#like i talk a lot about them dw

[picture-me-in-the-trees]

happy wip wednesday everyone here’s a snippet of this a quick little roy ficlet i was working on!

“Keeley, who eventually realized like everyone else that Roy—plain, simple, clingy, needy, unbearable Roy—wasn’t worthy of that kind of love.

He had convinced himself he’d never find that kind of love again. That comfort, that safety, that closeness. A person who loved him not because he was Roy Fucking Kent, but just because he was Roy. He had convinced himself being just Roy would never really be enough for anyone. But then there was Jamie.”

[al-luviec]

juvie buddies

[gorespawn]

also while we're here i would like to share the two iterations of tumblr user gorespawn that have existed since i abandoned this blog back in like early 2021. Who wants me

[crossedwithblue]

El Higgins and Discworld comparisons

So I've seen a couple of comparisons between El and Tiffany, and to an extent I guess I agree - they're both young female YA-ish protags who are passionate about injustice. However, I'm not convinced that El really does weaponise her selfishness into a virtue the way Tiffany does - El (at least where I'm up to) is more about being crankily selfless despite her better judgement.

Which Discworld character does that remind me of a lot more than TIffany? Prickly? Aggressively practical? Expresses concern and affection via tough love? Tall, attractive in a scary way, with a death glare that could melt steel? Perhaps a tad arrogant about her own raw ability, or at least, not precisely humble? An unreliable narrator convinced that other people hang out with her only for whatuse she is to them, and continually surprised when someone wants her for who she is? Constantly battling not to take the easy path of becoming a monster, arguably despite a world determined to paint her that way? Has a himbo boyfriend she keeps trying to push away?

Am I describing El, or Granny Weatherwax?

(PLEASE no spoilers beyond the middle of book 2/Field Day, I am aware that the boyfriend situation has different outcomes in the two cases but it's still a parallel IMO.)

[ryanthedoctor11]

Imagine a support group being created for your exes, purely to help them move on from you

[elizabethshaw]

trying to work out what exactly was going on in 73 yards

[jils-things]

im gonna sleep soon but aaauuhguug bespren acquired + angry norton . hi milo @ttimecode

[ryssbelle]

My cousins made their own troll Ocs and I drew them in my style.

They were very excited about it

[good-beans]

(Milgram self-insert oc masterpost hehe)

Name: For the sake of posting online I’ll call her Rose!

Color: #E7355B [the pink in the art]

Age: I guess she’d be 20 given when Milgram started huh.

Status: Milgram Staff, Machine Technician

Symbols/imagery: ballet/musical theater, science experiments

Song genre: very similar to Mahiru's, something upbeat and extra pop-y

Tentatively she's number 011? She's not really prisoner but she's also not free to come and go, so I'm not actually sure if she'd get a number (Edit: I've decided she'll actually be 012. Staff is given the 01X range, and even though Es doesn't actively have a number they'd be staff member 011, making her 012.)

Story: Since the project is supposed to be realistic/present day, the mv machine would be brand new and unpredictable tech, so they’d want someone keeping up on maintenance and making sure the brain-invasive process won’t cause any harm to the prisoners. Rose was studying abroad in Japan working on some cool neuroscience tech (irl I know nothing about technology or brains but shh) and she stumbled upon some secret tech/plans from Milgram. Long story short, she was dragged into the experiment to make sure things ran smoothly.

Writer's Reasoning: She’s really fun for me to play around with, as she allows me to work with a character who has a tiny bit of pull over Es’ mindset in conversation but not the final decision (aka mirroring the voting system), and someone who is simultaneously trapped in the prison but has a reason to see all the canon content.* I really enjoy the character interactions and dynamics Milgram has set up so far, so it’s been super fun seeing how things change for better and worse when someone not quite aligned with either Milgram/the prisoners is thrown into the mix!

*As much as I love dramatic irony in fiction, it would drive me crazy if I knew every detail of of the vds/mvs but Rose didn't – and every single Milgram character is The Worst Communicator Ever so I couldn’t justify that she’d hear it secondhand from them...

Story roles:

She’s a bit conflicted -- she’s officially Milgram staff and knows she should remain neutral on the prisoners, since she won’t be allowed to interfere with the process/executions. At the same time, her job description is literally “make sure the machine doesn't hurt them and everyone's safe :)” and she's way too emotional to avoid getting hopelessly attached to everyone 😅

I really enjoy the theory that the machine extracts videos based off of priming, so one of Rose’s duties involves listening in on the interrogation and making sure there’s been enough material discussed/not too much time has passed overall (hence the ringing of the bell happening at different lengths for each vd -- That's her ringing it :3). She then watches the mvs along with Es to make sure there are no machine glitches, and know how to calibrate it better for next time.

