. All the other people in the store were either wearing all black clothes or something dark with a weird band logo in it.

A couple boys tried to scare you as soon as you stepped in, yelling “Hail Satan!” right at your face.

Euronymous smirked, wondering how long it would take for you to realize that you walked in the wrong store.

But you weren't scared. In fact, you stared at the two boys in complete silence. For a moment, they laughed, but soon their smiles began to fade out. Something about your look, your presence and even the way you chewed your gum was fucking scary.

“The fuck you lookin’ at?”, you asked angrily and the two boys just looked away, too afraid to say anything else. “Fuckin’ assholes”, you whispered to yourself as you walked to the balcony, where Euronymous was still staring at you, but this time with surprise.

You stopped right in front of him. The look on your face was serious, and he felt the urge to say something that would make your face twist in disgust. After all, it was his favorite thing to do.

“You sure you’re in the right place, cupcake?”, he jokes.

You just ignored his question.

“Listen, I need a dark fucking mindblowing death metal album or some shit like that, what do you have?”

“This is fucking Helvete. Everything here is metal”, he laughed and leaned on the balcony.

You sighed and rolled your eyes. “Okay, mister… whatever the fuck your name is…”

“Euronymous”, he added. “My name is Euronymous.”

You felt his friends around looking at you.

“Of course it is…”, you continued, feeling impatient to leave that place. “Look, I have a brother who’s into this…”, you gestured with your hands to the records around. “...type of shit and tomorrow is his birthday. I don’t know if your brain is rational enough to notice, but this is really not my thing, so I’m gonna need some help, okay?”, you gave him a sarcastic smile.

Euronymous liked it. The attitude, the way you were not threatened by anyone there at all. Shit, he even liked the lip gloss in your lips and he was far away from being a lip gloss admirer.

And he had no idea why he liked it.

“Alright”, he nodded, not taking his eyes away from you for even a second. “So, is he really into it or is he a poser?”

You had no idea what he was talking about. “You’re asking me if he’s a satanic freak who wants to burn down churches and eat priests for breakfast?”

“Wow, she’s fast”, he said with a smile and his friends laughed.

“Yes, he is.”

“Alright”, he said, disappearing behind the balcony to grab something.

He knew exactly what you needed. That is, if your friend was not a poser, of course. He grabbed his own band’s record and showed it to you.

You stared at the record and looked back at him. “Okay…”

“It’s my band.”

“This is weird”, you whispered to yourself and the guy in front of you gave you a smirk. “Whatever, how much for it?”

“If you give me your number, it’s for free.”

“That’s not happening, but I appreciate your trying.”

You paid for it as you watched one of his weird friends putting the record in a plastic bag. Euronymous made sure to take it from his friend's hand to give it to you himself and when you grabbed the bag, you felt his fingers touching your hand.

"Freak", you whispered to yourself and he laughed as you turned away to leave.

Euronymous wouldn't say it out loud but he even found himself thinking of you after that.

The second time he saw you, you were beating the shit out of a boy outside of a bar. The boy was on the ground already wrapped up in a ball.

"Fuckin' nazi!", you yelled as you kicked the guy on the stomach one last time. 

Later, he found out that you were very good at beating the shit out of nazis.

As soon as you noticed Euronymous watching you sent him a deadly look. Euronymous would even be scared if he wasn't… well, himself. That was one thing you had in common, you two were not easily threatened.

"What do you want?", you asked.

"Nothing", he shrugged and grabbed a cigarette from his pocket, putting it between his lips.

He turned away for a second but soon he turned back to you, removing the cigarette from his lips and putting it back in his pocket. You stared at him curious to what he had to say and he thought to himself if he should really say it.

But you only live once, right?

"Can I buy you a drink?"

Euronymous felt nervous as he watched you thinking about it.

But it was only a drink, right?

So to his relief, you also shrugged and nodded.

You two walked in the bar and he did buy you not one, but two, three, four drinks. You found yourself laughing at one of his jokes at some point and you wondered if it was the alcohol or if you were actually enjoying his presence.

"So, why did you move here?", he asked with a smile. "I mean, it's not like this is a dream city."

"Well, I like it here", you said. "And also the rent is cheap."

He laughed, but didn't say anything. Then you realized he wasn't satisfied with your answer. He wanted to know why.

"I ran away", you answered honestly.

"What did you run away from?"

Maybe if it was anyone else, this would be the perfect moment for you to push them away like you always did. But it wasn't anyone, it was him. And you enjoyed talking to him.

"My family. I ran away from my family."

Euronymous nodded, knowing that there was a line that he couldn't cross yet. Of course, he could ask more. He wanted to, but more than that, he wanted you to do that by yourself.

"I get it", he said.

"Of course you do."

Euronymous looked at you, so you explained. "Look at you, all angry at the world."

"My family is pretty nice, actually."

This time you were the one feeling surprised.

"Really? So you're a family guy?", you asked. "Then why do you act like you hate everyone?"

He thought about it for a second.

"I can still hate everyone except for my family", he gave you a smirk.

You smiled. Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was the fact that he had those big beautiful blue eyes, but you were mesmerized by how pretty he was.

"Do you hate me?", you whispered as you got closer to his face.

Euronymous stared at your lips. You were so different from him and he, for some reason, was loving it.

"No…", he whispered back.

He didn’t kiss you that night. You turned away before he could do that, distracted by a song playing in the background. You stood up from your chair and offered him your hand, asking him to dance with you. Euronymous hated that song and if it was anyone else asking him to dance, he would immediately decline and leave. But it wasn't anyone, it was you.

So he danced with you. The first minutes he had a frown on his face, but it faded away as soon as he saw you almost tripping on your own feet. He tried to hide his laugh as he held your waist, but you knew he was enjoying this more than he wanted to assume.

Soon, you two were dancing to songs that he swore to never dance to. Euronymous knew that if any of his friends saw him like that, they would probably lose all the respect they had towards him. But then again, he asked himself if he even cared.

And the truth was that he didn’t. He didn't care about anything else other than you at that moment.

[jinnie-ret]

ep.1: meet the wives

ratings: fluff

warnings: small mentions of ADHD, cancer, death, body size, cheating

running time: 1.5k words

summary: the brides to be gather and meet each other for their hen party, before they get married.

SKZ MAFS EPISODE LIST

MAIN MASTERLIST

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"Hi!!! I'm Aurora, but most people call me Rori, I'm 25 and I've been single for 2 years," Aurora grinned toothily at the camera as she introduced herself.

"I joined this experiment because I just want to meet someone who makes me feel safe, you know?" her tone has shifted to more of a sad one, but from the way she presented herself you could tell she was good at hiding that side of her.

"I've definitely had some experiences before that have changed who I was as a person, and it's not a nice feeling at all, it's dreadful," Aurora admitted, hinting at something else that must have affected her, eyes unable to look into the camera anymore, or even the person asking the questions to her.

"These past 2 years I think I've really grown as a person, like massive personal growth. I've managed to come out of that time where things were darker, and I just want a husband that will help me see the lighter times too."

"I moved to South Korea from the UK not too long after my previous relationship, and I now work as a nurse! It's a really rewarding job, long hours, but so rewarding. I think it's important my husband cares about hard work too, and yeah."

"Yeah, my family thinks I'm absolutely insane for joining this process, of course they do!" Dallas giggled and covered her mouth as she threw her head back, just imagining and remembering the looks her family gave her when she told them she was going on a show where she'd be marrying a stranger.

