#he has so much potential but specifically me is personally annoyed by the whole dipping at the first sign of distress thang

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

any camelopardalis fans in chat

[ducktracy]

187. daffy duck & egghead (1938)

release date: january 1st, 1938

series: merrie melodies

director: tex avery

starring: mel blanc (daffy, turtle, duck), danny webb (egghead)

starting off the new year with a bang—the first cartoon of 1938 is one of my favorites! two tex avery creations, daffy and egghead, make their second appearances paired together.

both characters have gotten a makeover, though egghead’s is more drastic: he now has hair and talks in a dopey drawl courtesy of danny webb. daffy, on the other hand, now has blue irises and a matching ring around his neck—this design would be exclusive to this short only. but, it IS the first cartoon to pen him as daffy duck! he’d appear in a number of looney tunes shorts with porky as the year would go on.

like so many other “hunter vs prey” shorts, egghead is determined to hunt daffy. daffy, however, is prepared to do everything in his power to make egghead miserable.

ben hardaway, who would have been directing his own cartoons at the time of this cartoon’s release, is the writer, and it shows throughout. ben is notable for his more hayseed sense of humor, relying on puns so corny you’ll be flossing your teeth for a week to remove the kernels. his punny touch is noticeable right at the start, with daffy and egghead bursting out of literal nutshells in an odd little introductory sequence. irv spence does some nice animation here: daffy shakes his fists in the glory, soon to be interrupted by the fire of egghead’s gun. egghead chases after a HOOHOOing daffy, the smoke from the gun spelling out to the audience “DUCK SEASON STARTS TODAY”.

the scene is odd, but more so out of uniqueness rather than perplexity. one wonders how tex really would have prefaced the cartoon if he were paired with another writer instead.

in a tradition that would carry out into tex’s MGM days, one of our first impressions of the short is a facetious disclaimer:

a sense of tranquility is established through a soft, sweeping rendition of “morning song” from the william tell overture. various gorgeously painted backgrounds fade into each other to convey the passage of time and rise of the sun, each background absolutely stunning in its own right. in a tex avery cartoon, such peace and harmony can only mean one thing: chaos is soon to follow.

our eponymous hunter creeps onto the screen, remarking aloud on the eerie stillness of his surroundings. “i wonder if there are any more hunters out here this morning.” right on cue, a swarm of hunters pop out of the reeds, reciting a popular catchphrase from the ken murray show reused in many a ‘30s WB cartoon: “whoooooooooa, yeaaaaah!”

the sound of quacks ring out from the recesses of the reeds, turning egghead on the alert. just as he prepares to hunt his prey, a signature avery gag of epic proportions interrupts the scene... literally. 

tedd pierce’s silhouette darkens the screen as he makes his way to his movie seat--a latecomer. egghead spots him and urges him to sit down and not scare away his prey. the latecomer does so, only to rise up again and change seats. our frustrated sportsman urges the silhouette to sit down again, which he does so. the silhouette never utters a word, and that’s the best part. the matter of fact delivery of the gag, the control of it all is what makes the gag so funny. such even temperament from the silhouette juxtaposes starkly with the wild nature of avery cartoons. the normal is now the ridiculous. 

when the silhouette snoops around for a better seat once more, egghead loses all patience and fires his gun straight at the silhouette. tedd pierce’s theatrics are hilarious--he twirls around, clutching his heart, hamming up his injury to the last drop. the anticipatory drum-roll as egghead looks on brings the entire act together. finally, pierce collapses, much to the contentment of egghead. he merely rubs the dust off his hands in a job well done and continues where he left off.

cartoon characters shooting audience members isn’t an alien move in warner bros. cartoons (bugs in rhapsody rabbit, daffy in the ducksters), yet the inclusion of the silhouette and its subsequent dramatics brings a new level of inclusion with the audience. imagine what an uproar this would get in a packed house! it’s a great way to break the barrier between cartoon characters and the audience. WB did a great job of making the audience feel included. hell, a majority of daffy’s character throughout the ‘40s hinges on this! but that’s an analysis for another time.

speaking of daffy, he’s the perpetrator of those quacking sounds in the reeds. egghead parts the plants to see if his prey is still there. he is—daffy gives him a viscious bite on egghead’s bulbous nose before going back into hiding.

“that duck’s craaaa-zy!” daffy pops his head out of the reeds again, shrieking a reply of “you tellin’ me? WOO WOO WOOHOO!”

daffy’s voice is significantly more shrill than his dopey guffaws in porky’s duck hunt. in fact, it’s so shrill that this could easily be considered one of his most annoying cartoons. though his 100% screwy, totally out of his mind personality isn’t my favorite personality for him, it’s still pretty damn great! so if you like obnoxious daffy (like me), this is a short for you. if you can’t stand him being a lunatic, stay away!

with that, daffy takes an exit, whooping and shrieking all the way in a direct throwback to his ecstatic exit in porky’s duck hunt. this is a game-changer for the merrie melodies series—the screwy, lunatic antics were typically reserved for the black and white looney tunes shorts. and here we have daffy, splitting the ears of his patrons and being a royal nuisance in the more expensive, esteemed merrie melodies, typically reserved for song and dance numbers! this ain’t your mother’s merry melody.

when daffy takes refuge within a cluster of reeds positioned in the middle of the lake, egghead uses this as an opportunity to lure out his prey with a decoy. specifically, ONE LOVE-LURE DUCK DECOY.

egghead sends the obnoxiously feminine duck decoy out into the water, quacking in time to the beat of stalling’s “the lady in red” underscore. the decoy disappears into the reeds, and there’s a pause.

a flurry of aggravated, warbled quacking cues us in that daffy is pissed off. the action is all hidden behind the plants, leaving details of their altercation is up to the audience’s interpretation. what we do see is daffy’s physical anger: he pops out of the water at the bank of the lake, throwing the decoy down at egghead’s feet. a makeshift sign cleverly held up by a cattail echoes a beloved catchphrase from the radio show fibber mcgee and molly:

bubbles rippling on the surface indicate daffy’s presence. he pokes his head out to heave a teasing quack at the befuddled hunter before dipping back down again, prompting egghead to stick his rifle in the lake. cue a tried and true gag that was likely much funnier then than now: the ol’ tie-the-gun-into-a-bow trick. 

the next gag is one that tex avery would refurbish in his MGM debut, the early bird dood it!: egghead physically lifts the lake up like a blanket, where daffy appears just in time to give his nose another honk for good measure. cue crazed laughter and intricate water aerobics. daffy halts, addressing the audience directly with a flimsy reassurance: “i’m not crazy, i just don’t give a darn!”

irv spence takes the next showdown between hunter and duck. look at how much more appealing egghead is in his hands! egghead leans down to retrieve his gun he tosses aside, when daffy zooms into frame and fights him for it. daffy’s consistent smile as he and egghead battle for dominance, both trying to reach higher and higher on the gun, is hysterical—he’s absolutely getting a kick out of egghead’s frustration. though it was clear he was reveling in porky’s own anger in porky’s duck hunt, here his enjoyment is much more blatant. he loves being a pest.

daffy slides the rifle beneath his legs and out of sight, bopping egghead on the fist and causing him to slug a haymaker against his own head. signature irv spence grawlixes add a nice level of two dimensional graphic design, like something straight from a comic.

out of nowhere, a random turtle disrupts the altercation. the turtle is a parody of parkykarkus from the chase & sanborn hour, speaking in a thick accent and slightly butchered grammar. he opts to settle daffy and egghead’s fight once and for all, posing as a referee. “just a minute, chums. just a minute!” he supplies the two with pistols, both fitted for their respective sizes. to daffy, “turn around.” to egghead: “now you turn around.”

i love how daffy’s curiosity with the turtle’s interruption is noticeable. so noticeable, in fact, that the turtle grows hostile, getting up in his face and shouting “KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES BUSINESS, AIN’T IT!” it’s rare to see daffy lacking control of the situation, even this early on. 

the two put their backs together per the turtle’s command, walking ten paces backwards in time to the turtle’s countdown. just as the turtle reaches ten, daffy jumps behind egghead, who fires. a potentially gruesome conclusion is avoided as the bullet hits the turtle’s chest instead, causing his head to rocket upward, hit a branch, and shrink back into his shell. in a hardawayian touch, daffy hands egghead a cigar, walking off screen, satisfied.

random as the scene is (hardaway’s influence seems to be particularly strong throughout this whole middle section), irv spence’s timing and appealing animation makes up for it. the switch to another animator entails an inevitable downgrade in draftsmanship.

after egghead realizes he’s been duped, he retrieves his rifle and prepares to shoot daffy. though initially startled, daffy thinks on his feet, and eagerly places an apple on his head for egghead to aim at instead. stalling’s fitting accompaniment of “william tell overture” raises in key each time egghead fires (and subsequently misses), a pattern that sounds almost identical to scott bradley’s scores under the direction of tex at MGM. 

egghead shoots a tree, the lake, a barn, and even straight past daffy, who grows increasingly irritated at the hunter’s incompetence, moving closer to him with each effort. hardaway’s influence is strong with the next gag, matched with tex’s fast pace to prevent it from overstaying its welcome: daffy thrusts pencils, sunglasses, and a sign that says BLIND on it before turning to the audience and tssking. “too bad. too bad!” harsh indeed. i imagine this gag would have been prolonged had hardaway directed this cartoon or wrote it under another director.

if anything, this cartoon certainly displays the importance of the relationship between director and writer. writers have a much bigger influence on the cartoon than one might believe! there’s a reason as to why chuck jones and mike maltese are touted around as a dynamic duo. i wouldn’t call hardaway a bad writer by any means, but his influence is certainly potent. tex is a strong director, and thankfully he could cushion the blows of hardaway’s corniness as much as he could, but it’s also evident that certain decisions were made that tex wouldn’t have made in other circumstances.

decisions such as daffy singing an entire ode to his lunacy as the cartoon’s song number. this is definitely a hardawayian insert--a prototype, hayseed, screwball bugs bunny sings his own nutty anthem in hardaway’s hare-um scare-um just a year later. full song numbers have been making their way out the door in avery’s cartoons, and by either this year or next they’d be absent in total from the merrie melodies series. it’s unlike avery to write a whole song about characters explaining their nuttiness.

that is why i have qualms with the scene. at his zenith, daffy never attempts to explain or justify his screwiness. even in the mid-’40s, when he’s able to think and speak coherently and isn’t a mere caricature of his name, he showed no self awareness for his condition. the “look at me, ain’t i a crazy one?” jokes with him were out the door by 1939. half the fun with him is how unaware he is of his daffiness--he lives in it constantly, always zipping from emotional extremes, but never stops to tell the audience just how crazy and fun he is. here, his self-awareness seems ingenuine and prideful. daffy is my favorite character for his humanity and relatability (even--if not more so--when he’s a total loon). here, he lacks that dynamism. he’s merely a stock reflection of his namesake.

