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a goose

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Blog Comments posted by a goose

    JiMing

    Posted

    I'm glad everything's alright

     

    but

     

    is the US even a real place? how can school threats be so commonplace that most people have a story

    try northern ireland, where school threats are so commonplace that not only does everyone have a story, but the actual threats are ignored and they refuse to do any lockdowns unless there's evidence of a shooting or someone actually finds the bomb

     

    i've been in a couple lockdowns, man, i know how it feels (pretty awful tbh,although i imagine we're a lot more casual about them over here)

    glad everything was fine

     

    - Indigo Individual

    Zatth

    Posted

    Oh! I had no idea, I hadn't looked them up for like two years, and I'd just played the song as a song request. Nonetheless, I am glad to know and will ensure not to endorse a person like Alex Day. Thanks!

     

    And yes, ALL OF THE MIND CONTROL!

    It's no problem, I thought it best to make you aware. It helps with these things when everyone is on the same page. :)

     

     

    HE ADMITTED IT D:

     

    ...but it could be a clever ruse

    maybe you don't actually have mind control but you're saying that so that we'll think you do

    or maybe you do actually have mind control but you're saying that so that we'll think you want us to think you do and that you actually don't

     

    - Indigo Individual

    Zatth

    Posted

    'chameleon circuit'

    um

     

    you know about the alex day/eddplant stuff, right

    ?

     

    'cause, y'know, what people do doesn't really affect the quality of their music but i'm not sure if i'd necessarily give the band airplay after all of it, although in the end it is your choice (your show, after all :P)

     

    (i can't really use any more than general terms here because seriously it's awful nsfbzp stuff, but they did some really bad things)

     

    - Indigo Individual

     

    also i noticed that 'might'
    you're not hiding your mind control from anyone >:c

    Sumiki

    Posted

    I think how recent the history is actually makes it stand out even more; there are a whole lot of fans (those who haven't left the show, at least) who have been watching the revived Doctor Who since 2005, so changing something so recent and so huge in terms of its effect on the show in such a big way really does stand out. The reason the changes for criticism come in because it's reshaping history, and judging by Moffat's attitude toward it he's doing it because he feels his interpretation of the character is somehow more 'right' than that of showrunners before him and he's doing it in a way that leaves holes. RTD did receive criticism, too (you are criticising him right now, after all, and I can guarantee you people were saying the same things you are now when the show returned), although to some degree that was offset by the fact that he'd managed to get Doctor Who back on the air. Another reason he isn't getting as much criticism nowadays is because he isn't running the show, and I can guarantee you I'd be complaining about a lot of his stuff were he still in charge. I guess a lot of it is a matter of relevance, but once again it is an issue of reshaping history, and the reason RTD doesn't get as much criticism is that he did not. 

     

     

    Don't even get me started on the War Doctor, I detest Moffat's 'IT DIDN'T HAPPEN ON-SCREEN IT'S NOT TECHNICALLY CANON' (gallifrey's destruction was actually shown in a canon comic, though, if i recall correctly, so that's another plot hole left in his wake) attitude.

    I feel pretty sure it would have been a big help in pitching it, and I feel that right now is a little too soon to change one of the biggest details of it in a way that made so little sense, and my argument isn't that it's unchangeable show lore. It's that the way in which it was changed was, in some ways, even a personal insult against a previous showrunner (and despite his faults, the one who managed to get the show back so that moffat could be in the position he's currently in) -- 'the doctor wouldn't do that' -- that it nullified a big character detail for the Doctor and that it's one of Moffat's typical plot twists ('ahahaha i lied, get it? it's a plot twist' [see the master's return as missy]), alongside the issues I've previously mentioned. We have seen characters breaking through the Time Lock before, and while people would be complaining if Moffat had done that instead it's probably safe to say that as long as it was handled well the complaints wouldn't have been nearly as vocal, because it's a change to the show's present state rather than one that alters its past, which were exactly the kinds of changes RTD made and part of the reason, in my opinion, that he hasn't received as much criticism for them.

     

     

    And here the Doctor has been angsting over whether or not he's a 'good man' for the better part of the series, with no explanation as to why he's doing it. Sure, as an audience we can try and seek out explanations (as you've done for the soldier thing), but that's headcanon. (and personally i don't see how being sad about the fact that you're about to die is shoddy writing, but idk. maybe i just like writing with legitimate, long-term emotional consequences)

     