"Hi, I'm Dallas! I'm only 21, but, I had been in a relationship for 5 years. I think obviously I've changed since I was a kid, I'm a woman now, and I think now that I'm a woman I need a man," she shrugged her shoulders lightly with a small smile, almost becoming shy at admitting what she wanted in a husband.

"Someone who... is quite calm in their nature, I'd say. Sometimes my brain feels too busy, I do have ADHD and that can sometimes be quite overwhelming. So I think I want someone that'll calm me down but also accept who I am, yeah," she explained as the camera panned to her knee jolting up and down from ner seat.

"For my job I actually have my own little flower shop, and I don't think I'd rather be doing anything else. Some people say to me it must get boring but there's so many stories with the people I meet and why they want to buy their flowers and-" she cut herself off.

"I'm rambling, aren't I? To put it simply, yeah it's a small business, but I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Hi, I'm Sienna! I've never had a boyfriend before, so, yes, coming onto a show where I'm going to have a husband, it's, umm, how you say? Crazy, haha. Why am I here? Haha," Sienna's Polish accent came through as she spoke, adding some charm to her.

"I just think... The male figures in my life are very important to me. I remember the day I was told my father had cancer, that was the day I learnt he was going to die from it..." she bravely admitted, eyes welling up with tears. The screen showed her grabbing a tissue.

"Sorry can I have a moment?" she sniffled, holding her hand up to block the view of her getting upset.

"He always told me to think with my heart, and I think that's something that will stick with me forever. I know he won't be there the day I get married, but I've got a part of him with me always," she spoke gently of her father's warm advice.

"I think I can come across as quite closed off, I am training to be a lawyer, so I feel like I have to look at things quite unbiased, but with love... I'm not sure how it will go. I think I just want someone who will accept me for me, you know?"

"This is 100% the right place for me to be. I want love, I need it. I'm done living my lonely girl era. I mean that era was a whole year but let me tell you it was a long year," Octavia admitted as she sheepishly shrugged her shoulders.

"I've been in and out of relationships a lot, and they've never really matched me. It always left me thinking, maybe I was too much for them to handle?"

"I just want someone cheeky who will match my humour, that's a big thing for me. Someone who is ambitious too, yeah that's important for me as well," she nodded, describing her ideal type.

"I'm a model, I travel quite a lot for different shoots or campaigns so I hope that my husband is someone who could handle that, and cope with my busy lifestyle."

"Hi, I'm Valentina! I'll say it how it is, plain and simple like that. I work in sales, it's not the most interesting job I'll be honest, but it pays the bills, haha," she laughed, tossing her over her shoulder and giving a 'help me' look to the camera jokingly.

"I just live for the Fridays where me and my girls can go to the bar at the end of a long day and do a bit of karaoke. I have been told I have quite a good voice, not to brag," Valentina smirked.

"What do I want in a husband? I need someone who can handle my fieriness, someone who will accept me for me."

"I think people look at me a certain way, I'm not a prude, but I want my fairytale. My parents have been together for 40 years now, they're so important to me. My family is my world. So, as ambitious as it may sound, I want to have my fairytale in this experiment."

"Hi, I'm Tanaka! All I know is old people, fish, and the sea. You don't get a lot of people my age near the village I live," she introduced herself.

"I'm from Japan but live near the beach in Uljin! I'm looking for love, and I don't quite know what that will look like yet but I need something to fill the void," there was a pause as she spoke seriously, before she chuckled and leant back into her chair, "too deep?"

"I work at an aquarium, people come in with their kids, it's definitely something I want one day... Even if I can't carry them myself."

"I want my husband to understand me I think, which will be hard because I don't fully understand myself. But maybe they'll bring a different side out of me? Who knows haha... I'm looking forward to it."

"I'm Taniyah! I need a man that can handle a big girl-" Taniyah gave a cute look to the camera and looked it up and down as if she was flirting with whoever was watching. The camera quickly cut.

"Is that too much?" she giggled heartily, her hand habitually resting on her chest as she did so.

"Guys I've been with in the past... They've only wanted to get with me because they're curious of what it's like to be with someone plus size... They almost, how you say it? Fetish? They don't care about who I really am, deep down. And that's been a huge problem for me my whole dating life, it's really held me back."

"I work as a therapist, mainly with teens, and I go into schools and talk to them and just really help get down to the roots of their problems."

"I think I want someone who is caring and a good listener, because they're things I strive to be too, so yeah, I need a man that'll match my energy. Just wait til he sees me in full glam too, the boy won't be able to keep his hands off of me!" Taniyah cheered, clicking her fingers.

"Korea is very different to India let me tell you that," Ishani said in wonder, before adding on quietly with a small smile, "I like it."

"I came onto this show because the last time I was in a relationship I got cheated on, very badly, and I want someone who I can rely on all the time. I don't even have to know what they're doing, I just need a trustworthy person to be my husband, because then I won't have to worry."

"I do work as a vet, so I get to see animals quite a lot. It really is my dream job, I feel so lucky. I trust the animals more than men sometimes I can't lie. They're better listeners!" Ishani's eyes lit up as she spoke passionately of her job.

"I think what I also want out of the experiment is personal growth too. I've kept myself to myself for far too long, and I want someone to help bring things out of me I didn't know were there."

watch next ep -->

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[autisticmckennabrooks]

My Collection!

From left to right:

Blair: (eras shirt) I got her in January of 2024. She’s Truly Me 101

Rebecca Rubin: from the historical collection. I’ve had her for 14 years, give or take. Her limbs are extremely loose from years of play- to the point where she can no longer stand on her own. So my Rebecca is disabled (I imagine her having hypermobile ehlers danlos syndrome because of her loose limbs)

Little Rory: my Just Like Me doll! I named her after myself when I was a kid. I’m not sure what number she is but she’s a pleasant company doll from around 13 years ago. I’ve started giving giving her medical and mobility aids to match the ones I have/had irl

Mckenna Brooks: the 2012 girl of the year! I got her when she came out in 2012

[frazzledsoul]

I've got a long meta in my drafts no one will like about Literati class issues and why Rory is inclined to think the worst of Jess when she's actually dating him, but I'm just going to get to the point. Rory was immensely privileged to be raised by a teenage mom invested in her welfare who worked herself up to middle-class life, as well as wealthy grandparents who were there to provide the things that Lorelai could not give her by herself. Jess did not grow up with those advantages. Stars Hollow judges him harshly for being a troublemaker and not being the socially compliant middle class kid who is satisfied with social life in that tiny town, but all of that is heavily influenced by class snobbery.

He's a working class kid from the big city who grew up poor and is being haphazardly raised by his uncle who is also working class. Jess doesn't live by their social standards: he skips class, causes trouble around town, would rather work than go to school, has sex with his casual girlfriend, and wants to get away as soon as possible. They judge him for not viewing their way of life as superior to his and Rory judges him for that, too. She's physically and intellectually attracted to him and has lost interest in Dean, but she's not willing to give up the advantages she has of being the socially compliant "good girl" and doesn't do so willingly until Dean jumps ship. Even then, half the time she is either ashamed of him, inclined to think the worst of him, and views his responsibilities as inferior to her social life and almost dumps him when he doesn't plan adequately for dates. She did view him (at least subconsciously) as inferior to her because of where he came from and for his lack of ambition but most of all because he did not want that middle-class life, either. He didn't like Stars Hollow and Stars Hollow didn't like him. He didn't want that life for himself. Luke may have failed at easing his transition into the next phase of his life, but he did need to leave there and figure out where he needed to be on his own.

