Journey's End

I watched Stolen Earth and JE on my new DVD set.
... yes, I started at the end. The end has Mickey. Not much, but some.
I like the way he moves now. He stalks. Nice.

I still don't like the end of the series. Everything up to the TARDIS flying home, great. But on several levels after that it goes a bit wonky.

I've said a lot about the Donna stuff. I have much annoyance about the Donna stuff. You don't make your main character the Best In Universe by slapping down everyone else, you (and he) raise everyone else up and so demonstrate greatness. And everyone lives a fantastic life - like he says to - after they've left. Otherwise it's all a bit fail.

But mostly... I just get bored. It's like, plot resolved, The End. Oh look, home again, The End. Nooooo... other home again, The End. Er, no, still not all home... aaaaand one more! The End. The End? No, conversation with parent! And The End. Er, no, still not... aha, conversation with grandparent. The End! Plus one more emo in the TARDIS shot. The End now?

... you know having read The Writers Tale I know even *that* wasn't The End until the other dude argued with him. Thankfully it stopped right there in the final version.

It's just... I know we wanted to know all that, because we know all those characters and we know they're all going off to their assorted Fantastic Lives and then there's some stuff to sort out and, yeah, I get why all that is in the story.

But I've also read writing books, a lot, and it's exactly and completely the sort of thing gets warned against in endings. Everything is wrapped up and then there's more episode. And I just get bored. And I don't want to get bored by all these great characters. It just keeps going on. I mean they rattle through the story at a rate of knots when they're setting everything up, but when they're settling it down it wanders around all over the place. Slow tour of the universe.

So I get why it's there. I just still would hit stop after Mickey leaves if I was rewatching it again.

He's going to be so much fun to play with now.

Friday=asleep

I dreamed some rather surprising stuff involving the 8th Doctor and biting and hands around my neck. On a bus. I guess I can see why my subconscious expects the 8th Doctor on a bus, but I have no idea why he's so kinky. Well, actually, it was more tolerantly amused that humans is so kinky, but still.

I read one chapter and fell asleep. This happens to me a lot, specially on Fridays.

The chapter was good. Greek Tragedy, sociology of, which I didn't finish last time I read it, I think. There was a bit about women - when they haven't got their male guardian around they get in big trouble - and slaves - when they haven't got their guardian around they get women in big trouble, and also there's a difference between natural born slaves and free born people who happen to be slaves and the natural ones just looooove being slaves and care about their masters more than anything and look after them and love them and hug them and did you know the slaves did most of the child rearing? And yet remain slaves. How can you have a system where the people that do most of the looking after end up slaves to people who wander off in all the stories and come back when and if they feel like it, or end up wives to them and supposed to look after the house while their husband wanders off and does who he pleases. Men were allowed to shag whoever they wanted to. But it was Very Bad Form to bring back the whoever and have them move in with the Mrs. It happens in three plays and the immediate consequence in all of them is the man who tries it dies. Agamemnon, Heracles and someone else I can't remember right now. Anyway, women are trouble, when their bloke isn't around or isn't looking after them properly. Slaves are trouble, although born slaves can be very loyal to lots of generations of a family. People that weren't born slaves are instantly recogniseable and can stop being slaves because their quality shines through. People that were born slaves don't got quality. It's all very hegemonic dominant ideology to support the system stuff.

Except.

The bit on Polyphony points out that these stories have women and slaves in them. And they do things. Sometimes bad, sometimes good. And they make speeches. And everyone is equally articulate. This is important, especially in a legal system that was basically people standing up and making good speeches. Women and slaves get to make a case, but only in tragedy. In real life they weren't allowed any such thing. But they get voices in the plays.

So the conclusion of the article is that tragedy is secretly more democratic than the society managed to be, with voices for everyone and everyone making a case for being treated well and every tragedy being about how things go horribly wrong if x is treated badly.

Is a pretty good conclusion.



So I read that and then fell asleep.

On the plus side my back doesn't hurt now. Yaay.

