New Who rant... and other ramblings [is it a kind of dream?]

I think i'm leaning away from Doctor Who. :shock:

It was cool to be a Who fan when no one else was. I enjoyed it, reveled in loving an obscure British scifi show that had went the way of most tv shows, and petered out in the late 80s. I loved the novelty of asking for Who related items and the shock on people's faces when they found out I was a massive Who fan.

The reinvention (and distortion stroke ruination) of New Who has changed all that. Suddenly everyone and their uncle is a Who fan, and what RTD / Grand Moff have done to Nine and Ten both piss me off so much, royally, that I cant stand it. It started back with Curse of Fatal Death, which Teh Moff wrote, with the Doctor marrying his companion, and its just gone on into new Who. And its nauseating.

*MY* favourite Time Lord does not LOVE any of his companions, or have sex with them, least of all the chavvy bimbo Rose. Its almost as bad as I've heard Harry Potter fandom is, and almost as popular, which again, makes me drift away from it...

I'm leaning towards the wonderful obscurity of Sapphire and Steel. Its a fabulous show with a very cerebral premise, and such an open format that so much could be done with it... and not that many people doing it / competing for it. My chance to stand out, to be that big fish in a little pond...

If i were to have an authorial dream come true, i'd rather it be a script for a S&S audio (and have my words voiced by David Warner! omg.swoon.die) than a New Who adventure ANY DAY, and you couldnt pay me to write Nine or Ten books, ever. Never ever ever. I despise Nine and Ten equally, and i'd never write their characters, ever.

Just venting some resentment that's building up inside me. I've unsubscribed most of the Who fiction related comms because of all the smarmy 'I want Wose back' shit written by teenage girls, and I just can't stand everything always revolving around sex. Same with Torchwood, gawd almighty.

I will keep watching both shows, if only to see how they fuck things up next. I will probably enjoy the odd episode, as I did with the recent Dalek episode(s).

But i think my brain is unstoppably mulling / dreaming / contemplating writing S&S stuff. Yes. This is a sort of transition period for me, and its not a move I make intentionally, but am being drawn, for some reason.

Just so no one thinks i've gone mad, that's my line of thinking. I think i need to add a S&S folder inside my 'Stories' folder on my hard disk. Yes. Its the time travel / time aspects / stories / atmos of it all that I really find i like - that's what i liked about Who, before it became bloody Emmerdale Farm With Daleks *headdesk*

Thanks a lot Rusty and Grand Moff. And Paul Cornell, you'll never be forgiven for that crap that was Father's Day, no, even though I love Goth Opera.

Ok rant over. Hence my new default icon. Made from the old Sapph and Steel opening screencap, which i took, and the S&S banner at BF site, snipped and put together. :D

December

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25 1	26	27
28	29	30	31

Sun

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

I sort of agree. A lot more mildly. Imo it's not necessarily a bad thing that it's more popular. and...i can't be bothered forming a coherent opinion *handwave*

all the smarmy 'I want Wose back' shit written by teenage girls Hey, we don't all write Rose/Dr stuff, and not all teenage girls write crap.

Sorry sorry, not picking a fight, just hormonal. *goes off to be moody in a corner*

[link] [reply]

For me, its like being a massive fan of the Beatles in 1964 - what's the chance you'd ever meet them, or write a lyric for them to sing on stage in front of millions and gazillions of screaming and fainting girls?

None at all.

But being a fan of a relatively obscure show, you might just get yourself known . get involved, if you meet the right people...

Besides, that's only one of many reasons New Who is losing its popularity with me. I can forgive crap scripts, dodgy effects, poor acting, hell, i was a fan of the show since I was 14 - i'm used to all that already. And besides, that's not what makes a series for me, its the stories. The very thing that New Who is moving away from as they focus on character development and backstory (Martha's family too? DO I GIVE A FLYING TOSS??), and soap.

*My* Who had no soap in it. Characters were killed off or companions died and then you moved on, and that was that. *headdesks at the Rose-emo every single fucking episode* sigh...

No, not all teenage girls write Wose-come-back fix-its for post-Doomsday. But if you knew how many DO, how many pages and pages of that nauseating shit i have to skip every day (now i dont, i unsubscribed the comms!) you'd know why i generalised like that when i wrote that.

I was a teenage girl once actually and I didnt write that kind of crap when i was writing fic back in the middle 90s, so i do know that it is possible to be a teenager and not be focussed on Ten/Rose fix-its, or sex/love/romance/relationships etc in general. In fact, i wrote torture, actually :)

Sigh... I dont think i'm explaining myself very well.