    (also, Steven Moffat, not me. he made a pretty big deal out of talking about how this doctor would be darker. and ten as lighthearted strikes me as a little odd -- he had his lighthearted moments, yes, but an awful lot of the time he was deadly serious [and i felt like that was a good balance to strike with the doctor, tbh; someone who was still excited to see and discover new things but could still be very serious when the occasion called for it]. eleven, however, i don't think really resembled ten; on an exterior level, maybe, but below that the various sexist jokes and repeated sexual assault of other characters (rory, jenny, clara), as long as the obvious not only genocide of the silence but brainwashing an unknowing human populace into committing the genocide for him strikes me as a little odd coming from the same man who answered the question of whether an unknowing slave was still a slave with 'yes' [and while i know that's nine, it does seem like something ten would have said too] and who said dictionary entries on genocide would be captioned with his face and the words 'over my dead body'. an awful lot of ten's characterisation came from his response to the events of the time war and to the love for humanity he'd found again with rose, and i don't feel we can say that they had very similar personalities when there's such a huge difference between their ideals)

     

    and as i seem to recall going back to colin baker's era wouldn't seem a terribly good idea, given how hard Michael Grade was trying to get rid of it at the time -- not the show's best moment, and it is not a good sign if something is going back to the tone it had while the BBC's Controller was doing his darndest to destroy it.

     

    I'm pretty sure it was for the sake of the finale, and seriously don't worry about trying to justify it, you're right. It is exceptionally terrible writing.

     

    - Indigo Individual

    a goose

    Posted

    [snip]

    - I'm sorry but I can't agree here. Not only was her death included solely for shock value, but based on the character traits we've already seen I find it impossible to believe that she would fail to respond in any way to finding that set of handcuffs in her pocket apart from 'oh look at that handcuffs isn't that curious'

    and also the the guards failed to do anything during that scene

    a death that outlandishly ridiculous in set-up barely lands within suspension of disbelief, nevermind 'fearsome'

    also, it is a fact that the reference to the Fourth Doctor was ditched in favour of a reference to Moffat's Doctor. Osgood didn't choose her own outfit, because she is a fictional character, written by Moffat, which means that Moffat chose to replace a reference to a Classic Who Doctor with a reference to a Doctor that he wrote and created. Do you see the problem? I fail to see any way in which that couldn't be considered patting himself on the back, especially given his track record for doing so. I stated a fact, and then I provided evidence from Moffat's past that explained my reasoning for believing that yes, when you remove a reference to something that preceded you and replace it with one to yourself it shows a degree of egotism, and this is in a context of such things already having happened in the past.

     

    - 'permission to squee' was a cringey line that frankly didn't really fit in with the previously established character, and honestly his whole presence in that scene seemed shoehorned in so that they could remove him from the plot

    to be honest i found him a far more engaging character than missy (chris addison played affably evil perfectly, and i still love the scene in which he offers the darker side to his character ['we've got a thing for that']) and i really think that he should've had a bigger role, with more scenes which showcased that darker element his character

     

    - The power of love has saved the day, and that's an awful resolution. What makes it worse is that this is not the first time, and that in every instance it has been heterosexual. There's nothing wrong with the statement that the day was saved by heterosexual love again, because it was, and I feel that given Moffat's whole 'mothers are amazing' and 'gay couples can't kiss unless they need to in order to survive' context, yes, that's another element of the issue.

     

    - no but there were metal plaques in there

    metal plaques

    with the names

     

    - Y'see, I'm sorry but that's bull. Gender and sex are not the same thing, and that's not changing mentally, that's a huge element of personal identity changing with no explanation given and in a world where we've come to a point where we can recognise that gender identities outside of cis exist, it seems very ignorant for a character whose sex has changed to suddenly comply with that sex. And to use my favourite word again, 'context': Steven Moffat does use the words 'gender' and 'sex' interchangeably. This is not a matter of mental change, this is a matter of ignorance.

     

    - How is that silly? Missy doesn't want to tell the Doctor, but why shouldn't we as an audience know how she escaped when it's relevant to the story being told? That's something that's very easily accomplished in a visual medium, and is a pretty big element of storytelling. To use previous events connected to the Master: the Doctor didn't witness the ring being picked up from beside his pyre, or the (kinda sketchy) way in which he was brought back to life. Do you think that we shouldn't have been made aware of those? The issue isn't showing too much too early, it's actually knowing that she came from somewhere and that this isn't just going to be handwaved or thought up on the spot. All we needed was a glimpse, just something, however small, just the tiniest quantum of evidence that Steven Moffat wasn't pulling this out of his arse same as he always does.

