[I wrote this with about 0 brain something like 2 months ago. But I was feeling like posting one of my drafts and I just realised belatedly that Chris Bidmead had died in August. Or possibly just found out and was shocked for a second time, who knows, it's terrible how much I forget. But I do love his DW era very much and while he lived to a good age, I am still sorry to hear it - he brought so much to the show & was a rare DW script editor who was genuinely interested in SFF* as a genre, which showed in a whole bunch of scripts commissioned by him, which are like any of the other eras - even if a whole set of them then had the misfortunate to be made by the next script editor who Did Not Get Them at all. This serial is actually one he wrote later for his successor's rather more action/dark orientated era (and said successor, Eric Saward, Did Not Get this one either), but - I had prepared it earlier! And also: I love Frontios!]


I haven't much brain so I thought for this edition of the Unofficial Fandom 50 I would once again burble about a favourite classic Who serial, this time...

Frontios

tumblr gifset for pictures

What is it?

It is a four part Fifth Doctor serial (4x 25 mins; c. 1hr 25 minutes in total) from Season 21 (1984). Yes, it has Giant Woodlice.

The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) accidentally stray into the far future - so far that the Time Lords are forbidden to go there. They arrive at a tiny, struggling colony of survivors from Earth, who are under bombardment from an unknown enemy from space - except there's also something beneath them: the earth on Frontios is hungry...


Sometimes, as a DW fan, you love the unloved serial; sometimes you adore the fan favourite - and sometimes you just love a decent one more than you can properly justify or exactly explain, but we've all been there. I have a few of these, and Frontios is one, although honestly I think it's belongs in the circle just outside of the all time greats personally, which is why I'm going to babble about it. (I mean, I realise, like everything, it does depend on a) taste and b) how people feel about lumbering giant woodlice).

(It's also the only DW serial where a member of the main guest cast had to be replaced at the last minute because the original actor, Peter Arne, had been murdered. This has no bearing on anything, other than the replacement being the excellent William Lucas, but I felt the need to mention it anyway). (All my DW classic faves do not involve someone dying or nearly dying irl, I promise).




What do I love about it?

It's about confronting buried/unspoken terrors & what you can do with gravity in SFF if you have some giant woodlice to hand, plus it's one of those forsaken, almost Shakespearean colonies classic Who loves to do (the youthful leader with his fragile hold on it is even called Plantagenet) and I am a sucker for such things. The guest cast is great - William Lucas, Lesley Dunlop, Peter Gilmore & Jeff Rawle, pre-Drop the Dead Donkey.

Penned by Five's original script editor, Chris Bidmead, Peter Davison shines here, and gets to pull out his brainy specs for the first time since Bidmead left; Tegan and Turlough are both really well used, with Turlough's buried race trauma demonstrating that having alien companions as well as earthlings on the TARDIS can lead to interesting options for storytelling.

It's dark and weird, fascinating and quotable, with excellent team!TARDIS banter. The hatstand gets a moment of glory. The TARDIS is disintegrated. The Doctor saves Tegan's life by being really insulting to her. "Frontios buries its own dead."

Basically, I love weird colonies, I love strange ideas, I love this TARDIS team, I love the hatstand, I'm not at all put off by giant woodlice and: "Just tell them I came and went like a summer cloud." (Oh, Five. <3)


* Classic Who script editors (and producers) were assigned to the show by the BBC and did not always have a huge amount of choice about being offered the post and then being removed from it - it was just how the BBC worked at the time.

+ I may be somewhat trying to cope with the Horrors by making a big purchase, but I done did it: I ordered those oracles and the workbook I was eying + a tarot deck that spoke to me very loudly and was limited in quantities. Hopefully it doesn't take too long before it arrives so I can dip in before it's back off to work. Tomorrow's big plan is tidying and washing my entire bedroom, laundring the curtains, and set up a nice altar space on the top of my dressing commode.

+ Finished Fallout s2 and I'm happy with how their storylines turned out.( spoilery comment ) There was a small cut scene at the end in case anybody missed that.

+ Steam NEXT Fest is happening, and as usual I've managed to try next to nothing. Two big recommends: Esoteric Ebb and All Will Rise. They're both text-heavy, your choices matter kind of games. I'm gonna try to get a game in of Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, Wax Heads, Above The Snow, WOODROT, I'm Making A Monster, Dosa Divas, Bookbinding, Twilight Imperium, and the new Moomintroll entry before the time runs out (in that order). 100% I'm going to fail at that.

btw how I loathe having to keep my enthusiasm in check until I've had a scroll to look for AI usage.

