World Enough and Time

An article about Captain Jack Harkness: Captain Jack And River Song Met, Decided They Want A 'Doctor Who' Spinoff. Well, of course they do.

I'd like it too, if only because it's not likely to be the dirge to morosity that Torchwood Miracle Day was. And since the loss of Elisabeth Sladen and The Sarah Jane Adventures, there's a gap to be filled.

Now, I was never, and am not, a big fan of River Song, partly because I saw her as playing the role in Doctor Who that Captain Jack ought to have been playing. Replacing him, in other words. What did she do that he couldn't do better? Nothing that I could see.

Putting them together -- well! It would be like two peas in a pod, but why not? They'd be fun. They'd be loads of fun.

Bring it on.

As for the rest of the article: I don't want to know the Doctor's name, and I'm hoping that episode won't tell us, despite its name. And: why is Captain Jack being left out of the Doctor Who special? I had thought that since Steven Moffat was the first writer to write Captain Jack, that he'd want to include him. Perhaps he sees him as a Russell T Davies creation, and doesn't like the character.

I wrote this a couple of days ago.. and never posted it.

- - -

A day of good news.

First, the news that France and New Zealand have legalized gay marriage. I'm tempted to say, "What took them so long?" but hey, that really is good news. Waking up to a new age of equality and justice.

Second, I saw the trailer for Thor: the Dark World and kind of got all excited over it. Especially the last few seconds featuring Loki.



I'm a little sorry to see Jane Foster back, but I suppose it was inevitable.

Third, I saw the preview of tomorrow's Young Avengers #4, in which Noh-Varr is awesome, Kate Bishop turns up, Loki makes sarky comments, and we get a few more Parents from Hell. I can hardly wait!

Fourth, I learned that the movie rights for Daredevil have reverted to Marvel. Is there hope in the future of a good Daredevil movie? Dare I hope? Now, I know, a few good movies under their belt doesn't mean all their movies in future are going to be great - I didn't much like Iron Man 2 - but they've had a few magnificent movies, and The Avengers trumps all. Other movie-makers just don't get it right.

Maybe things aren't as bad as they seemed: maybe they saved most of the manuscripts Timbuktu after all.

How I hope.

And I hope the international attention earns them the manpower and resources to get the manuscripts digitized and preserved safely.

Bowe Cleveland was one of the kids shot in one of the recent schools shootings - and what a hearbreaking phrase that is. Shot in the chest and abdomen, he is being slowly awakened from an induced coma. He was a Spider-Man fan. Stan Lee sent him a video-taped message, which you can see on Comic Book Resources.

The comments are interesting, especially the comparison of Bowe to Flash Thompson - a character who has become one of Marvel's more interesting people. Others sound as if they are blaming the victim.

In any case... hooray for Stan Lee.

commodorified posted a link to On Idle No More, Chief Spence and non-violence and I thought it was important enough for me to repost the link here. I don't see the TV news so I don't know how much coverage "Idle No More" gets in general, of Chief Spence in particulary, in Canada or outside it. I think it's one of the most important movements of my time - alongside the ongoing battle for equality for women and gays worldwide.

I too am ashamed of this Prime Minister, but I have been for some time, and for many issues beyond this one. The worst I can say of him is that this is typical of his philosophy.

I’ve visited many countries in my life and the more I’ve travelled internationally, the firmer my conviction has become that Canada really is the most amazing country on Earth. As a Canadian citizen I enjoy tremendous privileges many others do not, even amongst other western liberal democracies. But, all my relations, those privileges have not been free and their costs have not been distributed justly. ...Colonization is not a completed historical fact from which all must simply move on; it is a deliberate, daily violence continuing this moment and anyone promoting that Indigenous peoples are ignorant not to accept this violence as legitimate is at worst, racist; at best, living in a dream palace.

There are ways of making this a just society, and I hope it will happen - here as in the rest of the world.

auriaephiala pointed me to this exchange, and I'm glad she did. Very interesting.

Starting point: lyda222's Livejournal, where she talks about Rob Bricken's Fan Fiction Friday on io9, in which he ridicules a Steve/Tony slash story and a Harry Potter story.

