sex and death

[prof_pangaea]

so apparently i will be reccing at three_settings this week. check it out if you're curious as to what kind of fic makes me think, "oh that was quite sexy. oh, and also well-written. and i won't mind admitting to that in public. too much." or avoid that, if you're afraid to find out (or already knoooow and wish you didn't D:).

meanwhile, there's a thread on the anonmeme about whether gallifrey and the time lords should be brought back. and so i've been scrolling past this comment all day (which is part of thread where everyone's like, yeah get rid of it for good! stop bringing it up!) and every time i see it it HURTS MY SOUL:

Yeah, but thing is? New canon hasn't really made a case for its absence. I mean, it's present by its constant absence, more so even than Rose was.

other than the fact that that statement doesn't make logical sense (make a case, what?), it's strange to this commenter that the continued absence of the doctor's home planet is "present" within the show? what, is he going to forget he blew it up and wiped every being on it, including his own family, his own children, off the face of the universe? and it's even stranger that this is made more of an issue in the show than rose being gone?

i just. this statement does not compute. of course gallifrey's absence is mentioned more than rose's! GUYS HE DESTROYED HIS ENTIRE SOCIETY, HE COMMITED GENOCIDE AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE. HE KILLED HIS OWN CHILDREN. this is more important than a not!girlfriend, even if she was dead, and not alive and healthy with her entire family and an inherited job and inherited wealth. gah!!

Comments

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

and it's even stranger that this is made more of an issue in the show than rose being gone?

Oh, fandom, how are you so fail?

I don't know why it's such a terrible problem to see DEAD PLANET and DEAD FAMILY as more important to a person than losing your girlfriend who is, as you say, alive and well. (Though even if she was dead it would still be less of An Issue.)

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i can't really tell if the poster doesn't think that gallifrey's as important as rose (i'm thinking no, but there are some crazy peeps in this fandom so who knows), or whether they're just bothered by the constant allusions to both.

but if it is the latter, then surely a person should be able to see that allusions to gallifrey are on a competely different level than allusions to rose, right? and how allusions to one make sense because it's probably the most important event of the doctor's entire life, and the other is... not.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Actually, it'd be interesting to know if Rose or Gallifrey have been mentioned more since she left. Hmm.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i feel like it's obviously gallifrey, but that may be because the emotional impact of when gallifrey is mentioned is always much greater. there's the whole flashback sequence in tSoD, and of course that whole three part finale was about the doctor finding out that there was another survivor and what that meant. and there are the times it's brought up in s4, like FoP, when the doctor needs donna's help to set off the volcano because he can't kill so many people again, and then later when she's pleading with him to save someone, and he snaps he can't save anyone, because he couldn't save anyone on gallifrey. and of course he's wrong. plus all the stuff in tDD, wanting not to be the last, being afraid of it, having his new family taken away again so quickly; and all of the stuff about how hard it is to stop killing once you start. plus the line, "the man who dare not look back, out of shame" in JE.

um, yes. so that kind of stuff sticks in my mind more than, "not that you're replacing her". yes.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I can see what the poster probably means -- that the absence of Gallifrey is almost more profound than its presence in the old series -- but wow, that was poorly phrased.

Also, I'm not sure it's that clever, to equate Gallifrey with Rose. One embodies failure, unmet obligations, lost chances, lost family, domesticity. The other is his home planet.

*eyedart*

I'll get my coat.

What I meant to say, before I got distracted, is that it's not necessarily positive for Rose, equating her with Gallifrey. I mean, the Doctor's attitude to his home is pretty damn ambiguous.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

here (http://community.livejournal.com/who_anon/5574.html?thread=24340166#t24340166) is the thread so you can see the comment in question in its native environment. i re-read that thread so many times because i wanted to understand that comment! re-reading it again i think the commenter is saying that gallifrey should come back, because the show hasn't done a good enough job justifying its absence, because it keep being mentioned even though its gone? but again, if you're actually going to go ahead and make a storyline as insane as "the doctor destroys gallifrey, commits double genocide", i *do* think that the fact he did that should be brought up on occasion (otherwise... why do it?), so i don't understand the anon's concern. of course, i could have it completely turned around, because every time i read it i become confused anew.

Also, I'm not sure it's that clever, to equate Gallifrey with Rose. One embodies failure, unmet obligations, lost chances, lost family, domesticity. The other is his home planet.

knowing what you could have, but being unwilling to settle down in order to have those things. yes, sounds familiar.