+ Why all science fiction and fantasy writers are historians by Ada Palmer.

+ The SEA Is Whose?, Ethnic Entanglements in Southeast Asian SFF, an essay.

+ European bison arrive in the Iberian Highlands for the first time.

+ Botswana shows how smarter cattle herding can save lions, reopen ancient wildlife pathways.

+ youtuberecs is a fun community I just became aware of!

+ Soda Blonde released a new song/video, Suit & Tie, and I dig em both. Weird women in suits on the moors. Mud. Pretty horsie. What's not to like.

+ Forbrukerrådet is a Norwegian consumer council that's focused on making sure customers are treated fairly and not scammed, etc. Big big fan. And they've just released an ad on enshittifaction that is top notch.

Used my manga TBR boardgame.

I finished 5/6 on my last board. One was a DNF, the rest were good! My wish is to have at least another 8 star BL soon. 🤞

Avatar:

Ciel
Skill: Cover two prompts with one manga

Roll #1:

A 2...on this board, that's okay. Prompt: isekai! Twisted Wonderland - Episode of Savanaclaw. Looking forward to more screenshot taking lol

Roll #2:

And a 9, prompt: royalty/nobility Men of the Harem again.

Roll #3:

A 6, trap tile! Went back and rolled a 9 again. prompt: martial arts Alright, I picked Follow Your Heart.

Roll #4:

An 11, prompt: sex friends to lovers. Let's read one that's been on my TBR for aaages: [bónd(z)]  .

Roll #5:

A 6, prompt: slow romance. Another one that's been on my list for a while: Here U Are.

Roll #6:

Another 6, prompt: BDSM, ooo. I'll choose the first on my to-read list unders that tag, Ai Subeki Sadist.

Roll #7:

A 5 and the end. The physical BL this time is one I've read multiple times through the years, Time Lag so I hope it holds up.

Didn't manage to post February's icons before the month was up, so here's some catch-up.

Mostly Percy, with some of Leeds and Cecelia and one Cameron.

1-5 were made for ic_animated's Crayola round—can't resist the color yellow.

( 30 icons )

I don’t usually do memes, but I amended this one from tumblr somewhere. (I forget where. Oh no.) And I also never really do much in the way of introducing myself (I think introducing oneself with a lot of information feels a little unnatural) so the occasional meme may work as a partial substitute.

who is your comfort character?
I would usually get a little haughty about the very concept of a “comfort character” but I realised a little while ago it may be Mr Satterthwaite. So.

lighter or matches?
Matches. But I do admire nice vintage lighters.

which cryptid being do you believe in?
I don’t, but I enjoy cryptid folklore. (In fact, I idly keep a blog for things like that.) Every country has its folkloric creatures, of course, but for some reason I associate cryptids with America specifically.

which do you prefer, hot coffee or cold coffee?
I love an iced coffee in hot weather (I brew a pot, let it cool, refrigerate it and then serve it with ice) but I drink hot coffee more often. I try not to drink coffee at work because I think coffee should be a treat and a pleasure. I like to make coffee on a Saturday morning.

favourite extracurricular activity?
Hard to choose. I prefer/try to prioritise analogue hobbies. But I do have a weakness for research.

( Read more... )

working on a new book. today I rewrote my opening. it's better now, I think? still not saying exactly what I want it to, but it's better.

Work/life overall: Usually before a seasonal crunch starts at Dayjob I think to post something to the effect of "I'm about to be swamped, so while I'll probably/hopefully manage to keep up with reading posts, commenting will probably be mostly nonexistent, etc. etc.", and sometimes I feel a bit silly about it because I'm not as active a commenter as I'd like anyway and sometimes the crunch isn't that bad, and probably most people reading this already know that anyway...but I have some newer mutuals here now and I didn't think to post it, and friends, this crunch is CRUNCHY. Ohboy.

---

Media intake: LOL. (Okay, I did actually read a couple volumes of manga last night, and I did show ep. 1 of Heated Rivalry to scruloose last weekend. But I think that's it.)

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Weather: We did get lots of snow early in the week, but somehow yet again didn't lose power. No complaints!