There's more one can say about Rory's selfishness in season 4, when she rejects Jess in the hopes of clinging to Dean and getting that small town middle class status back and believing Lindsey is a minor inconvenience to be disposed of, only to use her upper-class advantages to run away from the situation and rejecting Dean for that life once she's actually free to date him again. That's not the point here: the point is that Jess deserved a life where he could be accepted and loved and respected without having his class status weaponized against him, and he could only find that life if he wanted to be there and wouldn't resort to his troublemaking antics out of boredom. He could not have that life in Stars Hollow, and Rory was part of the reason why. Eventually he needed to be free of her judgment, too.

Could these two work it out in a hypothetical future where these issues don't trip it up? Maybe. Jess comes to Rory's rescue twice after he's grown up and found a home for herself and she's still spiraling because upper-class life hasn't satisfied her, either. However, she ultimately rejects Jess again for life with Logan and she hasn't quite escaped the appeal of it a decade later, even though she isn't willing to commit to it full time by actually marrying (or by the AYITL era, even dating) him. She also weaponized Logan's wealth against him in arguments more than once in the OS, too, so this is a tactic she resorts to when she's unhappy. In AYITL, all three guys have settled into lives they're more or less content with and Rory still doesn't know what the fuck she wants. Same old story, I guess. She no longer judges Jess, so maybe there is hope.

[pilot-boi]

Plotbunny AU:

Okay, you want more lore for this story? Let's follow this plotbunny down the rabbit hole.

So Jaune did not travel through time. Not really. Alyx did, and Juniper followed her to meet up with Jaune again, but Jaune is more like Rory from Doctor Who: A version of him experienced that time, and he vaguely recalls it, but there's a door in his head keeping the worst of it from his conscious mind. He can open the door to let those years in and take stock, but he's still Volume 1 Jaune who had a bunch of info dumped into his head, which had the effect of making him closer to Volume 7 Jaune.

When RWBYJ left the Ever After, Vol 9 Jaune was de-aged by having the 'extra time' sucked out of him, unaware of this. This was something of a trick the Blacksmith played, at Alyx's behest, though it wasn't exactly what Alyx herself wanted.

The Blacksmith told Alyx they they could use it to make an actual Afteran Knight to stay with her and Juniper, but she protested saying that the 'extra' deserved to go home, too.

The Blacksmith said that the 'extra time' would need a vessel to make the journey, and a guide. Alyx volunteered to take it back to Remnant, but no one could carry it.

Enter Juniper. Whose purpose is and will forever be: Help Jaune. Because she loved him with all of her being, just as he loved her. And if even a part of him needed help, and helping it meant she might see it again, Juniper would gladly do anything.

Juniper became the vessel, and shrunk and slept in a cabbage until the time was right to awaken and share the memories.

And Alyx would be the guide to Remnant and to "the next vessel". She could never return to the Ever After in doing this, but she decided to be brave like the Rusted Knight and her Brother and went forward.

But desire all her time in the Ever After, she's still just a child who never grew up, suddenly in a Remnant that's so DIFFERENT from the one she knew. She doesn't know what a Scroll is, the villages she knew are gone, and since when does Vale not have a King?

She's alone, she's hungry, she's trying not to be scared becase she needs to get to Beacon and meet the Wizard named Oz, who will know where Jaune will be in this era.

But it's so hard. She's alone. She doesn't have Lewis, or Jaune, or the Blacksmith, or even the Cat, and Juniper is asleep....

But just as she sits on the sidewalk she's found herself moping on, contemplating if she's desperate enough to steal some food, someone with a higher pitched but familiar voice asks if she's okay....

And Alyx could admit, she shed a few tears and got a little clingy.

But it was Jaune, definitely. His beard was missing, his armor was almost all gone, and his voice was cracking, but he hugged her like Jaune, and he offered her food like Jaune, and he asked if she was okay like Jaune.

This was it. Mission accomplished.

So why does she hesitate in waking Juniper up?

Why not right away give him the 'extra time'?

Oh, she realizes: he's actually happy.

And Alyx decides that she doesn't want that to end, just yet.

So she takes his offered hand, and asks if he could take her to Beacon, and promises herself and also him.

I'll make sure we're both going to be Better this time.

And so it begins

Okay but this is hella cute?? This is SO so cute?

I love this I LOVE THIS

I love her not revealing Juniper right away even though that was the only reason she came back. Because she’s only known this version of Jaune for five minutes but it’s already so obvious that he’s more happy than the Rusted Knight ever was

And Jaune literally just meeting this girl, but it’s JAUNE so he’s instantly like “I have to help her”

God this is all so good THIS IS ALL SO GOOD!! This is like the fix-it fic to end all fix-it fics

I know you just sent me this but by god I need more

[zalrb]

what's the difference between julie and tami's relationship vs rory and lorelai's. What makes tami the better mother?

what's the difference between julie and tami's relationship vs rory and lorelai's.

Boundaries.

So, in the post that probably initiated this ask, I said this:

while Lorelai had her moments, like telling Rory she was treating Dean like dirt and then telling Rory she was wrong for sleeping with Dean when he was married and then telling her she was wrong for dropping out of Yale, for the most part I didn’t think the show really portrayed Lorelai as a mom at all. Like even when they talk about Rory growing up, it’s like Rory raised herself, she came out as this booksmart, curious kid and Lorelai just happened to luck out because what do we really know of how Lorelai actually shaped Rory as a person?

and I stand by that

although after the rewatch I did a couple of years ago, I will say we do see more moments than mentioned where Lorelai pushes Rory like when she encourages Rory to go to the formal because she doesn't want her to miss out on experiences simply because she's scared or during the Dean break up where she tells her it's OK to just wallow in how she's feeling and later on, when she says she doesn't want Rory to be closed off to love. Fine. But.

Boundaries are still an issue.

So to reiterate ... this is interesting as someone who doesn't like Julie as an individual character but Tami is understanding, she's gracious, she's communicative, she can concede things, admit when she's wrong

but she is a parent and reacts to Julie like a parent

as opposed to

she is interested in having an open relationship with her daughter, she is interested in having a relationship in which Julie will be able to come to her and talk to her

she specifically tells Eric that she will not be her own mother, she says that a daughter is entitled to an open relationship with her mother

but she is not saying this

and that's a healthy boundary to have.

Julie doesn't have to take off from school and comfort her mother over a breakup; she doesn't have to tell someone to stay away from her mother because she's worried about how Tami acts around them; Tami isn't encouraging behaviour like devil egging a seventeen year old boy's car because she doesn't like him. Tami definitely has to contend with judging other characters on the show when it comes to hanging out with Julie i.e. Tyra, although that's presented imo as a very typical parent doesn't want their kid to hang out with a 'bad influence' and not what Lorelai does and Tyra and Tami end up having their own relationship, which... not that Lorelai had to with Jess tbh, but again she's an adult and he's a kid, and she did the same thing to Dean the first time he and Rory broke up.

