#roseblogging

[dersitedarlings]

Hm. Actually, a purple vinyl record would be an excellent profile picture for me. I own of those and it is extremely pretty and very close to Rose's text color. It would, however, immediately identify me to anyone who knows me and my habits of record collection.

I have much to consider.

[rosencrypt]

In October 2020, I caught a shiny Suicune! It took c.4 months of soft reseting, but I did it!

Today, after some months of soldering and fiddling with save files, I finally succeeded in moving my VC save file onto a cart. Look how beautiful my Suicune is! that Stadium 2 shiny (you can't really see in the pics but it's sooo pretty)

Also featuring their shiny buddies Calamin the minty green Espeon and this as-yet-unnamed Steelix

[vividsunset]

I’ve never heard of a Star War before, did the stars start fighting?

[dersitedarlings]

I need to draw my own DaveRose icon and banner. I don't want to be generic. It spites my pursuit at anonymity to connect my artstyle to this blog, but I also desperately wish for individuality. Why am I posting this when I have no followers and will likely not be telling my friends about this blog? No one knows. It may never be known.

[dersitedarlings]

I have had a blog with a Rose profile picture and that is primarily for Rose fanart for a matter of minutes, and I am already feeling quite Lalondian. This is not a good sign for anyone.

Did I use that comma correctly? I am never quite sure what counts as an introductory clause.

[rosencrypt]

Hey check it out, the battery still works in my Red cart! Miraculous; it's been going since December 2000

[rosencrypt]

RTD2 Trilogy is about (false) dichotomies

After Wild Blue Yonder I'm having Thoughts about Doctor Who.

Knowing the expression but not the song, I assumed the relevance was that the Doctor is all about exploring the open, unknown sky. Having now seen the episode and had a chat to my Beloved about Jungian dialectics, Persona's Shadow Selves etc., I'm appreciating the title choice much more.

This is a story all about inherent contradictions. The ship is at the end of the universe, but the universe is everything. The ship is both agoraphobic and claustrophobic. There's nothing beyond, but also Nothing beyond. There's a countdown to a bomb detonation, but that's a good thing, but also the Doctor is running to stop it, but also we want him to fail, but also we still don't want the ship to explode? It even extends to the viewer - we all know that Donna survives to feature in the next episode, but I've seen a lot of people (and in the moment I was one of them!) worried that she might actually die in that corridor.

And as the Doctor* says, humans are capable of believing two opposing ideas at the same time (can a superstition also be a fact?). Apply this to Wild Blue Yonder, the song. As humans we know that although it sounds jolly it's also a war propaganda song - it's both catchy and an explicit endorsement of horrific violence. To an adult who understands the reality, like Wilf or the Doctor, teaching children to sing the song is grotesque. The Not-Them however only mimic. They ask questions and can algorithmically regurgitate information, but they only take things at face value. They are children. War is a game, and they want to play! RTD may here be critiquing cycles of inherited conflict or possibly the glorification of violence in fiction (probably both), but he's definitely using the Not-Them as a mirror. If Nothing exists out there, then there is nothing but what we send. If we fill the nothing with e.g. songs about how jolly it is to soar with scouts ahead and bombers galore, we shouldn't be surprised when nothing flies to fight, guarding the nation's border. After all, Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force.

Consider The Star Beast in this light. It's also all about things not being as they seem! The Meep vs the Wrarth Warriors, the controlled UNIT troops, Rose. Then we have less episode-specific concepts, like the DoctorDonna and Fourteen being both a wholly new incarnation and a return of Ten.

Probably here I should speculate about the final episode, but it's 1am and I should be in bed. Basically, Doctor Who is many things at once. It's good! It's bad! It has 60 years of continuity, including I'm pretty sure at least 3 previous appearances by Isaac Newton, but the only bits that count are the ones any given writer feels like acknowledging at the time. The TARDIS is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

In this way, these specials are much truer celebrations of the series than they at first appear. They're both anniversary stories, but they don't feel that way - more like beginning and midseason episodes from the Fourteen and Donna series we didn't get. They're so much bigger, and madder, and better. And what's more Doctor Who than that?

*And also Visser One in Visser! I KNEW I'd seen that emphasised in a SF thing recently, but it took hours for me to remember.

[rosencrypt]

On balance tho, like. New!RTD!Who has its representational flaws. But he's got the spirit. And it's entertaining. It's such a relief to be able to just watch this show and have fun, rather than feeling bored and vaguely patronised by Chibnall's teen fanfic.

And the first 3/4 of the episode were generally really good! I loved the quiet moment in which Rose's gran worries about offending her ("Am I allowed to tell her she's gorgeous?") and is reassured that her intention is the important thing, and that she should just treat her like ay other girl. I'm sure my family feel very represented by that.

idk it's just. A new Doctor Who episode about a trans girl called Rose that also touches on motherhood as a theme feels like it should be my jam! and then they do a problem right at the end :P