What I meant to say, before I got distracted, is that it's not necessarily positive for Rose, equating her with Gallifrey.

sorry, i was about to make a profound statement, but then i pictured rose in a silly time lord hat.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I have lots of very clever things to say, but I'm watching "Terror of the Zygons" and shipping Doctor/Loch Ness Monster.

sorry, i was about to make a profound statement, but then i pictured rose in a silly time lord hat.

Self-satisfied, short-sighted but capable of more, manipulative, dangerous when crossed -- she'd fit right in.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

So basically Ten/Rose happened because she reminded him of home?

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

It's not an interpretation that stands up to the remotest bit of attention, but it amuses me.

(Also, Ten/Rose happened? WHERE? I was trying to make a vid, and it required footage of Ten being the one making overtures to Rose. There was no footage. Rose's romantic attraction to the Doctor was as unrequited as Martha's; she just didn't get the same level of headgames.)

(You could argue that she got even more headgames, since the Doctor basically strung her along.)

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Last time I saw Terror of the Zygons was just after School Reunion and we were like "...yeah, I can see why they said they were in love."

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Yes! But then I watched "Revenge of the Cybermen", which was all about how Sarah and Harry are secretly married.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

I have lots of very clever things to say, but I'm watching "Terror of the Zygons" and shipping Doctor/Loch Ness Monster.

that was mah first episode! i haven't seen it since i first saw it, er, nine years ago? gah.

Self-satisfied, short-sighted but capable of more, manipulative, dangerous when crossed -- she'd fit right in.

i seriously can't care enough about rose after JE to have very in-depth conversations about her, because it's impossible. RTD took away whatever depth there was was. probably if she'd been a character i was more invested in i would be trying to make some fanon to fix her, but as it is... yeah, i already wasted time on that after doomsday, so what's the point? she and handy will break up when she wants him to be the doctor and he can't be, and he'll blame her for being trapping him in a parallel world world without a TARDIS, and it'll be a huge mess. or, they'll live happily ever after. either way, RTD reduced all of her concerns to whether she was with her man, and thus there's not a lot i'm interested in exploring there.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the thing. After TSE and JE, what's the point? Even the supplementary material like interviews usually contains some seeds of layers for Rose, but in this case -- "she wants the Doctor back". That's nice, Rose, now can you explain why there's ocean where some Pacific islands used to be?

[zougla.livejournal.com]

Maybe the person is saying that the show purposefully dances around the issue of Gallifrey, and never explains why he can't talk about it? (I don't know that this is true or untrue...) And in general the doctor never explains why he doesn't talk about things. Just like he never talks about rose......

who would want to talk about rose, anyway?

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

And in general the doctor never explains why he doesn't talk about things. Just like he never talks about rose....

even if that was true (it's not) it would still be a terrible comparison! it's be like comparing my mom's death to the fact that i hardly ever get to see my friends or the rest of my family. er, yes, that's sad, but it's not really on the same level, is it?

who would want to talk about rose, anyway?

i was hoping me, before her appearances in s4 killed what little interest i had left in her. it was like a lesson in character assassination.

[jigglykat.livejournal.com]

You KNOW the anonmeme is bad for the soul! IT'LL POLLUTE YOU WITH STUPIDITY.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

sometimes there is good discussion, and often there is lulz! (like when someone wrote a comment personifying murray gold's music). i did get into a discussion on there once with someone who would. not. accept. that i didn't find interpreting the show as a romance between the doctor and rose as plausible. "but the love story is obvious!" "er, which love story? the one where the doctor actually rejects rose and leaves her deliberately in another universe from which she can never come back, when there was absolutely nothing keeping them from being together if that's what he'd wanted? and leaves her with a guy that looks like him but who's apparently half woman and also extremely dangerous, so she can 'fix' him? this is not a persuasive love story to me."

[jigglykat.livejournal.com]

*facepalms* You are a braver soul than I, sir.

when someone wrote a comment personifying murray gold's music

EXPLAIN PLZ.

PS. How's your Secret Project going? Get any more done?

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

context here: HANNAH MURRAY IS NOT THE NEW COMPANION. THE NEW COMPANION IS MURRAY GOLD. (http://community.livejournal.com/who_anon/5574.html?thread=23884486#t23884486)



PS. How's your Secret Project going? Get any more done?

¬______¬

*sidles back over to textedit*

[jigglykat.livejournal.com]

OMG HILARIOUS.

And me too. Me too.