with that said, daffy’s rendition of “the merry go round broke down” is my favorite merrie melody song number, period. i’m certainly biased due to my undying affinity with daffy, but irv spence’s animation is genuinely fun to watch, and mel blanc does a wonderful performance. i know all of the words by heart! essentially, daffy’s justification for his daffiness is because the dizzy pace of the merry go round went to his head and made him nuts. while this sense of bragging is relatively out of character for him, it makes for a contagiously fun song, and also, this is his second film ever. they still had much to explore. 

the scene concludes with daffy shaking hands with his reflection in the water and diving back in. fade out and in to egghead, still furiously attempting to pursue his prey. cue a fun little avery gag where our hunter nonchalantly opens the reeds he’s hiding behind like a pair of blinds. daffy’s carefree quacking and swimming in the lake almost seems to mock him. in a gag that would be reused in avery’s lucky ducky over at MGM to a greater extent, daffy puts on a mask to scare away the oncoming bullets. indeed, the bullets retreat into egghead’s gun, prompting befuddled stares at both the gun and the audience.

daffy engages in another round of spastic water aerobics, HOOHOOing all the way. he only pauses to cling to a cattail, echoing an averyian daffy catchphrase that he would also shriek in daffy duck in hollywood, “ain’t i some cutie? ahah! i think i’ll do it again! HAHAHA!”

a nice, jazzy score of “bob white (whatcha gonna swing tonight?)” accompanies yet another endeavor by egghead. he’s either stupidly bold or boldly stupid to keep up such a tiring charade--or both! egghead loads a pair of gloves tied to a string into the barrel of the rifle, cleverly using a cattail as a bore brush. and, despite the absurdity of his makeshift fishing pole, it works: one gloved hand grabs daffy by the neck, the other konking him on the head and knocking him unconscious. egghead reels in his prize, dumping daffy into a net and letting out a handful of gleeful “WHOOPEE!”s.

avery’s timing is succinct--immediately after egghead snags his duck, the sound of a siren drowns out his celebration. a duck nearly identical to daffy approaches the scene in an “asylum ambulance”. “gee, t’anks a lot for catchin’ dis goof!” duck confiscates his fellow duck comrade. the decision to turn the conversation confidential, complete with the lowering of the voice and shifty-eyed glances is great. “y’know, we been after dis guy for months!”

despite everything that egghead has endured, he seems genuinely shocked at the duck’s claim that daffy is “100% nuts”. “oh YEAH?” he echoes, daring to believe it. duck nods. “yeeeeah!” with that, he gives egghead a honk right on the nose.

daffy, completely unscathed, wastes little time in joining the festivities as both ducks beat the tar out of egghead from both ends, literally kicking him in the arse and honking him on the nose. both ducks head to the lake, HOOHOOing in shrill unison as they bound off into the horizon. egghead only has one more option... to join them. thus, we iris out on our brave hunter HOOHOOing into the horizon himself.

as i said at the beginning of this review, this cartoon is one of my favorites--for this era, anyway. despite its imperfections, it’s still a rather fun and rousing cartoon. it’s exciting to see daffy becoming more recognizable, in terms of voice,  demeanor, and appearance. the same can be said for egghead as well, though i doubt anyone has the same attachment to him as they do other characters. i certainly don’t.

admittedly, porky’s duck hunt is a more solid cartoon. this cartoon feels much more like a string of gags than anything, though i suppose that could be said for many a tex avery cartoon. he wasn’t known for his moving stories. hardaway’s corny, hayseed sense of humor serves as the biggest detriment to the cartoon, but luckily tex is a strong enough director to try and work around those weaknesses as best he could. and even though i disagree with the reasoning behind the song number, the song number will always be my favorite merry melody song. 

i didn’t mention the backgrounds very often, but they’re STELLAR. the colorful, whimsical palette brings a lot of energy and vitality to the table. if you were to describe the cartoon in one word, “energetic” would certainly be it.

so, with that said, go watch it! this is a really fun cartoon that serves as an interesting look into early daffy’s character, obnoxious as he may be.

link!

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 34 of 26

Title: The Harbors of the Sun (2017) (The Books of the Raksura #5)

Author: Martha Wells

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Adventure, LGBT Protagonist, Female Protagonist (Kind Of), Third-Person

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 12/11/2020

Date Finished: 12/25/2020

Moon and his friends are reeling from the betrayal of a former ally. With several members of their party kidnapped, and a mysterious weapon stolen by their new enemy, the chase is on. He and the others must infiltrate unknown territory to rescue their missing family and avert a deadly calamity. At the same time, a massive army of Fell are gathering to attack the Reaches. The Raksuran colonies of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night must join forces to defend their home before they are overrun and destroyed. 

“But you don’t want to be near Fell,” Moon guessed. Considering what had happened to Shade when they had been captured by the Fell flight northwest of the Reaches, it was only rational. 

“No, I don’t.” He looked at Moon hopelessly. “Is that weak?” 

Consorts were supposed to be weak and delicate and need everything done for them, but Moon and Shade were different, and nothing was going to change that. And “weak” wasn’t really the right word for what Shade meant. What he was trying to say was harder to express. It was giving into feelings other people thought you were supposed to have about things that shouldn’t have happened to you in the first place, but were not like the actual feelings you did have. There wasn’t a word for that in Raksuran or Altanic or Kedaic or any other language Moon knew. Moon said, “It’s not weak.” 

Full review, some spoilers, and content warning(s) under the cut. 

Content warnings for the book:  Graphic violence and action. Implied past r*pe (it’s the same plot point as previous books). Genocide is a big plot point of this one. 

The Harbors of the Sun is the fifth, and presumably final, book in the Raksura series. And boy what a ride it's been. I've enjoyed settling in with a longer fantasy series. While I'm excited to read something new, I'll miss these characters and the captivating world they inhabit. Since this is probably the last installment, I'll look into book-specific details, but also provide some series retrospective commentary. I won't touch on everything, just things that stick out to me.

From what I can tell, The Harbors of the Sun is a little controversial with long time fans. I can see why, and it's the same reason I added "Epic Fantasy" to the tag list. Most of the series has focused on small-scale conflicts centering on the Raksuran characters. There's hints of large-scale stuff in The Siren Depths, but that crisis is averted, so thus not fully realized. However, these last two books contain a much longer storyline, and the stakes in The Harbors of the Sun are potentially catastrophic not just for the Raksura, but thousands if not millions of people. Think The Lord of the Rings trilogy vs The Hobbit in terms of ramp up.

Due to the larger scale, this book also embraces a rotating point of view. The original trilogy is entirely from Moon's perspective, and The Edge of Worlds only dips its toes into alternate POVs. The Harbors of the Sun features multiple character groups all doing important things to the story, so there's lots of perspective shifts. While I still consider Moon the main character, he shares the stage with many others.

Personally, I like the scaled up conflict. It seems like a natural progression of the series. While not every point of view wows me, finally seeing some stuff from Jade and Chime's perspective (for example) is really cool. While Moon is an enjoyable protagonist, he often interprets characters and motivations wrong. Getting someone else’s take on a given situation or character is refreshing. 

One of my favorite alt-perspectives is Frost. She's a young child and minor character, but serves as the perspective for a tense political discussion between Raksuran queens about impending war with the Fell. This whole section serves to convey important information, but also as great worldbuilding to see how Raksura interact with, indulge, and care for their young. While we have seen adult perspectives such as Moon happily playing with his children, it's interesting to see a child's view of life in the colony. This is emblematic of Wells' approach to the series and her technique when crafting this world. It would be easy to pick a major character like Malachite and tell this section from her perspective, but we would miss many interesting details. Using Frost isn't something I would necessarily consider, and is just a cool writing choice.

By the end, The Harbors of the Sun feels like it's been a long, epic journey-- more so than the shorter adventures of previous books. A LOT of stuff happens in this book, and there's so many different interesting places the characters visit. Even events at the beginning feel distant compared to where everything ends. There is a unique appeal in this kind of story. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I personally like the change of pace and tone, especially as a finale. 

For a series retrospective, the Fell are an interesting subject to discuss. I'm impressed with what Wells pulls off with them. One of my criticisms of The Cloud Roads is the Fell aren't especially compelling villains. They're an evil race of shapeshifters, distantly related to Raksura, who infiltrate cities and eat the population. The Fell are parasites-- they have no real culture or ability to survive except through the destruction of others. They’ve recently taken to destroying Raksuran colonies, kidnapping survivors, and forcing them to produce crossbreeds. Obviously, this introduces two narrative problems. One, "evil races" in fantasy are boring and already done ad nauseam. Two, how can one make the Fell interesting when they're literally irredeemable monsters? 

The answer, it turns out, is a nature vs nurture debate, and it's mostly approached through the Fell/Raksura crossbreed characters. While these ideas have been explored throughout the series, The Harbors of the Sun brings it full circle. The Cloud Roads' main antagonist is Ranea, a crossbreed queen raised by the Fell. She sees the crossbreeds as a natural way to strengthen the Fell and make them an even deadlier force than they are by default, since Raksura have their own set of powers and traits. She’s soundly defeated, supposedly concluding the subplot. Until, of course, it comes back. 

In The Siren Depths, we meet several crossbreed characters who are, for all intents and purposes, Raksura. Malachite rescued them as children and chose to raise them as Raksura of Opal Night. The result is that, while Shade and Lithe are aware of their heritage, they've experienced love and acceptance throughout their lives. Sure, they may have some physical traits and abilities that differ from the others, but often these have practical uses in the story. Their families don’t treat them differently because of this. As characters, they're just as Raksuran as everyone else.

In The Edge of Worlds, we're introduced to another crossbreed queen, a foil to Ranea. While she makes some early mistakes, unlike Ranea she seems capable of reason and compassion. We learn her name and backstory in The Harbors of the Sun. Consolation was born in a Fell flight, but most of her childcare came from her father, a captive Raksuran consort. Hence her name, which is painful with context and distinctly Raksuran. Apparently, the consort's influence didn't just extend to Consolation, but to other outcasts in the flight. After his death, Consolation and her allies slaughtered the leadership and took over the flight, and seek a place to live in peace independent of traditional Fell corruption and influence. 

One of the interesting things about this are the kethel and dakti in Consolation's flight. Throughout the series, these two Fell castes are basically treated as cannon fodder. If you need a big intimidating enemy, throw in a kethel. For annoying imp swarms, dakti. The Raksura tend to think of these creatures as intelligent animals, not people. They only talk when a Fell ruler takes over their mind. They're treated badly among the Fell; cannibalized them when food stores get low, thrown into suicidal situations, etc. 

In The Harbors of the Sun, the kethel and dakti can speak, much to the surprise of the main cast. Consolation's main advisor is a crossbreed dakti named First. There's also a kethel (presumably pureblooded Fell) that follows and assists Moon and Stone throughout the book and engages them in conversation. They clearly distrust it, but over the course of the story go from calling it "the kethel" to "Kethel", like an actual name. It has ulterior motives-- to convince the Raksura to help Consolation-- but is certainly not "inherently evil", nor just an intelligent animal. This is counter to everything we've been led to believe through the series, and it shocks multiple characters and challenges their way of thinking. 

