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don'tcha wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don'tcha wanna dance
Dec. 4th, 2025 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursamajorOkay, after rehearsal last night, I think the ship is feeling a bit more on an even keel. Even if we are only 10 days out from the annual holiday concert, and we just finished getting all of our music last night.
I'm most nervous about the Magnificat, of course, never having done it; how many trills can you possibly fit into 45 measures? ALL OF THEM, says Bach. But the Hallelujah Chorus is old hat. The new arrangement of Break Bread isn't too difficult, aside from some truly weird close harmony chords in the third round; I do need to record that with a keyboard before this weekend so I can send it out to the sopranos.
And then the Whitney Houston stuff is easy, at least to me, at least partially because these are childhood car radio songs for me, especially the finale medley of So Emotional, Where Do Broken Hearts Go, and I Wanna Dance With Somebody. I mean, I even sang the last of those three for the third grade talent show, and can still get just about every nuanced ad-lib at karaoke today; restraining myself to the choral part is gonna be the hard part here, hahaha. (The tenors and basses get to do the DANCE! spoken word at the outro, though,hyounpark is gonna be so stoked.)
Speaking of, right now, he's in Boston (well, okay, he's about to get on his plane back from BOS), and I'm a little jealous, even if it is for the most last-minute work thing possible and it's not like he got to see anybody but work people, though he did squeeze in dinner at Abe and Louie's. And turns out Boston hasn't quite yet gotten the snow, though Western Mass did, so at least I don't have to be jealous that he got the first snow and I didn't. (Him: "You can have all the first snow you want, I've had enough for a lifetime!")
And he got his Flour sticky bun, so all is well there. :) He tried to pick up their Bakers Gonna Bake sweatshirt for me, but they didn't have any in stock at Clarendon which was his closest option, though they don't have that much room for merch (Central Square is much bigger).
He did manage to stop by Burdick's and pick us up some drinking chocolate and chocolate penguins or mice, so that'll be good for the truly frigid nights we've been having lately (I know, I know, by Bay Area standards). I do need a slightly more windproof solution for night biking; when I was biking home from choir last night, I had a fleece on over a puffy vest over a wool sweater over a long sleeve top, but my arms were still chilly. It wasn't quite cold enough to require pulling out the puffer (which, admittedly, is showing its age because it dates from Eastern Mountain Sports still being an intact company); I think I really just need a windbreaker shell. We'll see.
*
Note to self for Thanksgiving next year: PEANUT SAUCE FONDUE. I mean, it might not wait until next year, peanut satay is a regular guest at the table chez us, but the reminder that we could make a vat of it and do it all fancy banquet style is a good one. :)
I'm most nervous about the Magnificat, of course, never having done it; how many trills can you possibly fit into 45 measures? ALL OF THEM, says Bach. But the Hallelujah Chorus is old hat. The new arrangement of Break Bread isn't too difficult, aside from some truly weird close harmony chords in the third round; I do need to record that with a keyboard before this weekend so I can send it out to the sopranos.
And then the Whitney Houston stuff is easy, at least to me, at least partially because these are childhood car radio songs for me, especially the finale medley of So Emotional, Where Do Broken Hearts Go, and I Wanna Dance With Somebody. I mean, I even sang the last of those three for the third grade talent show, and can still get just about every nuanced ad-lib at karaoke today; restraining myself to the choral part is gonna be the hard part here, hahaha. (The tenors and basses get to do the DANCE! spoken word at the outro, though,
hyounpark is gonna be so stoked.)Speaking of, right now, he's in Boston (well, okay, he's about to get on his plane back from BOS), and I'm a little jealous, even if it is for the most last-minute work thing possible and it's not like he got to see anybody but work people, though he did squeeze in dinner at Abe and Louie's. And turns out Boston hasn't quite yet gotten the snow, though Western Mass did, so at least I don't have to be jealous that he got the first snow and I didn't. (Him: "You can have all the first snow you want, I've had enough for a lifetime!")
And he got his Flour sticky bun, so all is well there. :) He tried to pick up their Bakers Gonna Bake sweatshirt for me, but they didn't have any in stock at Clarendon which was his closest option, though they don't have that much room for merch (Central Square is much bigger).
He did manage to stop by Burdick's and pick us up some drinking chocolate and chocolate penguins or mice, so that'll be good for the truly frigid nights we've been having lately (I know, I know, by Bay Area standards). I do need a slightly more windproof solution for night biking; when I was biking home from choir last night, I had a fleece on over a puffy vest over a wool sweater over a long sleeve top, but my arms were still chilly. It wasn't quite cold enough to require pulling out the puffer (which, admittedly, is showing its age because it dates from Eastern Mountain Sports still being an intact company); I think I really just need a windbreaker shell. We'll see.
*
Note to self for Thanksgiving next year: PEANUT SAUCE FONDUE. I mean, it might not wait until next year, peanut satay is a regular guest at the table chez us, but the reminder that we could make a vat of it and do it all fancy banquet style is a good one. :)
thanksgiving 2025: the calm in the eye of the storm
Dec. 2nd, 2025 05:20 pmursamajorDad: "You look much more chill this year. Fewer rebellious menu elements?"
Me: "AHAHAHAHAHA."
Mom: "I still remember the year you did the Peking duck. That was stressful."
Me: "We learned our lesson. Outsource cooking the bird.*"
* unless it's roasting a chicken, something either of us could do in our sleep
Happy Asian American Thanksgiving, year ... uh, whatever it is since we've been doing this formally, composing our Thanksgiving banquet menus to be primarily if not entirely recipes by Asian American cooks and chefs. Year 8? But we've been perfectly happy to give up on the turkey and just eat something yummy and celebratory, along with a bounty of sides.
- Main: Knowing both that Leonard and Sara were doing their own experimental turkey roast and planning on sharing if it worked out, and that there would be at least one additional meat sauce option on the table, we went with pork belly again. This time, we did Kristina Cho's Chop Shop Pork Belly, from her Chinese Enough cookbook. Lovely crispy skin on top, succulent meaty bottom, served over jade pearl rice (which was pretty and interesting and just a little sweet to balance; I'd be curious about making a horchata out of it!), and it paired incredibly well with ...
- Cranberry Sauce: Kay Chun's Cranberry-Asian Pear Chutney, always and forever. (Forgot to pick up mandarins to make another version I've been meaning to try, but I'll probably do that later this week.) This year's amusing highlight, though, was that the last time I bought raisins, they were "giant" ones from the bulk bin at Berkeley Bowl. Leonard: "Um, Lynne, are those grapes in your cranberry sauce?" Me: "No, they're raisins, I swear!" Said giant raisins rehydrated enough in the cranberry sauce to look like full-on grapes.
- Stuffing: Mandy Lee's Red Hot Oyster Kimchi Dressing has been on my bucket list bakes forever, and now I'm mad at myself for waiting so long. "Oh, but I have to get oysters, and I really want to do it with the gochujang bread, and what if some people think it's too spicy?" Everybody loved it. We will be repeating this before next Thanksgiving, maybe as soon as Christmas. Maybe even with oyster kimchi to make it extra oyster-y. If you haven't had oyster dressing/stuffing, with or without kimchi, this recipe has completely convinced me of its deliciousness. Even the Chron had an oyster stuffing recipe this year. Time to bring it back!
- Orange Veg: After several years in a row of squash soups, it was time to shake things up; we called on our old fave, kaddo bourani. Sweet pumpkin echoing the sweet potato casseroles of our younger days, tempered with a meat sauce full of warming spices and a garlic-mint-yogurt topper.
