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umineko is a post culprit mystery novel

the police being absent and the blurring of victim/victimizer as categories sort of begets a vague anti-carceral stance or at least the beginnings of an argument for one.

for example, the blurring of victim/victimizer can be seen in how natsuhi and eva both suffer patriarchal abuse, yet use their class to mistreat the servants. and in how eva perpetuates the misogyny she endures onto natsuhi, due to the internal hierarchy of the family.

umineko is saying that crime (and abuse), as phenomenon, is a voice (that can't be ignored) from people too desperate to speak any other way. and that the conditions that create it are much more in need of criticism than the harm done by the individuals involved.

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i paint btw

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people don't seem to get that belinda was always a mom. why else did she see poppy in the story and the engine? reality going a bit wrong like the sweden/norway border moving also happens when poppy disappears. the correct reality was the one in which poppy was always real.

there's no the doctor forces belinda and rewrites her life to become a mom. belinda was always a mom. we just saw the edited version of her life. belinda asks the doctor to correct things and bring poppy back. he didn't change her story, he just brought it back to her.

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the gatwa era has thematically been about lost families and how non-normative forms of it are valid. family is not biological. family is not heteronormative. family is chosen, not given. belinda's arc had to tie into that theme somehow.

it frustrates me a bit that people are just going "belinda was reduced to motherhood". she wasn't "reduced". yeah sure, davies *always* brings his companions back down to domestic life after their time in the tardis. i also prefer moffat. but it's not done so here for no reason.

belinda doesn't give up anything else? she's still a nurse, so her career is intact. she's not in a romantic relationship. she's not married off. she raises poppy as a single mother. she wasn't absorbed into some idealised nuclear family. she was just reunited with her daughter.

and more importantly, belinda's arc actually engages with the core thematic substance of the gatwa era. this entire stretch of the show is about abandoned and lost children, and the people who find them again.

ruby and carla. belinda and poppy. goddess abena. splice. even the doctor himself; trying to make sense of susan and what family means when you're queer, immortal, and childless. this era is full of people who are not biologically related but are still bound together.

having belinda be a mother is part of that larger vision. she gets to be a single mother. she gets to keep her job. she gets to be strong and competent and compassionate. nothing about that reduces her. it places her within the emotional and thematic fabric of the era.

now yeah there are valid critiques to be made about how davies often handles female companions. and yeah, it's definitely fair to say that belinda being rewritten to fit a broader theme sacrifices some of what made her unique when she first appeared.

actually i think the same thing happened with ruby. he set up very clear signs about how something about her was supernatural, but then he rewrote her to fit his thematic idea while sacrificing a lot of what made her initially compelling for other reasons.

but to say belinda was simply reduced to motherhood misses the point when it's in a story that is clearly trying to show that family can look like many different things outside the confines of heteronormative expectations.

people will go "she was just locked in a box for the finale" uhm for like 10 minutes out of a decision she did to protect the emotional anchor of the entire narrative? for most of it, she was out too. actually, the entire third act is emotionally centered around belinda.

ruby gets some action, sure, but the story isn't about her like it is about belinda. hell, it is belinda we check in on one last time. it's belinda 15 says farewell too. not ruby. doesn't that say something?

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”nothing more than a mother”

what’s with you guys? she’s still a nurse lol. just *also* a mother now. a single mother even, without the need for a husband

people also talking about how the doctor can’t call himself a dad if he can’t biologically have children. it’s very weird behaviour from the fandom which makes you say reactionary crap.

i like that for ruby they just went uuuuhh cause just like belinda both of their arcs ended with them explicitly not in romantic relationships with anyone

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Series 15 is Doctor Who uncertain of renewal under the shadow of streaming collapse and cultural apocalypse. It flickers between brilliance and boredom, baroque and basic. But it still has things to say about the cost of believing in stories and the danger when they stop working.

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13 golden years of television.

four completely different incarnations yet all of it working as one long seamless arc -- from eccleston to capaldi.

the later eras have no idea what they want to do. 13 didn't build on any of the character development the previous doctors had gone through and actively went back on a lot of it. rtd definitely engages with interesting ideas but can't pull it together coherently.

fundamentally it's not working. chibnall's doctor who was incompetent in the very basics of its workings. rtd2 doesn't have that. he's competent, but it's still too engaged with its own past, still quite empty (perhaps best exemplified by its companions), and limited by format.

i think rtd2 is engaging with interesting thematics that have their moments where they work poignantly, (several times) and overall still takes enough risks episode-by-episode to overall stay interesting. but i hope when it's all done, i can still feel more thoroughly satisfied.

i'm ultimately onboard as long as rtd is running things (and will tap out when mctighe succeeds as showrunner) but it's fundamentally a different feeling show than series 1-10. but i guess that's how it goes with doctor who. it changes a lot.

