My Vent on the Hopelessness of the Internet

And then, just as the last hope of finding an excuse to stay up past 11:00 drained away, I realized that I had a blog post to write.
Molto bene - I now get to vent.

So, against my better judgement, I joined a little debating group on Facebook this morning. I had a love/hate relationship with it for a few hours, and then jumped off and swam for shore. Why? Because GOOD GRACIOUS RASSILON it was depressing.

Gay marriage! Abortion! Evolution! I got a chance - as many chances as I liked - to state my opinion. Heck, my thoughts on those subjects aren't opinions, they're what I believe to be hardcore truth. And when something's true, it's not just because you 'believe' it. It's because it IS. Truth is universal! Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder! Reality is not subjective! *rails against the unrelenting cloud of general internet opinion*

(Haha, look, I'm venting.)

(It probably looks nasty to everyone reading it.)

Anyway, after that, of course, people jumped up and just started disagreeing. And I knoooow there will always be disagreement. And I guess I was anticipating it, even though it was a mostly-Christian thread. But right now I just can't take it. For my sanity, for my spiritual health, I just need to build foundations for now. Because I will seriously explode if I'm jumping around debating abortion on one post and trying to keep up with and counteract the comments on the evolution topic. It makes me too angry: it isn't healthy.

(Whatevah, venting's making me feel better.)

(Oh, yes, and it's all about my feelings, now, isn't it?)

So yes, I quit the group, and I'm not one hundred percent sure if that was the right thing to do, or not. But - here's my little captured atmosphere for the day - when I state my opinion on Facebook, I really feel like I'm shouting into a thick cloth. Into a stuffy room full of cotton. Into a hot, pressing darkness. An atmosphere that will allow me to scream at it, but that will never let the sound travel. And I'll never win against it. 

I feel so small!

This is why I want to travel with the Doctor. Because it's really hard to do good down here. In the TARDIS, changing history would be just a snap of the fingers away. But down here, it takes a lifetime of work to make a difference.

I really do want to try. I will do everything I can to make my little time on the earth count.

But I'm not sure commenting on Facebook posts will help.

And that's just the source of what's getting me down, isn't it? The feeling of worthlessness. The feeling that my beliefs will never change anything.
(Normally, just about now is when I go into a fiction-coma and remind myself that there are stories where my favourite characters are living, and I could go join them until I feel better).
But right now, I think I'll just pray it out - and remember a truth that's like a strong hand helping me up. If God wants my opinion heard, then it will be heard. And if He doesn't - then why would I want to go against his plan?

~Sorry, everyone, for not catching up on comments, emails, and messages. I've been lazy about that. My inbox is so backed up. I'll get around to it ASAP.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Because referencing Shakespeare in your post titles makes you automatically well-read.

(Totally joking, by the way.)

Dreams!

Dreams. Is it just me - no, it isn't just me, because I know some people who are having the same thing. But I'll ask anyway: is it just me, or did everyone have a ton of vivid dreams when they were fourteen or fifteen? (Le gasp! Giving away of the age on the internet!*). Or - because I know this happens, too - is it a Doctor Who thing?

Because I've lost count of how many times I've traveled with the Doctor. What was with that world the TARDIS landed in that was made of Jello and filled with Orwellian dystopia characters, anyway? And I'm pretty sure the Capitol didn't get the memo that you can't sign a girl up for the the Hunger Games seven times. And I think sending Halo: Reach characters into the arena to kill me is against the rules, too. Have I really been to summer camp that many times? I was an elite ninja with my friend's mum once, have you ever done that? Then there was this terribly embarrassing moment at choir where I walked up on stage and I wasn't in my uniform. But one of the times I'm most happy with is the time I watched Donna Noble and the Eleventh Doctor escape from Weeping Angels, investigate the Hound of Baskerville, and then hang out and have an emotionally relevant chat about regeneration.

Yeah. Not even going to Eygpt with Churchill and having the Doctor as a boarder in our multicoloured fairytale house can beat that one.

What kind of dreams do you guys have? I love hearing about the marvellous adventures we all go on in the night.

On a completely different note, a note which is not even part of the real [and very short] above post:

I've had an idea boiling in my head for a while now, but it came to the surface just now. KidWholock. Tell me it would work.