- Potatoes: Likewise, with the potatoes, I wanted "not cheesy scallion, not maple miso, make something up, we're both Asian American, it'll still count for Asian American Thanksgiving!"hyounpark took that decision off my plate, thank you dear, and made mashed potatoes with toasted ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, soy sauce, and sesame oil. It tasted good, but note to our future selves: when you run out of regular soy sauce, substituting dark soy sauce is going to result in mashed potatoes the color of gravy, just be warned. :)
- Green Veg, Cooked: Made Andrea Nguyen's Sesame Salt Greens again (from her cookbook Ever Green Vietnamese). This time, with collard greens; probably should've cooked them a little longer, but that's okay.
- Green Veg, Raw: Leonard and Sara brought a salad with pomegranates and persimmons from their tree and it was exactly the right balance to all the other heavy stuff on the table.
- Dessert: the triumphant return of Alana Kysar's Liliko'i Chiffon Pie (from her cookbook Aloha Kitchen) to the table. We get our arm workout in every year making the passionfruit curd, but the results are well worth it. Even when yours truly realizes at 3:30 pm Thanksgiving Eve that actually, we *are* out of gelatin powder, and I'm going to have to go Brave The Grocery Store. Didn't find gelatin powder, but did find gelatin sheets, and learned a new thing, so it worked out!
*
Things that did not make it to the table this year, but hopefully will next year:
- Cornbread. I really did want to solve the custard cornbread problem. I was trying to de-dairify the custard-filled cornbread that used to be on our Thanksgiving table every year until our collective lactose intolerance got to be too much for even Lactaid to help with. But having talked toladyjax's professional chef spouse, there may not be an alternative milk out there that's going to behave the same way heavy cream does from a chemistry perspective, alas.
I made two batches and both were big enough fails we weren't going to inflict the results on anyone. One used coconut cream, the other used A2 cow milk cream. In both cases, the cream that was supposed to sink below the top layer chocoflan/impossible cake style, forming its own transverse plane surrounded by two layers of cornbread in the vertical center of the cake? Pooled in the center of the pan like creamy lava in the horizontal center of the cake, with a ring of perfectly normal cornbread around the outside. It tasted fine, but the texture was obviously wrong.
I'm going to go back to basics and try making the original recipe with bog-standard commercial heavy cream to make sure even the original still works, sigh. Maybe in a few weeks. When I can stand to look at cornbread again.
The cornbread part itself came out just fine, though! I've wanted to make a cornbread with the same flavors as Betty Liu's lemongrass corn soup; I added lemongrass and shallots and scallions and used coconut milk as a base for our cornbread, and that part was great.
- Deviled eggs. I forgot I was going to use up most of the eggs on the chiffon pie, so didn't follow through. But I want to put chicharones on my deviled eggs the next time I make them! Just trying to decide what else should go into the filling or as a topping.
- Cheesecake. Following up on my successes with burnt Basque cheesecakes, I wanted to try to make one with the truffle cream cheese from one of our local bagel bakeries. I will in fact do that, and probably bring it to coffee ride this week! But the pie was enough for everybody.
*
Ten days out from Break Bread, trying to cram the Bach Magnificat into my brain, somehow having never performed any part of it before in four decades of choral singing. This is a CRAPTON of trills, peeps. At least I already have one of the Whitney Houston songs we're singing down flat (I can absolutely get up on stage right now and sing I Wanna Dance With Somebody from memory, and could have done so any time from 1987 on), and the same with the Hallelujah Chorus. Which leaves three other newer songs to learn quickly. Tis the season!
(We survived Verdi, but that's another post entirely!)
Me: "AHAHAHAHAHA."
Mom: "I still remember the year you did the Peking duck. That was stressful."
Me: "We learned our lesson. Outsource cooking the bird.*"
* unless it's roasting a chicken, something either of us could do in our sleep
Happy Asian American Thanksgiving, year ... uh, whatever it is since we've been doing this formally, composing our Thanksgiving banquet menus to be primarily if not entirely recipes by Asian American cooks and chefs. Year 8? But we've been perfectly happy to give up on the turkey and just eat something yummy and celebratory, along with a bounty of sides.
- Main: Knowing both that Leonard and Sara were doing their own experimental turkey roast and planning on sharing if it worked out, and that there would be at least one additional meat sauce option on the table, we went with pork belly again. This time, we did Kristina Cho's Chop Shop Pork Belly, from her Chinese Enough cookbook. Lovely crispy skin on top, succulent meaty bottom, served over jade pearl rice (which was pretty and interesting and just a little sweet to balance; I'd be curious about making a horchata out of it!), and it paired incredibly well with ...
- Cranberry Sauce: Kay Chun's Cranberry-Asian Pear Chutney, always and forever. (Forgot to pick up mandarins to make another version I've been meaning to try, but I'll probably do that later this week.) This year's amusing highlight, though, was that the last time I bought raisins, they were "giant" ones from the bulk bin at Berkeley Bowl. Leonard: "Um, Lynne, are those grapes in your cranberry sauce?" Me: "No, they're raisins, I swear!" Said giant raisins rehydrated enough in the cranberry sauce to look like full-on grapes.
- Stuffing: Mandy Lee's Red Hot Oyster Kimchi Dressing has been on my bucket list bakes forever, and now I'm mad at myself for waiting so long. "Oh, but I have to get oysters, and I really want to do it with the gochujang bread, and what if some people think it's too spicy?" Everybody loved it. We will be repeating this before next Thanksgiving, maybe as soon as Christmas. Maybe even with oyster kimchi to make it extra oyster-y. If you haven't had oyster dressing/stuffing, with or without kimchi, this recipe has completely convinced me of its deliciousness. Even the Chron had an oyster stuffing recipe this year. Time to bring it back!
- Orange Veg: After several years in a row of squash soups, it was time to shake things up; we called on our old fave, kaddo bourani. Sweet pumpkin echoing the sweet potato casseroles of our younger days, tempered with a meat sauce full of warming spices and a garlic-mint-yogurt topper.
- Potatoes: Likewise, with the potatoes, I wanted "not cheesy scallion, not maple miso, make something up, we're both Asian American, it'll still count for Asian American Thanksgiving!"
hyounpark took that decision off my plate, thank you dear, and made mashed potatoes with toasted ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, soy sauce, and sesame oil. It tasted good, but note to our future selves: when you run out of regular soy sauce, substituting dark soy sauce is going to result in mashed potatoes the color of gravy, just be warned. :)- Green Veg, Cooked: Made Andrea Nguyen's Sesame Salt Greens again (from her cookbook Ever Green Vietnamese). This time, with collard greens; probably should've cooked them a little longer, but that's okay.
- Green Veg, Raw: Leonard and Sara brought a salad with pomegranates and persimmons from their tree and it was exactly the right balance to all the other heavy stuff on the table.
- Dessert: the triumphant return of Alana Kysar's Liliko'i Chiffon Pie (from her cookbook Aloha Kitchen) to the table. We get our arm workout in every year making the passionfruit curd, but the results are well worth it. Even when yours truly realizes at 3:30 pm Thanksgiving Eve that actually, we *are* out of gelatin powder, and I'm going to have to go Brave The Grocery Store. Didn't find gelatin powder, but did find gelatin sheets, and learned a new thing, so it worked out!
*
Things that did not make it to the table this year, but hopefully will next year:
- Cornbread. I really did want to solve the custard cornbread problem. I was trying to de-dairify the custard-filled cornbread that used to be on our Thanksgiving table every year until our collective lactose intolerance got to be too much for even Lactaid to help with. But having talked to
ladyjax's professional chef spouse, there may not be an alternative milk out there that's going to behave the same way heavy cream does from a chemistry perspective, alas. I made two batches and both were big enough fails we weren't going to inflict the results on anyone. One used coconut cream, the other used A2 cow milk cream. In both cases, the cream that was supposed to sink below the top layer chocoflan/impossible cake style, forming its own transverse plane surrounded by two layers of cornbread in the vertical center of the cake? Pooled in the center of the pan like creamy lava in the horizontal center of the cake, with a ring of perfectly normal cornbread around the outside. It tasted fine, but the texture was obviously wrong.
