1) This story is a prime example of why I get so angry when people throw away their right to vote. A common argument is that it makes no difference who is in office, that nothing ever changes. There has never been a clearer example of how untrue that statement is and how downright dangerous it is to assume that. There is sanity and competence and there are mental disorders and deliberate ignorance. We are clearly living during the latter time. ( Read more... )

2) A bunch of shows have ended or are ending soon. Certainly Orphan Black was the most fan-oriented, though it is Broadchurch I will miss the most as I am ready to declare DI Hardy and DI Miller as one of my favorite teams ever. ( Read more... )

3) Then there was TURN. ( Read more... )

4) I noticed High Rise was on Netflix and as a friend had read the book, I thought I'd give it a try. Wow, what a messy bore. ( Read more... )

5) And people wonder why Hawkeye is on the Avengers team.

RE: ongoing horror show, err, US national and foreign politics: this is yet another reason why I find the entire Hydra in Marvel comics & MCU concept so stupid, not just in the WWII era, where the sheer logistics (or lack of same) break my brain, but also in the present day. Super-secret organization, master assassins, gadget weapons? This just isn't how fascism works. This is how fascism works. It shouts its goals to the winds and gets itself voted into power.

There is not a single member of the Republican party, nor any other voter who either elected the Orange Menace or by not voting enabled it, who can claim this isn't EXACTLY what they voted for or allowed to happen. Because Agent Orange certainly hadn't kept his views a secret. Nor did his minions.

In which we get a LotR or Babylon 5 type of ending, and it's lovely.

( Read more... )

1) I've been posting various recs to recs, but wanted to single out Stamina by runawaynun. It's an inspiring vid about female athletes with a really awesome set of notes about all the women in the video.

2) HT to Paula for these book related words, mostly because I think Angsticipation and Readgret could be used more widely.

3) The legal brief defending John Oliver has a wonderfully fun table of contents!

4) Of all the (many) stories of women being discriminated against, I think this one has to take the cake when it comes to the entertainment industry. And it was simply straight up misogyny, not even cloaked.

5) Some things seem like they ought to be connected to a fandom, even when they aren't. Case in point: "Apocalypse Dreams" by Tame Impala.

I am looking forward to Jodi Whittaker’s Doctor, but last week it hit me really badly how much I’m going to miss Peter Capaldi, and I promptly started a Capaldi era rewatch, and fell in love with the Twelfth Doctor and Clara (and Missy, and (almost) all the storylines and themes) all over again. This was when Moffat-DW really clicked for me. I like the Eleventh Doctor, I like Amy, Rory, and of course River, but individual episodes aside, I was never in love during that particular era. And that’s okay. With a canon spanning more than 50 years, you really don’t have to be all the time. But it’s really great when it happens.

( Madmen and -women in boxes )

The things you learn: seems Samantha Bee of tv comedy fame is a Call The Midwife fan. A woman of taste, which is not new.:) As the unspeakable creature in the White House brings us closer to WWWIII by the tweet and finds condemming Nazis as Nazis too much of an effort, I can see why watching CdM is a good way to maintain sanity.

(Sidenote: I usually avoid calling present day people Nazis because the term is flung around far too often and sometimes in bizarre contexts - see: "grammar nazi" - but if they scream about blood and soil, give the fascist salute and throw the occasional Sieg Heil in, there's absolutely no reason to call them anything else. No more of this "Alt-Right" nonsense.)

But to return to "Call the Midwife", here's a lovely new story, a terrific portrait of Shelagh/Sister Bernadette that follows her through her life to that most crucial of years to her, 1958: life, and breath, and all things.

And here's a Black Sails rec:

The Fields of Elysium: the story of Thomas Hamilton after the 2.05 flashbacks until and including ( something spoilery )

1) I'd be pretty amused if fanfic writers decided to take the same approach, but at least one Norwegian news outlet decided to make readers take a quiz on the content of the article they were trying to comment on before they could comment. If they had a Kudos button on that idea, I'd be trying to hammer it like a whack-a-mole. And it turns out it was a good idea for various reasons.

2) Our civilization will likely end because of "disenchanted teenage boys." They seem to be behind a lot of the fake news being spread online, (especially if we're looking at the commercial factory production of such news), harmful hacking and virus production, and, I learned thanks to Samantha Bee's last episode, the Trump election. The latter was not so much because they voted, though perhaps they did, but because there was a direct line between Steve Bannon's experience with video game players to the misinformation created for the Trump campaign.

3) I don't know how Parrot balances out the different elements that it collects data on, but I found quite a few surprises among top TV shows. ( Read more... )

4) I was on the Pew Research page looking up a report about demographic trends and was poking around their topic list. I found it notable that they haven't done any surveys related to TV specifically -- the few studies that touch on it are not about programming but news. Radio, similarly, has focused largely on podcasting and a bit on NPR.