Like, we're keeping in mind here that the whole premise of Gilmore Girls is a romanticized "what if your mother was your best friend?" notion and FNL is a more grounded, slice of life drama which means that Tami and Julie are more organic in my opinion. Even when we're supposed to see how close Rory and Lorelai are when she tells her that she's considering sleeping with Jess despite the fact that Lorelai has extreme reservations around it, that moment isn't really anything, it's just Lorelai saying we're doing this and they eat, and put their hands on each other's backs and that's a sweet moment, sure, but it's also kind of perfunctory whereas when Tami and Julie have their sex talk, we actually see how uncomfortable it can be, how Julie can be seemingly dismissive, how she gets serious when she sees how intent Tami is and we see that actually have an effect on her

and because we actually see times where Tami struggles with Julie during her rebellious era

it has a more emotional and realistic impact when even during this time, Julie can cry with Tami or talk to Tami because of a relationship that Tami makes sure to have had established with her, which is we can open

[oodlyenough]

so i’ve been rewatching doctor who from the (2005) start as a little project for the 60th anniversary - it’s the first time i’ve rewatched most of eleven’s run, and i haven’t watched any of his eps since like….2013? anyway i just finished the angels take manhattan and forgot just how dumb it is as a concept, but did remember you had a lot of hilariously incredulous posts about it when it first came out. why can’t the ponds get on a bus to new jersey and have the doctor pick them up there??? it does feel like such a wasted opportunity to have all these eps about how they’re “growing up” and living their own lives and how that’s sort of nice, only for that all to get torpedoed in their final episode

in general the whole eleven rewatch has been a fun revisit to things that absolutely infuriated me back in the day, to the point i have almost a fondness for them now lol

It's so stupid lmaooo. I haven't seen any of those episodes in years, maybe since they aired?, and while I find looking back I retain a fondness for Amy Pond (more than any other Moffat character at least), thanks largely to Karen Gillan being just so dang lovable, I can't think about her story for too long or my brain implodes.

Angels Take Manhattan is such a goofy stupid end for a character who helped define the era. They really have to just pull together so many contrivances to try and justify Amy and Rory being stuck in the past forever even though their bestie and also their stupid stolen baby are literal time travellers. And, as you said, most of s7a sets up Amy and Rory with a life on earth that they're increasingly attached to only to rip it away from them, too, for uh, reasons. I also remember loving the part where Amy wears glasses for a single episode so that Eleven can have something to wear sadly after she's gone. Those iconic glasses we all remember Amy wearing for (checks notes) 30 minutes of runtime. Why not at least introduce them at the start of s7a. Can't plan too far ahead, I guess.

For a long time I think a lot of the New Who companions suffered from the issue of needing a big dramatic exit, when some, like Amy or Clara, would've done better with a Martha-style exit of their own free will. Of course, more recently, this has been replaced by stuff like Yaz getting evicted from the TARDIS against her will because ? no reason really Thirteen just is tired of her ?, so I guess be careful what you wish for.

...Why did you get me started on this. How dare you. Lmao

[st4rfckerz]

i need to know all of your past phases

-🌟

ok strap in because it's a lot.

so first i loved stranger things, i wanted dacre montgomery so bad and then i was really into harry styles and one direction for a very very long time until 2021 (?) and then i gravitated towards the mcu and was obsessed with sebastian stan and chris evans (call me), and thennn that's when i got into star wars heavily, and after that i became obsessed with the 90s grunge so i was strictly listening to nirvana, soundgarden etc. and then that's when my little sam monroe era came around along with my scream franchise obsession that ended up turning into a rory culkin and jack champion hyperfixation and then i had my very short lived cillian murphy era and now we're here 🧍‍♀️

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who 10 for 10 Part 5/10: Series 5

And so we come to my era of Doctor Who, and I say “my” for different reasons. I first got into Doctor Who with the Matt Smith era around 2011 or 2012, watching the episodes on ABC iView then gradually branching back to the older episodes of the modern era, even watching a few from the classic era. It was also around this time that I started integrating Doctor Who into my personal project, realising it by essentially making my own version of the series. At first, I just put out ideas for episodes without writing them, then I started writing some episodes; some were adaptations or ripoffs of other episodes or media and some were original, with a lot of collaborations, throwbacks and crazy ideas to boot. Gradually, it came to the point where I was essentially compelled to write whole series of episodes and the rabbit hole just continued from there.

But that’s not what this series is about. I’ll think about elaborating on my personal project in the Kisekae Insights series, but for now, let’s jump into the retrospective for Series 5.

1. Changes

When RTD and David Tennant announced their departures from the series, Steven Moffat seemingly had his work cut out for him as he essentially had to start on a fresh slate, however fans were confident that the show was in safe hands, given how he had written episodes for each of the RTD era series. Additionally, before the revival of the series in 2005, Steven Moffat wrote a non-canonical(?) episode known as The Curse of Fatal Death, broadcast in segments during Red Nose Day in 1999.

Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor was revealed to the public in a special episode of Doctor Who Confidential on 3 January 2009, having been cast for at least 3 months by that point. This was a year before the Tenth Doctor’s regeneration aired on New Year’s Day 2010. The special episode of Confidential was commissioned three weeks before it was due to air, so the team only had a few days to work on it. Series 5 began filming in July 2009 and the series premiered in April 2010.

Doctor Who had only switched to HD with the production of the 2009 Specials; the RTD era didn’t start filming in HD presumably because it hadn’t taken off in the UK at the time. Torchwood was filmed in HD and RTD apparently had a bad time with it because there was a lack of training; also, the TARDIS would have to be rebuilt and it would have taken a lot of money and time, hence RTD held off on moving the series to HD until towards the end of his run. HD episodes of Doctor Who were simulcast on BBC HD during the 2009 Specials and Series 5 before moving to the newly-launched BBC One HD from the 2010 Christmas Special onwards.

With the change in production team also came more radical changes to the series, including the sonic screwdriver, the TARDIS, the logo, the title sequence and the theme music. The theme music was made faster and “a bit reckless” according to composer Murray Gold, which apparently received complaints from viewers. Personally, it’s a theme that’s stuck in my memories and it sounds a bit subdued compared to the 2008 theme.

2. The Girl Who Waited

Karen Gillan was cast as the Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond, however her backstory would be more complicated compared to previous companions and her involvement would not end at the conclusion of the series. Arthur Darvill was cast as Amy’s boyfriend and later, husband, Rory Williams, however he would not be credited in the opening credits until Series 6.

In The Eleventh Hour, a young Amelia Pond was praying to Santa Claus about the crack in her bedroom wall when the newly-regenerated Doctor crashed in her backyard. After climbing out of the swimming pool in the library and having something to eat (fish fingers and custard), the Doctor investigates the crack in Amelia’s room, he learns that someone called Prisoner Zero has escaped, but just as he suspects something suspicious in the corridor, out the corner of his eye, the TARDIS Cloister Bell rings as the engines are phasing out of existence.

The Doctor attempted to shift forward five minutes in time, but as he would later learn, he had gone forward twelve years in time and Amelia now called herself Amy. She began to believe in “the Raggedy Doctor”, with everyone in Leadworth believing that it was a thing. Amy was sent to four psychiatrists, which she apparently kept biting because they said that “the Raggedy Doctor” wasn’t real. The Atraxi, who were guarding Prisoner Zero and were on the hunt for him, followed the Doctor to twelve years in the future and were prepared to incinerate the planet if Prisoner Zero did not surrender itself to them. Without his TARDIS and his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor managed to corner Prisoner Zero and even trick it into showing its true form, allowing the Atraxi to recapture it.

Although the Atraxi had achieved their objective, the Doctor tracked them down and called them back for a talking-to, during which he decided to change out of his raggedy clothes and put on a new outfit, including a bowtie, which would be the signature element of the Eleventh Doctor’s outfit and one of a few things that he would find “cool”. After the Doctor gave the Atraxi a badass speech to introduce himself and tell them to run, the TARDIS had finished rebuilding itself and the Doctor flew away to the moon before coming back, accidentally arriving two years later. He invited Amy to travel with him in the TARDIS and thus, she officially became the Doctor’s new companion.

