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May. 20th, 2013 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "Lesbian forced from partner, two kids by Texas judge's 'morality clause':" http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/lesbian-forced-partner-two-kids-texas-judges-morality-clause180513?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
* Operation Enduring Wait:
* Things May Be Bad, But at Least Our Streets Don't Burp Mystery Goo:
* Mazda Scandal Booth - Benghazi:
* "Let My People Pee In Scotland:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/05/let-my-people-pee-in-scotland.html
* "Marriage Equality returns to parliament:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/05/marriage-equality-returns-to-parliment.html
* It includes trans stuff! "Other Amendments to Marriage Equality:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/05/other-amendments-to-marriage-equality.html
* "On straight, cis folks and Civil Partnerships:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/05/on-straight-cis-folks-and-civil.html
* Thanks to Birmin induced sleep deprivation and an impressive pain load, I'm barely functional. Today I discovered the new doctor isn't coming back from the place she's been subbing and I must pioneer a new Doctor in two weeks. The one who's been jerking me around on my hormones, joy, joy, joy. In two weeks I get to find out if they will take my arthritis pain and nausea from the drugs seriously and if I'm going to be long term fucked on trans stuff. At least when I turned up for my appointment, they didn't surprise cancel it like they did the last two times. I am exhausted, cranking, just restarting hormones after two months off and I came home to find Hector had trashed my bathroom in the course of this morning's two hour tantrum at bed time. Oh and someone threw up all over the living room, because what better on a day when standing up is a challenge than having to bend, scrub, and carry stuff for an hour. And then they did it again, a few hours later.
* I have been contemplating power inflation as a result of that Moffat Who article the other day. So often in old Who, it would have been so much easier if they had psychic paper. A whole lot of plots go like this: Doctor Who and companion(s) show up in the middle of a crisis. The authorities demand to know they are. The Doctor sometimes tricks them into believing he's an official. Sometimes he tells the truth and some believe and some do not. Sometimes the trickery fails and he must escape and dodge both sides while trying to solve the crisis. In the episodes of 4 I watched today, the minions demand his papers, he fakes a pocket search, then flees. Easily solved by psychic paper, right? The pattern gets a bit repetitive, so these days, they skip the phase where the authorities try to decide if he's the one killing crewmen/expedition members/villagers/minions/guards, and either have him instantly accepted or instantly exposed by the occasional person the paper doesn't work on. It also means that the phrase "I'm the Doctor and I'm here to help" is hardly ever questioned no matter how implausible his arrival is. (I say hardly ever, because there have been a tiny number of exceptions.)
Today, I've been contemplating the way that the no psychic paper old school Who arrival is a test for the people he's helping. Think about it: An obviously unreliable, strangely dressed man turns up talking nonsense when everybody is already under stress. The paranoid military mind and power hungry despot tends to respond to this with violence: Arrest him! Torture him! Execute him! The more intellectual or kind characters are always of the opinion that they should at least listen to his story and see if he can, in fact, help. Reactions to the Doctor are a way of gauging worthiness for the help he's offering. As Craig Ferguson might say, it separates intellect and romance from brute force and cynicism. You get characters like the Brigadier who sit on the bubble sometimes. You get characters that change sides. The thing is though, the initial responses tell you and presumably the Doctor where the allies and obstacles are. He will help them no matter how stubborn and undeserving they are, but it is good to know the characters of the people he is relying on to work with him in a crisis.
I'm not saying it's better or worse; I'm just thinking about how having or not having that particular bit of power inflation changes the way the stories get told as well as the sorts of stories that get told.
I am now wondering how Superman was different before power inflation. I bet they told different stories when he just was fast and had a super leap than they tell now when he can fly through space unprotected and somehow turn back time be changing the rotational direction of the earth. (Magic!) These days both Doctor Who and Superman are essentially Gods. I know I miss the human scaled Doctor in New Who, and it makes him less interesting when the Universe revolves around him. I wonder if that's why I stopped caring about superman once I hit adolescence.