I'm going to go back to basics and try making the original recipe with bog-standard commercial heavy cream to make sure even the original still works, sigh. Maybe in a few weeks. When I can stand to look at cornbread again.
The cornbread part itself came out just fine, though! I've wanted to make a cornbread with the same flavors as Betty Liu's lemongrass corn soup; I added lemongrass and shallots and scallions and used coconut milk as a base for our cornbread, and that part was great.
- Deviled eggs. I forgot I was going to use up most of the eggs on the chiffon pie, so didn't follow through. But I want to put chicharones on my deviled eggs the next time I make them! Just trying to decide what else should go into the filling or as a topping.
- Cheesecake. Following up on my successes with burnt Basque cheesecakes, I wanted to try to make one with the truffle cream cheese from one of our local bagel bakeries. I will in fact do that, and probably bring it to coffee ride this week! But the pie was enough for everybody.
*
Ten days out from Break Bread, trying to cram the Bach Magnificat into my brain, somehow having never performed any part of it before in four decades of choral singing. This is a CRAPTON of trills, peeps. At least I already have one of the Whitney Houston songs we're singing down flat (I can absolutely get up on stage right now and sing I Wanna Dance With Somebody from memory, and could have done so any time from 1987 on), and the same with the Hallelujah Chorus. Which leaves three other newer songs to learn quickly. Tis the season!
(We survived Verdi, but that's another post entirely!)
love!
Dec. 2nd, 2025 02:13 pmgreenmy thread here
I haven't done a love meme in so long, it really takes me back. I would love to see y'all's names on there, too! (I did spy two of you, but I know there's more of you here...) But even if you don't make a comment with your name on it, I would like to say I LOVE YOU. I appreciate those of you who've stuck around even when I've only barely remembered to post and rarely comment on anyone else's posts.
I'm gonna try to do better! I mean it this time! I miss the community here so much. Even being in a different fandom than most of you, I still want you in my life and want to be in yours.
Speaking of fandom, I have started posting my Fandom Trumps Hate fic (I think I mentioned this before), and I have 4 chapters up already. I'm hoping to get it posted in full before the Steter Secret Santa fics go live, so I'm putting the chapters up at a quick pace.
But I haven't written the epilogue yet, eep! But anyway, if anyone is interested in reading, here it is:
Painting the Night With Sun (Teen Wolf, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Explicit)
There's more to being a Spark than just powerful magic, and dragons don't come from eggs. Stiles has a lot to learn from his new mentor, but he and Peter have to escape the Wild Hunt first.
Featuring Steter romance, a magical castle, daring rescues, found family, and a cat with wings.
Fly by rec
Dec. 1st, 2025 10:40 amthisbluespiritMy wrangling got slightly derailed this morning, because I was scrolling down my bins and then suddenly a WILD TAG IN ENIGMA 2001!
And it wasn't me misreading, it wasn't some giant multi-fandom essay, or somehow ASOIAF, Harry Potter, Sherlock or Star Wars, it was real and pretty much perfect. Not particularly spoilery (the only thing this reveals is also evident pretty soon into the film):
de la lune (273 words) by misura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Claire Romilly, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon
Summary: "I've always wanted to be a Claire." (pre-canon)
I got too flaily to wrangle.
And it wasn't me misreading, it wasn't some giant multi-fandom essay, or somehow ASOIAF, Harry Potter, Sherlock or Star Wars, it was real and pretty much perfect. Not particularly spoilery (the only thing this reveals is also evident pretty soon into the film):
de la lune (273 words) by misura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Claire Romilly, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon
Summary: "I've always wanted to be a Claire." (pre-canon)
I got too flaily to wrangle.
Unofficial Fandom 50: Terence Rattigan [3/50]
Nov. 29th, 2025 06:47 pmthisbluespiritSince I've been trying to watch (or listen to) all of the Rattigans lately, this seems like a good topic for a post!
Who was Rattigan?
Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) was an English playwright and screenwriter, whose most famous works are The Browning Version (1948), The Winslow Boy (1946), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) & Separate Tables (1954). His works are usually sharply observed, low-key character pieces, mostly v middle-class background*, one of a combination of factors that caused him to fall from favour in the wake of Osborne's Look Back in Anger in the 50s. He wrote for (low-brow!) cinema, radio and TV too, another factor. Since the 90s in particular he's been recognised as one of the 20th C greats, via several major revivals of many of his works and you'd be hard pressed to find a year now when some major British theatre or other isn't putting on a Rattigan.
He was gay, which is evident in many of his plays, although usually more implicitly than explicitly - the most explicit use of a gay character, in Separate Tables, he censored himself prior to its Broadway performance. From 1998, though, happily, modern productions have usually restored the original version. The Browning Version isn't explicit, but is very much about queerness, too.
I came across him when my teacher gave us The Browning Version for A-Level, and instantly fell in love, even if it took me thirty-odd years to finally get up and try some of the rest of his plays. I think I was worried that they wouldn't be as good or would contain aspects that might spoil TBV for me - happily, as you can see, I needn't have worried!
What do I love about his works?
He's very much all about character pieces, especially small-scale, claustrophobic ones (which the theatre naturally tends towards), in a way that I really love.
His first success was the farce French Without Tears (1936), so between that and the screen-writing, he's a very easy watch, in the best sense - his dialogue says so much about character, and often still feels fresh, and he can do light comedy as well as the more serious pieces. You'll often find variations on mismatched marriages, moral choices, people from different positions finding understanding of each other, and trial by the media in one form or another. His characterisation is always well-rounded and complex.
The thing I love the most, though, is his characteristic trick of having so much of the mood or conclusion or character shift on a literal sixpence - one small item, or action, or change of point of view leads to an uplift of hope we didn't expect - and on rare occasions, the reverse, acting as the last spiteful straw. The gift of a book, the discovery of a letter, love of art - how big small things can be to us humans.
I'll talk about specific plays if I carry on with this meme, I'm sure, but I definitely think he's worth trying out if you haven't already. There are a range of adaptations around, new and old, (TV, film, Radio, some of which he wrote the screenplays for himself), as well as current theatre productions.
The National Theatre has a really nice little two-part intro to five of his major works (spoilery, though, as ever with these things) - I presume this means they have some Rattigans on their At Home service, too. If you wanted to try a live production, The Winslow Boy or The Browning Version are particularly good starting places.
(Warnings - not many! He's not a bleak writer at all as a rule, but suicide does crop up in various ways in After the Dance, The Deep Blue Sea, Cause Celebre, and Man and Boy; and In Praise of Love has a character with a terminal illness - leukaemia, which he had himself).
The last thing of his I watched was Heart to Heart, a 1962 BBC TV screenplay written to launch one of their anthologies - it deals again with mismatched marriages, trial by the media, and an attempt to do the right thing that isn't very successful, but at the end, the main character, learning that out of nearly 300 people who phoned into the TV station after a broadcast, 3 of them got the point: "That's something," he says. "They must be very interesting people."
How very Rattigan. ♥
* He attended Harrow, although wiki, if it is to be believed, says that while he was there, he was in its Officer Training Course and started a mutiny, which is brilliant if it's true. <3
Who was Rattigan?
Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) was an English playwright and screenwriter, whose most famous works are The Browning Version (1948), The Winslow Boy (1946), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) & Separate Tables (1954). His works are usually sharply observed, low-key character pieces, mostly v middle-class background*, one of a combination of factors that caused him to fall from favour in the wake of Osborne's Look Back in Anger in the 50s. He wrote for (low-brow!) cinema, radio and TV too, another factor. Since the 90s in particular he's been recognised as one of the 20th C greats, via several major revivals of many of his works and you'd be hard pressed to find a year now when some major British theatre or other isn't putting on a Rattigan.