The argument at the end is that the Fell are evil because of a poisonous ideology and the total control of the progenitors (female rulers). Raised with compassion and better treatment, they're very similar to the Raksura. I'm honestly impressed with where the Fell end up vs where they start in The Cloud Roads. I don't know if Wells planned this arc for them from the beginning, but I like the amount of nuance she introduced without it feeling gross or trite. Does it work 100 percent? I'm not sure; I'd have to reread the series in more depth. But based on my current thoughts, it’s a good development; it doesn’t “redeem” or justify the Fell, but demonstrates the ways in which future generations can change and break the cycle. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and many characters clearly distrust these “new” Fell (understandable considering the sheer trauma most of the cast has), but it’s an interesting take nevertheless. 

On another subject, we never really learn what was up with the forerunners! Except they really liked flower motifs, I guess. I kind of like this; there's an impression that the long forgotten civilizations of the past were technologically advanced, but no one knows what happened to them. It's just an enduring mystery of the series. Ultimately it doesn't matter to the characters, and that's fine.

Also, we now have confirmation that The Serpent Sea is basically filler. It felt like a side story when I read it, but part of me hoped it would have some relevance to these last two books. Nope. I’m a little disappointed in this, but it’s not the end of the world, just something to keep in mind when reading the series. I think the book is entertaining on its own merits, but there’s little to connect it to the main story besides the characters. 

Overall I recommend these books to people looking for a non-traditional fantasy series. There's no humans or typical Tolkein-esque fantasy races. Instead there are dozens of sapient humanoid species invented whole cloth, with some obvious real world inspirations. The shapeshifting Raksura are lovingly crafted, with lots of interesting detail about their culture, customs, and daily life. I love how they feel like believable people but are distinctly nonhuman. As a setting, The Three Worlds is deadly and fascinating, with lots of interesting places and people. There's always a sense of a big, vibrant world, even when the books choose not to explore it in depth. While The Harbors of the Sun feels like a finale to the current Raksuran story, I wouldn't be surprised if Wells visits this setting in the future.

There are some short story collections in this series which I do plan to read sometime in 2021. However, I'm going to take a break from the Raksura series and dive into something else for now. Thanks for reading! 

[tessatechaitea]

Young Heroes in Love #4

If Junior hits it off with Zip-Kid, he can stop fucking mice.

I don't want to assume that Junior and Zip-Kid are going to become romantically involved just because she's got the only vagina he won't drown in. Certainly she has her own agency and wasn't specifically created so that Junior can have a romantic love interest, right? Right guys? Tell me I'm right. Please? I don't really remember Zip-Kid too well because she isn't gay and I didn't have to write a letter to DC that purported to be about her sexual identity but was in fact about me and how lonely I was. But I think she can actually adjust her size which it seems Junior can't. So why would she want to fuck Junior when she can bang Hard Drive? I bet Zip-Kid comes so hard when she's small and wraps herself around a regular sized dick. Now everybody who likes dick is probably thinking about how awesome that would be because it totally would be awesome. I'll let you think about it for a few more seconds. Okay! That's enough! Get your mind back on comic books, you disgusting perverts!

Everybody is sad because they're being drawn by a guest artist.

Hard Drive has run off crying so Superman is all, "That guy don't seem so hard." Blushing little lightning bolts, Superman clarifies, "In the British sense and not in the erotic sense." I wonder what Superman Red was doing while Superman Blue was fighting Tottenjaeger? That might sound like a stupid question to people who actually knew what was going on with electric Superman after he returned from the dead. I never read any of those comic books. I'm sure one of my friends explained it to me at the time but it must not have been interesting enough for my mind to retain it. Superman questions Hard Drive's leadership skills because Superman can't remember a single time Batman ran out of the room crying. He never even did that when Kevin Smith was writing him! But Zip-Kid appears for the first time and is all, "I'm Zip-Kid! You don't know me or my huge tits (huge for a tiny woman, that is!) but let me explain what just happened." She then provids a stupid excuse as to why Hard Drive lost his temper and ran away crying which Superman readily accepts because he's a naive and gullible idiot. Unless he's just too kind to question anybody's honesty and simply knows when a person is lying to save face on all sides. Maybe Superman is the opposite of a naive and gullible idiot. Maybe I'm the naive and gullible idiot! No, no way. My mom certainly would have yelled that at me at least once growing up if I were one. Zip-Kid heard the mummy was back and figured the Young Heroes would be back too so she thought she'd appear and try to be recruited. She's pretty hot so that means she probably automatically makes the team. Unless she still has to declare which two other members with which she'll become entangled in a romantic triangle and she'll only then be a full-fledged member. Last issue, Bonfire read a hidden message in Frostbite's ice sculpture so she confronts him about it now.

Pretty sure the filthy message was for Off-ramp and the guest artist wasn't told Frostbite shouldn't look so happy about Bonfire wanting to sit on his dick.

Hard Drive hears Bonfire's lustful words to Frostbite and once again uses his mind powers to get her to forget him. Frostbite doesn't notice and I don't know why. I think when Bonfire said she wanted to dip his icicle in her foundry, he grimaced, awkwardly adjusted his neck tie, and excused himself stage left. Junior makes a pass at Zip-Girl only to find she not only has huge tits and a gigantic zipper but also a boyfriend. A mouse, watching from under the sofa, tightens its sphincter, squeaks, and runs away. Frostbite seems upset that Bonfire suddenly wants to fuck Thunderhead again which seems weird because I'm fairly certain he's gay. I suppose I should trust the story I'm reading rather than my memory since the me that made that memory probably hadn't put as much thought into bisexuality as the me that's currently writing this. Although that probably isn't a whole lot more. Me back then probably would have been, "Is that a thing?" And me now is more like, "Oh yeah. That guy fucks chicks and guys. Cool beans." Although by 1997, I'd already been propositioned by my friend Doom Bunny's friend Michael when we were both sleeping in Doom Bunny's living room after a party. Michael climb up from the floor so we were chest to chest and leaned in close and asked, "Have you ever been with a guy?" I said, "No." And then he said, "Do you want to be?" And I said, "No-o-o-o?" Then he said, "Oh, sorry!" Then as I lay there in the dark feeling horny, I thought, "Why aren't I bisexual? I sure wouldn't mind being jerked off right now!" So I totally would have thought about bisexuality by the time I read this! At some point, Zip-Girl returns to normal size and everybody becomes annoyed with Junior because he doesn't. He then has to confide that he's incapable of changing size. It's so emasculating that I can hardly feel enjoyment in this next scan.

Va-va-va—oh, poor Junior—voom!

Junior almost quits but then he and Frostbite walk in on Thunderhead and Bonfire boning and the intense drama pulls him back into the team. Plus, you know, maybe he still has a chance with Zip-Girl. Young Heroes in Love #4 Rating: B+. The Teen Titans was never this good. How could it run for 120 or more issues and this comic book only went for 18? Oh wait. I know how. Because comic book fans are idiots who will read any comic book, no matter how shitty, as long as it has a character they love. This comic book only had new characters so it already lost a good portion of its potential audience right out of the gate. Comic books with new heroes are like going to a concert and hearing the band play songs off the new album. Nobody wants that shit! Give us Batman and Free Bird!

[toosmallinabigworld-blog]

Just What the Doctor Prescribed, Literally

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a really long time and it means the world to me that so many of you have read the blog and been supportive. Hearing from everyone that read my last post confirmed for me that starting this blog was a good idea. I received a lot of compliments and anecdotes from people telling me that they appreciated my candor and willingness to talk about issues that they hadn’t heard talked about or weren’t able to talk about themselves. So, thank you for reading. I was struggling for a very long time with writer’s block, I would start something and then immediately criticize it and not know how to continue. It felt like I was running full force into a brick wall. I think that happened because I was trying to write fiction. When I was a kid and in middle school, I could write fiction like nobody’s business. Now, I realized that I struggle with fiction because I can’t relate to it anymore. I don’t want to write about made up characters that deal with real life scenarios. I want to write about real people that deal with real scenarios. So, let’s chat about a real life thing, shall we?

           Mental illness. It’s a phrase that people spit out of their mouths like it’s rotten. A phrase that makes people uneasy and nervous, ironically. The real life equivalent of saying Voldemort. This is a topic I’m nervous to discuss because it is incredibly personal to me. And I have reservations about talking about my experience with this due to the controversy surrounding it. But I feel that it is important to talk about, regardless of how weary it makes me. Mental illness is no joke and if talking about this could potentially help someone then feeling anxiety about this is worth it. According to The National Institute of Mental Health, in 2016 it was found that nearly 1 in every 5 adults in the U.S. lives with a mental illness. If you’re bad at math like I am, that’s 44.7 MILLION people. Almost 45 million people in the U.S. have a mental illness and yet we still treat those people that are afflicted like lepers. Like they are lesser human beings than us because of something that they can’t control. Now, not everyone who has a mental illness is treated like shit. Because some are more accepted than others and by accepted, I mean acknowledged. Such as ADD and ADHD. Those are illnesses that are more commonly accepted because they are less scary to think about. I don’t know anyone who has thrown a bitch fit over someone that has a hard time sitting still, concentrating and overlooking things. They’ve gotten frustrated but not immediately assumed that they were unstable and broken. Let’s face it those are the easiest to wrap the mind around. But when things start to get complicated is when people tend to start getting judgmental and scared and hateful. And hate stems from fear. I can’t remember where I heard that but it’s pretty damn accurate. For example, I’ve heard those who have Schizophrenia blatantly referred to as crazy. And why are they called crazy? Because of Schizophrenia’s most popularized symptoms, delusions and hallucinations. We’ve all heard tales of people seeing animals or people, hearing voices that tell them to do horrific things and those are legitimate things that happen. But those are all we hear about. And because we don’t necessarily understand why that happens, we get scared and demonize them. Which is bullshit. If we immediately got scared of everything we didn’t understand nobody would ever leave their houses. I don’t understand how concrete is made but that doesn’t mean that I don’t walk on the sidewalk or get in a car and drive on the street. I would venture to say that Schizophrenia is probably the most controversial of the mental illnesses, but it is not alone in illnesses that make people uncomfortable. Take OCD for example, people just think it’s obsessive organizing and that it is a choice, something they can just stop doing. But it is infinitely more complicated than that. It’s uncontrollable thoughts and actions that they feel they have to repeat over and over again. And in extreme cases, they think something bad is going to happen if they don’t carry out those behaviors. People’s reactions to those illnesses are what facilitate such negative thought processes about hyper common maladies such as depression and anxiety.