* Abandoned Star wars sets in the desert: http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/abandoned-stars-wars-sets-in-the-desert-slideshow/star-wars-photo--1373415513.html
* Operation Enduring Wait:
* Things May Be Bad, But at Least Our Streets Don't Burp Mystery Goo:
* Mazda Scandal Booth - Benghazi:
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* "Let My People Pee In Scotland:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/05/let-my-people-pee-in-scotland.html
* "Marriage Equality returns to parliament:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/05/marriage-equality-returns-to-parliment.html
* It includes trans stuff! "Other Amendments to Marriage Equality:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/05/other-amendments-to-marriage-equality.html
* "On straight, cis folks and Civil Partnerships:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/05/on-straight-cis-folks-and-civil.html
* Thanks to Birmin induced sleep deprivation and an impressive pain load, I'm barely functional. Today I discovered the new doctor isn't coming back from the place she's been subbing and I must pioneer a new Doctor in two weeks. The one who's been jerking me around on my hormones, joy, joy, joy. In two weeks I get to find out if they will take my arthritis pain and nausea from the drugs seriously and if I'm going to be long term fucked on trans stuff. At least when I turned up for my appointment, they didn't surprise cancel it like they did the last two times. I am exhausted, cranking, just restarting hormones after two months off and I came home to find Hector had trashed my bathroom in the course of this morning's two hour tantrum at bed time. Oh and someone threw up all over the living room, because what better on a day when standing up is a challenge than having to bend, scrub, and carry stuff for an hour. And then they did it again, a few hours later.
* I have been contemplating power inflation as a result of that Moffat Who article the other day. So often in old Who, it would have been so much easier if they had psychic paper. A whole lot of plots go like this: Doctor Who and companion(s) show up in the middle of a crisis. The authorities demand to know they are. The Doctor sometimes tricks them into believing he's an official. Sometimes he tells the truth and some believe and some do not. Sometimes the trickery fails and he must escape and dodge both sides while trying to solve the crisis. In the episodes of 4 I watched today, the minions demand his papers, he fakes a pocket search, then flees. Easily solved by psychic paper, right? The pattern gets a bit repetitive, so these days, they skip the phase where the authorities try to decide if he's the one killing crewmen/expedition members/villagers/minions/guards, and either have him instantly accepted or instantly exposed by the occasional person the paper doesn't work on. It also means that the phrase "I'm the Doctor and I'm here to help" is hardly ever questioned no matter how implausible his arrival is. (I say hardly ever, because there have been a tiny number of exceptions.)
Today, I've been contemplating the way that the no psychic paper old school Who arrival is a test for the people he's helping. Think about it: An obviously unreliable, strangely dressed man turns up talking nonsense when everybody is already under stress. The paranoid military mind and power hungry despot tends to respond to this with violence: Arrest him! Torture him! Execute him! The more intellectual or kind characters are always of the opinion that they should at least listen to his story and see if he can, in fact, help. Reactions to the Doctor are a way of gauging worthiness for the help he's offering. As Craig Ferguson might say, it separates intellect and romance from brute force and cynicism. You get characters like the Brigadier who sit on the bubble sometimes. You get characters that change sides. The thing is though, the initial responses tell you and presumably the Doctor where the allies and obstacles are. He will help them no matter how stubborn and undeserving they are, but it is good to know the characters of the people he is relying on to work with him in a crisis.
I'm not saying it's better or worse; I'm just thinking about how having or not having that particular bit of power inflation changes the way the stories get told as well as the sorts of stories that get told.
I am now wondering how Superman was different before power inflation. I bet they told different stories when he just was fast and had a super leap than they tell now when he can fly through space unprotected and somehow turn back time be changing the rotational direction of the earth. (Magic!) These days both Doctor Who and Superman are essentially Gods. I know I miss the human scaled Doctor in New Who, and it makes him less interesting when the Universe revolves around him. I wonder if that's why I stopped caring about superman once I hit adolescence.
* Abandoned Star wars sets in the desert: http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/abandoned-stars-wars-sets-in-the-desert-slideshow/star-wars-photo--1373415513.html