have been unavoidably detained by the world

So there have been three new David Tennant Doctor Who specials in the lead up to RTD taking back the reigns and in the gap between Jodi Whittaker as Thirteen and Ncuti Gatwa as Fourteen? Fifteen?. And they are starring David Tenant and Catherine Tate who haven't been on Doctor Who in agessss.

Now, I haven't watched Doctor Who consistently since Matt Smith's run. It's a whole host of reasons I'm sure - life changed, my friends weren't watching, turns out Moffat has some....flaws....at being a showrunner - but the one that I keep coming back to is that I wasn't really in the fandom anymore, was I? I watched Doctor Who partly so I could join the Torchwood fandom in the first place. So I think when the fandom corners I was in died out, a bit of my interest in the source material died too.

(...also I'm convinced that some of the reason the fandom died out WAS because of Moffat giving us less to work with, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.) (ALSO also I'm still disappointed with the resolution to the River Song storyline, I still miss the days when people were connecting River Song to Jack Harkness in all sorts of fun clever ways.)

THAT ALL SAID I watched the first two specials and actually I loved them in that kind of shameless dorky way you love things when they recapture a bit of magic for you years after you've stopped looking. They weren't perfect (what was happening with David's hair) but also, who cares I love them.

I haven't watched the third one. My friends who watched the first two with me have already done so, but I was busy that weekend so there was no push factor. And a little bit I don't want the magic to end? I mean, it's Ten and Donna Noble! My heart!

*

AND WHILE WE ARE HERE. Gareth David-Lloyd was in the National Theatre production of The Corn is Green, which wouldn't mean anything except that the National Theatre keeps advertising to me on my youtube videos that it's availible to stream now. And every time I'm like OH THAT IS GARETH DAVID-LLOYD'S FACE so I'll probably have to figure out how to watch it even though I actually find it really hard to sit through recorded live theater for whatever reason.

SO. I have gone through three Torchwood fics (ok, let's be honest, one real fic and two tiny ficlets) and I actually do plan on posting them but work has been the. absolute. worst., so you know. When I have time.

In other news, Captain Awkward managed to summarize one of the reasons LJ/DW is/was so much better than all the current social media platforms and I want to record it for myself:

"I really miss LiveJournal of the early 2000s sometimes. (And yes I know it still technically exists and I about Dreamwidth and alternatives, don’t @ me. The culture changed.)

PSEUDONYMS were our friends.

FILTERS were our friends. LOCKED POSTS were our friends. In ye olden days a guy could wail at the internet all day and get love/tough love from his inner circle without crossing the streams of business and friendship and family and people he met years ago (plus that one high school teacher that he’s not sure he even took a class with).

Maybe it will function as a reminder to post and check my flist occasionally? Maybe.

This post is making rounds on tumblr right now.

Basically it's arguing that you can enjoy art for what it is without criticizing it.

And I agree, mostly. I think it's pushback against the hyper-critical tumblr culture, which tends to eliminate space for nuance and makes it difficult to disagree with people without actively calling them out for the thing you disagree about them with, even if you don't disagree very strongly. And yeah, it's important to just let people enjoy things. Fandom is an escape, for so many, so often, and sometimes you just want to ESCAPE to your escape.

But also. Also no?

Everything, everything, everything is problematic and flawed. Because everything is created by people, and people are flawed. And it's ok to not want to dwell on the flaws? It's ok to roll in the delight of this thing! you love! and want to squee about!

But also it's not. It's so important, so often, to remember that these things are flawed because to someone else, that flaw is HARMFUL and that flaw is DANGEROUS and that flaw needs to be acknowledged and critiqued or we won't collectively improve, and we won't collectively protect the vulnerable among us. Torchwood wasn't a perfect fandom (HAHAHAHA) but I enjoyed that by the end, we all sort of acknowledged our show had a boatload of problems and we were there ANYWAY. That, to me, was a valuable lesson in how to love something ~*problematic*~. And when I come to Harry Potter, which is so much more sprawling, and so much more influential and so much more powerful, I think it's even more important to acknowledge it's flaws and it's deficiencies. You can still love it, I mean, and you can love it WHILE acknowledging the problems?