He was gay, which is evident in many of his plays, although usually more implicitly than explicitly - the most explicit use of a gay character, in Separate Tables, he censored himself prior to its Broadway performance. From 1998, though, happily, modern productions have usually restored the original version. The Browning Version isn't explicit, but is very much about queerness, too.
I came across him when my teacher gave us The Browning Version for A-Level, and instantly fell in love, even if it took me thirty-odd years to finally get up and try some of the rest of his plays. I think I was worried that they wouldn't be as good or would contain aspects that might spoil TBV for me - happily, as you can see, I needn't have worried!
What do I love about his works?
He's very much all about character pieces, especially small-scale, claustrophobic ones (which the theatre naturally tends towards), in a way that I really love.
His first success was the farce French Without Tears (1936), so between that and the screen-writing, he's a very easy watch, in the best sense - his dialogue says so much about character, and often still feels fresh, and he can do light comedy as well as the more serious pieces. You'll often find variations on mismatched marriages, moral choices, people from different positions finding understanding of each other, and trial by the media in one form or another. His characterisation is always well-rounded and complex.
The thing I love the most, though, is his characteristic trick of having so much of the mood or conclusion or character shift on a literal sixpence - one small item, or action, or change of point of view leads to an uplift of hope we didn't expect - and on rare occasions, the reverse, acting as the last spiteful straw. The gift of a book, the discovery of a letter, love of art - how big small things can be to us humans.
I'll talk about specific plays if I carry on with this meme, I'm sure, but I definitely think he's worth trying out if you haven't already. There are a range of adaptations around, new and old, (TV, film, Radio, some of which he wrote the screenplays for himself), as well as current theatre productions.
The National Theatre has a really nice little two-part intro to five of his major works (spoilery, though, as ever with these things) - I presume this means they have some Rattigans on their At Home service, too. If you wanted to try a live production, The Winslow Boy or The Browning Version are particularly good starting places.
(Warnings - not many! He's not a bleak writer at all as a rule, but suicide does crop up in various ways in After the Dance, The Deep Blue Sea, Cause Celebre, and Man and Boy; and In Praise of Love has a character with a terminal illness - leukaemia, which he had himself).
The last thing of his I watched was Heart to Heart, a 1962 BBC TV screenplay written to launch one of their anthologies - it deals again with mismatched marriages, trial by the media, and an attempt to do the right thing that isn't very successful, but at the end, the main character, learning that out of nearly 300 people who phoned into the TV station after a broadcast, 3 of them got the point: "That's something," he says. "They must be very interesting people."
How very Rattigan. ♥
* He attended Harrow, although wiki, if it is to be believed, says that while he was there, he was in its Officer Training Course and started a mutiny, which is brilliant if it's true. <3
(no subject)
Nov. 28th, 2025 01:34 pmgreenI literally feel at least 5x better than usual. I don't know if it's because the weather is good or because my hormones are just right, or because the new med is working. I've been on it for 2 weeks, so it's probably the med. WOW. The difference is so striking.
Definitely More of an Autumn vibe
Nov. 28th, 2025 07:23 pmglindaSo, yes, I am in fact writing these out of order, but writing the last one made me think about this album and as it was also gig related I thought it was a natural companion piece to follow up with. So this album choice was a result of two different gigs. As noted previously I went to see the Scottish Ensemble and Anna Meredith doing their collaborative album Anno at the Barbican at the end of September, and then at the end of October I went to see the Scottish Ensemble here in the Inverness again. To my intense amusement, working with Anna Meredith again had clearly reminded the ensemble how much they enjoy playing her work, because the whole second half of the Inverness gig was pieces by Anna Meredith re-arranged for string ensemble. Mostly from her first electronic album Varmints - the lead violin noted with clear irony before they played Nautilus that that piece had been intended as a clear break from her previous orchestral work - and having experienced it as something akin to a transcendental experience - I virtually floated home afterwards - obviously I had to go and actually listen to the album in question.
I didn’t initially love this album, despite it being much more what I was expecting from Anna Meredith - before I encountered Anno I knew her mostly from her film scoring work - but as I’ve continued to listen to it across the last month, I’ve come to the conclusion that I like it more the further away from the gig I get. For example, I can now listen to Blackfriars and feel it’s glorious rhythms combine happily with my memories of my recent holiday in London, of standing outside Blackfriars station at rush hour, hearing bells and clocks striking all over the place, feeling the ebb and flow of traffic around me and the rumble of the tube below - I have a whole bunch of field recordings I made in and around that tube station - and think, yes, that part of London does indeed feel like that. I also feel like I’ve been able to fall in love with Nautilus and Scrimshaw all over again in their own right, without constantly comparing them negatively with their reimagined versions. (Honestly I want to hear Nautilus re-arranged for brass a la that Hannah Peel album I wrote about earlier this year.) I do think I need to go see Anna Meredith live in her own right next time she’s touring, because I think her work really lends itself to live performance, to variations on a theme and interacting with visuals and graphics, a proper multimedia experience. However, now that I’ve got enough distance from the gig, I can happily also enjoy it, lying on the sofa with low winter light and just the fairy lights on, through big headphones and let it transport me to other places.
I didn’t initially love this album, despite it being much more what I was expecting from Anna Meredith - before I encountered Anno I knew her mostly from her film scoring work - but as I’ve continued to listen to it across the last month, I’ve come to the conclusion that I like it more the further away from the gig I get. For example, I can now listen to Blackfriars and feel it’s glorious rhythms combine happily with my memories of my recent holiday in London, of standing outside Blackfriars station at rush hour, hearing bells and clocks striking all over the place, feeling the ebb and flow of traffic around me and the rumble of the tube below - I have a whole bunch of field recordings I made in and around that tube station - and think, yes, that part of London does indeed feel like that. I also feel like I’ve been able to fall in love with Nautilus and Scrimshaw all over again in their own right, without constantly comparing them negatively with their reimagined versions. (Honestly I want to hear Nautilus re-arranged for brass a la that Hannah Peel album I wrote about earlier this year.) I do think I need to go see Anna Meredith live in her own right next time she’s touring, because I think her work really lends itself to live performance, to variations on a theme and interacting with visuals and graphics, a proper multimedia experience. However, now that I’ve got enough distance from the gig, I can happily also enjoy it, lying on the sofa with low winter light and just the fairy lights on, through big headphones and let it transport me to other places.
A Fable of Summertime...
Nov. 27th, 2025 08:04 pmglindaSometime this summer, I rediscovered my fic writing muse. Which has been great, but has unfortunately also meant that I’ve fallen quite behind on writing up my monthly albums - I have several months of backlog! Fortunately, I have still actually been listening to the albums and noting them down, so I’ve been able to look back at my list and write them up.
First up, we’re all the way back to the summer, for my August album, which was Fable by Ainsley Hamil. (I really thought I’d at least started this post, I definitely remember sitting down in the days after the gig with the album on and the intent to write about it. I suspect I probably started writing it into the ‘create entries’ page and lost the draft.) I mostly know Ainsley Hamil as a Gaelic singer - competed for the Gold Medal at the Mod a couple of time - and this album is split pretty evenly between songs in Gaelic and English, with a Burns number thrown in for good measure. Personally I think if we’re talking traditional Gaelic modes, she’s better suited to puirt-a-beul than the strictures of the Gold Medal - I’ve seen her do puirt live and she’s very good, it’s not easy to keep up that level of articulation at that speed especially not in the middle of a gig! She has such a rich, warm singing voice, it’s a pleasure to listen to her sing, and always so tempting when the album finishes, to just stick it on again for another play through!