           Nothing pisses me off more than hearing someone say to a person with depression, just be happy. When you have clinical depression you don’t get to choose to “just be happy” because guess what? It isn’t that easy, it’s out of your control entirely. Clinical depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. The brain isn’t producing enough serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine neurotransmitters. Causing feelings of sadness, hopelessness, lack of interest/motivation, guilt, low energy, etc. I could go on for pages and pages but at the risk of sounding like a commercial for an antidepressant I’ll stop. I think you get the point. I am one of those people who has been told to “just be happy”. I was diagnosed with depression coupled with seasonal affective disorder, anxiety, insomnia, and OCD like repetitive thoughts when I was in 6th grade. As if being 11 and in middle school wasn’t hard enough, let’s throw a mood disorder in the mix, that should be fine. Right? Wrong. Being told you have a mental illness is like waking up one morning and realizing you have a tattoo that you’ve never seen before. You don’t know how you got it, you’re scared that it’s there in the first place, anxious about what other people are going to think about it, it will never go away, and all you can do is take care of it and hope that it doesn’t get infected and fuck up everything else in your life. Depression can be immensely polarizing. I’ve heard a million and one people say that it gets better, but when your brain isn’t doing its job, it inadvertently convinces you that you are utterly and inconceivably alone. And it’s not a constant feeling either. It comes in waves, sometimes I can go for days without feeling like complete ass and sometimes I can go for days feeling like a dead slug. It’s not something you can predict. And it’s a difficult hole to try and dig yourself out of when you find yourself there. Now depression, just like people comes in all shapes and sizes. And most people’s experiences with it don’t mirror each other, and it’s that lack of sameness that breeds the loneliness that is so common in depressed people. I know all too well about that feeling of loneliness. I’m going to take you on a journey through what a bad day looks like for me, which will be really easy to do since I’m having a bad day today. When I wake up I don’t usually know right away that my brain has hit the off switch on functioning. The first indicator is this ever present feeling of heaviness. Like someone dipped my whole body in molasses. Getting out of bed is physically difficult and I don’t even want to. Because even something simple like walking is just fucking hard. My body aches and I feel like a zombie and in reality I probably look like one too. Next on the shit list is the mental fog. And it genuinely feels exactly like it sounds. I can’t think clearly or focus on things that aren’t generally mindless and easy. I isolate myself and even though I’m feeling lonely and sad, I don’t want to be around other people. And I have no desire to eat, I just lose my appetite all together.

           Anxiety does the same thing. I’ve been anxious, worried, and habitually stressed out for as long as I can remember. I’ve had teachers, friends, previous therapists, and even my parents call me a worrier. Which couldn’t be more accurate. I have a terrible habit of worrying about other people so much that I start to take on their problems. Stressing about my dad not having a girlfriend and hoping that he doesn’t end up dying alone. Worrying about my mom every time she gets sick, even if it’s just a cold. Taking on issues my friends are having with their families and trying to use my knowledge from many years of therapy to help them overcome their problems. Worrying and stressing that much can lead to panic. I remember the first time I had a panic attack, it was freshman year and I was in my 6th period Spanish class. Describing what a panic attack feels like is akin to trying to explain what the color red looks like. Especially because it’s subjective, no two people have the same experience. But because it’s important I’m going to do my best to explain. It feels like the world is crashing down on me for no particular reason. It’s terrifying. It legitimately feels like my skin is turning inside out. I get shaky, sweat like a whore in church, scared. It feels like I’m trapped in my own body and all I want to do is run away and hide. From myself. Panic attacks are something I still struggle with. They’ve decreased in prevalence since I found a medication regiment that works for me but even that doesn’t eradicate them completely. Most of the time I have no warning as to when one is going to happen. But there are some specific triggers, for example when I hear an unexpected loud bang or noise. I have PTSD and that sound sets off a fire in my brain that causes me to panic. Or when my stress level gets too high and I get overwhelmed. My mind doesn’t know whether to fight or flee so it gets stuck in the middle and I shut down. There is nothing that I know of that compares to that feeling. And when it’s over I’m left exhausted and weak. It fucking sucks. There’s no other way to say it. It fucking sucks.

           When I was first diagnosed, I was paralyzed at the thought of telling anyone that I have d&a (depression and anxiety, it’s getting annoying writing out the entire words). I was scared of being judged by my peers, and looked at like a freak, like I was different; even more different than I already felt. I didn’t want to get bitched at by everyone for being the emotionally broken girl, which is what I thought I was. I remember my first appointment with my psychiatrist, I was scared. I was adamant about not wanting to go on medication, but my parents thought otherwise. Which wasn’t a bad thing. In reality going on medication was the best thing that could have happened. Because I don’t know where I would be without it. I’ve had the discussion with multiple people about how I shouldn’t need to be on medication anymore. That I should be able to just learn how to deal with my depression and move on. But it isn’t that simple. Like I said before, depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. The medication helps rebalance me. But it isn’t an exact science. Since 6th grade I have been on 8 different medications, some of which I still take. Why so many you ask? It comes back to it not being an exact science. Sometimes the medication will work for a while and then just stop. Which, speaking from personal experience, is a bitch and a half. It’s so aggravating when you can feel that something isn’t right but should be. That being said, finding the right medication, or medications in my case can be immensely helpful. I’ve gone from regular panic attacks and depression so bad that you can’t complete simple tasks to what I refer to as, being at ground zero. Ground zero is a great place to be, no extreme highs and the absolute lowest of lows. Just level. There is no joy in the world that can compare to finally feeling normal when you’re used to feeling like your emotions are exploding.  

           I have been really lucky to have a family who completely supports me and is always there when I need them. And they understand when I’m having a shitty day and what that means. I have been spectacularly lucky to have that. Others have not been so lucky. And that breaks my heart. Nobody deserves to be looked down upon for something that they can’t control. It’s like getting mad at someone for the color of their eyes. They didn’t choose the color, genetics gave them that color. So, who are we to judge them for that? This post is jam packed with facts and personal testimonials and if you gain anything at all from it, I hope you gain some understanding and empathy. That the next time you see someone on the street talking to themselves or one of your friends is really sad or stressed out for no obvious reason. Don’t judge. Try to understand. Try and wrap your mind around the concept that their brain is, for lack of a better phrase, rebelling against them. You don’t choose to have a mental illness, just like you don’t choose to have legs. It’s what life has bestowed upon you. So, I challenge you to try and change your frame of mind, you may find it enlightening.  

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 2: GERALD

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a new mini-series of mine, in which I’ll be going into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, we’ll commence Round 2 by taking a look at the mastermind of Sonic Adventure 2, who got a cap popped in his ass 50 years prior: Professor Gerald Robotnik.

The Gist: Gerald was once a kindhearted scientist who wanted nothing more than to use his genius to help benefit mankind as we know it. Seeking to cure the fatal illness of his granddaughter, Maria, Gerald worked on many ambitious projects, such as constructing the Space Colony A.R.K, working on countless potentially dangerous weapons like the Artificial Chaos units and the Eclipse Cannon, and most famously, creating the Ultimate Lifeform and chest hair enthusiast himself, Shadow the Hedgehog. None of these achievements actually cured Maria, but the professor worked tirelessly in his eternal quest all the same.

Here he is here, looking completely fucking terrifying.

Unfortunately, this quest was tragically cut shot when a bunch of dummies from G.U.N stormed the A.R.K. in an effort to shut down all of Gerald's projects. In addition to the professor's own arrest, it also led to the death of his beloved granddaughter. When he found out about the casualty... well, he didn't take it all that well, because the revelation transformed him overnight into a mad fucknugget.

At some point before his execution at the hands of G.U.N, he reprogrammed the A.R.K. itself to collide with the planet should all seven Chaos Emeralds be inserted into the Eclipse Cannon, as a final middle finger to the human race who took everything away from him. He also reprogrammed Shadow to carry out the hunt for the emeralds, to ensure his revenge would go off without a hitch in spite of the somewhat annoying obstacle of being dead. While Shadow would indeed go on to carry out Gerald's plot 50 years later upon his release, courtesy of one Dr. Eggman, an attack of conscience through a talk with Amy Rose convinced him to turn against his creator's corrupt intentions at the most vital moment, going so far as to help Sonic take down the professor's repurposed guard dog - the Biolizard - and seemingly sacrificing himself in the process.

Though Gerald’s pre-insanity days would be delved into more come Shadow’s own spinoff (although making a deal with an obviously evil alien makes one question if he was already crazy from the beginning), his villainous spin is still remembered with dread by the world he once loved. And no one remembers it more vividly than the one who nearly carried it all out. The one who Gerald looked at as a son.

“NOW can I use a better font?”

The Design: There’s a bit of an inconvenience here, because whereas there was a lot to cover with the many designs for Chaos, there's significantly less to speak of with Gerald's design. He’s essentially just a grey-haired (grey-whiskered?), slightly slimmer version of his grandson.

“Eggman? No. I’m my own original character... Deadman.”

In fairness though, with the way this particular antagonist works, it was never really about the physical appearance in the first place.

The Personality: ...There's not really a lot to say here either, since we've only seen a few moments with him due to his status as a posthumous character. He was a decent, altruistic man, only to turn crazy and vengeful when Maria got bumped off. That about covers it, really.

“I know that human beings and anthropomorphic killing machines can co-exist peacefully.”

The Execution: Now this is where the meat lies with Gerald. But I have to say, my thoughts on the professor overall are very prominently... grey.

On one hand, he's sympathetic enough as a character. The premise of a once pleasant man carrying out his vengeance from beyond the grave is certainly an interesting one, and his voice actor did a really good job with conveying his spiral into tragic insanity (even if it's slightly harder to take seriously when you remember it's the same guy who voiced Vector the Crocodile in Sonic Heroes).

On the other hand, while I don't think the basic concept with Gerald is too out-of-reach for a Sonic game, I do think there are certain elements involving him that go a bit too far and dip it into pretentious territory when you remember what franchise this is supposed to be. Much like Maria getting shot to death by the military, I feel that the recorded footage of Gerald's to-be-execution is a misguided result of being gritty for gritty's own sake.

Can Sonic lend itself to darker moments? Sure it can! But it needs to do those moments right, in a way that works with this franchise, rather than work against it. Moments like Gerald's pre-execution footage don’t mesh well, and make it all too easy to forget that I’m playing a Sonic game at all.

Can you tell I don’t have a lot of photos to work with for this guy?

His plan isn't without problems either. While not to the same degree as Mephiles certain other villains who I’ll cover at a later date, Gerald's evil scheme nonetheless has a few loopholes, the most infamous one being: Where did he get the time to do all this?

In order to have been able to program Shadow's servitude and the A.R.K's collision in the first place, he had to have had access to them. That's obvious enough, but here’s the thing: Gerald spent his captivity in Prison Island, which you can tell because his cell is the same one that Sonic was trapped in earlier on in the game. You COULD make an argument as to how he accessed Shadow at least, since the Ultimate Lifeform was sealed away in Prison Island as well, but here's where it gets even trickier: He couldn't have went insane until after his capture and imprisonment, because his arrest happened during the G.U.N. raid, the same event that resulted in Maria's death to begin with, and very little time would have logically passed between that and the professor being taken into custody.