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i'm ultimately onboard as long as rtd is running things (and will tap out when mctighe succeeds as showrunner) but it's fundamentally a different feeling show than series 1-10. but i guess that's how it goes with doctor who. it changes a lot.

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okay talking about the gender politics regarding belinda and yeah it's kind of mixed. this is ofc rtd's usual track record ("fun to travel with the doctor for a bit but then you gotta get back to settle down") but at least parts of that work thematically here.

obviously stories pushing queer characters or independent women into traditional heteronormative roles are bad but the reality war is a little more thematically complex than that reading allows.

rather than enforcing a nuclear family unit, the episode actively critiques that structure. this is not a family constructed by blood, but one that has been found and built. 15 who is explicitly queer is shown not as a heterosexual father figure

(which would be forcing a queer man into a heteronormative package) but as someone whose queerness and heroism allow him to die not for his child but for *a* child. poppy is important because she is a child and the doctor can help her.

both belinda and the doctor are affirming non-traditional models of family. belinda as a capable single mother (still working as a nurse) and the doctor as a non-biological non-heteronormative parental figure.

this is a deliberate response to ideologies like those embodied in wish world where any form of family that isn’t built around the conventional family unit can’t be understood within that ideological framework.

so i think the critique that the episode reinforces a traditional family model overlooks the ways it’s actually inclusive in how it defines what a family can be.

that doesn't mean it's all good. it's *mixed* but not outright bad for a reason. it’s just not true to say the narrative is pro nuclear family as many on here seem to be claiming (it’s not).

but in making this thematic statement, the show does rewrite the one character whose original conception seemed the furthest from that role. belinda's whole life gets changed to fit the needs of the story (and all the autonomy issues that come with that).

but again there are layers here. i've seen people say "didn’t belinda have an entire first story about not wanting to get married and become a mrs?". sure. but she’s still not a mrs.

people seem to be ignoring that. the narrative still rejects the idea that she needs to be a wife to be a mother. she is a single mother.

equally the entire point of the episode is that you can be a dad without being biologically related at all. you're actually espousing reactionary politics yourself if you're saying a man can’t be a dad unless he can biologically have children.

there’s a reason kate says that in a way they’re all the doctor’s children because in conversation with moffat’s conception of masculinity, rtd shows that the parental role of protecting, sacrificing, and nurturing; is a social one and not a biological one.

and that has really interesting implications when it comes to susan and the potential of removing biological determinism there altogether.

i understand that people are upset that belinda has been reduced to motherhood, but nobody seems to talk about how it does actually engage with this era's themes in an inclusive and non-normative way.

the show, unfortunately, just chose to make that statement using a character who was compelling for completely different reasons.

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very cute you can tell from the episode how much rtd loves moffat and how he nods to him every chance he gets.

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i really like that the master's "genetic explosion" sterilizes the time lords who weren't actually killed. i dunno if it makes a quack of sense in-universe, but it works wonderfully with rtd's re-interpretation of the timeless children theme.

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i think the rani was ultimately done very nicely. having her whole plan be eugenics sort with how "racially superior" time lords are is a particular sort of fascist-coding that i think works very well to differentiate her from the master as more of a "mad scientist" villain.

and i'm happy mrs. flood sticks around because anita dobson is delightful and maybe she'll get a chance to become something more substantial and distinct eventually.

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theories like these are very cool. like how people thought maybe there’d be a time-wimey way for belinda to become mundy flunn. or how the doctor wore the same kilt in the first and last episodes of this season, so maybe it’s a loop? unfortunately, rtd doesn’t write like that.

fundamentally. i’m not sure he’s capable of else either but he simply doesn’t write plots like that. they’re never clever. or actual puzzle boxes. he likes puns and deus ex machinas. i don’t know why people expected something cool like the “they’re trapped in a tv show” theory.

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let me catch up on discourse and what everybody else is thinking about the episode.

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i quite liked it

doctor who finale time

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doctor who finale time

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For an „anarchist” you seem falling nicely in line with other tumblr users and their performative racial awareness.

Making comments on Ruby’s mothers’ skin colours just make you look like you were raised in a small town wirh not library. Get better baby

Sorry that I think having Season 1 talk about how adoptive ties are as meaningful and important as blood ties and then immediately leaving that behind the moment a white woman shows up for Ruby to call her “real mum,” and for the show to then consistently paint her adoptive mother Carla as “evil” in every single alternate reality, is at best bad optics and, more likely, is RTD’s faux-progressivism not holding up under the slightest scrutiny.