Unusually, I was listening to this album extensively because I was going to a gig, rather than going to the gig because I’d been listening to the album a lot. My local art centre hosts a folk music festival in a tent on it’s lawn every summer. (Not in one intense weekend but two bands per session, two sessions a night, five nights a week across two months.) Living near by and being a regular gig go-er, I go to a lot of these sessions, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, sometimes pre-planned, others spur of the moment because I walked past and thought ‘oh they’re good’ and stayed. The Ainsley Hamil gig was planned fairly far in advance, as a friend texted me just after the programme came out and asked if I fancied it, and as I did and it was a day I was on a helpful shift, we booked it and went. As it was her idea, and I’d agreed on the basis that I remembered what I’d heard of Hamil’s latest album being good, I thought I better swat up beforehand.
(It’s a lovely album, but gosh, live really is her forte, she was such a compelling and warm presence on stage, making her music come alive. In both Gaelic and Scots, her delivery on the album is more precise and probably more technically correct, but live she was so much more natural and felt much less constrained.)
First up, we’re all the way back to the summer, for my August album, which was Fable by Ainsley Hamil. (I really thought I’d at least started this post, I definitely remember sitting down in the days after the gig with the album on and the intent to write about it. I suspect I probably started writing it into the ‘create entries’ page and lost the draft.) I mostly know Ainsley Hamil as a Gaelic singer - competed for the Gold Medal at the Mod a couple of time - and this album is split pretty evenly between songs in Gaelic and English, with a Burns number thrown in for good measure. Personally I think if we’re talking traditional Gaelic modes, she’s better suited to puirt-a-beul than the strictures of the Gold Medal - I’ve seen her do puirt live and she’s very good, it’s not easy to keep up that level of articulation at that speed especially not in the middle of a gig! She has such a rich, warm singing voice, it’s a pleasure to listen to her sing, and always so tempting when the album finishes, to just stick it on again for another play through!
Unusually, I was listening to this album extensively because I was going to a gig, rather than going to the gig because I’d been listening to the album a lot. My local art centre hosts a folk music festival in a tent on it’s lawn every summer. (Not in one intense weekend but two bands per session, two sessions a night, five nights a week across two months.) Living near by and being a regular gig go-er, I go to a lot of these sessions, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, sometimes pre-planned, others spur of the moment because I walked past and thought ‘oh they’re good’ and stayed. The Ainsley Hamil gig was planned fairly far in advance, as a friend texted me just after the programme came out and asked if I fancied it, and as I did and it was a day I was on a helpful shift, we booked it and went. As it was her idea, and I’d agreed on the basis that I remembered what I’d heard of Hamil’s latest album being good, I thought I better swat up beforehand.
(It’s a lovely album, but gosh, live really is her forte, she was such a compelling and warm presence on stage, making her music come alive. In both Gaelic and Scots, her delivery on the album is more precise and probably more technically correct, but live she was so much more natural and felt much less constrained.)
(no subject)
Nov. 26th, 2025 09:52 amgreenThe new med so far seems okay. I'm not as easily annoyed/angered, is that a thing? In a couple days I go on the largest dose. So far I've been gradually going up.
I hate being the only person in charge of cooking. Tomorrow's gonna suck
My second beta finished with my FTH fic. Now I've got to get my first beta feeling better.
I hate being the only person in charge of cooking. Tomorrow's gonna suck
My second beta finished with my FTH fic. Now I've got to get my first beta feeling better.
the latest batch of Tommy Hambledon's exploits
Nov. 26th, 2025 03:23 pmphilomythaStill reading steadily through the series. These books are just perfect for decompression reading, they're mostly lightweight though with the odd flash of seriousness, they're full of fun hijinks and adventures, all the characters are very nicely drawn and overall they're just plain fun to read. Plus a nice sprinkling of historical interest for the period.
Among Those Absent
Prisoners are escaping and disappearing with tremendous success. Tommy Hambledon has to find out why. While Biggles would have tackled this by looking for rogue airplanes, Hambledon tackles this by getting himself a cover as a fraudster and being sent to prison, whereupon he muscles in on someone else's escape and gets rescued from prison. By hot air balloon and parachute. And after Hambledon and a fellow escapee have a wonderful hot air balloon and parachute ride, they then have to deal with the fact that the escape gang want paying for their rescue out of the totally fictional ill-gotten gains Hambledon is supposed to have stashed somewhere. In the process of dealing with this, Hambledon encounters a different slightly shady group of guys who--well, their leader lives in a truly flamboyantly ridiculous suburban mansion which is named, and I really could not believe my eyes when I read this, Kuminboys. It is almost redundant to add that he has all sorts of miscellaneous young men calling on him at all hours who are willing to do all sorts of shady odd jobs for him. He deals with blackmailers unofficially. Manning and Coles never say anyone is gay or refer to sexuality in any way, but then they do things like this and I love it. And, well, there is a plot involving Hambledon sorting out the prison break gang, but I'm afraid my brain seized up at Kuminboys and I can't actually remember what happened otherwise. The anti-blackmail gang was fine at the end and so was Tommy, and that's the main thing.
Not Negotiable
This one opens with a prologue explaining that the Nazis had an industrial-scale programme forging currency from the various Allied countries in an effort to destabilise their economies. Now, after the war, large numbers of dubious notes are turning up across France and Belgium and Tommy Hambledon is trying to find the source. A fun Belgian detective teams up with him for this, and lots of Manning & Coles's usual vivid secondary characters including a reformed crook and a young man who tries crime and doesn't like it, plus two young women who attack a gangster with a frying pan with considerable success. Not one of the most outstanding, but plenty of fun to read.
Diamonds To Amsterdam
This was an absolute classic, featuring a mad scientist, so many people in disguise, gold and jewels and a seaplane and a Very Significant Umbrella and kidnappings and escapes and really everything you could possibly want. The story opens with our mad scientist being found murdered. The mad scientist in question had just solved, allegedly, the problem of how to turn silver into gold, and then someone bludgeoned him over the head and his notes all disappeared. Then his assistant disappeared, then his machinery was stolen, and Tommy Hambledon is traipsing around a Home Counties village trying to find clues to all of this and figure out what was going on, with occasional trips to Amsterdam thrown in for good measure. A great ride, plus some excellent whump as various characters are drugged or kidnapped and imprisoned, lots of fun all around.
Dangerous By Nature
Tommy Hambledon visits Central America. While this had some moments of period-typical racism, it was not as bad as I expected. The story was a familiar one from multiple Biggles and a Gimlet on this theme: in a fictional Central American state, a slightly lost British sailor saw a ship secretly unloading goods in a remote part of the country while hiding its identification. Hambledon is sent to investigate. He is told that he can liaise with the excellent American spy Mr Hobkirk who is already there; however no such person ever comes up. Instead he has a peculiarly devoted and helpful local man named Matteo who follows him around everywhere, produces useful information and kills assassins and generally devotes himself to Hambledon's wellbeing and work, far more than you would expect from the guy who you paid to carry your luggage to the hotel. Hambledon, unusually for him, has no suspicions about the identity of the capable and knowledgeable Matteo. Anyway, the country is run by your standard thriller dictator who has annoyed the local aristocracy and is fleecing the local peasantry and has plans to flee the country with all the wealth he can carry away, soon. Hambledon discovers that the mysterious cargo was of course weapons, supplied by the Russians; however the Russians are somewhat inexplicably arming both the President and also the old aristos who oppose him, and having bought everyone off with guns, they are busy building something involving lots of concrete in the middle of the jungle. Hambledon investigates, nearly gets killed many times over in the classic way, discovers he does not like jungles at all, and eventually figures out what it's all about. (spoilers for the plot)
Now Or Never
Hambledon has heard rumours of a secret resurgent Nazi society in occupied Cologne and heads out to investigate. Forgan and Campbell, our gay model train shop and lawbreaking-for-fun guys, come along to help out, impersonating the Spanish financiers who are supposed to be meeting the Nazis in Cologne - a job that does not become easier when the actual Spaniards show up. Meanwhile, Hambledon makes friends with an earnest and enthusiastic German private detective, and tries to figure out what's going on. Excellent atmospheric descriptions of bombed-out Cologne and life there as things start to recover postwar. These are all very much immediate postwar books, and it's fascinating to see what the attitudes are and the snippets of different settings, in France and the Netherlands and Germany and England, every character has a war backstory of some sort and most of the plots are about leftovers of war one way and another.