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Cats: Last week both of the blues had birthdays! Yona turned four on Tuesday and Sinha turned five yesterday. (It would be very convenient to have a pic of the two of them together that'd make a good idea, but the odds of that ever happening are not remotely good. Have an icon of baby!Yona.)

Happy March, Overwatch is getting a Nier Automata collab and for some reason Square lobbied for Kiriko to be 2B. Kiriko does not have the legs and ass to be 2B, and nor does she make any sense to be her at all in playstyle or personality. On this one occasion she ought to have been Widow... or any of the characters trained in dance, as they have the legs for it... or Widow, who suppresses the emotions she feels due to the death of the person she loves, something 2B does on the regular...

And you could've done so much with the easter egg of Widow requires a visor of some kind that slots into place when her ult activates, and on this occasion doing the opposite - removing the visor to show her eyes, and making them red to match the og visor lighting up, whilst also implying logic virus... I just know this would have tickled Yoko Taro's brain... Square letting me down one last time.

The other skins are going to Wuyang (9S, weird pick), Vendetta (A2, personality clash but the sword is good and the big spins she does with the sword are just Nier spins), and then Lifeweaver (Adam) and Mercy (the Yorha Commander) and the last one in particular is so. Yeah. Give it up for another evil Mercy skin everybody. And not a single omnic/robot got a skin in the game about androids/robots. Of course not. I hope we get music in some way at least...

Decided on and bought my gold weapon backlog, of which Anran has seen some use because it turns out I do enjoy playing her, she just works best when you have someone to coordinate with when retreating for cover or heals woops. But I got the majority of my list, so, Orisa, Sojourn, Tracer, Widowmaker, Ana, Illari and Kiriko, then Anran and Domina, leaving Pharah, the cat and Vendetta, of which I decided to leave Vendetta until such a time that she crashes and burns during the storyline because then congratulations girly you actually did something and advanced the plot successfully (because thus far we are three weeks in and nothing has happened yet with her attack on Overwatch, it's all new character introductions, yknow, stuff we got pre character release being drip fed, I'm expecting once the five week run is over we'll see some advancement?). I do kind of want to give her the crimson wolf weapon as it is literally her theme, but I committed to the golds for women bit, and don't want to get two comp weapons for someone I don't play... :')

I did get the gold for Mizuki. I have lost every single game with him since. That's how it goes. ( plans for what's next )

Finished 5.3 in SHB! I actually got to see the second part of Elidibus for the first time ever! The prior two times I was in too much pain from the ATE to do so as it's the first trick one, and the first one not to fill a gauge but to keep it from depleting and will, always, be pixels off failing. It's a not a couple of seconds worth of quick pressing that you could take ten seconds to do, it's like ten to twenty seconds of consistent quick pressing, which is not very accessible at all. My method with ATE's after much trial and error is to very gently roll a finger around the d pad, and whilst it is not fast by any means for filling a gauge or stopping a deplete, it will do it successfully. And doesn't wreck my right thumb further, or cause issues in my left. I just can't regularly do whatever that piece of content is. tl;dr, I actually really like his fight now that I could participate, lol. I'd forgotten a lot of the plot threads and his reasoning for becoming The (titular) Warrior of Light, but it's actually really genius, because he was embodied to be hope, it has simply become twisted and an obsession over the years, and he uses what is typically reserved for the playable hero of the power of hope to win against his adversary (you). Full end of Okami or Persona 5 moment. And in true JRPG style, the next thing the WoL themselves do is call upon the power of hope and belief to take their friends safely home to the Source, including G'raha, and it's such a nice moment... you know you will succeed because Elidibus showed you the way... I am so weak to stories about hope and that is what SHB is, ultimately, all the way down.

Eden 9-12 also did, and Cylva follow up quest where you leave the crystals you gathered to her (and their memories recognise her), went to solo Warring Triad/HW base primal ex's so I can today take Unukalhai from the closet to the First for the final bits of Cylva content, and so when Khlip does do Endwalker I can have all my voidsent threads already in place. I wasn't going to do 5.4/5 right away but Krile hijacked my cursor when I was looking directly at the Solar so uh 5.4 did start LMAO. I guess I'll continue until Endwalker start and then take the break by playing something else. It shouldn't take too long, since it's just two dungeons I know very well. I may cutscene skip for certain individuals though. I absolutely switched off during their respective monologues at the end of 5.3: I simply do not care :')

Dear me, somehow my Reddit feed is full of posts by young women who apparently have no personal taste. Asking which wedding dress they should choose, or which engagement ring, or which wedding ring goes with their engagement ring. Sigh. Girls! It's your body, your hand. It should be dressed according to your taste, not mine! (Especially when your taste involves something that looks like fancy underwear with draperies, or has those sad, drooping sleeves.)