So with what the narrative gives us to work with, either Gerald somehow had access to Shadow and the A.R.K. during his captivity, meaning G.U.N. are extremely incompetent and careless... or he already reprogrammed them before the raid even happened and thus when he had absolutely no reason to do such a thing. (Maybe he did it for a cheeky laugh...?)

“Only through the power of Windows Movie Maker can I make my vengeance manifest.”

Speaking of Shadow, Gerald's manipulation of him to destroy the world in Maria's name kind of falls apart when you remember that Shadow's flashbacks of Maria presented the latter as the kindhearted girl she really was. Maria marked the core of Shadow's own tragedy and subsequent low opinion on humanity, and yet nothing about her presentation in said flashbacks indicated that she would have wanted him to destroy the planet and kill everyone. Gerald clearly altered Shadow’s memories by inserting his own misanthropy and vengeance into his creation, so why did he leave his memories of Maria completely unscathed? 

This is even part of what causes Shadow to eventually change his ways in the first place. And yet, despite the story itself insisting otherwise, it's not like knowing Maria's real ideals was a game changer for Shadow. He already remembered what Maria was truly like.

“Shite, I guess.”

And finally, there's his relationship with his grandson, Eggman. Or more accurately, Eggman's relationship with him. Either way, I feel as conflicted about it as I do with Gerald himself.

We find out that Eggman considers his dead grandfather to be an even bigger genius than he is, even long after the latter's demise. I don't want to make this all about Eggman, since this post is meant to be about Gerald (don't worry though, the doctor will get his time in the sun soon enough, just you wait), but I always had a problem with this, because I feel it undermines Eggman’s own status when you really think about it, and while I can appreciate the attempt to give Eggman some depth and backstory expansion, I don't think this angle works out for Eggman specifically. Why? Because for a character who was - and still is - loud, proud, and insistent on how he is the best scientist there ever was and ever will be, the sudden revelation that he thinks his grandaddy was better than him honestly feels like a betrayal of the character in a way. If he respected his grandad's genius and maybe got inspired by him when he was a young lad, but still considered himself the biggest genius when he grew up into the man he is today, that would have felt more characteristic of him in my honest opinion.

“So just for clarity’s sake, when I say I’m the greatest scientific genius in the world, I’m actually saying I’m not the greatest scientific genius in the world.”

So yeah. Overall, my thoughts on Gerald are mixed. Decent concept, good acting, and I actually do like the character to an extent, but there's a lot working against him that make me unable to consider him a full winner. Also, he and Shadow fucked Eggman over massively. The game that many consider to be Eggman’s finest moment, and they pull the rug out from underneath him and reveal he was a clueless pawn the whole time.

I’m slightly bitter about that.

Just slightly.

Ever so slightly.

Crusher Gives Gerald a: Thumbs Sideways!

[timeflies1007-blog]

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 5, part I

Please note: these reviews contain spoilers for this season as well as other seasons of the reboot, and contain occasional references to the classic series.

Previously on Doctor Who: Russell T. Davies presided over the rebirth of the show, starting with Rose Tyler’s escape from mannequins in a shop and ending with the Tenth Doctor’s sad exit. Lots of glorious things happened, we met some fabulous new monsters, we were introduced to an unprecedented amount of information about companions’ homes and families, and if there were occasional detours into deeply annoying pieces of plot and characterization, there were also many triumphant forays into charming and highly emotional stories. Once Steven Moffat takes over as showrunner, the show gets more complicated; people usually mean by this that the plot becomes convoluted, which I think is only intermittently true, but the approach that the show takes to its characters is, to me, the much bigger leap in terms of complexity. In the Davies era, we had a lot of very emotionally demonstrative characters, who often verbalized their thoughts directly, and who had such expressive faces and body language that they were usually legible to us immediately even if they were refusing to speak about certain feelings. With Moffat in charge, I don’t think that the characters’ emotions are less deeply felt, but I do think that they are less directly expressed, to the point that elements of plot, music, and imagery are far more thoroughly burdened with conveying—sometimes with extreme subtlety, sometimes with banging-you-over-the-head obviousness—the feelings that the characters conceal from each other and occasionally from themselves. This season is not quite as subtext-heavy as the next one, but I do think that, while you can turn your brain off and enjoy much of this season as a compilation of lots of good jokes and some entertaining running around, it does seem like a very different kind of storytelling that fundamentally involves more work for the audience, at least if you want to grasp what’s going on with these characters. I don’t think that this is necessarily a qualitative difference—more directly visible characterization can be brilliant and can be terrible, and the same is true of more subtext-driven work. Sometimes, the Moffat era is smarter, in its indirect character-building, than the Davies era was, and sometimes it is clumsier, but regardless of the result, I do think that the approach is extremely different. With that said, plenty remains the same: the show is fun, the monsters are scary, and, as we start this new season, the Doctor is about to make an endearing new human friend.

The Eleventh Hour: There are two high-stakes situations unfolding very quickly in this episode: the Doctor has twenty minutes to save the Earth from incineration, and the show has about an hour to prove that it can survive without David Tennant. The combined pressures exerted on both the show and its characters result in a frenzied, often breathtaking episode that feels a bit like inhaling five shots of espresso, but it finds just enough moments to slow down and let us appreciate this new array of characters.

           Smith is immediately good, but Doctor himself takes a few minutes to win me over. While the initial meeting between the Doctor and tiny Amelia is cute, the long sequence in which the Doctor tries and spits out various foods quickly gets annoying; making a little girl cook what seems like most of the contents of her fridge for him seems like an awfully pushy thing for the Doctor to do in his opening minutes, and the scene puts the Doctor right on the line between quirky and exasperating. At the end of the scene, though, we get the first piece of magic in this fairytaleish season, appearing in the unlikely form of fish fingers and custard. There are quite a few things on Doctor Who that work for reasons that are difficult to articulate—murdery trashcans really shouldn’t be some of the most engaging villains in television history, but somehow they are. Smith, until the end of this scene, has been a mostly likeable presence without quite being able to shake the little voice saying “He seems pretty good, but why did they cast someone so young?” This was my initial reaction to his casting, and continued to be my reaction to his first few minutes, but then he dips bits of fish into a bowl of yellow gloop and why this works is entirely beyond me but suddenly he’s the Doctor. Hi, Eleven.

           The Doctor, whose tendency to show off becomes especially troublesome in this regeneration, gets plenty of opportunity to do so here. He gets the attention of world leaders by sending them a proof of Fermat’s theorem and several elaborate pieces of knowledge, he practically revels in the chance to save the world with no TARDIS and a twenty-minute countdown, and his warning to the Atraxi, in which all of the previous Doctors appear, is both a terrific moment and a huge display of vanity. The Doctor refers to his confrontation with the Atraxi as “showtime,” but he’s putting on a show the whole time, and enjoying the performance quite a bit. Even his pep talk to Jeff—“First, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working…This is when you fly”—seems like something he is saying to himself as much as to the bewildered young man he is addressing. The Tenth Doctor was often a huge spectacle, but he was rarely as self-aware of it or as intentional in building it as this Doctor so immediately is. This means that there is even more potential for aggravation here than in his previous incarnation, but the Eleventh Doctor’s tendency to indulge in performance is so clearly-defined and so easily-perceived by other characters that it plays a slightly different role here than it did before—most notably, it produces problems more often than it solves them. This is one of the rare moments in which his self-glorification really does straightforwardly solve the problem, but it’s just so nice to see glimpses of the previous Doctors just as we’re starting with a new one that I still really like the sequence.

           There were a lot of complaints about Amy Pond being introduced to us as a short-skirt-wearing kissogram, which is a reasonable objection. On the one hand, her outfit allows her reunion with the Doctor to take the form of hitting him with a cricket bat, handcuffing him to a radiator, dressing up as a police officer, and communicating with fake police on a fake radio, which is sort of fabulous in itself; I appreciate people who have a proper respect for costumes and props. On the other hand, it really is just an unnecessarily objectifying first look at grown-up Amy, and it invites the audience to sexualize her in a way that hadn’t really happened with the reboot’s previous companions. The decision to have her let her hair down just as she reveals that she’s a kiss-o-gram makes the scene look even more sexualized, and the return to the subject later on at Jeff’s house is just cringeworthy. We really, really didn’t need the Doctor making a judgmental face about Amy’s choice of profession, nor did we need a list of the different people she dresses up as—apparently, she’s been a police officer, a nurse, and a nun. It’s a brief scene, but it really does feel sexist, and it’s an unfortunate distraction from the much more interesting elements of Amy’s personality that we encounter in this episode. (On the subject of gender, it’s also worth pointing out that if you’re on a laptop talking to a group of world leaders, at least one of whom appears to be female, you might want to refer to them by a less gender-specific term than “fellas.”)

           Other than the questionable choice of occupation, though, we get a marvelous introduction to Amy here. I particularly like that the companion who’s going to go through pretty much every imaginable faith-related psychological issue over the next couple of seasons is introduced praying to Santa Claus (in April!) It’s a silly moment, but one that shows that her tendency to resort to belief that some sort of miraculous intervention will solve problems is exacerbated by the Doctor but doesn’t originate with him. She’s had many years to obsess about the Doctor, and her long period of disillusionment with him before she even sets foot in the TARDIS means that she reacts very differently from what we’ve seen in other companions. I really like the scene in which she traps him by locking his tie in a car door in spite of the fact that the apocalypse is looming, and I love that there’s no “bigger on the inside” moment when she first enters the TARDIS, just wide-eyed silence. The presence of the Doctor and his time machine is as much a validation of her stubbornness as anything else, and the “Scottish girl in the English village” who clung to her accent in spite of the geographic change already has a complicated relationship to the man whose existence she spent so much time defending. There’s some interesting thematic work connected with her as well: the act of carefully looking is an important element throughout Amy’s time on the show, and the Doctor’s promptings to look for what’s in the corner of her eye create a nice beginning to this, as does the fact that the Atraxi is basically just a giant eyeball.

           Amy’s world—a small town with a post office, a hospital, and a duck pond with no ducks—doesn’t look as endearing as Davies-era London often did, but it’s very pleasant and I sort of wish that future episodes had let us spend a bit more time there. I particularly like the Doctor’s frustrated remark that in their current possibly apocalyptic scenario, “We’ve got a post office. And it’s shut!” Rory isn’t especially memorable here, but we get a solid introduction to him. While everyone else is busy filming whatever is happening with the sun, Rory is calmly trying to do the useful thing by recording the inexplicable phenomenon of a walking coma patient, and the impression of Rory as quietly and unostentatiously helpful is a pretty accurate first glimpse of him.

