(no subject)

[sebastienne]

Well darlings, what a week it's been! Handed in the work of DOOM, and promptly spent three days doing nothing whatsoever. Well, for a given value of 'nothing'; have some beautifully-nested HTML.

• Seeing bands:
  
  • Barbare11a, who are so beautifully glam-goth that I almost don't care that their music was only average
  
  
  • Borderville, who I need to accept will never fill me with as much joy as they did in 2006, even though I still love them an awfully large amount
  
  
  • Scaramanga Six, who rocked and appeared to have Bill Bailey's evil twin on bass



• Staring at screens:
  
  • Star Trek, which was fun, and subverted some things that irritated me about TOS quite nicely
  
  
  • Ashes to Ashes, which is just made of awesome, plus 01x03 was approx the most feminist thing I'd ever seen on TV:
    
    • a woman who enjoys casual sex and is not ashamed of that fact
    
    
    • recognition of the fact that sex workers can get sexually assaulted
    
    
    • discussion of how attitudes to women alter based on their perceived sexual status
    
    
    • Mister Misogyny saying, "no, we shouldn't do this, we're too drunk"
  
  
  • Babylon 5, which continues epic
  
  
  • Genesis of the Daleks, which is joyous and wonderous and has moral complexity that New Who can't even dream of and giant clams!

So today it was back to mind-numbing data entry, and afterwards off to a seminar about social networks and political polarisation (y halo thar, area of DPhil interest.. yes, I wish to acquire propaganda skills that would have made Goebbels proud and Use Them For Good. You may say I'm a dreamer...), and I'm pretty much all the way back to normal. Not a bad refractory period, all things considered!

An offering of joy:

This video may not look like much to anyone else (I get a lot of home off it, all the random flashes of things-I-know-to-be-Oxford) but I think that the song is very worth listening to, regardless. It's a boy-meets-girl lovesong that doesn't irritate me! (Funny thing I've noticed about that: when I'm with a girl, it's, "why is no-one ever singing about us?" - now, it's, "how dare popular culture try to tell me how I should be experiencing things?")

So check it out. Especially if you're apotropaios.

Comments

[calliope85.livejournal.com]

It's in 'Evil of the Daleks' which sadly is largely burninated (DAMNIT BBC), but I've got the cassette version somewhere. It features the Daleks deciding they want to find out why stupid humans keep defeating them by isolating the 'human factor'. This largely involves making Jamie run through mazes. Then the Doctor has to implant the 'human factor' into test Daleks. Aforementioned test Daleks then start behaving like ADORABLE THREE YEAR-OLDS who play trains and sing little songs about getting dizzy, and then start questioning their Dalek overlords, and then...get slightly annihilated, oops.

There's an Eighth comic arc which spins off from it, have you read that one? It was totally awesome for about two chapters (Dalek society with Dalek culture and Dalek art in Dalek Atlantis!) and then totally depressing for the last part. Oops again.

*ponders* I do think Eighth would, but I'm hard-pushed to say exactly why. Partly I guess the impression stems from actions in the amnesia-arc, which isn't entirely fair (because of aforementioned amnesia), but does leave one with the impression of Eighth being willing to go to *any* lengths, even *extrememly* morally questionable ones, to achieve his goals - the casual acceptance of human death in 'The Burning', for example, or the extended screw-up and emotional manipulation of 'Turing Test'. I think it's partly because of Eighth's fluffinesses that his I find his moments of unrepentent and unfeeling alienness even more jarring - fitting Compassion with a randomiser springs to mind (the violation imagery is *really disturbing*), or his lack of emotional reaction to C'rizz [SPOILER RESCINDED]. I guess it's a bit of a leap going from that to genocide, but I still feel oddly that he's one of the Doctors Who Would.

Plus the fact that he managed to wipe out Gallifrey at least twice hasn't entirely played in his favour, no matter how angsty he was about it.

Can I also interject Warner!Doctor here, who starts off being all gung-ho 'slaughter the bastards!' and ends up 'uh, yeah, oops, sorry guys, I forgot that I wasn't supposed to be a judgemental psychopath, my bad.' Yay Warner!Doctor.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, Dalek Atlantis is awesome!

You may be right about Eighth's alienness. I'm not entirely sure though. Perhaps the fact that he's the only one I'm not sure about is the reason that he's my favourite?