Just bear with me for a second - the Doctor has a son with River (I know the Doctor having a child is cliche. But I'm already writing that idea and you can't stop me! *runs away laughing maniacally*). Because the child is too young to travel, and River is dead at the Library, the Doctor leaves the boy with the Ponds. They bring him up normally. The Doctor pops in for dinners. Anyway, they send Theta (the kid) to public school, and at recess he meets the Holmes boys, Mycroft and Sherlock. They start having adventures and solving mysteries, though they get off to a rough start, because Sherlock has no care for the solar system and, along with Mycroft, seriously doubts that Theta's dad is who he says he is.

And Grandpa Rory has been teaching Theta how to do that awesome punch where the kid - *ahem* - enemy who is opposing you gets knocked out cold for a full five minutes.

But they start getting along after a while.

And there's the lonely John Watson who teams up with them sometimes.

And, getting off to an early start, is James from kindergarten who keeps ziplock bags of powdered, deadly poison in his multicoloured school cubbyhole.

Yeah? No?

*Not to be flippant, but, well, if someone really wanted to know how old I was, in a creepy way, it's not like they couldn't find out anyway. It is on my Facebook, if you look back to the last time it was my birthday.

Endangered Species Awareness Post

I think I'll plan to post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, just because that works. Probably late each night.

Yay.

Also, if I disappear from the face of the planet for a few days this week, you'll know that I've been brutally murdered by exams. I'm full of terror and anxiety right now, because I have an exam, and a paper I have no idea where to start on, both due on the twenty fifth.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

On to the actual post.

So, you know how some people share pictures on Facebook, or write weepy posts about endangered animals? (Not to be offensive. But I'm not really an animal person. I appreciate the sadness of endangerment, but I'm sorry, I don't get emotionally involved.)

Well, I think I'm going to write an awareness/appreciation post for the beautiful endangered species of Platonic Relationships in Fiction.

I have always loved platonic relationships in stories. They mean so, so much to me. They're the interactions that warm my heart, more often than romance. And it's totally okay if you're different. I just wanted to point out the fact that, whether you like them or not, these relationships are dying. They're all dropping like flower petals in the heat. And I think something should be done about that.

For example:

Sherlock and John [I'm talking BBC] (Critically endangered) ~ In the novel "1984", George Orwell portrays a society where language is being cut down, words being deleted from the English vocabulary, so that certain thoughts are inexpressible. That's what I feel like is happening to me, now. During Sherlock's "The Great Game", I practically jumped around with happiness when Sherlock got scared and slightly protective over John, stuttering around to ask him if he was alright. Also, when the explosive-draped John grabbed Moriarty, willing to sacrifice his life to let Sherlock get away safely, I couldn't help but love it.

I am unable to express my feelings, when I speak about this. I find it amazing and wonderful that two people would care like that for each other. That their friendship could break the ice that Sherlock's soul seems covered in, that it would even, in John's case, melt the instincts of self-preservation, allowing selflessness through.

But, look, any average person on the internet - and here comes the controversy, the touchy subject matter - would think, from that sentence above, that I ship JohnLock. NO! No, no, no, no, no!

Well, why do you have feelings like that, then, the internet asks. Surely, if any two people care about each other past simple friendship, they must be sexually interested in one another.

And that's where you're so wrong. Read Lord of the Rings, for goodness sakes. They say things that are so much more shippy, but, since Tolkien actually understood that people can be gloriously deep friends without ever, ever having a romantic thought, they're not meant to be taken that way.

Other friendships that have made me smile over the years include

Calvin and Hobbes

Phineas and Ferb

Frodo and Sam [Lord of the Rings, obviously]

Hiccup and Toothess [How to Train Your Dragon]

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger

and, my favourite right now: The DoctorDonna [Doctor Who]

A lot of them have fans that ship them romantically. Fortunately, I don't think all of them do. But with almost anything, there comes a point where the present day's mind goes haywire. People can't be devoted friends anymore. They have to be more. And, by being 'more', I believe they become so, so much less.

Think about the word 'love', for a second. Used virtually anywhere outside of family, what do you think of? A couple holding hands or kissing under a cherry tree in the full moon? Something along those lines? Yeah, it's almost impossible to use the word 'love' without someone at least doing a double-take, and wondering if it was meant romantically.