(IEdit: I've since decided to add in official trial mvs, but before when I wasn't ready to tackle that:) She has to run some tests on the machine to make sure things are calibrated correctly, so she'd extract little things here and there. It gives me the opportunity to think up lyric snippets and recurring symbols for her without worrying about full encompassing music videos.

I'm not afraid to admit she can fall into Mary Sue territory every so often by being everyone's friend, because it's less about "aw everyone likes her" and more about "canon is too painful rn and I need a fix-it tool to take care of these guys and give them hugs and tell them someone forgives them and cares about them and unfortunately these characters wouldn't let anyone less than a friend do that." Rest assured she's definitely not perfect and will fuck everything up on occasion :3

Miscellaneous: Whenever I play around with normal au ideas she's still working on the machine (but in a public, more ethical setting), and she's Mahiru's roommate :) Her character isn't super focused on love, but if I had to pick a cover song it'd be Stickybug II. It's very much my vibe, the lyrics fit well enough (better than most songs, at least lol) and it's one of my favorites out of my limited knowledge of unchosen Deco songs! (Edit, I've actually given her non-deco cover songs hehe)

So yeah, I hope she's not too boring without a cool crime to decipher, but I wanted to share since I was really proud of her! It took a bit of tinkering to find a way to fit her into a perfect secret-third-thing role that runs very smoothly with all of canon, so I was very excited!

[quietwingsinthesky]

oh, yeah, another thing i noticed that was odd about s5 in comparison to earlier seasons was how much they relied on like. not the history of the doctor, exactly, but the image of that history. whether from little easter eggs of the first doctor’s picture popping up everywhere to i think the two(?) times in the season we get a montage of past doctors. and i honestly can’t remember anything like that happening earlier (with the exception of the time crash short, which felt more substantial to me and was also like. 7 straight minutes of david tennant being allowed to fangirl.)

and i say ‘the image’ because hell knows the RTD era was pulling from doctor who past left, right, and center, but it rarely felt like a moment of ‘look at this old thing, you remember old thing? old thing was cool and so are we for continuing it.’ and more like ‘here’s a species/character/etc from classic who. and here’s how they’ve changed and fit into the new world we’ve built for the show.’

I guess, the difference here for me is that. i haven’t watched classic who. s5 shows me a slideshow of doctors and to me, those are the guys i once ranked by how sexy i think they are. and not much else. i don’t have an emotional connection to an image. but take, say, school reunion? an episode that was my favorite even back when i was a kid specifically because i adored sarah jane? i had no idea who she was then, i only just figured out a little bit ago which doctor she traveled with, and exclusively all i’ve watched of her is that episode in s2 and the sarah jane adventures. and yet, that episode, without the context there for me, managed to make sense to me. i’m sure it was probably even more impactful to fans of sarah jane from classic who, but it didn’t lose its impact without that knowledge.

so, that’s a shift. i don’t want to say it’s a negative one, exactly, because maybe people who have seen classic who like these references and i’m missing something. but, to me, it feels a little more shallow.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Me, at my coworker: I finished both Kyoshi novels. Coworker: Uh oh. How you holding up? Me: I thinking about walking into traffic

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

wait that idea is making me lose it pep comes over to hang out one day and he’s like guys. I need you to not die. and they’re like?? aha ofcourse bud no problem. and he’s like (700 years of life experience and has watched several friends die) (probably just lost simon or finn and is raw but won’t admit it any other way to his wizard friends) no I mean it guys. I’m going to figure out a way, to continually extend your lifespans. since I’m immortal now. no it’s ok my mom has been into immortality experimentation and the extension of life and regeneration since like forever.

like where were you when our friend died a few years back when we were kids and can you bring him back

(oh yeah lemme check with my other mom, who can do necromancy. no, I said my OTHER mom, the one who can do it without the use of potions that frequently backfire)

[rapha-reads]

Hey. Has anyone noticed that Maestro and Ruby are similarly colour-coded? Black and white stripes. To go with both being musically-oriented and canonically queer for Maestro and pretty sure queer but as yet to be confirmed for Ruby? That's interesting. The way Maestro says Ruby is wrong and keeps looking at her like they're trying to look into her soul... I hope we see Maestro again.