[link] [parent] [reply]

Getting involved is probably very difficult. Getting known is a case of turning up to the Tav once a month and being generally pleasant to all and sundry (and not gushing over Moffat, as my girlfriend and I did last time. Or Rob Shearman, like we did... um, the time before that).

Since my decision in 2000 to 'do my own thing', I've not gone for the networking, and haven't gone often enough to be known by many people at all - it's just a nice cheap pub in a pleasant part of London where I can drink real ale and talk about Doctor Who.

But the FIRST time I went was part of a general House at Allen Road mailing list meet. The other people who went along included Eddie Robson, Jon de Burgh Miller and Matt Michael, who as far as I know weren't particularly known in fandom at that point. Now Eddie's getting stuff on BBC7, Jon's had a couple of novels published and Matt crops up regularly in DWM. Kinda makes me wish I'd taken the whole trip more seriously.

The Internet is still not really a place to network on a professional level, basically. It is still a case of who you know. I've not been to the Tavern for a few months now, so I don't know how many of the New Who / Big Finish crowd are still going on a regular basis. But it's a great starting point for either Who or S&S

I know, i just meant generally, but yeah, wish i were in London :/

Still, as my offspring grows up and gets even more detached to having me around all the time, I can nip off to London for 3 hours for a few quid on a megabus, and participate in these things, meet the people, and make myself known.

Being a 'famous author' is a lifelong dream, and one day i will achieve it, somehow. Until then, i will keep writing, just for myself, and enjoying the hell out of it.

Yeah, I have the same basic dream of being a 'famous author' (with the added frill of being a famous author and living in a rambling tumbledown chateau in South West France) - the other day I did a little thought experiment which went thusly.

'I want to be a professional writer. What is preventing this from being reality?'

And the only answer I had was:

'I don't write enough.'

I feel myself getting sucked into fanfiction again, and I'm very ambivalent about it. The Craig book is one thing (one achingly time-consuming and frustrating thing), but now I'm tinkering more with the Time War idea (just because it's brilliant) and possibly even finishing off my silly piece where the Doctors all go on a drunken bender together (Tennant has just chopped up Richard E Grant with a Sycorax broadsword and Pertwee is moaning about the Master being a gold-bricking tart who was quick to come sniffing about as soon as he got a cushy consultancy job).

I view fanfiction as a dangerous snare for anyone with professional aspirations. It's easy to spend too much time on it because it's generally quicker to write than original fiction, I get a rapid response of usually broadly positive feedback - it's seductive.

I fell into the same trap writing book and film reviews for Internet websites - made a bit of money at that, but it's all just treading water, really. Showing up to meet a potential agent with a fistfull of snobby reviews of Titanic and a crossover with Alfonso Bonzo isn't going to impress anyone, sadly.

I'm rambling, whee!

You know more about the game than i do, evidently, because i dont know even the first thing about even meeting a potential agent, or anything else.

Yes, fanfic is easy to write, but i say its better to write something than nothing at all, and the more writing i do, the better i get (i hope!) so its practice well worth doing.

I just have a couple of short stories under my belt and the odd bit of editorial and translation as part of my day job. Just enough to realise that if I'm serious about writing I have to up my game and:

a) Get an agent
b) Write more stuff.

I've always enjoyed writing fanfic, but I personally learn a lot from proper critiques of my work. Fancrit tends to be gushing when it's positive, and focusing too much on continuity elements when it's negative. Perhaps that's just a Doctor Who thing, I don't know.

Might be your betas - my usual suspects (

alocin42, thats you!) tend to be quite harsh on things that dont make sense or could sound better / more English / etc... She's not so big on continuity, but more on the thing making sense, kwim?

My Shelf Life entry has had 4 betafyings now so far, and i'm waiting on Adrian for number five. And i may give it to my next door neighbour for number 6. Can't have too many opinions, never.

Funny, not one of them pointed out the same thing twice.

Yeah, maybe i ought to get an agent or something. Course i dont have a professional career at the moment besides professional mommy and housewife, so its a bit awkward :/

I don't do the beta thing, for fan fiction at any rate. It probably shows in a lot of my material. I'm a ruthless self-editor and my background in obscure French literature (and cinema! Ooh, got the dvd of Last Year in Marienbaad from the director of Providence! I am teh chuffed!) means no one understands my influences enough to comment on certain things - which are definitely the bits that NEED reining in.