           In addition to Amy, Rory, and the Doctor, we’re also introduced to the new TARDIS, who gets possibly the best debut of the four. Debates about who has the best TARDIS entrance generally center on companions, but my answer would be the Eleventh Doctor. I’m really glad that he’s the Doctor who eventually gets to talk to the human TARDIS (in next season’s “The Doctor’s Wife”) because he and the TARDIS somehow manage to have off-the-charts chemistry even while she’s still a machine. His awed “What have you got for me this time?” as he first enters his newly-redecorated TARDIS is my favorite moment of the entire episode, because he delivers the line with such a palpable sense of love that I suddenly get their relationship more than I ever have before. The TARDIS has always been fabulous—I mean, she’s what makes the show possible—and there have been plenty of moments that showcase the Doctor’s emotional connection to his time-space machine, but the end of this episode is the first time that she genuinely seems to me like a real character with a personality. This is partly due to Smith’s reaction, but the camera also shows an unprecedented level of excitement about the buttons and switches, and there’s a spinny thing that made me really want to poke it when I first saw it. (It should be pointed out that Amy does so almost as soon as she enters. Well done, Pond.) It’s like the camera, after years of taking it for granted, suddenly noticed how amazing the control room was, and while I have often wanted to travel on the TARDIS, this episode made me feel much more connected to the TARDIS herself than ever before.

           There is so much attention to new characters and spaces here that it’s easy to lose sight of the plot, but it’s a solid one—the Atraxi’s broadcasts to the entire Earth are quite frightening, and Prisoner Zero’s ability to change form is used to good effect. I wish that Olivia Colman had gotten a bit more to do, but she makes the most of a tiny role, looking and sounding tremendously intimidating as one of Prisoner Zero’s bodies. We also get a number of references to upcoming plot points, including the first appearance of the eerie cracks in time and the first mentions of the Silence. As a shift in tone and an introduction to new characters, storylines, and themes, this is a phenomenal piece of writing, and if Moffat had managed to come up with a different job for Amy, this would probably be in my top ten episodes of the reboot. The kissogram nonsense brings the quality down a bit, but it’s still easily the best debut episode for a Doctor in the reboot, and “Spearhead from Space” is really the only episode in the history of the show to compete with it as an introduction to a new Doctor. “Spearhead from Space” is an important predecessor here, in that it, too, marked a huge departure in tone from what had come before. The change here is not as drastic as the shift between “War Games” and “Spearhead,” but it does feel like we’re in a quite different world from the one of the Davies era. It definitely requires some adjustment, but for the most part, the new world looks absolutely stunning. A/A-

The Beast Below: I really disliked this episode the first time I watched it, but there are only a couple of episodes that have grown on me more over time. The Starship UK isn’t among the best worlds this show has portrayed—it’s a bit too wrapped up in generic Police State Surveillance things to be completely enjoyable. (The logic doesn’t really hold up either. Having children fed to the whale because they perform badly in school is horrifying to an extent that doesn’t really gel with the idea that the leaders here are trying to do the least terrible thing possible in an awful ethical dilemma. It’s also pretty stupid that the Starwhale clearly doesn’t eat children, and yet they keep getting sent to it.) The episode manages not to fall too badly into the trap of dystopian dullness, however, in large part because it features a queen wearing a giant, awesome cape who has strewn water glasses all over the floor and is secretly investigating her kingdom. It’s too bad that we only got one episode (and then a tiny cameo at the end of the season) of the marvelous Sophie Okonedo, but she really sells both the Queen’s enjoyment of trying to take down her own government and her eventual guilt when she realizes what she has allowed to happen. She looks, at first, like she’s going to be fabulous and fun but sort of lacking in depth, but by the end I’m really intrigued by her role in the Starship’s moral dilemma. She makes the Starship a much more interesting space, and some very nice direction allows the camera to find some really beautiful moments in the generally pretty drab world.  I tend to get annoyed with episodes that take a general approach of “It’s the future, and everything’s terrible! And technology, in particular, is terrible! Look at all the terribleness!!” because it’s just a boring way of creating a new place. Unlike some other episodes, though, the episode mixes a simplistically grim-looking future with some whimsical features and some much more compelling and creative darkness, and so the world of the Starship winds up with a varied enough atmosphere that it mostly works.

           The plot itself is solid without being especially original—basically “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” with a whale in it—but it’s a surprisingly hopeful version of this story in several respects. The choice between the agony of the whale and the destruction of the Starship is taken entirely seriously, and the reveal that Liz 10 was behind this all along manages to avoid making her look straightforwardly evil. (Non-misanthropic dystopias are my favorite kind of dystopia.) There are also more options here than there are in “Omelas,” as we see in both the Doctor’s attempted plan and Amy’s actual solution. The absence of the binary decision between tormenting an innocent victim and harming the rest of society means that this isn’t as good as “Omelas” in terms of serving as a thought experiment, but this does allow for a more character-driven story. Smith is not quite as memorable in this episode as he was in the previous one, but he gets both some fun moments of physical comedy and some interesting moments of darkness, particularly in his grief over thinking that he has to murder an innocent creature. He starts to get unnecessarily condescending—he clearly sees that the choice between protecting the whale and protecting the Starship is an impossibly difficult one, so his insistence that he’s taking Amy home after this trip and his infuriated “Nobody human has anything to say to me today!” seem a little bit unjustified. Interestingly, though, he is shown to be wrong almost immediately. He and Liz 10 have sort of the same problem here, in that they both see themselves as the hero, and so the whale is placed into the role of victim, either to be saved or to be abandoned to his continuing misery.

            ��  Enter Amy Pond, whose continuing state of awe renders her far more capable of understanding that in this narrative, the Starwhale is, well, the star. Amy gets a huge amount to do in this episode, from cheerfully picking a lock to leaving herself messages about how to rescue the Doctor from having to make a difficult choice. Her delighted reaction to being listed as 1306 years old is adorable, and the scene in which she floats just outside the TARDIS is a beautiful image—so lovely that I’m not even particularly bothered by the unnecessary voiceover. Her resolution to the whale dilemma partly relies on her observational skills, the importance of which is highlighted by the Doctor as soon as they land. “Use your eyes. Notice everything,” he tells her, and her effort to do this definitely helps her to figure out the whale’s actual motives. Mixed in with her observational abilities is her somewhat idolizing view of the Doctor, which shapes her actions in a number of ways. You don’t want your childhood imaginary friend to become morally compromised, and her immediate response to the information about the Starwhale is to leave herself a message to get the Doctor away from the ship, where he would be forced into doing something that might tarnish his image as the perfect hero. Amy eventually does create a compassionate ending, but she was entirely willing to run away and leave the whale there in order to remove the Doctor from a morally ambiguous context. Amy is a character who is defined by her ability to believe—she puts her faith in the Doctor to an extent that allows them to develop a wonderful sense of trust, but that also can become dangerous because of how fervent that faith is. Her belief in the Doctor shapes her reading of the Starwhale here; she is so committed to her vision of a perfect Doctor that she sees the whale through that lens, and is willing to take a huge, possibly catastrophic leap as a result. As it turns out, she’s right—the whale really is too kind to let down the Starship passengers. If she’d been wrong, though, she would not only have killed herself and the Doctor but also the entire population of the Starship. It’s a great introduction to the mind of Amy Pond—fundamentally good and kind and trusting, but in a way that carries quite a lot of risk with it. What I really like about this is that the Doctor doesn’t just need a human perspective, he needs Amy’s in particular; what she does here is so specific to her personality and mentality that it really does seem unique to her, and I don’t think we’ve ever had quite this much information about a companion’s mindset by her second episode before.

           The problem with this episode is that Moffat doesn’t quite seem to be able to trust the intelligence of his audience. In fairness, there are some pretty subtle things here, including the first reference to silence in relation to emotional pain, but there’s also a tendency to over-repeat important points to a ridiculous extent. We spend too much time watching Amy flash back to the clues that help her put together the real nature of the whale, and then once she’s figured it out, she goes on about kind, lonely creatures who are the last of their species for about five years. The notion of Starwhale=Doctor isn’t a very complicated one, even for a show with lots of children watching, so the decision to keep the dialogue one tiny hop away from “The cast of Schoolhouse Rock shows up and sings a song called Metaphors Are Your Friend Also Do You Get How the Whale Represents the Doctor” is just completely unnecessary, as is the poem that Amy recites at the end.

           Other than the poem and the belaboring of the point, the ending has some lovely moments. The hug really solidifies the connection between Amy and the Doctor, and the final scene on the TARDIS, in which Amy answers a phone call from Winston Churchill, is an absolute joy. On the whole, the episode does a stellar job of conveying the nuances of Amy’s emotional state, and it gives us one of the season’s best guest characters in Liz 10. If the details and logic of this world had been ironed out a bit more, and Moffat had written the ending with anything approaching subtlety, restraint, or basic faith in his audience’s intellect, this could have been a great episode, but even with these errors, it’s still a very enjoyable one. B

Victory of the Daleks: For a while, until disaster strikes and everything collapses into multi-colored nonsense, this episode seems like a return to form for the Daleks. The show’s most famous villains had a mixed run in the Davies era: they’re brilliant and terrifying in Season One, kind of fun but shoehorned into the plot in Season Two, an absolute mess in Season Three, and even in Season Four, when they improve a bit, they get slightly buried under the avalanche of plot and character things happening in the finale. In the first twenty minutes of this episode, the Daleks are sensational: terrifying, visually fascinating, and deeply unsettling in their uncharacteristic subservience. (This isn’t the first time that the Daleks have masqueraded as servants, as this was a thing in “The Power of the Daleks” as well. We only have that in animated form, though, since it was erased, and so it’s nice to have the creepy visual of tea-serving Daleks here.) I love having the Daleks fight Nazis, on whom they were initially based, and the hidden threat contained in their stated ambition of “win[ning] the war” is fantastic, although slightly diminished by having the Doctor explain the double meaning a few minutes later. The reveal that Bracewell is a robot that they constructed in order to explain their presence is terrific, and they have a solid plan for getting the Doctor to inadvertently help them. (I mean, if you’re a Dalek and your plan relies on the Doctor’s tendency to grandstand about his longstanding rivalry with your species, you can feel pretty confident about your chances of success.) Even after they have stopped pretending to be Ironsides, the Daleks do some intensely creepy stuff, like turning all the lights on during an air raid.

           The triumphant portrayal of Daleks in the early scenes of the episode makes it even more disappointing that the climax of their plan involves intimidating the world by…changing color. Moffat has said in interviews that he was too focused on the first block of filming, and didn’t shift his attention soon enough to the second block, which included this episode, and so he didn’t put enough thought into evaluating how these new Daleks looked on camera. This is a plausible enough thing, particularly for someone in his first season as showrunner, but I can’t imagine what even prompted the initial idea to do this to the Daleks in the first place. There was nothing wrong with the existing appearance of the Daleks, and this redesign just makes me think of the song in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat where they list all the colors. (“It was red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn etc.” and then in the film version there are eventually multi-colored sheep.) There has been some variety in the Daleks’ appearance across the history of the show, but this is easily the silliest and least frightening that they have ever looked.  