    And I do think it's an example of lazy writing, because he has done the exact same thing in Sherlock and refused to provide resolution (see the end of the first episode and Sherlock surviving after the fall). Context. When someone uses the same set-up for something and every previous time they have done so it's ended the same way, there is nothing unreasonable in presuming that they will follow the same pattern. (it's also worth noting that in the few cases where Moffat does provide resolutions for things, he deliberately prolongs them in the hopes of detracting from how weak they are, which is also lazy writing)

     

     

    - Indigo Individual

    Sumiki

    Posted

    Yeah but part of my point is, the end result should not be the same. As Xinlo has mentioned, Moffat leaves plotholes all over the place, and the reason it's so obvious in his plot changes is because he chooses to retcon rather than change things going forward; he changed it so that Gallifrey was never destroyed (which, as I mentioned, makes no sense, because the Doctor wasn't just getting rid of Gallifrey using the Moment, he was getting rid of all of the Time War and what was in it), instead of having the Time Lords somehow break out of the Time Lock (like they came near to doing in The End of Time), or having another plot point which doesn't detract from what's come before by leaving holes in it. That is a matter of execution, but I think it's also an idea issue -- as he's stated in interviews, he felt like the Doctor wouldn't have done that (obviously because he didn't understand the stakes, which i've mentioned here a few times), so he went and changed it. It felt less like it was about bringing back Gallifrey and more like it was to reshape the history of the show in his own image, just as he did with Clara.

     

    And I'd recommend researching the BBC thing. As far as I'm aware, there are multiple documentaries about how difficult it was to bring Doctor Who back on air, and while I can't recall whether or not the Time War was chosen specifically for that, I'm pretty sure it was mentioned at one point to be in order to help avoid continuity lockout for new fans and it's probably safe to say that if you're trying to get a show back and you can present a huge change to the dynamic which leaves whole new directions to go in that's going to help.

     

     

    Also, I love how you're using the 'mopey' point even after we've been shown that that doesn't matter to Moffat, making the Twelfth Doctor THE DARKEST DOCTOR YET!!11!1!one!! (read: unnecessarily cruel, regularly disparaging of his companion's appearance, carrying an irrational hatred of soldiers, all with no real justification apart from making him more like the First Doctor whose arc was about him growing out of that and some of the other Classic Who Doctors, and given that recent Doctors have been shown to have more compassion in light of the Time War I don't think the Doctor would suddenly decide it was time to stop being nice to humans now that he apparently didn't destroy Gallifrey; the emotional impact is something that should have stayed with him) despite all of this. Yeah, I don't think that justification really functions as well as it did after the 50th.

     

    - Indigo Individual

    a goose

    Posted

    [snip]

     

    that was cool, but the way the doctor said the cybermen thing heavily implied (if not outright stated) that this has always been a feature of cybermen, especially given his already being aware of it

     

     

     

    [snip]

     

    [snip]

    well, there's a very thin line between 'intentionally ambiguous' and lazy writing, and i think it lies at about the point where we weren't even shown as an audience what happened... missy not telling the doctor is a character motivation, but moffat not telling us comes across as not knowing yet, given his tendency to think things up on the spot because they'd be cool without really planning around them (for example, making the daleks forget the doctor and then having them get all of that information back from tasha as soon as they next show up)

     

     

    - Indigo Individual

    Taka Nuvia

    Posted

    i think i'm just motivated by my own anxiety
    like, if i don't, not only do i start feeling guilty but my whole body just starts feeling really uncomfortable

     

    but apart from that i tend to set a specific amount of time at a specific time aside for it, it makes it easier to get it done when you know exactly when it's happening

     

    - Indigo Individual
     

    • Upvote 2
    Sumiki

    Posted

    the reason people are criticising moffat for bringing back gallifrey (and i don't just speak for myself, although maybe there are a few individuals who treat it the way you seem to think they do?) is because usually when RTD was changing elements of Doctor Who (for the most part, anyway, and i would be criticising the times he messed up if he were still running the show), he was changing them going forward -- as in, 'the Time Lords are now dead' as opposed to 'the Time Lords have always been dead'. In the case of the Master, I do think that the different characterisation is justified -- after all, he's lost Gallifrey too, it's understandable that that would have a big impact on him, although I do understand other people's dislike of the character. When RTD changed the TARDIS and the titles, he changed them relevant to the current series, he didn't go back and edit every previous TARDIS and and every previous title sequence to fit with his image (in fact, he didn't go back and edit any of them).

     

    RTD did something that changed the dynamic in the show in a big way because, as far as I recall, the BBC did not want to bring Doctor Who back. It was a harsh uphill struggle, and some changes would have to be made in order to convince the BBC that there was something new that could be done with it, and I think killing off the Time Lords was one of those things.