Also, related but not directly, there's been an emphasis on music since the first episode of Fifteenth. Whether intra-diegetically or extra, music has been important for the past 3 episodes, 4 if we start with The Giggle. Between all the musical numbers (I haven't recovered from the goblins yet and now they hit us with the twist?), the Doctor breaking the 4th wall, Maestro themself, Ruby being a musician... It's not new of course, we remember Twelfth and his guitar, or Simm!Master's drums, but it is being put frontstage here. Is it because Murray Gold is back in charge of the music? Is it RTD's season-long narrative arc? There's something going on in regard to music in this series 14...

I wrote an essay last year (in Spanish and I haven't translated it yet otherwise I'd be posting it) comparing Segun Akinola's score with Murray Gold's and how both have their strength and serve their narrative purpose. Basically, Murray Gold's first score for DW (2005-2017) are orchestral compositions, full of easily recognisable leitmotivs and big instrumental scores that make you vibrate with all the instruments, the song itself sometimes being much more known, recognisable and popular than the work it was composed for (see Duel of the Fates and the likes). Meanwhile, Segun Akinola (2018-2022) pertains to the genre of ambient music, much more interested in the tone and the sonorous atmosphere, something that's very popular today (how many playlists on YouTube or Spotify, you know the ones).

Anyway, I'm not going to sum up my entire essay here, but basically the role of music in a cinematic work has changed over the past 20 years, and Doctor Who followed that change, and now with Gold back in the music booth, there's another change appearing, one where one aspect of this change could very well be the importance of lyrical songs. I'd need to research it more closely to be sure, but that's what it looks like at first glance. How interesting!

[ssaalexblake]

chibnall era fans as a group are the wet paper towels of era fans and it’s not annoying, it’s Depressing. When was the last time anybody saw any rtd or moffat era fans say in Every positive post ‘it isn’t perfect’ despite how very Not perfect those eras were? What made everybody think you have to compromise your way into saying you like something? If somebody reads your post and they believe you saying you like the era is you saying you like Every single choice made, every story decision, every behind the scenes decision and word uttered from the cast and crew, and every second of screen time was utter perfection then They’re a moron and/or acting in bad faith and aren’t worth anybody’s time beyond a cursory block button hit. 

it upsets me on peoples behalf at this point. We’ve ended up the personification of the 10 crying in the pouring rain.gif. You don’t have to bargain with people who dislike it to express a single positive feeling about it, you don’t need to shove a disclaimer on every post, there is no need to be Guilty (or at least, no need to be any more guilty than people who like the Other eras should) and that people have been such dicks about the era that it’s gotten this far is truly absurd (it’s also Doubly sad because a great deal of these people who actively engage are just showing their own biases, being rude as shit, and offering no good faith analysis. They are Not worth conceding anything to. The polite ones worth conversing and debating with you will hear nothing from because they’re not, you know, rude). 

no, i don’t think it was perfect, but if anybody assumes i think it was because i say it’s my favourite era they’re engaging in bad faith performative outrage because they hate that somebody likes something they don’t, and that’s literally the end of it. 

There is a difference between critical analysis that ends in a negative place and just plain not liking an episode or a choice and voicing that dislike casually and like... a dog rolling on it’s belly in submission to people? I, and everybody else, have as much a right to like this era best as rtd and moffat lovers have to their own favourites and i’m not going to act all submissive about it when they don’t about their favourites. And I don’t expect fans of any other show runner to shove a disclaimer in every one of their positive posts, either, it’s absurd. And i’m not mad that those eras were their favourites, I like things about all the eras and have different critiques about them all as well.

This is absolutely a rant, but... It’s coming from a place of??? People shouldn’t have to do that. It’s not fair. This happened because people were utterly awful. It’s a rant in defence. With everybody else tearing into us with bad faith, unchecked and proud bigotry, and sometimes just plain entitled fan whining, the last thing we need is to tear ourselves down for them. 

[rainingincale]

Why is being a living exisiting human being so very confusing 🙃

[8uny]

my lil bro started estrogen and our twin energy will soon be unstoppable. we'll actually literally be the identical gender nonconforming sibling pair that fiction wishes was real. my family just mixed them up for me today and its only going to get more confusing. tell people we are transgender energy and no one can tell our agab type of deal.

im planning on growing my hair out too now that i have such passing privilege so im saying its only going to get funnier. its going to get so funny. too many people were mistaking me for a cis man at my internship i have to keep them on their toesies.