[reasonabsurd.livejournal.com]

I want Gallifrey back. *sadness* I liked the rebel!Doctor plotlines of the Old Series better than angst!Doctor that we have now. And plus, I told my friend WHO HAS NEVER WATCHED THE SHOW about Time Lords, and he thought that space bureaucrats in funny hats was a fantastic idea.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i don't want gallifrey back, at least not as it was, because it would make the past four (almost five) years of the show irrelevent. it would be a retcon that would make the ends of LofTL and JE look nuanced and beautiful in comparison.

i also prefer rebel doctor, but i'm hoping that as he heals from the war that he'll start to get back to that, and stop trying to take the place of the time lords in the universe. i think he feels very guilty about their absence (makes sense), so he's felt obligated to take over their role, and it's a role he's very unsuited to fill. which is how we get more genocide and throwing people into the event horizons of black holmes and such.

he thought that space bureaucrats in funny hats was a fantastic idea.

i lked the time lords more when they were SCARY AS FUCK, like in "the war games". i like to think of them as a mixture of extremely scary and also amusingly incompetent, arrogant and silly. which is... a bit like ten, actually. hmmm.

[reasonabsurd.livejournal.com]

They're definitely complex characters. There's that balance of being powerful on a mythic scale and outright ridiculous (which is, again, a bit like Ten). It also seems unfair to me that the Daleks should keep coming back and that the Time Lords should be gone for good. I guess I'm not entirely decided whether I'd prefer the current power vacuum, yet more complex storyline, that exists without them, or the more complete universe, and the oversimplification and tediousness that comes with absolute power if we still had them. It also annoys me because some of my favorite characters were Time Lords, though.

[shobogan.livejournal.com]

> > I clicked on your name when you commented on my rec, which made me squee, and I think I can shed some light?

I think the point was - if you don't want Gallifrey to be a presence anymore, destroying it is shooting yourself in the foot. Because it will be, it must be, just in a different way. So saying you don't want it to return and be significant is silly, because it is already.

Perhaps also that the effect of its destruction on the rest of the universe isn't explored very much, and seems to mainly just fuel the Doctor's angst.

(Personally, I'd like them back somehow - not entirely, maybe not Gallifrey itself, but I like the Doctor better as a rebel than a tragic last survivor. And we can entirely ignore the Time Lord culture of Deadly Assassin*, and make it a mix between War Games and later appearances.)

*I have fanwanked that to death and I have no shame.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

I think the point was - if you don't want Gallifrey to be a presence anymore, destroying it is shooting yourself in the foot.

i certainly agree with that, although i'm still not sure if that's what that particular commenter was trying to say (i think someone else in the thread said something like this though). and i know i personally don't think that the absence of the time lords is sufficiently explored, either for the doctor or the universe -- it's mentioned sometimes, but not actually as often as you'd expect given its importance, and so we're left wondering, well, why did RTD destroy it at all, then? well, the obvious reason is so the new show can have a kind of clean slate in certain respects -- or more accurately, a clear demarcation of now and before. it's the same show but there is quite a gap between 1989 and 2005, and how will this be represented in the show? because going back to the exact same storyline and format isn't going to cut it.

but anyway, my only true puzzlement comes from "moreso even than rose was". i can't understand a meaning where that doesn't imply either that gallifrey's absence should be brought up less often than rose's absence, or that bringing up rose is annoying but so is bringing up gallifrey. which i can understand if they're frustrated that they're not doing anything very thematically interesting with gallifrey's destruction, but surely there's no way to do *anything* interesting with it if it's never brought up at all?

And we can entirely ignore the Time Lord culture of Deadly Assassin

sexy poet shirt: yes. pathetic bureaucratic bumbling reminiscent of the bbc: no.

if you've listened to the gallifrey audios, i think there are some nice things in those, with the general atmosphere of pettiness, backstabbing, stagnation and arrogance, although the actual mechanics of government are bit... um. but points for effort, yes!

[shobogan.livejournal.com]

It's really disappointing, especially if you like Gallifrey – if it's destroyed, I want it to be done properly. I want it to matter. (It's a bit odd, as I started with New Who - but then I prefer Classic overall anyway.) I kind of wish Nine had died to bring it back, as I think it worked better for him than Ten.

I'm thinking it's just a point of comparison? At least, I hope it was. I have seen people convinced that Rose was more important, which - just - head, desk, etc. Even just saying they're the same - and why would you, it'd mean he liked Rose much better when she was gone. :p It could be that they think the manner of them being brought up was equally bad?

Four's poet shirt really was the best thing about it. Which works with my "it's all filtered through Four's wonky perception" theory, come to that.

I've started the Gallifrey audios, and love them like pie. Crazy, crazy pie.