What was Fred

Characters are always two things at once - an imitation of a person, and a tool for storytelling. They represent something to the story, have a specific role. Hero, sidekick, villain. Femme fatale, damsel in distress. MarySue.

So I looked at Lilah and Fred, what they were to Wesley's story, how that explains his attraction to them.
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today I have
figured the interesting twisty bit for the Wesley story
written a lot of notes about Wes and his assorted relationships
booked a hotel room for SG10 (helpful person did the phoning, but is done now)
been driven to the shops
did shopping on my own
walked home on my own

I think college kind of uses me up. I spend all week either going to college, recovering from college, or getting ready to go again. Now with the time off I'm doing little things again.

I have had a big chocolate muffin.
I have egg mayo and bread rolls for later.
so today pretty much worked.

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Watched Point Break
I still really love this film
don't so much like the DVD. No extras, no subtitles. I can live without extras but subtitles are pretty much why I buy DVDs, so that was a pain.

Have realised I like Point Break for much the same reason I like Lost Boys - its about falling for the wrong guy. Main difference is the lack of that layer of metaphor. But surfing becomes a different sort of metaphor. Real world but different world at the same time.
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The fall-for-wrong-guy story is why I keep going back to write Ripper/Ethan in the 70s, despite being fed up of teenagers (or idiots acting like them). Got that whole seduction to the dark side thing going. But in my head the thing with Ethan was only incidentally dark side. Like, Ethan wasn't the wrong guy, he was Star or Tyler, the one who is involved but not the principal problem. Which is also not right. I mean Ethan is bad magic guy, no doubt. Just... I don't know. Maybe because story logic says whoever is at fault has to die, therefore it has to be Randall that was the bad guy because he ended up dead. Hmmmm, doesn't really work right.

Star, Tyler, they bring the guy in to this other world, new and transforming. Tyler's world, surfing, that has a spiritual side. It transforms him in a positive way. Connects him to the natural world and to himself. And that should be what magic does. For Ripper and Ethan, or in the real world, magic is spiritual and transforming but not the source of the problem.

Ethan is all about transformation, so that part comes from him. And he is spiritual, he is the guy who worships, who gives the night to Janus rather than taking it for himself. So that part fits.

Just, then there's Eyghon. Ripper and Ethan found Eyghon together. And Ethan ends up turning up playing bad guy. So something went very wrong.

Did Ethan fall for the wrong guy? If I told the story from his point of view, would Ripper be Bodhi or David?

Some days I want to make Ethan too shiny, clean him up too fast. But nobody gets born the bad guy. So there is always the question, how did Ethan get to be that way? And if Ripper is the answer... layers of interesting.

Doctor Who, last son of Gallifrey

Been reading essays about Doctor Who again
one of them compared Gallifrey Go Boom with Superman, the whole Last Son of Krypton thing.

There are a number of characters who are 'last of their people'. And assuming their biology is in full working order (or their technology, like genetic looms), there is one simple way to fix that.

Like Battlestar Galactica says, the war is over, they lost, now what they have to do is get out there and start making babies.

At this point the Doctor shouldn't be traipsing around the galaxy having fun adventures. He should be looking for a co-parent.

Which makes Rose make a whole different kind of sense. Find a robust young woman who likes to take care of people. Fuss about children. Fuss over baby Rose actually.

And okay, 'Doctor Who and the new born baby' is never going to be saturday night tea time viewing (stinky and loud!) but logically this is what he should be doing. Building something. Taking every part of Gallifrey that ever mattered to him, all the good bits, everything worth preserving, and giving it back to the universe. Making sure it will carry on without him.

Which, come to think, he might have done already, if all the hints dropped as 7 and all the bits in the books about the Other have any validity.

Then it gets to be a Babylon 5 deal, when something is worth it you keep on building it until it stays. Like Valen did. Even knowing the future he got stuck in and did his best and built something worth building.

All of this has happened before, all of this shall happen again.

But we can make it better this time.

Making people better is what Doctors do.

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Now I have spinny insomnia
which is like the regular kind
but with head full of thoughts

I keep applying the idea that the Doctor actually was shopping for a mother to his children to what we saw in the episodes. Children were a theme, and new starts via children. Also hybridity. The Doctor took Rose to the future, and what was the first thing he showed her? Obviously, the end of the world. The end of earth, that is. Make her have the same trauma? And therefore the same needs? Show her how finite life is?
But the other thing he showed her was the future of 'pure' humanity. The last pure human. Humans spread out everywhere and mixed, was the Doctor's point. Rose was the last pure human, says Rose. Oops, that didn't work. Didn't give her the right idea.
Jack turns up, and the Doctor tells Rose that the future of humanity dances, with everyone. Emphasises that the Doctor dances too. And once again we have that mixing thing, in an episode about children.
And by the end of the series Rose has mixed with the Time Vortex. Makes her pretty unique.
I wonder how you got Time Lords (and Ladies) in the first place? Rose + Time Vortex = mind like the Doctor, seeing what he sees all the time. What did she do to herself, and are the effects permanent?
And then I come back to that most hated bit of canon, 8 and his declaration of being half human, on his mothers side.
And stuck in my head is the song, "I'm my own grandpa"

See the entire series makes a kind of sense without this idea, but with it, I start to wonder- are they setting Rose up as the mother of the next generation of Time Lords? Is canon actually hinting that way?

(Rose, arose, what arose?)

or have I been awake waaaaay too long?

(well yes, definitely)


I don't actually *like* Rose. At all. I like Ace. Rose isn't Ace.
But my complaint was phrased that the series should have been called 'Rose', and that she was being set up as the Doctor's equal (without having the wherewithal, the stuff, the smarts or the work)
What if she is being set up as the Doctor's partner? First Lady?
Makes the refocus make sense.
Still doesn't make me like her. Annoying woman. Grrrr.