The last study involving blogging was from 2010. And even then it was lumped into general internet use and has been superseded by studies on social media use. ( Read more... )

5) I came across an article which talked about declining products that Millennials are not embracing. Diamonds were one of them, though the article actually pointed to a drop in demand from China as the main culprit, as well as the growth of synthetic diamonds for jewelry, and the issue of conflict-free diamonds. Beer consumption is also showing a slight decline with other alcohol sales stalled. (Hard to believe that one given the incredible binge drinking that goes on.) But it was the issue of napkins I found most interesting. ( Read more... )

Despite only eating "safe" foods last week, I had a flare up that left me miserable all week. It de-railed all the momentum I had with exercise, water drinking efforts, and keeping safe food in the house. Yesterday, 10 days after it started, I felt human so I started over.

Again.

I managed to walk 2 miles which took me to 12,000 steps.

With the endorphines that generated I managed to bake egg cups so I could get enough protein with my breakfast (scramble eggs, pour over a piece of ham in the bottom of a muffin tin, bake 350 20 min), shredded up half of a rotisserie chicken, zoodled and sauteed three zucchinis (the only freaking vegetable I can eat) and made a pot of turmeric rice (chicken broth, turmeric, ginger powder, and saffron).

Then I cleaned up the mess and congratulated myself on adulting and functioning with chronic illness. This morning, the egg cup was yummy protein goodness and I'm continuing to feel better.
I've got to learn how to keep going through the flare ups instead of curling up into a ball and being miserable. I see the gastroenterologist again at the end of the month. Here's hoping we can get to the bottom of this. Heh, bottom

In the last three days, British historian Mary Beard has been relentlessly attacked on and off twitter for pointing out that the Roman Empire wasn't populated exclusively by white people; this particular round of racism, misogyny and general vileness was started by, of all things, a five minutes BBC cartoon for children featuring some poc Romans. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so outrageous and depressingly a symptom for our present, especially considering current Trump Administration employee and long time racist nutter Alex Jones has also commented. Detailed articles on the subject here and here.

(Incidentally, if I weren't there already, such events would completely sway me to the "representation matters" side when it comes to tv and movie casting.)

Black Sails:


Echoes: it's that rarity, a post-Treasure Island fanfic not in denial of same which has Silver reflecting on his past, specifically the relationship with Madi. Also Flint, but here the focus is on Madi. And it takes what happens in the s4 finale fully into account.

Book of Days: Miranda (and James) after London and in the years before the show starts. Beautiful and painful.

Class:

....a question for everyone who has watched this little gem of a spin-off and the most recent season of Doctor Who: at which point of the Doctor's timeline do you think he met Charlie & Quill and brought them to Earth? We know that there were only three months between that and the Class pilot, and that Clara (as well as Danny) are listed as the most recent names on the Coal Hill board in the pilot, so it must most likely have been post-Clara for the Doctor, and I'm guessing pre-Bill, but was it before or after the events of Extremis flashback that reveals his s10 arrangement with a certain someone in the vault? At the time Class was broadcast, londonkds speculated he might have been projecting his best enemy on to Miss Quill (though they're actually quite different, other than love of sarcasm, if you look at motivation and goals), and it occurs to me the s10 revelation makes that even more likely, but it could have worked both ways - he could have had his Rhodian & Quill encounter before the flashback events, in which case it would have been part of the build up to the decision he makes there, or after, in which case the decision could have been part of the projecting and ignoring that the Quill and Charlie situation really isn't alike.

Okay, on to the fanfiction:

wear me like a locket 'round your throat: Charlie and Quill before, during and after the season finale.

Two stories using the fact that Clara Oswald taught at Coal Hill:

To to learn to be brave: in this one, she's April's favourite teacher and inspiration, but April also observes her downward spiral.

Per Aspera Ad Astra: in which Clara makes a nostalgic incognito visit to Coal Hill post DW season 9 and promptly runs into the not at all nostalgically minded Quill.

1) The Manservant by Michael Harwood was a book that seemed to give up halfway in. ( Read more... )

2) Mordred, Bastard Son by Douglass Clegg was not a romance, though it does have a gay love story. ( Read more... )

3) Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler also plays with the line between fantasy and reality in the first of a mystery series. ( Read more... )

4) An account of how U.S. schools are re-segregating. This BS is going to continue until such time as we start administrating all school funding at the state level, which is the only way to ensure students get an equitable education (and might even encourage voters to better fund education).

5) This article about VR and LARP experiences at ComicCon was perhaps most interesting in its references to how recent movies are relying more on practical effects than digitial ones. However, I can understand why people would be more interested in physical streets and sets than VR. It's much like what I felt at the music museum in Seattle -- I didn't want to spend hours of time watching videos that I could just as easily stream online. I wanted to see physical memorabilia. At some point people will be able to use VR programs at home. Very few people can actually visit, say, a Enterprise bridge set...

More Last Kingdom thoughts, and a new icon which I made myself since I couldn't find one, apropos some rewatching after reading the early books and discussions with peasant:

( Cut for spoilers )

Last but one episode, and more board clearing.

( Spoilery talk )

A fantastic look at Missy through the decades in the Vault:

Still Time to Change the Road You're on (2513 words) by AstroGirl
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Twelve & MIssy
Characters: Twelfth Doctor, Missy (Doctor Who)
Additional Tags: Missing Scenes, reforming villain, The Vault (Doctor Who)
Summary:

Missy may or may not be changing. She doesn't understand any of it, herself.