If you’re following the Doctor Who “Caretaker” post, you really want to check out this comment thread on the Livejournal echo.

Also, you’ll find this pair of comments on the primary blog post illuminating: Tony Cross on the classist military PE teacher trope, and my reply on how that matches racist tropes in North America.

This is really interesting. I hadn’t expected to get a convincing explanation here, and I rather have. This is an element of class I had been aware of in, say, a Great War context, but not as current.

So, yeah. “The Caretaker.”

I’m getting pretty close to “ring me up when Moffat is gone from Doctor Who.” And I’m not that entirely sure I’m going to turn on my phone’s ringer. Because right now, there is so very little to like and so very much not to, and I am out of patience with Mr. Moffat.

I don’t like – to paraphrase James Nicoll – that at the rate we’re going, we’ll end up with an entire episode consisting of the Doctor negging Clara for 50-odd minutes straight by the end of the season.

I don’t like Clara again being defined so entirely by what men think about what she’s doing. I particularly don’t like – as Leeson on The Doctor Who Podcast said – that it feels like some sort of competition of who is better at taking care of her. She’s a goddamn adult, she doesn’t need taking care of.

I don’t like Danny Pink anymore, in no small part because of what I just said. I kind of liked him in the first episode; since then he’s become more and more weirdly erratic and demanding in ways that set of alarm bells for me. (I did like him when he went all soldier-and-officer on the Doctor, though, in this episode. I’ll say that.)

I don’t like the Doctor demanding explanations about Clara’s boyfriend, even if I don’t like that character. Wanting to know? Sure. Feeling hurt or isolated if he’s kept out of the loop? Okay, I can see that. Demanding like he has some sort of goddamn right? Fuck you, Doctor.

This show has made me think, “FUCK YOU, Doctor. FUCK you.” And wow, do I not want to be thinking that.

I can take an abrasive Doctor. Sometimes I like it. It’s a delicate balance, a challenge, and I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, because in episodes like this, you end up with nothing to like about this Doctor, or any of these characters. Don’t get me wrong, that can work. You weren’t supposed to like anybody in Absolutely Fabulous either, and that didn’t stop it from being completely genius.

But I think the way Moffat is running this version only works if you have previous regenerations of the Doctor in your head. One, to remind you that eventually he’s not like this, and for another, to place this into contrast, which makes this in turn more interesting.

That’s called “writing entirely for the fans,” and over time, it’s a really bad idea.

But most of all – on top of everything else, the thing that really punched me in the face, the thing that’s making me think that maybe I’m done…

I really, really don’t like the Doctor turning the black maths teacher into “the PE instructor” over and over again.

I really do not fucking like the Doctor playing racist tropes as dismissals.

See, here’s the thing. I can take my own ox being gored with more … grace? With having more stomach? I can more easily deal with problematic material that’s problematic towards me than I can with problematic material that’s that so very problematic towards others. It’s one thing to be all dismissive of humans, I’m fine with that. It’s another to be pulling out racist shit.

Now, I’m willing to listen to people to say this isn’t such a fucking racist trope in the UK. I only want to hear it from Britons, and really, I prefer to hear it from Britons of colour. But I’m willing to listen to that.

Something tells me, though… I don’t think it’s that different.

eta: The original version of this post attributed a phrase to James at The Doctor Who Podcast; the statement was actually made by Leeson, and the post has been edited to reflect that.

eta2: Anna has added her reaction over on her blog. She has other issues I don’t.

Blue means finished, yellow means something reasonable is recorded, orange means fantasy, dreams, and laxness. Look at all that blue.

Why those colours – is it project management SCIENCE? …nooooooo those were just the colours of the little mini-post-it tabs they had at the store. *^_^*; BUT SO WHAT BLUE MEANS DONE OH GODS SO CLOSE. Just more vocals. And a couple of things not on this board like art and mastering and design and liner notes and how long can that take, right? Knock that out in an aftern… oh. SEE YOU IN 2015 EVERYBODY! Or something. XD

I’m solarbird on ello.co if you’re into that sort of thing. Mostly I’m camping the name, but if people use it, maybe I will too.

The band site will be offline some today, for security mitigation measures which have actually already started. (Debian backports have not released a patch yet for a particular issue of immediate importance.)

Relatedly, if you haven’t patched any systems you have for this vulnerability, get on that.

Will you look at all that blue? Some of that yellow isn’t really yellow even, mostly on Kitsune at War, which just needs a little bit of levelling work on backup fiddle.

By the end of the day one of those remaining orange tags will be gone, and might not be yellow but outright blue. And one of those vox2 yellow tags will go to blue – Shanti’s coming in to record one phrase on John Barbour and then that song is finished.

For comparison purposes, minus the few orange tags, this is what Mine to Love looked like when it went to mastering. You kind of lose track of updating when you’re changing six tags a day and there isn’t really a reason anymore.

And again, you can still sign up for an ARC! I got some amazing comments on the leaked track, but… sadly I cannot share them in public, because of reasons. But the lurkers support me in email! Except they actually do. I wonder if that’s ever actually happened before? XD

All instruments (real, MIDI, otherwise) are complete. Flute was the last to the post, and I got that done over the weekend.

Vocals this week; final mixes next. Fun announcement hopefully shortly thereafter, and maybe not the one you’d expect given all the other things I’ve just said. There may be some surprises included in all this, oh, stuff. But I’m waiting on word from other people.

Once I know, you’ll know.

I have my first outside feedback on this album, or one song from it. A release candidate recording made its way further out than I intended. It leaked, like Doctor Who scripts leaking leaked; I had no idea until I got reaction mail about it on Sunday. So I’ve asked permission to quote that reaction mail, because I don’t mean to brag, or maybe I do, but this is the kind of reaction you really want to quote. It comes from an area pro, someone I know but not super-well, and involves the words “superb” and “addictive” and also “knockout,” and those aren’t all the good words.

Y’know, it’s still not too late to sign up for an Advance Review Copy.

If you do, send it to me now. Also if you want to do panels, same thing. We have some early deadlines this year (because reasons) and I haven’t been as out there about it as I should’ve been also because reasons including not having a day off since PAX, and before that, you have about four more weeks since the last one. So, yeah.

Send ’em in today! Now, preferably. You don’t need a complete proposal, just your elevator pitch will do for now.

Trumpet, trombone, sax. Swing jazz background strongly preferred. Can you play like you should be in a late-prohibition speakeasy jazz band? ‘Cause I’ve had this one idea for a while, and I want to see whether I can make it happen.

Note: may involve time travel. Probably won’t. But I can’t rule it out.

Polls are open in Scotland. Good luck from Cascadia – regardless of the outcome.

The CBC did a Cascadia story a couple of months ago, I totally missed it. They got a few things wrong (and are so very not taking it seriously) but it’s not bad.