    I don't dislike Moffat because he's changing the show -- I dislike Moffat because he is retroactively changing the show. I dislike the fact that he's going back and retconning huge decisions. As you mentioned, the destruction of Gallifrey was a big deal. And then Moffat comes in like, 'Nope. Didn't actually happen.' The end result is not the same -- because the original end result wasn't that the Doctor couldn't get to Gallifrey, it was that he had had to destroy his own species in order to save the universe. As we saw, had Clara not cried, the Doctor would have gone back and made the exact same choice again, no matter how fondly he looked back on some elements of Gallifrey, because he knew it was the only way to protect the universe from the horrors of the Time War (speaking of which, what happened to those and to the Time Lock? do we get an explanation for that? i could've sworn a big part of it was trapping the various things that were inside the time war as well as gallifrey). And then he goes back and inserts Clara into every moment of the Doctor's history, and makes her the person who inspired him to become the Doctor. The issue isn't just Moffat's execution -- while that is a problem -- it's his need to leave his mark not just on the show's current incarnation, but on everything that has come before it. You can see this in subtler ways with the little insults he flings at older Doctors and there companions, but it's never clearer than with Clara and, to a degree, with Gallifrey (side-note, why were there maypole children on Gallifrey? not only could I have sworn looms were a thing, but maypoles? really? last glimpse i saw of time lord childhood they were taken out at the age of eight and forced to stare into the time vortex). Moffat's execution is terrible, but there is an ego that goes with it as a result of the success Doctor Who has been riding on since Tennant left (take a look at the viewing figures in the UK sometime) that he attributes to himself ('Eleven's the best', as one of his own characters once said in an episode, and let's not forget that 'any old idiot can be a hero').

     

    So, yeah. That's my issue with Moffat when I mention those things, and the same goes for an awful lot of the other people who bring them up too. Not that the show is different.

     

    - Indigo Individual

    • Upvote 1
    Bfahome

    Posted

     

    all of the characters around them suddenly gain two-dimensional personalities and become underdeveloped

    (so, if we're talking later years of BIONICLE, practically nothing)

     

    - Indigo Individual

    So basically nothing would have changed from 01 - 10?

     

    the fact that the cardboard cutouts were there from the beginning, gradually went out of style and then returned in force right at the end of the series actually only occurred to me again right before i read this again

    so yeah, actually

    scrap that

    practically nothing happens anytime

     

    - Indigo Individual

    a goose

    Posted

    [snip]

     

    I get how it makes sense for her character, it's just that among all of the 'Eleven's the best, you'll cry your eyes out' and 'The Rickest Rick the doctoriest doctor' (not word-for-word, the quote being "We've got enough warriors. Any old idiot can be a hero." "Then what do I do?" "What you've always done: be a doctor.") it stands out as another appearance of Moffat patting himself on the back (and technically Moffat indicated -- in a really creepy answer to the question -- that Osgood had been given her scarf by the Curator, which means that she likely had some awareness of him being the Doctor too). I suppose it could be matter of updating it to the most recent Doctor she's met, but I guess we'll never know for sure if she would've done that for Twelve because they had to go and kill her because that was obviously completely necessary and not just for shock value.

     

     

    - Indigo Individual

    Trijhak

    Posted

    Well, do you live in Europe or have you lived in Europe at some point of your life, Duchess of...?

     

    @Indigo: oh... but why would it be about the band? Most people know Europe, as well, the continent.

    @Gata: *waves back*

    take a glance through the blogs and name me three blog entries other than this where the title could've been a band but wasn't

    it's just how things tend to happen (tbh i expected the same)

     

    - Indigo Individual

    believe victims

    Posted

    I love that poem! And you've done an awesome job with this.

     

    Now add the remains of the face and I'll really be impressed.

     

    ~B~

    could switch to the smith option and leave the face

    (although that'd mean losing a leg and those are very nice legs)

     

    i really love what you've done with this, it feels like a very accurate representation of the idea presented in the poem (although lacking the pedestal as far as i can see, but that's really just being pedantic when working with LEGO on that scale can easily limit what's possible, which i suppose just adds to how great it is that you've managed to convey what's presented in the poem so well)

     

    it's really cool

     

    - Indigo Individual

    believe victims

    Posted

    Actually, gonna have to say Fishers is more justified in this one. Poor media representation of Dinosaurs is detrimental to biological archaeology as a whole, but ultimately Dinosaurs as we know them (birds notwithstanding) have been dead for a super long time and they are never coming back.

     

    Bad media representation literally kills sharks on a terrifyingly daily level, be it in fear or because they are just so tasty apparently.

     

    Not to discredit you, of course. I am greatly concerned with academic oversight. It's really important to me, too.

    as i recall, especially in the instance of shark fin soup, it's not for the taste, it's for the texture

    which i think makes it far worse, because it's not even like this is something valuable or this is some taste that is non-existent elsewhere

    it's literally just how the soup feels, physically

    all of those things are already awful but it's like that just adds an extra level of awful on top of it

     

    - Indigo Individual

    • Upvote 1
    Trijhak

    Posted

    *waves back*

     

     

    The fact that this entry isn't about The Final Countdown is extremely disappointing.

    ???

    like the band

    the band who did final countdown were called europe

     

     

    also hai, i'm from europe (northern ireland, specifically)

     

    - Indigo Individual

    • Upvote 3
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