Bothersome beast, comforting friend

Question for Whovians : imagine you're trying to get your friends to watch the show. What scene would you send them ? No context, no explanation whatsoever. Just one scene, either from the Classics or New Who.

(I'm currently in this situation and feeling overwhelmed with the challenge)

doctor who is aggressively hit or miss, especially in the moffat era, but i will never forget the episode where he meets a doctor who committed horrific atrocities during a war but has since turned to healing a small town as redemption and telling him "You do not get to decide how or when your debt is paid."

chills

When I say I enjoy content focusing on a specific doctorriver dynamic, I’m not saying I like one dynamic over the next. Because I don’t. 10, 11, 12, they’re all the same person at different stages of their life. Consequently, shipping the Doctor and River is like reading the most beautiful, devastating trilogy. Each book holds a different arc of their story.

When I say I want more 10River, I mean I want to see when the sparks began to fly. I want to place under a microscope the moment that burning ember of curiosity morphed into genuine friendship and intellectual and (begrudging) physical attraction. I want to listen and read of their adventures and watch how the Doctor begins to see River as a person in her own light. Not as the dead companion of future him, but the radiant, funny archaeologist he now dares call friend.

And when I say give me 11River, I mean I want to immerse myself in the early and middle stages of their marriage, the good, the bad, the rough, the smooth, as they, like many newly wedded couples, wrestle in their early years to learn how to make this marriage w o r k. I want jealous Doctor, I want the Doctor who caves to his desires and kisses River back as if she’s the only oxygen left on the moon. I want to cackle with glee as the Doctor abandons the idea of ever running away from her because it’s already too late to run. He started falling a long time ago.

And when I say pile on the 12River, I mean I want to see the latter years of their marriage, when they act like that couple that’s been married for 50+ years who says they’ve finally figured out the key to marriage because THEY HAVE. They went through hell, through darkest pits of marriage, through the miscommunications and misaligned expectations, and made it through to the other side. Instead of trying to paper the cracks, they smoothed out the rough t o g e t h e r. They relinquished every survival instinct and exposed their jugulars, their deepest fears and pains, and let themselves be completely naked and vulnerable with the other. They finally did what 10 asked River to do all those centuries ago in the library… they stayed with each other.

DOCTOR WHO — World Enough and Time (S10E11) directed by Rachel Talalay | written by Steven Moffat ››› Michelle Gomez as Missy / The Master

I see a lot of incomprehension online about our pension reform and the anger it generates in France, and what it often boils down to is "why are they so angry, 64 is plenty young to retire?"

I don't agree, but even if I did I would still oppose the reform. Here are some of the reasons why:

We already need 43 full years of work and tax contributions to be able to retire. Which means college-educated people were never going to retire at 64 anyway, let alone 62. This reform is aimed at people who start working early, mostly in low-paying jobs.

There's very little provision made in this law for hard/dangerous/manual labour.

There's no provision made for women who stop working to raise their children (51% of women already retire without a "complete career," which means they only retire on a partial pension, vs. 25% of men).

At 64, 1/3 of the poorest workers will already be dead. In France, between the richest and the poorest men, there's a 13 years gap in life expectancy.

Beyond life expectancy, at that age a lot of people (especially poorer, non-college educated) have too many health-related issues to be able to work. Not only is it cruel to ask them to work longer, if they can't work at all that's two more years to hold on with no pension

Unemployment in France is still fairly high (7%). Young people already have a hard time finding work, and this is going to make things even harder for them

Macron cut taxes on the rich and lost the country around 16 Billions € in tax revenue. Our estimated pension deficit should peak at 12 Billions worst case scenario.

While I'm on wealth redistribution (no, not soviet style, but I think there should be a cap on wealth concentration. Nobody needs to be a billionaire.): some of the massive profits of last year should go to workers and to the state to be redistributed, including to fund pensions. The state subsidized companies and corporations during the pandemic, Macron even said "no matter the cost" and spent 206 Billions € on businesses. Now he's going after the poorest workers in the country for an hypothetical 12 Billions??