Alias Uncle Hugo
A Ruritanian adventure of a familiar mould for Biggles readers. Tommy Hambledon is undercover in Soviet-occupied Ruritania to retrieve the teenage king of Ruritania, who is living incognito with his elderly tutor to care for him, and take him to England. Presumably to head up a government-in-exile or possibly to go to school, Manning and Coles wisely leave the politics to look after themselves and concentrate on the fun bits, ie Hambledon undercover as a Soviet inspector of factories trying to find an opportunity to extract young Kaspar from his Very Communist School For Little Communists. Unlike Biggles, Hambledon has no compunction at all about leaving a trail of bodies behind him and does cheerfully shoot people in the head the minute they suspect him. He also has a great line in making friend with people and then dropping them in the shit, in this case several senior communist police officers who think he's the bee's knees right up until they get killed or arrested for their connection with him. There's some excellent Aeroplane Content in this one too, Hambledon doesn't team up with Biggles but his life might have been a bit easier if he had, and being sent to make a stealth landing in Ukraine to retrieve the Ruritanian Prince and the British spy who's rescued him is exactly the sort of job Biggles does all the time. But Hambledon has to figure out his own aeroplane evacuation, and there's plenty of aeroplane fun as he does so.
Among Those Absent
Prisoners are escaping and disappearing with tremendous success. Tommy Hambledon has to find out why. While Biggles would have tackled this by looking for rogue airplanes, Hambledon tackles this by getting himself a cover as a fraudster and being sent to prison, whereupon he muscles in on someone else's escape and gets rescued from prison. By hot air balloon and parachute. And after Hambledon and a fellow escapee have a wonderful hot air balloon and parachute ride, they then have to deal with the fact that the escape gang want paying for their rescue out of the totally fictional ill-gotten gains Hambledon is supposed to have stashed somewhere. In the process of dealing with this, Hambledon encounters a different slightly shady group of guys who--well, their leader lives in a truly flamboyantly ridiculous suburban mansion which is named, and I really could not believe my eyes when I read this, Kuminboys. It is almost redundant to add that he has all sorts of miscellaneous young men calling on him at all hours who are willing to do all sorts of shady odd jobs for him. He deals with blackmailers unofficially. Manning and Coles never say anyone is gay or refer to sexuality in any way, but then they do things like this and I love it. And, well, there is a plot involving Hambledon sorting out the prison break gang, but I'm afraid my brain seized up at Kuminboys and I can't actually remember what happened otherwise. The anti-blackmail gang was fine at the end and so was Tommy, and that's the main thing.
Not Negotiable
This one opens with a prologue explaining that the Nazis had an industrial-scale programme forging currency from the various Allied countries in an effort to destabilise their economies. Now, after the war, large numbers of dubious notes are turning up across France and Belgium and Tommy Hambledon is trying to find the source. A fun Belgian detective teams up with him for this, and lots of Manning & Coles's usual vivid secondary characters including a reformed crook and a young man who tries crime and doesn't like it, plus two young women who attack a gangster with a frying pan with considerable success. Not one of the most outstanding, but plenty of fun to read.
Diamonds To Amsterdam
This was an absolute classic, featuring a mad scientist, so many people in disguise, gold and jewels and a seaplane and a Very Significant Umbrella and kidnappings and escapes and really everything you could possibly want. The story opens with our mad scientist being found murdered. The mad scientist in question had just solved, allegedly, the problem of how to turn silver into gold, and then someone bludgeoned him over the head and his notes all disappeared. Then his assistant disappeared, then his machinery was stolen, and Tommy Hambledon is traipsing around a Home Counties village trying to find clues to all of this and figure out what was going on, with occasional trips to Amsterdam thrown in for good measure. A great ride, plus some excellent whump as various characters are drugged or kidnapped and imprisoned, lots of fun all around.
Dangerous By Nature
Tommy Hambledon visits Central America. While this had some moments of period-typical racism, it was not as bad as I expected. The story was a familiar one from multiple Biggles and a Gimlet on this theme: in a fictional Central American state, a slightly lost British sailor saw a ship secretly unloading goods in a remote part of the country while hiding its identification. Hambledon is sent to investigate. He is told that he can liaise with the excellent American spy Mr Hobkirk who is already there; however no such person ever comes up. Instead he has a peculiarly devoted and helpful local man named Matteo who follows him around everywhere, produces useful information and kills assassins and generally devotes himself to Hambledon's wellbeing and work, far more than you would expect from the guy who you paid to carry your luggage to the hotel. Hambledon, unusually for him, has no suspicions about the identity of the capable and knowledgeable Matteo. Anyway, the country is run by your standard thriller dictator who has annoyed the local aristocracy and is fleecing the local peasantry and has plans to flee the country with all the wealth he can carry away, soon. Hambledon discovers that the mysterious cargo was of course weapons, supplied by the Russians; however the Russians are somewhat inexplicably arming both the President and also the old aristos who oppose him, and having bought everyone off with guns, they are busy building something involving lots of concrete in the middle of the jungle. Hambledon investigates, nearly gets killed many times over in the classic way, discovers he does not like jungles at all, and eventually figures out what it's all about. (spoilers for the plot)
It's atom bombs. The Russians are building a missile site so they can launch atom bombs at the Panama Canal. This book was written in 1950 and it's clear that Manning and Coles don't know that much about atom bombs at this point, because apparently there are twelve atomic warheads on site. This site gets shelled by the aristocrats, and the atom bombs are all set off by accident. Hambledon, hiding down the valley with his friends a few miles away, is fine. Radiation and fallout are not a concern for anyone. It's fascinating seeing that while everyone is scared of atom bombs, they are not nearly scared enough, they're treated as being functionally the same as super-sized regular bombs and there is no mention of any further ill effects. Hambledon arranges that the story is put out that a previously unknown volcano erupted and that was what the big mushroom cloud was all about (the mushroom cloud, evidently, they have heard of). And once all the atom bombs have detonated, the whole story is over.
Now Or Never
Hambledon has heard rumours of a secret resurgent Nazi society in occupied Cologne and heads out to investigate. Forgan and Campbell, our gay model train shop and lawbreaking-for-fun guys, come along to help out, impersonating the Spanish financiers who are supposed to be meeting the Nazis in Cologne - a job that does not become easier when the actual Spaniards show up. Meanwhile, Hambledon makes friends with an earnest and enthusiastic German private detective, and tries to figure out what's going on. Excellent atmospheric descriptions of bombed-out Cologne and life there as things start to recover postwar. These are all very much immediate postwar books, and it's fascinating to see what the attitudes are and the snippets of different settings, in France and the Netherlands and Germany and England, every character has a war backstory of some sort and most of the plots are about leftovers of war one way and another.
Alias Uncle Hugo
A Ruritanian adventure of a familiar mould for Biggles readers. Tommy Hambledon is undercover in Soviet-occupied Ruritania to retrieve the teenage king of Ruritania, who is living incognito with his elderly tutor to care for him, and take him to England. Presumably to head up a government-in-exile or possibly to go to school, Manning and Coles wisely leave the politics to look after themselves and concentrate on the fun bits, ie Hambledon undercover as a Soviet inspector of factories trying to find an opportunity to extract young Kaspar from his Very Communist School For Little Communists. Unlike Biggles, Hambledon has no compunction at all about leaving a trail of bodies behind him and does cheerfully shoot people in the head the minute they suspect him. He also has a great line in making friend with people and then dropping them in the shit, in this case several senior communist police officers who think he's the bee's knees right up until they get killed or arrested for their connection with him. There's some excellent Aeroplane Content in this one too, Hambledon doesn't team up with Biggles but his life might have been a bit easier if he had, and being sent to make a stealth landing in Ukraine to retrieve the Ruritanian Prince and the British spy who's rescued him is exactly the sort of job Biggles does all the time. But Hambledon has to figure out his own aeroplane evacuation, and there's plenty of aeroplane fun as he does so.