My Shelf Life entry gets more esoteric by the hour, but I've given Ace the best line EVER, so hopefully no one will notice.

I feel I'd write more if I had an agent. Productivity is my downfall. But lack of professional career isn't a barrier to getting an agent. An agent shouldn't cost you anything, merely take a commission from your work that they sell to publishers.

I'm a ruthless self editor as well, but i feel i can do nothing but benefit from trusted and respected peoples' opinions on my writing, so i take it all in, and what i come out with in the end is hopefully worth printing!

Ooh, well if it doesnt cost anything to have one, maybe i'll look one up!

[I know this was over a month ago, but I hadn't actually read it til today *facepalm* Not been on the computer much]

I guess if you actually want a chance of getting properly involved with it at all, the popularity is bad, but as that's the last thing I'd want, it didn't even occur to me =/ But it's always been pretty popular, hasn't it? Well I suppose maybe not so much in the 1990s, but most of the time it's been airing(?)

Admittedly I did only start watching old stuff after I saw Nine, but I kind of see New Who and Old Who as two different things. They've got the same premise, but have changed to reflect more what (they think) the audience wants to see (although as apparently fantasy/sci-fi dramas are becoming more popular than usual soaps/drama, that seems a bit skewed), and as (they think, at least, that) people want to be able to identify a lot with the characters, they give us lots of backstory and emotions and stuff.
To be fair, this series has been loads better than the last one, imo. The stories are fine, as far as I can see - some they could've done more with (that one with the sun for example, that seemed a bit pointless, would've maybe been better if they'd played up the whole stuck-with-murderer thing. although that would've been a bit dark I guess), but they're entertaining, and make sense, ish.
But then I also watch stuff for the characters, so *shrug*. I love finding out stuff about them, so from my PoV backstory's not necessarily bad. (Though is more effective if you find it out through events, rather than, Hello, This Is My Family. They Do Not Get On Well. kinda thing. Find it out when it comes up naturally I mean, rather than having it waved in your face.)

Even if there is so much Rose,Doomsday stuff on the comms (which I do see, as I'm subscribed to some of them, the main Who fanfic comms and that), there's no way you can know that most of it's writen by /teenagers/, surely?!
If we were talking about, say, fanfiction.net, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but livejournal has more adult users, and the Who fandom seems to be more mature then, say, the Harry Potter one (not that I'm saying that HP isn't. I haven't been around it much on lj, but in general it is kinda notorious for having massive flame wars, and for having loads of young fans (me being one of them)).
I was a teenage girl once actually You know how annoying it is when people say that, then? =) lol.

=/ I'm probably not, either...

I still get the occasional surprised look when I mention classic Who, and I come across very few people in RL who go back further than Nine, so I'm still in the minority :o)

Oh, and - *bounces* S&S fic! Please write some, there is so little! I think I've found a grand total of three, and I can't find them again. So yes, write some fic :oD

Oh, i will do, i will do.

Yes, people are surprised when i saw i'm a fan of the OLD SERIES, but then they start talking about Rose, and i want to vomit... sigh...

I love Doctor Who. I love New Who and Old Who. There are different reasons why I like them, and I do dislike aspects of both, but over all... it's Doctor Who. I just *have* to love it, come hell or high water. The world will probably implode if I don't like it.

The Rose shipping annoys me, but I just ignore it. I hate anything to do with Tegan, but I ignore her. Some of Seven's storylines make me want to kill the writers, but I ignore them. The Who fandom is so vast, no matter what you like or don't like, there's something to please you.

It's great to be a fan of something obscure, but it's equally great to be a fan of something popular. I suppose my experience of that is a bit different though - among most teenagers, it isn't cool to like Doctor Who. I get weird looks when I pull out my Who folders. But I don't care. I know the wonders of it, they don't.

I'm not keen on fanfiction. Any Doctor Who fic makes me cringe, even the good ones, because I have some wierd canon complex in my head. Torchwood is pretty much jumped up fanfic though, so the fanfic is spawned from other fanfic, which mean it'll be doubly gawdy.

I love Doctor Who, because it appeals to me to sit on the sofa with the curtains closed and a cushion half in front of my face, to be absorbed in and squeal at the science fiction, the bad monsters, the dodgy science. I love Torchwood ~~because of Ianto~~ because it's something different, because it's in the same vein as Who but I don't have to convince myself I need the cushion. Neither show is perfect - in some cases, far from it - but then again, nothing is. I focus on the good bits, rather than fixating on the bad bits.

