sgac

I have nothing much to say that other people haven't said. Twelve is becoming genuinely unlikable. I'm not sure it's good for the Doctor to keep his old companion after a regeneration. It gives him a backlog of goodwill his last personality created and means he doesn't have to try to find the nice parts of the new personality.

Clara has no presence as a teacher. She runs around the playground like a teenager rather than someone with authority. I guess that's a directorial oversight.

Was weird in a good way that the alien looked like someone in a wheelchair.

Are we meant to believe in Danny's somersault as a serious thing?

I knew Courtney the Disruptive Influence wasn't going to last because the actress wasn't pretty enough. Ah, tv.

This could so easily have been same-old, same-old, and it wasn't. And it was timey-wimey. How often do we get that?

Okay, so:

-The thing on the bed was legitimately creepy

-Clara and Pink's mutual foot in mouth disease was a bit embarrassment squicky

-The Doctor's comments on Clara's appearance is a joke I've never got

-Time-travel pioneered just a hundred years from now? I doubt it, but more likely it's reverse engineered from all the lost alien ships littered about earth

-I don't like the Doctor ordering Clara in the Tardis and she ultimately accepts that he has the right to give her orders and the narrative doesn't disagree

-Awesome to see Clara use her special skillset, children!

-And yes, I was faked out by the woman's skirts into thinking we were back in time

- So... Gallifrey is accessible now? That wasn't Gallifrey? Or were they able to get there because the Doctor had taken all the safeguards off? That was a bit too easy

-The Doctor either had brothers, or grew up with other boys in a foster/kibbutz or something ('the other boys in the house')

-Implied that Time Lords are a military caste, which is not my understanding. Maybe we're dealing with the vagaries of translation?

Proof that Moffat is not all played out and does have something left in him.

Well, it had explosions and exterminating and the visuals were pretty cool. I thought it resonated nicely with Nine's Dalek. I hope they'll revisit Rusty because that could actually be interesting. God knows they need a way to make Daleks more interesting, because they're a terribly one-note villain.

I still yell angrily at the cogs and gears part of the titles.

So is this Doctor a good man? Eleven was a good man. The Doctor isn't necessarily a nice man, but Eleven could manage it when he wanted to. Ten was usually a good man, but he only did nice if he already liked you. Twelve (oh, how I hate that they messed up our nice neat numbering system)? Jury's still out on good, but he's definitely not nice. Or even likable. Or even particularly clever, in this episode. He needs a lot more slapping. I can't believe Clara let him get away with the soldier thing to Journey.

"Quit it with the steampunk!" I yell as the title sequence begins. Just because steampunk is trendy (and really, isn't it over yet?) does not mean you randomly throw cogs and gears over everything.

Later: "Boy, this is derivative. Don't blink, don't breathe, what's next, don't swallow?" I no longer watch this program for plot.

"The sooner we get rid of this girl the better."

"Wow, Jenny looks really nice in her underwear."

"What's the point of the gratuitous mention of Amy?"

"The sonic is blue now?" Does it regenerate with him?

"Ooh, like the new interior decor."

I like Capaldi. I liked the Doctor as a mad old man rummaging in an alley in his nightshirt -- very King Lear. Some gorgeous meta on masks that actually gave us a new perspective on regeneration. And as a proponent of asexual!Doctor, I am relieved by an end to the flirting.

Most recently, a couple of XMen AUs by Yahtzee, Pantheon and Anarchy in the U.K.. I think I liked Pantheon better. Charles/Erik works best for me when there's major ethical and philosophical differences between them, and like so many AUs Pantheon ironed that out a lot, but I enjoyed the plot. Anarchy in the U.K. also ironed out the canonical disagreements, but the romance had enough very real barriers that that didn't matter so much. The 'worldbuilding' was very good and I enjoyed the extended family OCs. My problems were a) the 'happy' ending wasn't the ending I would have preferred and b) the characterisation of Raven. Raven is so awesome in canon that I didn't like seeing her so fragile and I feel other things could have been done with the character that would still fit the scenario.

Both are recced as good reads but to me they're weaker than some of Yahtzee's past work like His Terrible Swift Sword and The Winter of Banked Fires. OTOH, Yahtzee also wrote the excellent Pride and Prejudice fic A Marital Education, which I also read recently.

Reread goddamnhella's Loki/Tony Off the Record, which continues to be excellent on the third or fourth reading. Also reread Mikkeneko's A Villain State of Mind, which I see now has a sequel! I enjoy it partly because of Loki and partly because I love seeing Charles Xavier being badass in his own very understated way. I felt the conversations about mutant rights were a little out of place -- background of mutants in the Avengers verse could equally and more interestingly been given through the story of how Nick Fury did come to know and trust Xavier -- and the fic seriously missed an opportunity when the author seemed to forget that Fury is black.

The God Machine by robotboy was a very enjoyable Loki/Tony and I do love me a collect-the-gems plot. I remember bits of it so I must have read it before. Structurally I think it has some problems -- or maybe it just needs a sequel.

Finally, Thylacine by st aurafina. The fandom is Sanctuary, which I know next to nothing about, but I read it for Tasmania! In fic! I'm pretty sure someone who knows the fandom would get a lot out of it, but even for me it was an interesting time-travel story.

So, becoming a PoSI wasn't as interesting as I'd expected. It felt very like filling in a form. I did cheat and use Fate at one point as I haven't done anything sufficiently notable and I suppose if I hadn't working towards one of those goals would have been impressively onerous. But it really was a bit anticlimactic.

In a nail-biting expedition in the Forgotten Quarter, I became a scholar of the Correspondent and can now progress at the University. But my main occupation these days in flipping cards in Watchmaker's Hill to reacquaint myself with the Regretful Soldier, preferably before my House of Chimes membership runs out.