Unofficial Fandom 50: Doctor Who Primer [2/50]
Nov. 23rd, 2025 02:47 pmthisbluespiritWhen I first thought about doing a Fandom/Fannish 50, as I said, the aim was not to do manifestos, and obviously Doctor Who is too big to cover in only one post anyway.
Naturally, I then immediately drafted out a manifesto for the whole of DW on the theme of "it's not THAT intimidating, I promise!", and it has been sitting complete in my posts in progress since January.
I wasn't going to post it - I think my flist is now comprised of DW fans, people who have left thanks to the Timeless Child, and people who don't want DW in their lives - but my intended Post #2 is not quite done (blame Yuletide ficcing), this one was, and I didn't want to have a long gap between posts - and it is the 23rd of November, after all. (I'll maybe see about linking it to tumblr or something, and that might give it more usefulness.)
So, have a chirpy DW primer I prepared earlier! Forgive me if it's annoying. And -
Happy 62nd birthday, Doctor Who! ♥
As most people around here probably have at least a vague idea of it already, this is mainly addressing the idea that it can be seen as too overwhelming and large and wanky.
It's true there is a lot of it, but the nature of DW is that it's all optional and rather than 40+ series of 100s of episodes you have to work your way through it's just... enough joy just waiting out there for a lifetime, with no need or hurry to catch it all. And the fandom can be wanky at times, but no more than any other, and a lot less than some. I've had more fun and made more friends hanging around in odd little corners of DW than any other fandom.
What is it?
It's a UK science fiction family-aimed show about a mysterious alien known as the Doctor who travels about in a time and space ship (known as the TARDIS).
The ship's exterior is stuck in the shape of a 1950s police box. It's bigger on the inside than the outside, like the show.
It all started in 1963, when two schoolteachers followed a mysterious Doctor's granddaughter Susan home to find out what was up with her weird knowledge, fake address and grandfather who didn't like strangers. In a panic, the Doctor abducted them and took them to the stone age. This worked out so well that the Doctor has continued to travel about with (mostly) human friends ever since. (Not all via kidnapping, though. Just a few of them.)
Together they explore all of space and time and fight monsters and alien invasions, plus many other even weirder things. And then it all ends, and starts again.
It was off-air from 1989-1995 & 1997-2004 and in that time several officially sanctioned runs of comic strips, novels and audios were made. There are also some spin-offs, both on TV and in other media. You can pick up any of these that you want to or not as you please. Or just watch the spin-offs and not watch Doctor Who. If anyone screams, ignore them.
There are also many unofficial fan productions, but you can worry about that later, if you want to.
Who is Doctor Who?
A mysterious traveller in Time and Space known only as the Doctor. Some fans will get very annoyed if you call them "Doctor Who," so you should do that.
The Doctor is a bit of a mix of wizard, wise mentor, or trickster character who's usually a side-character in things, but in this neverending story, they're the hero.
What we know is: They aren't from this planet or time period and they aren't human. They have a granddaughter. They are on the run from someone or something.
Later on, we learn they are probably a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterberous. The co-ordinates for it are the same as the DW production office's extension line in the 1970s. In 21st Century Who and some of the Extended Universe (EU), Gallifrey may or may not exist, you may not be able to find it, and/or it may not stay around for long. Maybe none of this is true anyway. We don't know. These are the reasons why people say we have no canon. (This is nice, but not precisely true: all the broadcast episodes are canon. It's just very a flexible, inconsistent and wibbly-wobbly canon, plus you can add or remove any bits of the EU you choose. It doesn't exactly retcon, it embraces the "everything happened somewhere somewhen anyway in a different timeline" approach.)
When the Doctor gets close to death, they can cheat it by means of "regeneration," a process which renews them into a new body with a different personality and dress sense, but they're always the same person deep down. That's why we have lots of different Doctors but they're all still the Doctor. Regeneration is always sad because the old Doctor is dying and you don't want them to go, but two seconds later you are confronted with a shiny new Doctor to learn to love, which is exciting. This conflicting experience is our one staple, other than the TARDIS.
Why are you telling me this giant 60 year old show with hundreds of episodes, novels, audios, comics, whatever, is easy to get into?
Because Doctor Who eternally soft-reboots itself. It started in an era where anthology shows were the norm, and while there is continuity between episodes/stories, each one is set in a different location with new guest characters. You didn't like last week's alien planet? Welcome to Victorian England. Next week: aliens are invading Cardiff or London.
Plus, there's the concept of regeneration. It's always understood that every new Doctor's era will be a fresh start with new fans arriving while some old ones depart grumbling for good, or for a season. Companions arriving or leaving are also a good place to stop and start, and each producer/showrunner's era has a different feel, and those may divide a Doctor's era, or cross more than one Doctor.
So if I want to pick up any individual story in any medium but I don't care about the rest, I can?
Yes!
There are exceptions - some EU material occasionally has some complicated arcs, and from 2005 the TV show has (often 2-3 part) season finales that you might want to get some context on first (or not spoil yourself for if you think you might watch the rest later), but absolutely, yes. In any medium.
If you are curious about one installment for any reason (actor, writer, it just sounds intriguing, whatever) and that's it, go for it! Have fun. Never worry about DW again. \o/
Look, what if I do want to get into it? Where do I start? There are 800+ episodes out there and you've just told me there are hundreds of audios and books as well!
Start anywhere you like! Most of us did. Story that sounds cool, companion you like the look of, Doctor you're most curious about. Start from the beginning. Start at the end.
The only rule is if someone starts wildly insisting you absolutely have to start at any given point or else oh noes, ignore them. There is no reason to be linear about DW unless you want to be.
And, like I said, each individual story and era and Doctor and companion have their ending, so you're not signed up for good unless you want to be.
But I want to do the thing! Where DO I start?
In reverse broadcast order, from 2024 to 1963, here are some stories that are generally recognised as decent jumping in points, where the show changes showrunner or Doctor or has some other significant element of soft-reboot. As I said, though: you really can start anywhere.
( Story starting point details )
* Watch every story in chronological order by the date the story is set in rather than broadcast. There are lists around to allow you to do this and a whole book. I am reliably informed (by someone on tumblr who attempted it with the New Who list) that this is the worst way to watch Doctor Who. Perfect for the rebellious/unconventional viewer/listener/reader and very much in the spirit of the show.
I mean, caveat: it IS the worst way to do it and I'm not serious, but it would be very funny. If you attempt this, please liveblog.
* Put every story in a randomiser and watch it that way. Time-wimey, wibbly-wobbly, amiright? Pretty much the method every hiatus fan had to do it in anyway, the randomiser in that case being "which novelisations are in my library," "in which order will BBC release the VHS/DVDs," and "what the BBC feels like repeating every once in a while" or "what gets shown on [insert local appropriate random TV channel here]." Call it being traditional. Also in the spirit of the show. So much so, there actually is a website designed to let you do just that.
Basically, DW can be everything and anything and has been by turns, and therefore absolutely all of it is for no one but equally there's almost certainly at least one tiny bit of it that is for you. Canon, such as it is, very flexible. Settle in for life and have fun, or pick up one era or medium or spin-off or episode/serial or book or audio or whatever and never come back again, and everything in between.