The Eleventh Hour is a powerful and fast-paced introduction to the Moffat era that introduces new elements to the series while still maintaining the spirit of what came before. During the RTD era, images of the previous Doctors were shown in Human Nature and The Next Doctor; this episode not only features images of previous Doctors, but also some monsters from the RTD era with even some from the classic era. As we get closer to the 50th Anniversary, I feel like the Moffat era included more throwbacks to older episodes in preparation for the special occasion.

3. The New Dalek Paradigm

Victory of the Daleks saw the return of the Daleks in the Moffat era, with the last surviving Daleks from Davros’ Dalek Empire making way for the New Dalek Paradigm during World War II. After the episode premiered, the design of the New Dalek Paradigm was not well-received by fans, with criticisms such as the extended back making them hunched and the colour-codedness making them parodies of the Power Rangers. The New Dalek Paradigm would be slowly phased out after Series 5, with Asylum of the Daleks reintroducing the bronze Daleks of the RTD era, making them the soldiers while the Paradigm would be an officer class. By The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar, the New Paradigm Daleks were pretty much phased out and kept with the Peter Cushing era Daleks, which is honestly quite sad.

Unpopular opinion, but I didn’t think the New Dalek Paradigm was that bad and I thought that a lot of potential was squandered with the way they were phased out. In my personal project, I had a little subplot at one stage featuring a civil war between the bronze Daleks and the New Dalek Paradigm, so I feel like if we actually had that in the series, they could truly “exterminate” the New Dalek Paradigm, as it were, and provide an in-universe explanation for them being phased out. But sadly, that has seemingly been relegated to the extended media. Personally, if the backs weren’t extended or the heads were made bigger so as to not look hunched, I think the New Dalek Paradigm may have had a bit of a chance.

4. Angels vs. Time

The Weeping Angels were a Moffat creation introduced during the RTD era in Series 3’s Blink, so Moffat becoming the new showrunner allowed the opportunity for a monster he created to truly shine. In The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone, a Weeping Angel had sabotaged the Byzantium and crashed it into Alfava Metraxis, where hundreds of Weeping Angels were laying dormant in the moratorium of the Aplans, using the radiation of the Byzantium to revive themselves. Joined by River and soldiers from what would later be known as the Church of the Papal Mainframe, the Doctor managed to board the Byzantium, only to discover that a crack, similar to the one in young Amelia’s room, has opened onboard. This particular crack, however, was leaking time energy that would erase from history anyone or anything it came into contact with. On top of this, Amy had looked into the eyes of an image of a Weeping Angel and an Angel was created in her mind, which began making her count down as the Angel slowly started to take over, but the Doctor made Amy close her eyes, which held off the Angel for the time being.

While the Doctor and River headed to the primary flight deck, Amy remained in the ship’s forest with the Clerics. As the Clerics were being erased from history one by one, the Doctor realised what the time energy was capable of and tried getting her to the primary flight deck. The Angels managed to close in on Amy during this, but River managed to teleport her to the primary flight deck. Because the Angels were absorbing the energy from the Byzantium, the gravity controls began to fail, so the Doctor had River and Amy hold on as the Angels fell into the crack, erasing them from history and the Angel in Amy’s mind with them.

This two-parter reveals more abilities of the Weeping Angels than from what we learnt in Blink; an image of an Angel is in itself an Angel, an Angel can be created in someone’s mind by staring into its eyes and Angels can snap people’s necks and steal their consciousness to communicate with others. Some people say that this is where the Weeping Angels become overpowered, but I didn’t really think so as I watched the series, probably because I wasn’t really involved in the discourse back then.

5. A new extension to the universe

It was during Series 5 that Doctor Who made its foray into video games. Well, there was the Top Trumps game released in 2008, but there were more PC and console games released during the Matt Smith era before Doctor Who returned to the medium during the Jodie Whittaker era.

From June to December 2010, four games were released under The Adventure Games banner through the BBC Doctor Who website. A second series of four games was commissioned for release in 2011, but only the first game, The Gunpowder Plot, was released before the rest of the series was cancelled as the BBC wanted to focus on console games such as The Eternity Clock, which was released in 2012. The Eternity Clock was planned to be the first of a three-parter of games, but the other two parts were cancelled.

The Adventure Games were only made available to residents of the UK thanks to a geo-blocking system that was embedded into the installer that communicated to a BBC server before it was shut down. The games were made available on Steam in 2014, but they were removed in 2017 as the licence of the publisher, Legacy Games, was expiring. The BBC downloadables were made available on the Internet Archive; there is a way to get past the geo-blocking system by unpacking the installers and modifying a byte in a specific position of the executable file using a hex editor.

Evacuation Earth and Return to Earth were also games that were released for the Nintendo DS and Wii respectively in 2010. They received negative reviews. The Mazes of Time for iOS and Android along with Worlds in Time, a Flash MMORPG, were also made, but they were eventually discontinued.

Finally, one Doctor Who game that I fondly remember is Legacy, which was released on iOS and Android in November 2013 for the 50th Anniversary. It was a Puzzle & Dragons-style game where you collect characters and match gems to attack enemies. The game was updated regularly during the Peter Capaldi era and it also contained content from the Big Finish audios and Titan Comics releases. Another similar game, Infinity, was released in 2018 and actors from the series reprised their roles for it, however both games were ultimately discontinued due to expiring licences with the publisher, Tiny Rebel Games.

6. Apes and lizards

After Series 3’s 42 and the first two series of Torchwood, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood was Chris Chibnall’s contribution to Series 5. The two-parter marked the return of the Silurians, a lesser-known monster that had only appeared in two stories during the classic series. The new Silurians were of a different caste to the old ones, particularly as the former used prosthetics (under masks) instead of suits to make them more humanoid. Neve McIntosh, who played Alaya and Restac in the two-parter, became the series’ resident Silurian actress, just as Dan Starkey became the resident Sontaran actor. McIntosh would play Vastra and Starkey would play Strax from Series 6 onwards.

Rory joined the Doctor and Amy following the events of Flesh and Stone, picking him up after Amy tried to kiss him in an effort to keep her and Rory together. The TARDIS arrives in 2020 Cwmtaff instead of Rio de Janeiro, where after Amy and Rory briefly wave at their future selves, the Doctor notices something strange in the grass and eventually discovers an entire city of Silurians underground. Amidst a growing crisis between the humans and Silurians, the Silurian leader, Eldane, decided to have his kind go back into stasis while the Doctor and the humans escaped back up.

Just as the Doctor, Amy and Rory reach the TARDIS, they notice a crack in time opening and the Doctor reaches in to pull a piece of shrapnel out. A dying Restac finds the Doctor and shoots at him, but Rory takes the shot for him and he dies. The Doctor notices time energy coming into contact with Rory and drags Amy back into the TARDIS, leaving Rory to be removed from history. Due to him being tied to her personal history, Amy ends up forgetting Rory and she waves goodbye to her future self, now without Rory.

Before the Doctor leaves, he examines the piece of shrapnel he pulled out and discovers that it is a part of the TARDIS.

7. Future legacy

Vincent and the Doctor is another powerful episode in Series 5, but in a different way to how The Eleventh Hour was powerful. In Victory of the Daleks, we met Winston Churchill and in this story, we meet Vincent Van Gogh, a painter who was ridiculed in his time but revered years after. His mental health is also the focus of the episode, which was a given how Van Gogh was in history.