(Long comment. Sorry. Probably doesn't make sense. Again, sorry.)

Oh, i focus on the good points, else i wouldnt be a surprisngly massive fan of a show that had a £2500 budget PER EPISODE!

Effects, scripts, acting, all that is secondary to the story for me, and that's a big part of why New Who is losing its appeal.

And its massive popularity. Which makes me run. Which is why i've never read a HP book or seen but one movie, and avoid most things that other people rave about. I guess i'm a nonconformist in that way? If people start gravitating towards it, i start running, and I dont know why, i just always have done.

Shrug. Its just my opinion.

I'm not attacking your opinion, sorry if it seemed that way. You're entitled to yours, mine just happens to be different.

I hear you on the backstory/family/soap issue though. I don't CARE if Rose has a boyfriend, or if her family thinks she's gone missing, or if Martha's worried about missing her brother's birthday party. If I wanted to watch a TV show about family and angst, I'd put Eastenders on. I want to see aliens, dammit, and other worlds. If I was offered the chance to travle in a TARDIS, I wouldn't think twice about it. I certainly wouldn't be worrying about going home every two minutes.

I read the HP books, because they're pretty good books. Don't care about the fandom as a whole, it bores me. I don't mind discussing things with a couple of friends, but I don't get involved with the mass hysteria over every clue. And I hate the films simply because they don't follow the books ~~at all~~ very well.

I just find myself thinking less and less about new Who, even feeling bored with Old Who (though i enjoyed Robots of Death again the other day, what a fabulous episode), and want to move on to something that has captured my imagination for the time being.

Sometimes i feel flighty and flit from thing to thing, but I'm really feeling the Sapphire and Steel lub lately. Yes.

It didnt seem like you were attacking specifically, but i dont think i expressed myself in other responses very well, so i just wanted to sum up that its just my opinion these days.

*hugs*

Fanfic doesnt have to contradict canon - none of mine EVER does. I always make sure, to the point of pulling out old episodes and quoting them line by line, that anything I wrote slots in canonically and fits in personality-wise as well - that's the neurotic in me, i guess.

The number of times I've re-read pps 183 - 186 of the Crystal Bucket, to make sure that Tempus Fugit slots in, instead of accidentally changing even one small detail Craig wrote...

I dont understand alternate universes or pairings. Like Five/Turlough or Alt!Eight/Rose. I just dont get that stuff at all, and never ever read it.

Attempt at a music analogy: in your teenage years you discover an obscure band and really enjoy their music. Hardly anyone else listens to them, but you like their different style and the small group of devoted fans who take the music seriously. Then they stage a come-back, write some new poppy songs, change the line-up, sign to a major label and are suddenly all over Radio 1 with sell-out stadium tours full of teenagers. Everyone's talking about them and you're happy they've had a new lease of life.

But then you notice that the new music is quite different to the old stuff. It's got some similar lyrics and seems familiar, but something fundamental in the beat has changed in modernising and popularising it. The new more poppy music isn't inherently bad, just different, but it's not how their music used to be, even though the name on the front is the same. Instead of a small group of devoted fans who listened for the music, all the gigs are full of teenage girls pushing to the front to throw their underwear on stage. The band appear on everything from pencil cases to yoghurt pots. They make a novelty Christmas number one single; it just isn't for the music anymore...

Hmm, I may just have been rambling nonsense there, particularly towards the end. Anyway I only started on Who with "Rose" so I'm not really qualified to comment!

You're bang on, and that's one of many many many reasons i'm leaning away from New Who, and Who in general...

Trust you to be able to say more succunctly what i'm fumbling about trying to ocnvey... :) After all, that's what i pay you for! ;)

Succint? I was rambling on about bands and selling out and teenage girls throwing underwear! I was straying far enough away from the point I think I'll need map to find my way back...

I.. I.. i'm drifting.

Drift away, Nebulous!

;)

I have a quick question and I won't be offended if you say no, but do you read my fanfiction?

We've discussed before that the Doctor is and should remain asexual, and I keep that vein in my fiction. Sex with the Doctor just shouldn't happen unless he's got really bad amnesia or volunteers to have a libido installed. I've only written Ten stuff thus far (I've brought One DVDs but haven't watched many of them due to health restrictions).

My fiction plays mainly on the character development at the moment and the moments between events on screen. It's my playground before venturing into episodic format. I'm interested if you'll stay away from the multi-chapter 10/Rose I'm about to put up because they spend a week in bed together with the premise he's helping her through remembering the events of the Game Station. How they deal with their physical arrangement is brought up throughout the prose because my Muse wouldn't let it be untouched and it is revelant to the story as a whole.