Our universe is built on a platonic relationship. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For God so loved the world.

I'm scared we're losing sight of that, outside of God and family.

Now, the situation isn't apocalyptic. There are so many friendships still intact. But they can't be strong as steel, anymore, or people start getting the wrong idea. Because that's how we're wired now. And I wish it wasn't that way.

It's Friday, Friday, Friday

Friday nights are the good nights.

But I haven't posted for what, three days? Sorry. Again, I meant to post every other day, but I seem to consistently forget about it. Ugh.

Scenes from today? Since, I guess that's what I mean to post here, you might forgive me for being random tonight. This was the last twenty four hours for me:

-Firstly, sleeping in. The sheets being so warm. That is love.

-Then the mountains. Olympic venues because we're cool like that. Going down again, the sea and the city, and sand, sand everywhere. Sand making my hair thick, sand being shovelled away to make secret tunnels under the logs on the beach, sand under my jacket and in my shoes. Seagulls being chased away from our lunch. I wonder what seagulls see us as. I almost think there wouldn't be much difference between a scavenging seagull's view and a human's - both parties see themselves contending with a screeching creature that is claiming food it has no right to. I don't know.

-Playing the iPod DJ is a strenuous job. It involves pushing other people to the limits, while trying to be nice. Estimating their chances of going bonkers if you put on another Chameleon Circuit song.

-Finishing the Doctor Who TV movie. All those who have given it negative reviews shall be hunted down. It is amazing. Eight is awesome! He totally deserves more screen time than he has. He's a bit confused, though. (The Doctor is so not half human on his mum's side. His mum is part of the council of the Time Lords [The End of Time]. Though of course the fact that it's his mother isn't canon. But there's a lot of contradictory evidence, isn't there?)

-Babysitting, wondering if I'll ever make a good mother. I mean, if I had kids, part of me likes the idea of keeping them off TV for a while, but the other half of me says that that's terribly limiting. And there is no way I'd be able to resist the temptation to stick my kids in front of the screen.

-Playing cars is actually not as boring as you'd think. When the sun's pouring in through the window and you're lying with your face on the rug, it's actually kind of entertaining to crash a fat plastic truck into a similarly shaped train over and over.

-Watching two episodes BBC's Robin Hood and being thoroughly unimpressed. Sorry, Alexandria. I will give it more chances, though, because I know I wouldn't want someone to write off Doctor Who after seeing "Rose" and "The End of the World". But it feels lacking. It's running off a really low budget, and I know that should never matter, but odd camera work distracts from the storytelling, and, frankly, I don't find anything inspiredly new and amazing about the story itself, as far as I've seen. It didn't strike me as bad, it didn't strike me as brilliant. The villain was okay. He reminded me a bit of Moriarty, which is always fantastic. I could almost hear Andrew Scott saying some of the lines. But I felt like his character took a turn for the weaker in episode two. Robin was also pretty entertaining, but not shining. So there's my obnoxious opinion. ;)

-Going to get frozen yogurt from someone else's fridge. Feeling like a raider even though the parents who hired me to take care of their children said "take any of the food."

-Watching the fifteen minutes of "The God Complex" that I pre-loaded, then having to stop because I don't know the WiFi password around where I am… got our first-world problems.

-Finishing Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and throwing the book on the floor when it was done. Pretty much yelling the whole of the last quarter. Who knew fishing could have so much heart in it? How did the author manage to do that? I haven't been so emotionally engaged in a book for a while. To be fair, I haven't read anything for a while, which is terrible - this is the internet's regime (yeah, I like to blame a lot of my problems on the internet) - but seriously, the book I'm reading right now is "1984" by George Orwell, and if anything's emotionally detached, it's that.

-And now, God willing, heading off to finish the rest of "The God Complex" and to write for a few hours. To maybe worry over homework. Oh, no, here comes the fretting as I type - I could be watching the exam study session archive right now. Nah, I won't, I'll do it tomorrow. Or Monday. Because I'm such a party animal.

Like I said, Friday nights rule.

So…. what did you guys do today?