I mean. I suppose it's most likely "I wanna make a post and be given lots of attention" more than "I dunno what I want", but it's irritating.

*

Went to a rather sweet birthday party yesterday evening. Quite a lot of potential guests have been stricken with the current lurgi and had to cancel, but there were enough of us to have a good time. There were members of all three of the choruses, just about enough to put on somewhat unbalanced mini-choruses. And my quartet managed a couple of songs, and I sang "I Won't Mind" which everybody thought was a lovely song, because it is. And I think the Birthday Celebrant had a good time. Very friendly and family-oriented. Although it was in the Middle Of Nowhere, Norfolk, and involved a long and entirely dark stretch of single-track road. Bleah.

*

We had our coaching evening with Deke Sharon on Tuesday, an experience generally enjoyed by all. It's not that the message of Emotion Is Thing To Communicate has not been put across before, it has, but somehow he managed to make that connection for most of the chorus, and it worked! They (I, still struggling with a cold, observed and wrote stuff down) sang A Million Dreams, and the first time through, the tension was *huge*! By the fourth repetition, though, it brought tears to my eyes and my Beast's. (Beast, and a handful of others from the men's chorus, took advantage of the invitation to come and watch.)

Deke is quite a showman, and was very entertaining. It was not an intense, information-rich session, but the message that got through really did make a difference to the singing. Most interestingly, the chorus sang better without the MD.... obviously it takes a lot of work to be able to get to that point, but once we can sing with our MD joining the singers, we should. Anyway. A very worthwhile experience. And Deke was awarded a pot of Colman's Mustard, of course.

Also, he started off by saying, "Judging Art is fundamentally stupid." Go Deke!

Title: "Blended Family"
Artist: magnavox_23 
Character/Pairing: Sam, Team
Rating: G


2x12 Tok'ra II

Dysfunctional Families Close Ranks

Whatever the horrors that Iran's theocracy has visited upon its own people - and they are horrors, as the grieving survivors of at least 7,000 Iranians killed by the regime in the past few months can attest, and the relatives of untold thousands killed in the years since 1979 - people in Iran will put that aside and stand against what we've done to them in the past 36 or so hours. 

Your family may break your bones, bruise your mind, or force you down into heartbreak. You may hate your mother or your brother for what they've done to you. You may dream of revenge.

But when the neighborhood bully comes and strikes them down, injured or dead, then turns to you with a smile and says, "You're welcome," and expects you to go to your knees and thank him for that violence? You may well jump on the bastard's back and close your fingers around his neck, or hook them into his eyes, because they were your weight to bear, your sorrow to work through. 

Didn't we learn this when we "freed" Iraq? 

Apparently not. 

Title: "Yellow Brick Road"
Artist: magnavox_23 
Character/Pairing: Team
Rating: G


(alt here)

2x11 Tok'ra I

Just wrote a little snippet for Small Prophets, for 100fandoms, because I felt like it and also I thought there should be something for it, so:

Live in Hope (266 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Small Prophets (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kacey & Michael Sleep
Characters: Kacey (Small Prophets), Michael Sleep
Summary: Michael and Kacey have nothing to do but wait.

(I need to rewatch it - I think this must be set c. late ep4 or sometime in ep5? I mean, I need to rewatch anyway, because it hasn't stopped living in my head yet.)

Summary: A powerful grand wizard named, “Raim” reappears after a millennium because of a failed experiment. While he sets out to regain his lost tower, he meets “Are” and “Ere” who have been trafficked as slaves...

A combination of a weird grand magician who only uses his wits to make money and the cute, lovable brother and sister of the miao tribe! Their endless adventure is beginning to unfold.

There's not really a comprehensive step-by-step tutorial out there for installing NPPS4 (Love Live! School Idol Festival) on iOS so I wanted to put something together for anyone who's having trouble setting it up! This post will cover using the known public server and making your own private server.

( Instructions under here! )