The Doctor and Amy visit the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, but they decide to head back in time to 1890 when the Doctor finds something strange in one of Van Gogh’s paintings. They eventually find a monster known as the Krafayis, invisible to others but visible to Van Gogh. While confronting the monster, the Doctor realised that it was abandoned by the rest of its pack because it was blind. It was accidentally killed by Van Gogh, who told the Doctor that it was scared.

Following this, the Doctor and Amy took Van Gogh to the Musée d’Orsay in 2010, where he heard Doctor Black talking about him as the greatest man who ever lived. This moved Van Gogh to tears and left him with a new outlook on life, but despite this, he still committed suicide, showing that despite best efforts, some moments of history are fixed. However, the Krafayis no longer appears in Van Gogh’s painting and he dedicated another one of his paintings to Amy.

One of the things that made the ending of the episode so powerful was the song used in it - Chances by Athlete, an indie rock band that Matt Smith was a fan of. Another song I know from Doctor Who is Angels Calling by Rooster, which was used in the Doctor Who Greatest Moments documentary series. Both songs are quite powerful in and of themselves.

Doctor Black was played by Bill Nighy, a high-profile actor who was cast because the producers wanted the audience to listen to him talking about Van Gogh. Nighy agreed to appear on the condition that he was uncredited, no publicity photos were taken of him and no interviews were to be given.

8. They made him famous

Since the previous year’s Christmas Special was already produced by the RTD-era crew and the current year’s Christmas Special would be filmed as part of the next series, there was no need to double-bank an episode, though Moffat did consider it if delays happened in the production schedule. When budget issues forced Neil Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife to be moved to the next series, Gareth Roberts’ The Lodger was chosen to take its place, being a cheap enough candidate for a companion-lite bottle episode. It was originally pitched as a comic strip where the Tenth Doctor was forced to live with Mickey when the TARDIS accidentally jumped forward in time with Rose in it, so the characters and setting had to be changed to fit Series 5. When it was clear the double-banking would not be required, some more material with Amy was added, making the companion-lite episode a companion-different episode.

The Lodger featured Craig Owens, played by guest star James Corden, who would be more known in the US as the host of The Late Late Show. When a rogue timeship caused the TARDIS to go in a materialisation loop without the Doctor in it, the Doctor was guided to Craig’s flat and rented a room there in order to investigate. The timeship lured in humans who wanted to escape or explore, but they ended up being burnt due to them not being compatible. When Craig’s other flatmate, Sophie, was lured into the timeship, the Doctor and Craig went up to save her, but the ship’s autopilot deemed the Doctor compatible despite him being too much for it. Craig was never lured in because he never had a desire to leave out of his unspoken love for Sophie, so when he willingly touched the panel, he caused the ship to shut down and implode. The TARDIS stabilised itself and the Doctor was able to leave, but not before having Amy leave a note for his past self about the flat.

The Lodger shows off the Doctor’s more alien side and how it affects his interactions with other humans, particularly when Craig tries to kick the Doctor out because the former felt that the latter was stealing his thunder. It’s a nice and down-to-earth episode. Gareth Roberts originally intended to bring Meglos back from the classic series, but decided not to when the Vinvocci appeared in The End of Time.

9. Cracks in time, time, time

In case you haven’t realised it by now, the cracks in time are the main story arc of Series 5. “Silence will fall” is also a saying that was coined in this series and would be the focus of the next one. The Pandorica was also mentioned in two episodes of this series, but it would be fully addressed in the series finale, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang.

Before Van Gogh died, he drew something that a woman noted was worse than his usual work. The painting made its way to Winston Churchill and he attempted to call the Doctor, but the call got redirected to River in Stormcage. River broke out and went to steal Van Gogh’s painting from the Royal Collection; after acquiring a vortex manipulator from Dorium Maldovar, River met the Doctor and Amy in 102 AD Britain. The painting is revealed to be the TARDIS exploding and titled “The Pandorica Opens”. Following the coordinates on the painting, the three arrive at Stonehenge, where they discover the Pandorica underground and beginning to open.

As the Pandorica opened, Stonehenge began transmitting signals through time and space, summoning numerous alien races to it. While River summons Roman soldiers for help, the Doctor and Amy are pursued by a broken Cyberman before the Roman soldiers arrive, a resurrected Rory with them. The Doctor tells River to bring the TARDIS to him, but she is brought to Amy’s house on 26 June 2010, where she discovers that aliens have been there and that the Roman soldiers were all part of a book that Amy had. The Doctor tells River to get away, but she discovers that something else is controlling the TARDIS. The Roman soldiers, revealed to be Autons, capture the Doctor and place him in the Pandorica with all the other aliens in witness. Outside, Rory’s Auton programming activates and he inadvertently shoots Amy dead. The TARDIS explodes and every star is erased from the universe.

Rory is sulking over the loss of Amy when the Doctor arrives from the future, giving him his sonic screwdriver and telling him to get his past self out of the Pandorica. Once he does so, the Doctor puts Amy in his place and prepares to head to 1996 using River’s vortex manipulator, but Rory decides to stay and guard Amy.

The Doctor arrives at the National Museum in 1996 to find Amy and her younger self, Amelia, being pursued by a Dalek that had been revived from the light of the Pandorica. Rory arrives and manages to blind the Dalek before finally reuniting with Amy. As the four of them hide from the recovering Dalek, the Doctor sets up the events that freed himself in the past and brought Amelia to the National Museum in the present. Upon encountering another version of himself from the future, the Doctor realises that he only has 12 minutes to live. He heads outside and discovers that the sun is actually his exploding TARDIS, leading him to save River from it. Eventually, the Dalek catches up with the Doctor and shoots him, which leads him to escape to 12 minutes prior. Amy, Rory and River discover the Doctor working in the Pandorica; because it contained atoms from the previous universe, it could be used to extract the entire universe from it. With the TARDIS exploding at every point in history, flying the Pandorica into it would restore the entire universe. However, the Doctor would end up trapped on the other side of the cracks, resulting in him being erased from history. Before setting off, the Doctor tells Amy that the crack in her bedroom was pouring the entire universe into her head, so if she remembers her family when she wakes up, she could bring her family back. The Doctor follows his plan to restart the universe and finds himself going backwards through his own timeline, saying goodbye to Amelia before skipping the rest of the rewind.

Amy wakes up on the morning of her wedding day with her parents and Rory restored. Amy senses that there is something missing until River’s diary leads her to remember the Doctor, who arrives for her wedding reception. After the dancing, River leaves and so do the Doctor, Amy and Rory in the TARDIS.

The Series 5 finale was pretty good. It resolves one story arc and leaves another to be addressed in the next series, though I must admit that given what we see, the payoff doesn’t feel as good. How the TARDIS exploded isn’t really elaborated into, but I think they felt that it wasn’t an important thing to focus on.

10. A Christmas Carol

The 2010 Christmas Special, A Christmas Carol, was produced and released as part of Series 6, just as previous Christmas Specials (with the exception of The End of Time) were produced as part of the following series. However, for the Moffat era, I honestly think that the Christmas Specials should have been considered a part of the series that broadcast this year (Series 5 being 2010) so that every series has a Christmas Special. This will become more apparent in Series 7, 9 and 10 because those series have more than one Christmas Special on their DVDs and Blu-rays whereas Series 5 and 8 don’t have one.