Ten vs Eleven

Warning: the following post is a long and random joy-ride by the author. It has little to do with the theme of the blog. If you don't like Doctor Who, feel absolutely free to disregard this - the author has foisted her rabid Whovian ravings upon the Normal Ones too many times…

~~~~

Ten vs Eleven. Davies vs Moffat. Rose vs River.

The hate. The arguments. *melodramatic music starts playing* Schisms cracking the fandom apart. Oh, the rivers of tears that separate the groups …

But seriously, there's a lot of dispute, in YouTube comment boxes across the internet and beyond, into forums and - well - if there's a video of Eleven and a lot of people talking about it, chances are at least one of them is saying, "OMG liek David Tennant's Dr Who was soooooososo much better then Matt Smiths .10foreva!!!1!!".

And, though it's rarer, vice versa.

Why, exactly? My thoughts.

Short answer: they're different. Almost opposites in the extremes of character a Doctor can display. And I think Doctor Who is a story that has the ability to touch deeply. Thus, people get impassioned over it… if Ten wins them over, they have a very hard time transitioning from white to black (Or, more accurately, light grey to darker grey. They're still both good guys with two hearts who travel time and space in a beautiful blue box. But I digress). I know this firsthand.

Human Nature and the Family of Blood was my first episode, technically speaking. But my first exposure to Doctor Who was, if my memory serves me (which it might not), the "Space" and "Time" Eleventh Doctor comic relief episodes.

()

I loved that quote from the moment I first laid ears on it.

So, who is my Doctor?

I'm going off on tangents far too much. I just have to confess that My Doctor is Ten. Always has been, and he'd better be forever. But I'm on a bit of an Eleven!high right now. Okay, so maybe the "bit of an" has been going on for months and reached a really kind of distressingly-high-to-non-Whovians peak recently.

Oh for goodness sakes. This post will be pages long. I'm making a list to keep it … shortER.

In order of importance, from least to most, I give you some differences between Ten and Eleven, and Moffat and Davies, and why they might cause squabbles.

The Difference Between Them In:

~CGI

Davies: Inconsistent, but usually rather terrible  /  Moffat: Normally as up-to-date as the budget can get it

Okay, so who really cares?

I do. But that's not good. Doctor Who's foundation is on characters, not their special effects. ♬That's just the way it is, some things will never change… ♬

But I admit that Eleven's era makes my eyes feel happy.

Score one for Moffat.

~High Definition

Davies: Non-existent  /  Moffat: The beauty of it, Iago. The beauty of it…

Plus, series two filmed with an odd glowy effect that didn't seem to be an upside. And I know this is another technicality that shouldn't really matter. But somehow it enhances my viewing experience when I can see every wrinkle in the costumes. (Yes, I know my Shakespeare quote is off).

~Good looks: (let's face it, this comes into play with the fangirls)

Ten: not strictly normal, but still, accessibly handsome in general opinion  /  Eleven: For the girls with odd taste

…What do I say? Personally, I think …Matt… if good looks could melt people…

But, apparently, no one else agrees. And it can't be denied that David's really handsome. Right? 

~Story Arcs

Davies: Very, very subtle. A hint or dropped word.  /  Moffat: Are you following this storyline? Huh? Huh? No? Too bad, here's another plot twist.

A matter of preference, but I think it's a fact that Moffat's era turns some people off, because it's too complicated. Personally? I love it! My brain likes being fed. A lot. It makes me feel thspecial ('special' said with a stupid lisp - sorry, it's a vocabulary word in our family) when I can keep up with what's going on. Plus, if you don't like story arcs, series seven is supposed to be a lot less heavy on that. A very large theme that runs through the differences between Moffat and Davies is now coming into play: emotion. I do have to say that series six, as an arc, lacked it. It was discovering a lot of facts, and not an emotional journey. Whereas "Bad Wolf" was saturated in heart. I thought the cracks in the universe was better with that - that Pandorica scene, where it is revealed that the Doctor was really the 'bad guy' all along - well, that is honestly one of the most beautiful plot twists I've ever seen. (backstory time! "The Pandorica Opens" was my first Eleven episode, so I had no idea what was going on. Me and my brother decided to turn off the episode and not watch its continuation in "The Big Bang" because we were so confused. Cue the Pandorica reveal. We looked at each other and it was agreed: we MUST WATCH MORE OF THIS.)

~The Ginger Companion

Davies: Donna Noble  /  Moffat: Amy Pond

Donna. Donna Noble, come to knock Moffat's era to the ground and steal a point. And a whacking big one. Amy strikes me as shallow, annoying, too flirty, and generally not an exceptionally enjoyable companion. Whereas Donna - Donna is, in my opinion - and a lot of other people's - the best NewWho companion yet.

~The Main Romantic Interest

Davies: Rose  /  Moffat: River

Wow, this made it high up on the list of importance, eh? Well, I have one thing to say about River Song. *bangs head* I DO NOT FEEL THE FEELS. The Doctor and Rose - yeah, I used to ship them to death. Someone came along and pointed out that Rose was a really average kind of girl, and suddenly I realized she was right - but Rose and Ten - and even Rose and Eleven, if you like that type of thing (I do so very love it) - most of the time were, and are, more satisfying than Eleven and River. Even though Rose isn't the most well-drawn of characters, she's more loveable than River, to someone tuned like me. Not that Eleven and River don't have their moments - the hints of tragedy in their love story are great, and of course I squee when they kiss. But when River treats the Doctor like dirt, flashing her gun around and blowing off his hats - just no. That is not the River Song I like. The River Song I like is the one who tells the Doctor that he is loved by so many and so much.