           Other than the Daleks themselves, the episode is uneven in terms of quality. The portrayal of Churchill is pretty one-dimensional and doesn’t acknowledge the many ways in which he was a quite problematic figure, but he’s entertaining and the World War II-era atmosphere is nicely established. This is probably Smith’s weakest outing among the early episodes of this season, perhaps due to some awkward writing of his initial rage against the Daleks. He does, however, try to confuse the Daleks by pretending that a jammy dodger is a self-destruct device, which is awesome. I’m pretty tired, at this point, of “The Doctor must choose between destroying the Daleks and preserving the Earth” as a plot point, though, even as a fairly minor one. Enough with this for a while. Amy continues to be an appealing presence, but she doesn’t get anywhere near the kind of depth that she had in the previous episode. She is pretty heavily involved in the resolution of the plot, but her ability to talk Bracewell through his feelings really just reveals that she is developing a crush on the Doctor—not an aspect of this season that I enjoy. Bracewell is an intriguing character, and the notion that having human memories makes him a real person accords nicely with the focus on memories as soul throughout the Moffat era, but the ending doesn’t make sense. It’s not unreasonable to say that a robot capable of deep emotion might philosophically be considered human, but in this case it would still be a human with considerable physical differences, including a bomb inside. There’s just no reason for the character’s emotional awakening to disrupt the physical process that the Daleks have set in motion, so the last-minute escape from destruction seems unearned. The decision to let him run off and carry on being human makes for a cute scene, though, and the episode concludes with a nicely-done reappearance of the crack from Amy’s wall, as well as the intriguing realization that Amy ought to remember who the Daleks are but clearly doesn’t.

           This episode is often offered as evidence that Mark Gatiss isn’t a good Doctor Who writer, which honestly I think is a bit unjustified. As I said in my review of “Idiot’s Lantern,” I do tend to like Gatiss’s writing of more realistic stories, like Sherlock and An Adventure in Space and Time, much more than I like his work on sci-fi stories. That being said, if the Dalek redesign didn’t look so idiotic, I would think of this as a pretty good episode, slightly let down by an illogical ending. While there are other flaws, there really is quite a lot that I enjoy here, and the one thing that completely capsizes the episode is the appearance of the Daleks, which Gatiss presumably wasn’t responsible for. It’s difficult to grade this episode, because it involves balancing a lot of good moments against some incredibly stupid decisions; on the whole, I think of this as a weak episode, but I don’t think I dislike it as much as some fans do. C+/C

The Time of Angels: This episode probably features more terrifying things than any other episode of the reboot. The Angel’s slow emergence from the television screen is creepy enough, but the gravel pouring out of Amy’s eye is the stuff of absolute nightmares. The Angel’s use of Bob’s voice is also enormously chilling—I would not want to hear an actual Angel’s voice, as that would take away from the mysteriousness of the species, but having it use a human’s voice and even make use of some of his thoughts means that the Angel conveys a lot of malice while retaining its elusive nature. The conversation is nicely structured too, so that we initially think it’s really Bob talking until we hear “I didn’t escape, sir. It killed me too.” The very best moment, though, is the reveal that they have inadvertently surrounded themselves with Angels; the Doctor introduces the two-headed nature of the Applans so casually that it just didn’t register to me, and I audibly gasped when the Angels’ presence became clear. (I am usually a very, very silent TV-watcher, so it takes a lot to get a vocal reaction from me.) It’s a perfect example of how easy it is to endanger oneself by simple misinterpretation—the notion that an Angel would hide amongst statues seemed so plausible that the possibility of another way of looking at the scenario just never occurred to me.

           While this is an extremely plot-twist-heavy episode, it does some interesting work with the characters. I really like the army of clerics, especially the Bishop in charge, who is beautifully played by Iain Glen. There are plenty of reasons to be dubious about a church that has evolved into a military, but what I like about the portrayal of these figures here is that the Doctor basically treats them like he does any other slightly odd civilization by just sort of getting on with the work that he’s trying to do. The idea of an overtly militant church is allowed to be unsettling without the Doctor doing an entire production number about how terrible they are, and the episode goes along with this by making the Bishop a figure of considerable integrity. It’s also a nice touch that we get both a religious army and a mass of angel statues in a season that largely deals with the (over)development of Amy’s faith.

River makes quite an entrance, burning a message into an artifact and then, once she lands on the TARDIS, being much better at actually flying her than the Doctor is and provoking a hilarious TARDIS-landing-noise imitation from him. I do think that her exchange with the men on the spaceship at the beginning gets a bit over-sexualized, both in the dialogue and in the closeup on her stilettos, but once we get past that scene she’s terrific, especially in her interactions with Amy. There’s an easy sense of connection between the two, which makes sense given later revelations, and I like that Amy seems intrigued by River’s relationship with the Doctor without appearing jealous. Amy herself also really impresses me by figuring out how to neutralize the TV Angel by pausing the clip on an Angel-free moment, and her brief spell of believing that her arm has turned to stone is a chilling scene that ends in hilarity as she questions whether the Doctor has “space teeth.”

The end of the episode allows the Doctor to do his usual yelling at monsters about how scared of him they should be, but it also gives some attention to his relationship with Amy. The revelation that Bob’s voice is actually an Angel is a scary plot twist in itself, but what’s even more interesting about this conversation is that it plays very precisely upon Amy’s fears. It’s unsettling to hear Angel Bob use the Doctor’s words about fear against him, saying that his fear did nothing for him and that the Doctor obtained his trust and then let him down. Amy has had more occasion than most companions to think about her level of trust in the Doctor, given his long abandonment of her, and the camera occasionally cuts back to her nervous expression as the Angel continues to taunt the Doctor about his betrayal of that trust. As the episode draws to a close, the Doctor gets everyone to reaffirm their faith in him—to take, in fact, a very literal leap of faith—but while the characters make this leap willingly, there remains a persistent sense of doubt about whether or not their faith is warranted. A/A-

Flesh and Stone: The Dalek episode was difficult to grade, but this one is nearly impossible, as most of it is amazing but the last scene is absolutely dreadful. I’m not sure if any other episode of the show has ever collapsed in on itself in its final moments quite as much as this one does; I mean, I had a huge problem with the end of “Love and Monsters,” but while the last scene is the worst part of that episode, it started to decline in quality about two-thirds of the way through, while this one is generally terrific until its very last minute.

           Until the final scene, there is a great deal to love here. A lot of absolutely terrifying things happen in this two-parter, but Amy’s slow countdown from ten is probably what scares me the most. It doesn’t lose any of its impact on rewatch, even though I know that it’s coming and what it means. The subsequent need to keep her eyes shut also makes for a lot of good drama, although her ability to avoid being sent back in time by the Angels by pretending she can see, even with her eyes closed, requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. As far-fetched as it is, though, I can’t watch it without holding my breath, and having to walk through danger without being able to see creates yet another test of her trust in the Doctor. (It reminded me a bit of those trust exercises they made us do in school, where you put on a blindfold and had to wander around the hallway guided by your partner’s voice. I have painful memories of almost falling down the stairs.) In fact, for a while, so many great things are happening that it takes a bit of an effort to properly appreciate them as they whiz by: the clerics use their guns to create short bursts of light so that they can see the Angels with the lights off! There’s a forest on a spaceship! With tree borgs! The Doctor gets Angel Bob to say “comfy chairs!” The clerics keep disappearing and only Amy can remember that they ever existed! The Doctor finds out part of River’s background! The Angels show up in a big scary tableau! The Doctor enters in a slightly altered costume, looking very mysterious while telling Amy to believe in him and to remember what he told her as a child! My favorite, though, is probably the scene in which the Doctor and River try to figure out how to stop Amy’s ominous countdown. The Doctor and Amy don’t know it yet, but River knows that she’s with her husband and her mother, and looking back on it with knowledge from future seasons I just think it’s a beautiful interaction between their family. River and Amy continue to have a lovely connection, and they work so well together that the episode leaves us not only with the usual questions about who River is to the Doctor but also with new questions about who she is to Amy.

           As in the last episode, there are a lot of terrifying moments with the Angels, but there are also slightly too many new developments. The worst of these is the moment in which we watch them actually turn their heads, which is the one total miscalculation that Moffat makes with the Angels in this two-parter. Part of the creepy charm of these characters is that we see where they were and then how far they’ve progressed in the blink of an eye, and I like that “Blink” left open the possibility that they essentially became something utterly different when no one was looking. Having the Angels just kill people instead of sending them back in time also isn’t as interesting, but it does lead to Bishop Octavian getting one of my very favorite death scenes of a single-story character in the whole reboot. Smith does some really beautiful work in this last exchange with Octavian, and their final words—“I wish I had known you better” and “I think, sir, you know me at my best” make for a really moving end to the character. He returns to his faith at the end, as well, saying that he thanks God for his own courage and for the Doctor’s safety, and for all that I think a militant church is all kinds of bad ideas, I really like how sincerely devoted Octavian is to his work and beliefs.

           The time crack could have benefited from just a little bit more explanation—it’s not entirely clear to me exactly what it means to never have existed, and whether this involves people’s memories being erased or the actual erasure of all of the effects that they had. (It seems to mostly be the former, but it could definitely be a lot clearer.) The clerics disappearing into it one by one is genuinely frightening, though, and it’s good continuity that the Doctor realizes that throwing a major time event (like himself) into the time energy would seal things up, as this becomes important later on. The resolution to the Angel plot also stretches plausibility a bit—it’s not the first time that the show has suggested that holding on really tight can completely offset exceedingly strong gravitational forces, and my science knowledge is limited but it always seems questionable to me. Still, I appreciate that the previous episode established the gravity turning off as a real possibility, which makes the moment more believable than it would otherwise be.

           And then there’s that last scene. Introducing a sort of love triangle between the Doctor, Amy, and Rory is a stupid enough idea to begin with, but the details of the scene make it even worse than necessary. I get that trauma can make people lose their judgment a bit, but Amy’s efforts to seduce the Doctor don’t read like someone who is shaken up and making questionable decisions, they just come across as a male fantasy of an attractive woman suddenly becoming desperate for sex. She’s so aggressive in trying to get with the Doctor—even persisting in her attempts to kiss him after he has resisted—that the whole thing is just exploitative and objectifying to a ridiculous extent. Sexual attraction between a Doctor and companion generally isn’t my favorite thing in the first place, but creating a love triangle between Amy, the Doctor, and Rory is even worse, especially with the added drama of Amy trying to seduce the Doctor on the night before her wedding. Her connection to the Doctor has so far been fascinating and unique, and this just rewrites it as something much, much less interesting. It makes this episode difficult to evaluate, because in spite of a couple of unnecessary new details about the Angels, there is so much loveliness before this scene, but this ridiculous ending is enough to bring my opinion of the episode way down. B-

[lemon-writings]

Project Update: Lessons in Humanity from a Future Physicist

So here’s a two-in-one update, because everything’s been really hectic lately. It’s been a tough 20,000, and I’ve had to fight with my teeth on it, but here she is!

50,000 words, folks. That’s what’s good. 

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We’re starting this 20,000 off with some stuff I remember from my singular semester of Gen Chem: noble gasses. I’ve always been a little fascinated with noble gasses in the same way I’ve been a little fascinated with theoretical physics and astrology. It’s an interesting concept, elements that have difficulty bonding with other elements, like people do. And, of course, Kam finds a way to relate science with his current life situation. 