In this special, Amy and Rory are on a starliner trapped in a cloud belt and potentially about to crash. Amy calls the Doctor for help as Kazran Sardick refuses to allow the starliner to land. As a result, the Doctor decides to influence Sardick by changing his past, becoming the Ghost of Christmas Past. He even unfroze Abigail Pettigrew and had adventures with her and the young Sardick every year on Christmas Eve. At some point, Abigail told Sardick about her illness and Sardick decided to end his travels with the Doctor. As a result, Sardick still grew up to become the same man he was when he met the Doctor, albeit changed from heartless to heartbroken, reluctant to choose what day would be his last with Abigail.

Acting as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Amy visited Sardick and showed him the situation on the starship. When Sardick still refused to let the starliner land, the Doctor returned to Sardick, acting as the Ghost of Christmas Future to show his younger self if he wanted to become like his father. Sardick’s refusal to strike his younger self finally convinced him to open the cloud belt, but when he tried to do so, they wouldn’t work because the Doctor had changed Sardick too much to the point where the isomorphic controls wouldn’t recognise him anymore.

Sardick, however, had kept a half of the sonic screwdriver, the other half which had been eaten by a sky shark. The Doctor gets the idea to set up a resonation pattern between the two halves, but the only thing that they know works is Abigail’s singing since it resonates with the cloud belt. As the starliner is successfully able to land, it begins to snow in the town and the Doctor takes the younger Sardick back to his time before rejoining with Amy and Rory.

A Christmas Carol is the first time since The Christmas Invasion where the current companions were involved in the story (due to the Moffat era not following the RTD era’s single-series companion formula), however the formatting of it makes it a bit companion-lite like The Lodger. It’s a unique take on the Charles Dickens classic, with the setting maintaining the feel of the Victorian era despite it being set in the distant future.

Series 5 of Doctor Who has got to be the best series for me, if I may say. Steven Moffat traded the deeper character development and domestic relationships for deeper plotlines, something which has admittedly influenced my personal project. The chaoticness of the Eleventh Doctor really appealed to me particularly a decade ago when I was more of a guarded lone wolf at high school and I suppose his character did rub off on me a bit as I hung out in my own little world.

The Matt Smith era started during a time when I wasn’t even invested in Doctor Who, but as the era went on, my fascination turned into an investment and my investment turned into an obsession. Stay tuned for Part 6 as I give my 10 takes on Series 6.

[redeyedroid]

Scots generally don't go much for cricket. Which I find odd, considering how consistently terrible England have been for most of my life. If there's one thing that brings the people of Scotland together, it's England losing at sport.

Cricket's eccentric as hell; the objectives often incomprehensible and bizarre, even to people who follow the game; it's impenetrable terminology has multiple ways of labeling the same things; the simple idea of who is winning and who is losing may be undiscernable for days; it can go on for five days and still end in a draw and they only decided to end matches like that because once, decades ago, a test match went on so long one team risked missing their boat back home; a series of five or more matches can go on for months; people are forced to keep playing long after the result has been decided; bowling and batting require completely different skills and techniques, yet some players master both; it's greatest trophy, The Ashes, is only contested by two nations and is, essentially, a self-deprecating shitpost; and one of the greatest memes of all time originates from a dropped catch in 2019.

But, because the people of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka love it like nothing else, it is the second most popular sport in the world. And I love it, too. Be it Mitchell Starc clean bowling Rory Burns with the first ball of the 2021/22 Ashes, beginning a series of quite staggering English ineptitude; or Virat Kohli, the greatest batter of this generation, hitting back-to-back sixes off Haris Rauf in front of 95,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground while leading India to an extraordinary win against Pakistan at the 2022 T20 World Cup, cricket offers dramatic moments of brilliance with a regularity other sports struggle to match.

If you want an idea of exactly how popular cricket is in India, Kohli has 60 million more instagram followers than Brady, Serena and LeBron combined. His is the 16th most followed account in the world. The only sports stars with larger followings are Messi and Ronaldo. Like the greatest players in any sport, time appears to slow down around him when he's at his best, his balance and timing perfect as he makes an almost impossible task look like the easiest thing in the world (batters have a fraction of a second to react to a ball being bowled at them. Against the fastest bowlers, they might not even be able to see the ball at all, instead relying on triggers and clues and experience to hit it.)

I picked up a love for cricket from my dad, who himself picked it up one rainy summer afternoon (what do you think happens in summer in Scotland?) when he was young and there were only two TV channels. He loves the great West Indian team of the 1970s and 80s like no other. They're probably his favourite thing in sporting history. A found love, rather than the familial support for Hibs he inherited from his father.

(For that, I'd recommend the excellent documentary, Fire In Babylon. No knowledge is needed, beyond that in cricket, unlike baseball, there is no restriction against a bowler aiming at the batter's body. And the West Indian team had a succession of players who bowled at the speed of light and terrorised batters across the world. They also had, in Gordon Greenidge and Viv Richards, the two great batters of the - possibly any - era).

I missed much of their quarter century of dominance, being too young or not actually alive, but I do remember their last great bowlers, Courtney Walsh and Curtley Ambrose, while the great Trinidadian, Brian Lara, twice set records for the highest individual score in test cricket, first scoring 375, then an unbeaten 400, a record that still stands today and which may now never be bettered. Of course, both those scores came against England.

There was a lot of listening to cricket on the radio, driving places when we were on holiday in the summer. It was a summer sport then, coverage only following teams when they came to England. In the winter, when England went away, we got little, for this was the age before wall-to-wall sports TV.

For instance, I remember bits of Australia's 1993 Ashes rampage coinciding with daytrips along Hadrian's Wall, among other places, but I have no memory of the following, equally one-sided series in Australia in 1994/95.

Not that test cricket is at all rampageous, containing, as it does, breaks for lunch and tea, and even at it's most fast paced only has a ball bowled every 45 seconds or so, this being repeated about 500 times a day, with maybe 1 in 4 actually being scored from. You can miss great chunks of matches only to find nothing has fundamentally changed when you return. One man dressed in white hurls a small red ball at another, who most often declines the opportunity to hit it as it whizzes past. It is often as close to being a day-long nap as any sport can be.

Today, like football, the sport is played everywhere, all the time. The South Asian nations have spread it across the world, far beyond the borders of the British imperial possessions where the colonial administrators introduced it. Wherever there is a strong community of people from the subcontinent, cricket will be found and while there are less than a dozen full members of the ICC, there are now lots of associate members all competing against each other (the USA is the 18th-ranked men's ODI team, for example). There's almost always something to watch somewhere.

Powered by TV money (rights for the Indian Premier league are, on a per-game basis, now the second most expensive sporting event in the world, after the NFL) the compressed, high-scoring excitement of T20 has become the most popular format of cricket, which is bad for me. Because my preference is for the full-fat, slow-motion weirdness of a test match. It's what I grew up with and in my mind, the game is not for the swift. There's a reason they're called tests. The game should be an examination of technique and concentration and endurance that lasts for ages and ends with two poor bastards trying to scratch out a draw by batting for a day and a half because their side trails by 450 runs and the other 9 players on their team are idiots who got out in ridiculous ways. And then, after they inevitably fail, they do it again a week later. And maybe they lose horribly two more times and their team finds itself 3-0 down with two matches to play, but those matches still get played, even though they won't change the result of the series, because that's also part of the test. Or maybe it rains all summer and no matches are played, because the English, with maniac optimism, like to invent games that cannot be played if it's raining (see also: tennis).

I recognise that this is churlish of me. The women's game, like in so many other sports a niche afterthought, is being supercharged by an influx of cash from India, as the men's IPL has this year expanded into a women's tournament. The TV rights for this sold for £95m, the 5 franchises sold for half a billion. The top players - most players, probably - will make more from it than they do for the rest of the year. T20 is an extraordinary boost for the women's game, where tests are rarely played.