But didn't Rose tell the Doctor that by simply being there with him?

~The Doctor's Mercy and Darkness:

Ten: Had cruel moments, but for the most part, expressed a lot of mercy  /  Eleven: Quite ruthless - unobtrusively so, sometimes, however

Yeah. Ten pushed Mother of Mine into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy. But Eleven turned the human race into killers in "The Impossible Astronaut" - he waltzed up, told the Silence he'd give them a chance to surrender, then did the Doctor-equivalent of "lol jk" and set them up for a genocidal fall. Take that how you will. The Team Ten part of the fandom takes it badly. I don't mind it. Ten said "No second chances, I'm that sort of a man" - and maybe his next regeneration was seeping through, because though he himself did have moments like in "The Runaway Bride" and "The Waters of Mars", Eleven has, I think, a much more cold and level way of killing. He's virtually aways ready to kick your butt into everlasting oblivion. He'll lie, with this nice, ernest, straight face - tell you, "Sure, I can save your life, hop on board" - and then he'll slam the TARDIS door in your face (don't believe me when I put it that way? "The Girl Who Waited".) Granted, he has his reasons and they do make sense. But still. Eleven's darker.
Anyway, this is opinion and personal perception, I may not be right.

~Emotions

Ten: expressed liberally, most of the time  /  Eleven: extremely bottled up

Ten swung between lighthearted and contagiously happy, to sad and angsty. And Eleven? Wait, what emotions? Huh? Oh, the one part when he teared up in "Closing Time" or "Flesh and Stone"? That one scene where he yelled at a Dalek? He was blinking back something in his eye at "The Doctor's Wife".

And I think that might be all.

Please don't get me wrong. Eleven can be fantastically happy, and I love that about him. But I'm talking about the emotions that resonate. And bowtie emotions, while amazing, don't make us sob all over the couch, wiping our streaming eyes on our TARDIS-pattern pyjamas and trying not to get the electrical workings of our tightly-clutched sonic screwdrivers too wet - whether from joy, or sadness.

The thing is about emotions - and I'll come back to this - is that Team Ten is measuring the Moffat era by the RTD era. And that's not the right measuring stick. There's a short Ernest Hemingway story that illustrates this so sweetly (#shameless favourite author plug): when you measure temperature by Celsius, it can look dangerously low. And then you switch to Fahrenheit, which was how it was always meant to be, and it's just fine.

And I'm not entirely sure I actually agree with myself, but what I think is that Eleven isn't meant to be emotional. He's so, so old. He can't just cry. And it's his lack of emotion that can stab us. The Lion the Witch and the - sorry, the Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe! That ending! The Doctor is drained of feelings - the years have bled his hearts dry and white. I do know how that feels - though of course, not on the scale that 1000 years of life brings - and that episode actually was really touching to me, because I was going through a period of hardly being able to feel a single thing deep in my soul at the time. And when he wiped away that tear, it was a gorgeous ending that felt tuned to me. But, personal angst stories over. God brought me out of that, and it's not something to scream over at all. Everyone has lows.

Just … imagine having one that dragged your soul down for centuries.

The Eleventh Doctor lives under that.

GUYS. GUYS I LOVE THE DOCTOR'S CHARACTER.

Conclusion:

Sometimes I think I'm just too accepting of everything, of every difference.

But truth is that I love both the Moffat era and the Davies era. And I like the Moffat era, as a whole, more. And I love to love my Who. Am I a mindless consumer that is gobbling up everything I am fed? Or am I radically enjoying myself where the internet is too cynical to feel the feels?

Sometimes I think there is something that the RTD era had that Moffat's missing. And I think it's emotions. But sometimes I think they are there in Moffat's era, and people are just not looking at it the right way. They're using the wrong measuring system. Or they're not looking hard enough, and they miss the way the Doctor's voice shakes and goes up that one note higher when he tells Craig to take Alfie and go.

But sometimes I think the high definition and the beautiful, clean-looking, sharp, constantly mind-engaging atmospheres of Moffat's episodes have lured me in and make me see beauty where it's not.

But sometimes I think reading way deep into the subtext is awesome.

But sometimes I think maybe I'm reading too far.

But sometimes I don't know what to think.

That's where I need you.

But I get the feeling the internet doesn't like it when people yell over and over that they want their readers to comment. Hey, it's only a natural human instinct, to want to share things together.
Hehe, I'm just kidding. Comment if you feel like it, because I WOULD LOVE to hear your thoughts, for however long you want to go on. I could sit here and listen for hours - or, if you want to just dash off without leaving a comment - or with just a one-lined speculation - that's good too.

