star trek tos: a summary

DOCTOR WHO | 2x01 ↳ New Earth

nine textposts <3 ... more people need to appreciate him

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Doctor Who | 8.11 Dark Water

never related to authors being like "childhood is such a blessed innocent time", catch me with that jane eyre shit like "such dread as children only can feel" and "I then sat with my doll on my knee til the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room"

nobody understands her (the novel jane eyre, published 1847) like i do

"Romeo and Juliets romance is just so unrealistic! It's not what a romance is like in MY experience!"

Oh? Oh really? You, adult living in 2022, you never went to a fancy Venetian masquerade in the 1590s and met a mysterious stranger and then your first conversation spontaneously forms a perfect sonnet? That's not a totally relatable experience for you?

Is Macbeth unrealistic because of the witches? Is Midsummer unrealistic because of the love potion?

Like, there's no explicit magic in Romeo and Juliet, but it still exists in a heightened reality, and overlooking the role that language plays within the text itself kneecaps your analysis of the intent.

When we hear of Romeo, his dad and friends are discussing his recent sad mood- he's upset because the girl he likes has no interest in him. His friends try to distract him from it with a party, but dont really seem to...connect with or fully empathize with his sadness. When we first hear of Juliet, her father and Paris are planning her marriage (without her input.) They are both talked about but not really listened to. The way they are spoken about isolates them from others.

Then they meet, and with no knowledge of each other, not even their names, they click into perfect rhythm. They finish each other rhymes. They form perfect ABAB quatrains in conversation, their sentences form a rhyming *couplet* at the end.

You know the song Ana sings with Hans in Frozen? Love is an open door? We finish each others- Sandwiches? Yeah- it's riffing on this. The idea that you meet someone perfect and right away your souls can make poetry together. The immediate intimacy of being so in sync that your introduction is a love poem.

I don't know, yall. Romeo and Juliet isn't a gritty hyper-realistic Oscar nominated docu-drama. It teters on the edge of fairy tale and myth, it leans on its language to convey deeper emotional truths that a 5 act play doesn't have the time to develop as deeply as we, in our world of movie montages and long form TV, are more accustomed to. This isn't a slow burn, pining, enemies to friends to lovers. It's soul mates love at first sight, and when you accept that, the play can get on with the business of saying what it wants to say about hate and the cycle of violence and social rules and decorum and how grudges and blood fueds can destroy the magic in the world if we let it.

"It doesn't matter if they are really in love. They should be allowed to be stupid hormonal teenagers without dying" I see many people say, and while I think that sentiment is true, I DO think it matters that they are in love. I think it matters that their meeting sparks a sonnet, and that poetry is snuffed out by the violence around them.

I think it matters that what they had wasn't an arranged marriage or a "good match" made by approving friends- that it was spontaneous and instant and inexplicable, but that the world couldn't let that be because it defied all the rules. Because it wasn't set up by parents and wasn't politically convenient, because it wasn't part of a proper, prolonged courtship with chaperones and social approval- it was love and poetry that defied all of that and so it was snuffed out. That they are pushed to such extremes not just by the killings, but by Juliets impending engagement to Paris, they have to act now because their love doesnt fit into the proper pattern set out by society- I think that matters.

i hate you romantically involved characters who talk to each other like they’re in a couples counseling session, i hate you watering down of the word toxic, i hate you plot twists where the male love interest is actually a villain because see, silly girl? in the REAL world guys like that are DANGEROUS, i hate you relationship therapist breaks down movie couple’s relationship videos, i hate you “romeo and juliet were just stupid horny teenagers” “belle had stockholm syndrome” “wuthering heights isn’t romantic” hot takes, i hate you sanitization of romance in fiction

Billie Piper, David Tennant & Russel T. Davies at the 2006 BAFTA’s

[x]

… My name is Rose Tyler.  And this is the story of Torchwood. The last story I’ll ever tell.  This is the story of howl died….  

I’m training to be a doctor. Not an alien doctor, a proper doctor. A doctor of medicine. Well that certainly is nonsense. Women might train to be doctors, but hardly a skivvy and hardly one of your colour. Oh, do you think?

SEASON 3, EPISODE 9 — THE FAMILY OF BLOOD

the doctor and rose