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I have read handouts from class about Courtly Love.
They're very annoying.
They're all 'you can only love one person at once and it wears off if there's a new person' and 'jealousy is good' and 'must be secret or it wears off' and rubbish like that.
I now need to write a set of Jack/Ianto porn drabbles to go with the rules and totally splat them.
The one about modesty and decency is clearly a oops-we-missed-the-invisible-lift fountain porn drabble.


Actually, I can see Ianto believing a lot of this rubbish. In the books he's, er, not convinced about the depth of Jack's affections. And there's cute jealous Ianto about the soldier and project Indigo, or 'he's not that young'. But I don't see Jack thinking that jealous is a good thing and love wears off and you has to swap and all that.

There's a Rule of Courtly Love about how you shouldn't fall in love with someone you would be naturally ashamed to marry.
Jack: So... no incest?
Ianto is stuck somewhere between 'that needs saying???' and 'that's your only rule???'
Jack is all puzzled and trying to think of who else you wouldn't marry.

Well he'd know because he had a very annoyed century without civil partnerships, but aside from that.

The rules are a bit daft really. There's the one about not telling anyone and the one about not splitting people up (that's the only one on the list I think Jack would be cool with. Join in yes, split up no.) and then there's that rule about only if you'd marry them but then you add the rules together and apparently you can't get married, or possibly can only marry in secret, without telling a priest or anything. And then it turns out that love and marriage were not the same thing, so being married was not being in love (which, okay) and being in love was not getting married (er, what?) and therefor adultery was best (... *blinks* ...) which explains a lot about Lancelot.

Possibly there should be a Gwen drabble in there too. *facepalm*

I liked the bit where a woman was using the rules to get a bloke to go away. The rule is if you're really in love you'll submit to a woman completely and do like she says. So she asked this bloke if he was really in love with her and he said yes of course he'd do anything so she said go away and shut up, basically. So he did. Because he promised. But then he didn't shut up for long. So she complained, because he broke a promise.
I like it up to that point, but after that it was decided that asking someone to promise to go away wasn't fair, so she should just let him stalk her.
Blah.

It's all very well saying the rules were about some kind of spiritual improvement and trying to attain unity with some elevated ideal, but if you apply them to actual real women being actually followed around by creepy blokes then eeeeewww.

So I'm not so much liking the medieval version of love.

21st century is looking more promising.

Doctor Who 8th Doctor audios 1.5 Phobos

Now that was a proper adventure. Plot with monsters! Subplots with romance! Some of it slashy! Theme levels about fear and prejudice. And, best bit, really being about the Doctor, getting right into his head and saving the day in ways the others couldn't. I like it!

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I watched a Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which was boring and had a non twist ending and didn't really do anything with like two thirds of the story. This is typical of what I've seen of that series. I don't know why I bother.

Then I watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
This is very much worth watching.
Really well written. Stories that work on several levels at once. Different strands of plot woven together. Long term plots mixing with the very episodic goals. And saying things about survival and living and what it all costs that are very much interesting to say.
Also, lots of pretty, with guns, and things going boom. That level just never gets old.

I like that Virgin 1 seem to treat it as their precious shiny. Lots of advertising, lots of repeats, special channel ident things, nifty graphics, all sorts.
I'm not sure I like that it's all wrapped around with "Do you have the Royal Marines Commandos state of mind", or whoever it is. That "you could join the military and play football!" bit. But it goes well with the military academy stuff in this week's episode. Just... honestly, I'd like there to be not so many wars and a whole lot less soldiers... but then again so would most soldiers, as long as it's because people quit and go, well, play football, or whatever.

Even Doctor Who has that whole turning people into soldiers thing. And saying it's better if they fix things with a screwdriver or be investigative journalists or something. But... eh. I guess it's one thing analysing the ideology and all that cultural studies stuff and a bit of another thing mixing it together with, like, news, and actual real events, and not ones that are back in history.

If stories are that powerful, why so much fightings?

Need better stories.