~~~~

That post was such a guilty pleasure. a) I stayed up way too late to write it, b) I feel bad, because even though I think that at least 50% of my small group of followers are Whovians, that post has nothing to do with … anything, and c) I allowed myself to go off on personal opinion tangents. FOR A LONG TIME. Seriously, this was a monster post.
 So please, if you feel like it, let me know if you didn't enjoy it, because I don't have to this kind of thing again. Until the autumn. When I will, God willing, give you a savage dissection of every episode that airs in series seven. But anyway - if you'd rather not read things like this, honestly just let me know.

A Short Ramble on the Subject of Music

To confess, I meant to post on this blog every other day.

But things happened, and there was stuff and shenanigans. Beautiful word, shenanigans.

I'm debating myself right now: should I post about music, or something normal like that - or about Doctor Who? Because there are many things waiting to be written in that area. "Ten vs Eleven: Why All the Hate?", "Closing Time", and "What I'd Like From Series Seven".

I think I'll go with something sane and post about music.

Next time is Ten vs Eleven.

Everyone thinks their own taste in music is the best, right? For instance, my "Top Twenty-Five Most Played" list on iTunes is made up of Trock (Time Lord Rock, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about) and songs in the "Alternative" genre. And one lonely pop song. And that's the way I love it.

But really, most of the music I listen to is on YouTube. I find it on fanvideos, and sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed at how many amazing songs there are out there - ranging from comforting violins and regretful lyrics about secrets, to more electronic, angsty things.

But something that's struck me is how powerful music can be. Words that would normally have no affect on me get deeper when set to a tune. It's the same with poetry, but even then, tunes can enhance a rhyme.

Music is such a great invention. It's like it's specially tapped into the place inside us emotion comes from. And can you imagine, in a world without songs, what creating the concept of them would be like? "So, I'm going to say something, except I'm going to let my voice get all blurry and go up and down while I say it." If I didn't believe in God, I think it would be pretty impossible to explain why music is so amazing, because when it comes down to it, that's all it is - someone sliding their voice around, or a musician pulling at a string or blowing into the right opening in an instrument.

But because it's meant for praising God, it reaches far down.

What kind of music do you like? How come?

Because I Forgot

Because I forgot to post last night, here's the loveliest .gif I have to offer on my computer right now, just to apologise, and so that there can be a post to make up for yesterday.

(I know nobody cares, but whatever, I like to set good habits. Lol, no, it's just because I'm looking for an excuse to share this).