Zach gets off his bed and starts to pace around the dorm, moving in this self-contained way, like a particle of noble gas. Maybe that’s why Zach can’t form meaningful connections with his romantic partners: his valence shell is full. Maybe he is meant to be a lone atom for the rest of his life, not forming any bonds with anyone.

Maybe that’s why Kam doesn’t have bonds. Maybe he’s a noble gas, too. 

I really like the noble gas comparison. There’s something really fitting about noble gasses and Kam. 

“Xenon.” Kam straightens himself, pulling his shirt and hoodie from his chest and fixing his glasses. He doesn’t say we are noble gasses. He doesn’t say we’re both lonely, but I think that’s why we get along. He doesn’t say I wish I understood people like you do.

“Xenon,” Zach repeats, sounding like Kam.

And one more time to make it a motif. Remember, kids: once is random, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a meaningful motif!

Kam sits, self-contained as always. He is his own universe, detached from everything and everyone else. Maybe he isn’t krypton, but helium, unable to form any bonds, floating alone in the vast nothingness of the universe. Helium is the loneliest element. 

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So, there are a couple characters we meet in these chapters that I’m not sure I’m keeping, just because I know they’re not being used to their full potential, and it makes me really sad to know that they could have such better roles in a different story. I’m not going to put them in this just because I’m not sure about their standing, but suffice to say that I might be writing a whole thing about them sometime. 

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There’s a little bit of Gerard’s backstory in this one, too, which is nice, because Gerard hasn’t gotten a lot of backstory in the past few drafts. Gerard has a pretty bad relationship with his family. He doesn’t really like to talk about it unless he has to, and even then, he won’t say a lot. 

Gerard nods, leaning back into Vic’s grip. He doesn’t look like the puffed-up, brave man who said that he wasn’t going to let his family ruin his life. He looks like the same broken child that showed up holding a trash bag of his belongings on the Suzuki’s doorstep sobbing out please, they found out, they kicked me out, I don’t know what to do, I’m scared.

-|-

Vic and Kam’s birthdays happen in these chapters! It’s a really big thing to everyone else, but Kam isn’t a huge fan of celebrations that center on him. 

Kam FaceTimes his family and it’s so? Pure? They’re just all so soft and I love them, especially when Kam looks back on his childhood with his mom and brother fondly. 

It makes Kam feel like a child again, walking into the living room to tell Kiyomi about the most recent episode of Star Trek he’d watched or some fact he’d learned from a documentary. He almost expects a gentle head pat and a declaration that he’s mom’s little astronaut.

-|-

At one point, Kam’s at his father’s house, and let’s just say that it upsets him a lot. He has a bit of an episode and goes to the bathroom, because for some reason, it’s a good place to have a breakdown. Or, at least, it is for me. 

Specifically, Kam’s having a moment where he freaks out about change. How much he’s changed, the people around him have changed, the world has changed. Change really upsets him, even if it’s for the better. 

The bathroom is always silent, and if Kam leaves the lights off, he doesn’t have to look at himself. He doesn’t have to look at the man he has become, slowly grown out of his gawky, awkward teenage body in the same way Zach hasn’t, broadening and filling his frame with muscle, the masculinity coming with the testosterone shots. He can ignore the fact that he is a different person from the child he once was, that he has actually become a man instead of a child. In the dark, he can pretend that his life has never changed from childhood.

As a result of this, Kam really misses Zach. Kam’s gotten really used to Zach holding him when one of them gets in a bad mental place, so when Kam’s having a bad time at his dad’s house, he really doesn’t have anyone to comfort him. Even though sometimes Zach’s really bony and uncomfortable to cuddle with, Kam still enjoys his presence. 

He aches for Zach’s presence, the unsure smoothness of his voice, all the ums and uhs and stutters in his speech that are more endearing than annoying. Then Zach’s skinny arms wrapped around him, the pressure making up for the uncomfortable boniness. His breathing, always so steady when he needs it to be, and even the scratchy feeling of his stubble and thrifted sweaters against Kam’s skin.

-|-

I love writing about Zach and Kam’s nostalgia. There’s something kinda warm and fuzzy about reminiscing over memories I’ve never had. 

Zach smiles at the rush of high school era memories, the innocence of going to the local record stores and then a comic store, watching Kam peruse the sci-fi comics with the same sort of awe Zach showed the battered sleeves earlier. He describes it, the happy look Kam would get when he’d see an issue of Star Trek focusing on Spock.

-|-

There’s some really good moments between Kam and Nikki when they’re bonding. Not quite in the realm of friendship yet but nearing the line, they’re really awkward around each other. Nikki just really wants to know about Kam because she thinks he’s “mysterious and brooding” when really he’s just traumatized and brooding about it. 

So, sometimes Nikki looks at Kam because of the aforementioned interest in knowing more about him, and it makes Kam ask himself a lot of questions and do a lot of introspection. 

Does she see his perfectionism, the way he makes sure the lines of everything on his desk are parallel? Does she see his determination, the way he grits his teeth when he bench presses? Does she see his thoughtfulness, the pauses in conversations when he stares off into the distance in silence? 

He wants to ask her what she sees when she looks at people that makes her continue to stare at them. Maybe it’s the same thing he does, trying to puzzle them together, piece together the parts he can gather about the people around him. Maybe it’s what Gerard does, psychoanalyzing everyone he sees. Maybe it’s what Vic does, admiring the beauty in everything.

But Kam knows he isn’t beautiful, so it can’t be that. 

Poor guy’s got a lot of self-esteem issues.

At the same time, Kam’s looking at Nikki and thinking about how much she looks like Zach, because Kam always thinks about Zach. 

She kind of looks like Zach, if he squints. Shoulder-length hair in frizzy curls, except hers is a little straighter, like she messes with it more often than he does, brown eyes that catch everything, band merch across her chest. The light hits her as the sun dips lower into the sky, making the purple marks under her eyes fade and her sharp angles look softer. He thinks she could be beautiful.

-|-

In all, I feel pretty good about what’s going on with Lessons, even though I haven’t been moving at a particularly decent pace with it. There are going to be some rather big developmental changes in the next 10,000 words, though, because, like many drafts of my books, Lessons has a sagging middle. 

[whatgoesoninmyheadd]

"Yeah."

I get hungry, alright? So I thought of my favorite snacks in bed and I only wanted that specific snack so I got my ass out of my bed because I had a bad case of the munchies. I got in my car and I drove down the street to my local circle K. Problem happened when I got there. I parked and got out of my car, and I saw a man who was making strange gestures as he walked across the front of the liquor store with his dog who seemed to be acting harmless sitting there, but the dog could still pack a punch seeing as though I just got bit by the tiniest dog the other month. Anyways, I was outside my car and I was slowly making my way to front door and it was late at night and there was no one else is in the parking lot on one of the busiest intersection in my neighborhood, and the guy quickly digged his hand in his pocket and I thought: “ah, fuck this how I die, he’s gonna pull out a knife. A fucking guy with either turrets or a smack problem is about to make a hole in my stomach and his dog is gonna slurp from the puddle of my blood.” So I made a hard left and toward the street I saw another dude drunkenly jay the street toward us and he literally had something sticking from the bottom of his shirt sticking out his belt line. Then I thought “holy shit, he’s packing and gonna shoot me and the guys dog is still gonna slurp up my blood.” So I went back in my car and fucking dipped. Then went to another convenience store. When I got there, there were at least two people at the chevron gas station. One of them being the gas station clerk. He was having a cigarette outside the door and when I came in and immediately went to the chip isle, I saw him through the window that he put out his cigarette and got ready to go back inside so he could ring me up. I met with him at the register in perfect timing. After I payed for my hot cheetos, I said “sorry you had to put that out, man.” The store clerk smiled and replied “it’s okay.” I left the store. I drove home thinking about the two potential killers I could have totally fought off with my imagined fighting skills. And as I was driving down a street near my house I saw the headlights of a car from the other lane that came my way and when it passes I heard a weird mechanical buzzing noise. At first I thought, “ah shit it’s a drive-by, son, duck.” And as soon as the car passed mine I was still alive because obviously that only happens on the news and movies and not my life apparently. But the car didn’t pass by my car that much, because they had hit there breaks and swerved a little to the side of the road. And I heard a slight yell. It was a girls yell, but I couldn’t make out the yell as I was making a left car turn to almost get to my house. I thought it was an annoying drunk girl calling out to her friend because they were gonna pick her up and go party. But it wasn’t that at all. I rolled down my windows and I stopped in the middle of the road because I started seeing the other car shake a little and the yelling was still happening, but this time I could make out what she was saying. “Let go of me. Let go of me. Let go of me Maurice. Let go of me.” I saw a woman struggling to get out of a car because a man was holding onto her. And when she had most of her body out the passenger side she turned around with a hand still wrapped around her arm and saw me. “CALL THE COPS PLEASE CALL THE COPS.” I was frozen in my car staring at the whole thing. The man let go of her as soon as she yelled that. When she got away she didn’t run, she just walked away toward me. That immediately told me she wasn’t in extreme lethal danger by like a weapon or something. So I waited in my car and didn’t drive off and waited for her to get closer. And soon as she got closer I felt like she realized I was waiting for her so she hurried and said “please take me home, please.” She went around my car and I still didn’t say a single word. My face just followed this woman through my windshield as she neared the passenger side. I realized what had happened in the moment but I was still high so it was a little slow paced for me but right before she lifted that passenger door handle I had just pressed the unlock button. Perfect timing again. She opened the door and my lights turned on because my ‘04 gti does that. As she was getting in my car I noticed her shirt had rips all over it and I saw her left breast because that woman has obviously been abused and that’s why there were huge holes in her shirt. As she got in, she said: “please take me home. I live just down the street.” I drove off and gave a last look to my left where the car was and I saw a figure in the dark. The person who she was leaving just stood there staring in our direction. I drive down the street and all I heard was complete sobbing and I’m just looked straight on the road and drive and tried to find out why I had let a complete stranger in my car. I didn’t even know if she was faking it or it was the real damn thing and I took a gamble and just said it was the real thing and trusted she really wanted to go home where she felt safe. All I saw while driving was the road and the light shining on her tears as they went down her left cheek through my peripheral vision. She lived really close to me. She said to make a right at the stop sign and her moms house was on the corner and that she was gonna call the cops. I went down her street. And I almost passes her house but I quickly made a right so I can make sure I was in her driveway. She courageously said the words “thank you,” and I courageously said the word, “yeah.” She got out and went in the house. I sat there for a bit and just took it all in. I wanted to say more but I couldn’t. I wanted to say “I hope you will be safe and I hope he stays out of your life.” But I felt like I couldn’t say that. I just didn’t know her well enough to share such caring words. I fucking dipped back to my house but I was looking around because I’m was paranoid about this whole night and was worried that guy was gonna intentionally t-bone me and be like “SHE BELONGS TO ME.” but I made it back home safe in one piece.

I laid back on my bed. But the difference was, I had snacks.