(Obviously, for any fellow fans who are about to scream at me - there are arcs and continuity and character growth, right from the very beginning, and, of course, context adds a lot to everything, once you've got it. I'm only saying that the newbie can worry about all that later. Unless they want to worry about it now).
This post is just to say - if you think you would like to try it or whichever individual installment of it you're curious about, then don't be put off solely by the fandom or the size of canon or the confusing nature of it.
Doctor Who is a joyful thing to have in your life and beyond that there are no rules. ♥
Naturally, I then immediately drafted out a manifesto for the whole of DW on the theme of "it's not THAT intimidating, I promise!", and it has been sitting complete in my posts in progress since January.
I wasn't going to post it - I think my flist is now comprised of DW fans, people who have left thanks to the Timeless Child, and people who don't want DW in their lives - but my intended Post #2 is not quite done (blame Yuletide ficcing), this one was, and I didn't want to have a long gap between posts - and it is the 23rd of November, after all. (I'll maybe see about linking it to tumblr or something, and that might give it more usefulness.)
So, have a chirpy DW primer I prepared earlier! Forgive me if it's annoying. And -
Happy 62nd birthday, Doctor Who! ♥
As most people around here probably have at least a vague idea of it already, this is mainly addressing the idea that it can be seen as too overwhelming and large and wanky.
It's true there is a lot of it, but the nature of DW is that it's all optional and rather than 40+ series of 100s of episodes you have to work your way through it's just... enough joy just waiting out there for a lifetime, with no need or hurry to catch it all. And the fandom can be wanky at times, but no more than any other, and a lot less than some. I've had more fun and made more friends hanging around in odd little corners of DW than any other fandom.
What is it?
It's a UK science fiction family-aimed show about a mysterious alien known as the Doctor who travels about in a time and space ship (known as the TARDIS).
The ship's exterior is stuck in the shape of a 1950s police box. It's bigger on the inside than the outside, like the show.
It all started in 1963, when two schoolteachers followed a mysterious Doctor's granddaughter Susan home to find out what was up with her weird knowledge, fake address and grandfather who didn't like strangers. In a panic, the Doctor abducted them and took them to the stone age. This worked out so well that the Doctor has continued to travel about with (mostly) human friends ever since. (Not all via kidnapping, though. Just a few of them.)
Together they explore all of space and time and fight monsters and alien invasions, plus many other even weirder things. And then it all ends, and starts again.
It was off-air from 1989-1995 & 1997-2004 and in that time several officially sanctioned runs of comic strips, novels and audios were made. There are also some spin-offs, both on TV and in other media. You can pick up any of these that you want to or not as you please. Or just watch the spin-offs and not watch Doctor Who. If anyone screams, ignore them.
There are also many unofficial fan productions, but you can worry about that later, if you want to.
Who is Doctor Who?
A mysterious traveller in Time and Space known only as the Doctor. Some fans will get very annoyed if you call them "Doctor Who," so you should do that.
The Doctor is a bit of a mix of wizard, wise mentor, or trickster character who's usually a side-character in things, but in this neverending story, they're the hero.
What we know is: They aren't from this planet or time period and they aren't human. They have a granddaughter. They are on the run from someone or something.
Later on, we learn they are probably a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterberous. The co-ordinates for it are the same as the DW production office's extension line in the 1970s. In 21st Century Who and some of the Extended Universe (EU), Gallifrey may or may not exist, you may not be able to find it, and/or it may not stay around for long. Maybe none of this is true anyway. We don't know. These are the reasons why people say we have no canon. (This is nice, but not precisely true: all the broadcast episodes are canon. It's just very a flexible, inconsistent and wibbly-wobbly canon, plus you can add or remove any bits of the EU you choose. It doesn't exactly retcon, it embraces the "everything happened somewhere somewhen anyway in a different timeline" approach.)
When the Doctor gets close to death, they can cheat it by means of "regeneration," a process which renews them into a new body with a different personality and dress sense, but they're always the same person deep down. That's why we have lots of different Doctors but they're all still the Doctor. Regeneration is always sad because the old Doctor is dying and you don't want them to go, but two seconds later you are confronted with a shiny new Doctor to learn to love, which is exciting. This conflicting experience is our one staple, other than the TARDIS.
Why are you telling me this giant 60 year old show with hundreds of episodes, novels, audios, comics, whatever, is easy to get into?
Because Doctor Who eternally soft-reboots itself. It started in an era where anthology shows were the norm, and while there is continuity between episodes/stories, each one is set in a different location with new guest characters. You didn't like last week's alien planet? Welcome to Victorian England. Next week: aliens are invading Cardiff or London.
Plus, there's the concept of regeneration. It's always understood that every new Doctor's era will be a fresh start with new fans arriving while some old ones depart grumbling for good, or for a season. Companions arriving or leaving are also a good place to stop and start, and each producer/showrunner's era has a different feel, and those may divide a Doctor's era, or cross more than one Doctor.
So if I want to pick up any individual story in any medium but I don't care about the rest, I can?
Yes!
There are exceptions - some EU material occasionally has some complicated arcs, and from 2005 the TV show has (often 2-3 part) season finales that you might want to get some context on first (or not spoil yourself for if you think you might watch the rest later), but absolutely, yes. In any medium.
If you are curious about one installment for any reason (actor, writer, it just sounds intriguing, whatever) and that's it, go for it! Have fun. Never worry about DW again. \o/
Look, what if I do want to get into it? Where do I start? There are 800+ episodes out there and you've just told me there are hundreds of audios and books as well!
Start anywhere you like! Most of us did. Story that sounds cool, companion you like the look of, Doctor you're most curious about. Start from the beginning. Start at the end.
The only rule is if someone starts wildly insisting you absolutely have to start at any given point or else oh noes, ignore them. There is no reason to be linear about DW unless you want to be.
And, like I said, each individual story and era and Doctor and companion have their ending, so you're not signed up for good unless you want to be.
But I want to do the thing! Where DO I start?
In reverse broadcast order, from 2024 to 1963, here are some stories that are generally recognised as decent jumping in points, where the show changes showrunner or Doctor or has some other significant element of soft-reboot. As I said, though: you really can start anywhere.
( Story starting point details )
* Watch every story in chronological order by the date the story is set in rather than broadcast. There are lists around to allow you to do this and a whole book. I am reliably informed (by someone on tumblr who attempted it with the New Who list) that this is the worst way to watch Doctor Who. Perfect for the rebellious/unconventional viewer/listener/reader and very much in the spirit of the show.
I mean, caveat: it IS the worst way to do it and I'm not serious, but it would be very funny. If you attempt this, please liveblog.
* Put every story in a randomiser and watch it that way. Time-wimey, wibbly-wobbly, amiright? Pretty much the method every hiatus fan had to do it in anyway, the randomiser in that case being "which novelisations are in my library," "in which order will BBC release the VHS/DVDs," and "what the BBC feels like repeating every once in a while" or "what gets shown on [insert local appropriate random TV channel here]." Call it being traditional. Also in the spirit of the show. So much so, there actually is a website designed to let you do just that.
Basically, DW can be everything and anything and has been by turns, and therefore absolutely all of it is for no one but equally there's almost certainly at least one tiny bit of it that is for you. Canon, such as it is, very flexible. Settle in for life and have fun, or pick up one era or medium or spin-off or episode/serial or book or audio or whatever and never come back again, and everything in between.
(Obviously, for any fellow fans who are about to scream at me - there are arcs and continuity and character growth, right from the very beginning, and, of course, context adds a lot to everything, once you've got it. I'm only saying that the newbie can worry about all that later. Unless they want to worry about it now).
This post is just to say - if you think you would like to try it or whichever individual installment of it you're curious about, then don't be put off solely by the fandom or the size of canon or the confusing nature of it.
Doctor Who is a joyful thing to have in your life and beyond that there are no rules. ♥