I don't know. I'm seeing these posts over and over again from Harry Potter fans, and I all I can think of is Sam, who wrote one of the (still) big, popular Harry Potter stories and is still being discovered by new fans whom he has treated gently and kindly while he firmly reinforces that he's Not in This Fandom Anymore. And when someone asks him why, he answers and he doesn't just say he drifted away. He points to flaws, he exposes them and he leaves that there. This is flawed. That doesn't mean he didn't love it, that doesn't mean he makes fun of the love that all the fandom people keep pouring on it via his fic. But he isn't going to pretend otherwise either.

I don't know. I'm having a thinky time with this fandom, and it's been a bumpy ride.

The most HILARIOUS part of being in Cursed Child fandom is that their standard for "dark and/or angsty fic" is adorably low.

That fic where a main character dies makes you sad? I came up Torchwood fandom. Our canon killed off more than half the main characters. Our happy AU fics were the ones where Ianto got a few more years with Jack and we all ignored the fact that Ianto would before dye and leave Jack to the inevitable despair and loneliness of infinite immortality.

Like, the reason I seem to crave some darkness is that it's so gosh-darn cotton-candy colored in this fandom ALL THE TIME. Hahahahaha.

(Notably, BTW, Harry Potter fandom as a distinct entity had a lot of dark fic going on because it had a lot of EVERYTHING. But that is a ponderance for another day.)

Livejournal users are fleeing LJ to DW and I keep wanting to write a longer post about the issue and spend time pondering if I want to leave Livejournal or not but in my brain I am 100% PANICKING ABOUT THE TORCHWOOD FANFICTION.

Should I start downloading? Should I use evernote? Should I just save it in word so I can convert to .epub? What about the fic I've already not saved?????? Chasing down fic from my MASSIVE personal rec list is going to take forever!

SAVE THE FIC. (AND THE META)

Thing the first: It's Yuletide letter season, or that one time a year when people suddenly re-active their livejournals. It's been fun. I should get popcorn.

Thing the second: So, apparently, when I was younger and capable, I wrote this massive Torchwood meta essay. And then, like a complete fail, apparently failed to respond to any comments? Wondering if I should do that now. Because I'm creaking back into fandom life.

But I digress.

There are a few legitimate comments on that page. And then, and I don't think you can see them, there are SIX AND A HALF PAGES OF SPAM.

I get emails every few days with another spam post. And it's GROSS STUFF. Weird transphobic porn advertisements. CONSTANTLY. D:

I finally logged in to turn off anonymous commenting. Let's see if that stops it? I can turn off commenting altogether, but I hate doing that. I was also tempted to fix some horrific grammar mistakes but I resisted. Let it live in all its mistaken glory.

OH WELL THEN

I sort in the back of my mind new about the new Torchwood audio but I haven't been tracking them down or anything (and this is literally a bone-throw to the fans, we know it, we're not dumb, whatever.)

BUT.

STILL.

Life goals for after finals.

Had a dream last night in which I hosted a get-together with two of my LJ friends and we were basically awesome and then one person left and the other one turned to me and went "but we never talked about Torchwood!"

So apparently my brain really wants to hang out with everyone, talking about Torchwood is a plus, not a necessity.

INSTEAD? FINALS.

D:

Here.

Um, warning for...actual cannibals in Wales?

YEAH.

I have so much reading to do. So much.

SO MUCH.

Instead I had to make a post on tumblr to correct a potentially horrible Torchwood fandom misconception. (I HAVE SAM'S REC LIST HAHA!)

I even logged into tumblr because everyone deserves to read more Torchwood fanfic, especially lurking anons. I feel you, lurkers. I feel you.

And now for my next procrastination technique, grocery shopping!


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Just noticed a grammar mistake on tumblr. Can you even edit tumblr posts? UGH TUMBLR WHY YOU.

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ETA: Sam just thanked me on tumblr. Can I fangirl faint now or something? I did squee quietly but my new roommates don't know about fandom yet so shhhhhhh.