And she makes some very cogent, significant points: that fanfic, especially erotic fanfic, and especially slash, is very personal, written by fans for fans, and it takes courage - I would add, and passion - to put it out in the world. To see strangers ridicule it is distressing. Yes, I'd be upset to see a stranger ridiculing my stories in a public forum like io9 - or anywhere else.

I don't ike to see mockery in public forums. If you must mock, mock what you love, not what you hate. Hatred isn't funny. I don't mind scathing reviews - I've written a few of them myself. But ridicule for the sake of ridicule is cruel. You shouldn't do it at all, and if you do, you shouldn't do it in public and you certainly shouldn't do it in such a way that the object of the mockery will know about it. Why encourage unkindness in a public forum? Aren't we supposed to be putting an end to bullying?

Moreover, if you're going to ridicule something, it's way too easy to do so as an outsider. People often ridicule what they don't like, just because they don't like it. ("Look at that ugly sweater on sale! Who'd wear that?") Respect for the tastes of others is a very difficult lesson to learn. To my eyes, it's an important one.

When I read lyda222's comments I thought io9 would reply: suck it up. Or some version of "fan fiction is fair game". And I think the consequences of that ultimately would be for slash fandom to go underground again, to retreat to the days when it was a secret; scattered, hard to find, kept under passwords and in fannish communities that were hard to find and hard to get into. I'm not sure how many people realize it, but fandom is fragile, even if stronger and bigger than it used to be. And there are a lot of people out there who would attack it, in various ways and for different reasons, with various weapons.

It's all the worse that this happened in a forum for fans - not some right-wing Rush Limbaugh site.

I was surprised and delighted to see that io9 was less insensitive that I expected, and the feature was dropped, without an apology, but with an explanation by io9 editor Annalee Newitz, who said:

Most fanfic archives and communities are run as safe spaces, places where writers are encouraged to pour their hearts and fantasies out without fear of reprisals. Many of the people who wrote to us to explain their concerns about FFF used the word "shaming" to describe what they felt the feature was doing. Again, this was not our intent, but intent doesn't matter.

So what did they think they were doing, and how clueless can they be? They did what they did: what kind of innocence can they plausibly claim? That they didn't mean to subject fans to scathing mockery? By their own admission, that's exactly what they intended. They may think they were just targeting bad writing, but they weren't. They were targeting a genre, and the fans who read it.

I thought Rob Bricken's comment was both insensitive and stupid:

On the plus side, I can stop reading hundreds of shitty fan fic each week, and may give my liver a chance to recover. I'm happy so many of you enjoyed it and will miss it, but I promise you there's no need to rake io9 over the coals. Annalee and io9 have been incredibly supportive of me and FFF, but it just didn't jibe with io9's audience. It happens.

Clearly he's not someone I'd want to invite over for supper. He sounds like a total lout. I'm so glad to hear that open cruelty isn't something that jibes with io9's audience. Reassures me no end.

A point that wasn't made on any of these forums - but which seems significant to me - is that slash is a women's fandom of fic written by and for women, and here we have a man ruthlessly demeaning it, and a female editor making the decision to stop the feature.

Looks to me like sexism at its worst.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. Mencken

I wanted to go to bed; but I also wanted to stay up to see who won the U.S. election.

I am now happy and relieved. Congratulations to all my American friends.

Seems that someone in the UK was giving bags of cocaine out to trick-or-treating children. (Halloween shock.)

Now, how could you do something like that accidentally? They thought they were giving the kids powdered sugar? How stupid can they possibly be?

Another death: Andy Williams.

He was the first singer I loved, whose albums I bought in the sixties, when he had a variety show on TV and I was hooked. I still love his music and have been listening to it on my Blackberry - a revival interest.

For years, I've been trying to find a digital recording of my favourite of his songs, Anniversary Waltz. No luck. I never liked Moon River, which always was and is the most famous of his songs.

San that he is gone, when he has been with me, musically speaking, for so long.

A Time For Us.

John Barrowman changes his stance on gay marriage.

I hope people pay attention to what he says.