Both RTD and David Tennant have said Rose/Doctor sex didn't happen, but they do say it was a love story and the best of friends can be in love. It's certainly not somewhere Doctor Who has been before. The show is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I'm sorry New Who doesn't appeal, but Sapphire and Steel sounds like your new home. :)

To be honest, i usually only read Five related fanfiction, if I read any at all. I specifically avoid Nine or Ten stuff; no offense intended to any Nine or Ten writers, it just isnt my bag. But moreso because i despise Nine and Ten, really, and what RTD/Julie/Moff have done to my show.

And these days, havent been reading much of any fic at all, just finished up TF and have moved on to other things that have captured my imagination for now...

I hope that doesnt offend you, its just my personal peeves gone awry lately. I remember hating on Buffy bigtime, and then suffering through a few eps, only to find i had to go back and see the show from the beginning. And i watched all 7 seasons. And i enjoyed it.

So maybe i will change my mind. But i think Nine and Ten would be easier to swallow if the show either wasn't called Doctor Who, or if they weren't such a departure from the Time Lord i grew up loving.

And this whole rant is just my opinion, not law or fact or anything else. Take it with a grain of salt.

No offense taken. I remember you commented on my first ever Doctor Who fanfic and I was curious if you continued to read. I've only found the health to read Ten, Nine and Eight in that order so I understand your stance on only/mainly reading Five related fic.

Five has been and always will be MY doctor, since I was 14, so that's kindof more the reason i stick to it. I enjoy the episodes of other Doctors, but i dont read their books or write them whatsoever. Its just my preferences i guess.

Plus i have very limited time, mainly after my offspring has retired forthe evening, so i dont get a lot of daylight hours that are spare and I can get any thinking done, (moreso in the summer than the winter that is) - trying to engulf the whole of Who fandom from 63 - 07 would make my brain break, lol

I've been reading all these comments with great interest. I'm half in/half out with your thinking.

YES -- I am *totally* past the Rose Angst. Give it a rest, RT! I never cared for Rose as a companion, but worse, I could never see what it was about her that made the Doctor go gaga. Really. I mean, Sarah Jane pwned Rose big time. I still have fantasies that he left Rose behind and took up again with SJ. :-D

BTAIM -- I'm still very much enjoying the new series (see my entry about watching it with my younger son). I like David Tennant both as the Doctor and in the other roles he has done. When he's in full Doctor mode (i.e., not in relationship mode) he's quite wonderful. Properly alien and all that. Just stop mooning over Rose, please!

Martha -- I love. She hasn't been given enough to do so far, but hey, she only just joined on. She's still figuring it all out. Just wish she'd stop mooning over the Doctor! And get some fresh clothes on, girlfriend!

I've loved all the Doctors, each in his own way. I'm still quite torn over whose tenure I think is the best. Each has had good and not-so-good stories. But I totally understand your other comment about not wanting to be a fan of something that has so many fans these days. I'm dreading the day when David Tennant starts showing up on the supermarket rags over here. As Groucho Marx put it, "I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member."

I love David Tennant, dont get me wrong. I just dont like his Doctor. I love Ecclescake too, i just dont like his Doctor either. They're not alien ENOUGH for me.

Martha is ok, but she needs to get over it, the Doc doesnt want her, and the Doc needs to get over Rose kthnksbai. *headdesk*

I dont know. I guess i'm just feeling a little burnt out and want to try something different for a change. Its a weird feeling to try and put into words.

Well, here's your problem, leonie, you moved out of the U.S.! :D Over here Doctor Who remains firmly in its little uber geek niche. Airing on SciFi has ensured that, and in my area there isn't even a PBS station willing to air the classic stuff. That's why I have to hang around on teh interweb so much, there are no fans around that I can fangirl with! And yes, the Rose shipping is indeed disgusting and I don't read any of it. It's annoying having to wade through it all, but thank goodness for summaries so all I have to see is "Post-Doomsday. Rose gets back..." and I'm on to the next one. Yay for broadening your interests. I wax and wane constantly on my obsessions, and I believe it's perfectly healthy.

Hee :D Yeah, waxing and waning is good. Spose it serves me right for moving here, but until 2005, i still got the same looks even here, until the new show started back up...

Plotting a Sapph and Steel fic next. Who knows where it will go.

is it a kind of dream?

New Who rant... and other ramblings

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Links

edit photos

edit userpics

December