This is A Very Good Thing, but I'll always prefer tests.

Only three nations now have the economic power and talent pool to devote equal attention to all three formats of the game. Only England, India and Australia still play full test series against each other. The rest now play two- or maybe three-match series and only occasionally. The form the future of the game will take is in doubt. The West Indies might fracture amidst a proliferation of T20 franchise leagues, their players - naturally and understandably - touring the world and playing in half-a-dozen dozen leagues, their talents auctioned and drafted and paid far more than they get from tests.

But today I'm going to ignore the question marks about cricket's future and the maybe slow death of anything other than T20. Because today, one of the last remaining marquee matchups begins. Tomorrow, the women's T20 World Cup starts in South Africa. In a couple of months I will consume as much of the two IPLs as I can. In the summer, England will host Ashes series for both men and women that promise much. Australia's men currently holds the ridiculous little urn and are the top ranked side. England's men are actually very good right now and have many fine and likeable players, and a part of me finds that very irritating. Either or neither could win. For the other, England's women are also good, but Australia's are much gooder (for real. Ellyse Perry should be counted among the greatest female sports stars of all time. A world class bowler and batter, she has represented Australia at World Cups in both cricket and football).

All that is for tomorrow and beyond. Today, Australia's men begin a 4-match test series in India. India will probably win. It is incredibly hard to win anywhere as a touring team because weather and pitches vary a great deal from country to country and strongly favour the home team, no matter how lowly they are ranked. The West Indies comfortably beat England last year, and Australia struggled to a draw in Sri Lanka. And of all the places to tour, India is the hardest place to win of all. A series win in India is a rare and treasured thing.

The problem with touring India are the pitches. They are slow and dusty and - like most subcontinental tracks - favour the arcane arts of spin bowling, where a bowler uses his fingers or wrist to put spin on the ball in the hope that when it hits the pitch it grips and it's trajectory changes, deceiving the batter. Pitches are prepared to take advantage of this and push India's home field advantage as much as possible. Teams who play warm-up matches before tests in the hope of acclimatising will find placid, grassy pitches that offer not a hint of the demonic conditions the test series will likely bring. Cricket has never been a gentleman's game.

Australia have one, very very good spin bowler in Nathan Lyon and a number who are either untested or not good. They are likely to suffer against Indian batters who have known how to play spin since picking up a bat. India have Ravichandran Ashwin, also a very very good spinner, but in Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav they have several who are merely very good and likely to prosper against Australian batters who are less good away from Australia (Jadeja, injured for most of the last 6 months is arguably the best all-rounder in men's cricket today. A prodigiously talented bowler and batter, he is also among the best fielders in the men's game).

Australia have barely toured anywhere since the pandemic began, but their team has played very well at home and their glitchy batting goblins Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith are incredibly good. I have hope they make the series competitive (though for me, their approaches to batting are too angularly idiosyncratic compared to the gloriously pure techniques of Kohli and Babar Azam of Pakistan). But I also hope that Kohli finds form and has a series for the ages.

The man's due.

PS Old Deadspin did a decent primer on cricket years ago and you can still read it, if you don't mind giving the site clicks...

[besidesitstoowarm]

series 1 retrospective

i'm not going to pretend this is anything literary, anything more than my random thoughts about the show i just rewatched. this is my blog. other, smarter people have said more intelligent things 20 years ago. this is the sicko blog for insane people, pull up a chair

so i have not watched s1 in its entirety since junior year of high school, which was a soul-destroying 12ish years ago. i liked nine well enough but i was already on tumblr at the time and was eager to get to ten, whose good looks and charm had been already sold to me. early into college i began to prefer the moffat era to the davies one and never turned back (i'm interested to see now how i'll feel) and rapidly got soured on the davies era by ten/rose shippers (this was not fair of me). 2014 was a dark time, you had to be there

ANYWAY other than the occasional episode in isolation (rewatching "dalek" for example) this is the first opportunity i've had to just enjoy nine without baggage and without being overly eager to skip ahead to "the good part" and like, god damn. the show is good lol

i remembered nine as being "dark" for some reason, more serious than ten or eleven, and i don't think that's fair. he has subjects he's touchy on and he's a bit rude but he's unbelievably earnest, undeniably goofy, and ridiculously loving. he imprints on rose immediately and protects her like a mother hen. he flirts with jack and only gets annoyed when jack flirts with rose. he really isn't that harsh on mickey after the first episode or so. ten is very dramatic in his wailing pathos (not a criticism) but the depth of feeling in nine, mostly good sometimes negative, is unreal. eccleston absolutely crushes the role and i'd kill to see more of him

this is the first time i've loved rose in like a decade. she's grounded, she cares about the average person. she's kind of got brienne energy if brienne was pretty. she's unapologetic about who she is and where she came from, she throws herself whole-heartedly into everything, she has this subtle dark streak where she chases excitement at any cost and flirts with death. she really seems like she'll kill herself if she doesn't risk her life with the doctor, it's kind of scary. you know that speech at the end of "family of blood" about like the fury of the time lord? rose would do that shit for real, ten got it from her. nine may be the navigator but rose is the swashbuckler. i wish we got to see her go ape shit

i found jack surprisingly obnoxious in his first appearance, which i did not recall ever feeling before. saved only by multiple instances of glenn miller. the glenn miller orchestra still exists and tours, did you guys know that? my dad founded a big band with someone who played in it. just a little fun fact for you. the rest of jack's episodes were fun, i like him well enough. wish torchwood had been good, he's a natural leading man with a good mix of humor and dramatic ability. he gets to play the zoe to rose's jamie. did you guys know john barrowman had a cameo in the producers? anyway

mickey was the character i was most surprised by on this rewatch. wow! poor tin dog of a boy. his teary outburst in "boom town" had me genuinely emotional, i really felt for him. i can't imagine how it felt to be left behind like that. he's not a natural fit for companion in the way rose so obviously is, i think it was good for both of them that they broke up, but it hurts anyway. i want to compare him to someone but i don't really know who. he's kind of rory, but rory insisted on coming along and made a pretty good companion. he's not really danny, bc danny was ian, to me. idk. i like you, mickey

i think the tone of the whole series was sublime. about half the episodes were biting political/media commentary (the slitheen/satellite five respectively) and most of the rest were classic doctor who "idk, you figure it out. there's a guy here" charm. "dalek" was an obvious standout for both the quality and the best introduction to the emotional core of the time war. eccleston is able to slide on a dime between bad puns and heartwrenching sorrow, and he carries the show sometimes, he's so adaptable which is perfect as the show found its footing. i was surprised to have genuinely enjoyed every episode this season. "the end of the world" doesn't quite have the polish of a classic moffat ep like "the empty child" but its place as second in the series (after "rose" as a perfect introduction) really sells the premise here, not just "what is this show about" in a literal sense (alien with a time machine) but in an emotional sense, why are we watching this, what's the purpose, why does doctor who exist (or STILL exist)

one of the things i distinctly remembered feeling when i first watched the show, and this will come up again in "christmas invasion," is "why is rose so sad that the doctor regenerated? it's the same guy, but now he's way hotter" but like i get it now. for the first time i understood and felt her confusion and grief. ten is fun and there are a lot of reasons to love him in his own right, but he's not nine, and it's understandable to sit with that emptiness. [clears throat] more like "are you my dadd–" [i am shot and killed for my sicknesses]