Implicit in all of this is the question of systemic racism. French workers from immigrant families are already more likely to have started their careers early, to have low-paying jobs, are less likely to be college-educated, more at risk for disabilities and chronic illnesses, etc., so this is going to disproportionately affect them

This is not even touching on the fact that he didn't let lawmakers vote on it, meaning he knew he wouldn't get a majority of votes in parliament, or that 70% of the population is against this law. Pushing it through anyway is blatant authoritarianism.

TL;DR: This is only tangentially about retirement age. The reform will make life harder for people with low incomes, or with no higher education, for manual workers, for women—mothers especially, for POC, for people with disabilities or chronic conditions, etc. This is about solidarity.

Hope (sincerely) this helps.

I think my favorite thing about Partners in Crime as an episode is thst they establish Donna and Ten being two halves of a whole idiot by having them have the exact same thought process, except Donna does everything the normal way and Ten does everything the absolutely unhinged way, but at the end of the day both of them needed to be there in order to save everyone.

being a doctor who fan and seeing netflix cancelling most of their shows after three seasons, like.... i sit upon an ancient throne. my kin have ruled these lands for centuries untold, watching empires rise and crumble to dust. none can challenge us

old tweet

Random Acts Of Violets

Watercolor On Black Cotton Paper

2023, 22"x 30"

Viola odorata, Sweet Violets

Private Collection

…

watchluke

How I push through writing when I don't feel like writing.

Here are some of the techniques that I use to help me write more often or more consistantly when my laziness/depression/anxiety starts to take over.

I watch TV. I don't do it with the purpose of zoning out though. I watch something popular and well-liked such as the LOR or Harry Potter to get new ideas on how I can develop my story and apply their in-depth world-building ideas to help develop mine. Without plagarizing of course!!!!

Zoning out and daydreaming. As I have mentionned before, daydreaming is a huge part of my story outlining and world-building process. I'll stand in the shower, or take a walk and think about how my charcaters would act/react/behave in situations, mundane or not. Doing this gives me a better sense of my characters, and sometimes gives me ideas for scenes I use later on.

Work on writing related projects. These work well at keeping me distracted while still being productive on my writing goals. Example, I have one story I am working now, I made a new language (alphabet and numbers included) to include as a cool and fun component for the book. So, at times when I don't wan't to write, I continue creating the dictionary (very fun, 8/10 would recommend). Also, for the same book, my characters don't work off the Georigian calendar and 24 hour clock, so I've been working at creating a new calendar (harder than it seems, 2.5/10 dont recommend). These are side projects that help my story, without having to write.

Reading. You saw this one coming, I know. Reading is great, especially when you're editing, your writing style will unconsciously change to be more similar the author you were just reading. Also, most importantly, I'll be reading and think, "this story is really good, but you know what story I like even better? Mine." then change to writing.

This one is my biggest life saver!! I learnt about a year ago that sometimes I'll get bored of writing a story, and have difficulty keeping on track. That's why I finished my first book in 2016 and just started editing the first draft last week. The solution for me was to work on multiple projects at once, because it was much harder to be bored of multiple stories. I stick to 2, but will sometimes add a third. This is easy for me, because I have a list of over a dozen series I want to write. Don't abandon one project for another, use them as a distraction/ motivation for each other, so you're always furthering at least one project. I've never heard someone say, "oh no, i accidentally worked on this other writing project for three months instead of the other writing project I was doing. Dammit." No, we're just happy we have written something. Be sure to have well outlined story lines before starting, don't just start writing randomly or you'll reach a point where you don't know where to go from there.

Author/ writer projects. Maybe this is building a following, or community to share your projects and engage with. Tumblr, Insta, Reddit, whatever it is. My hope this year is to start up my website to offer publishing services (editing, graphic design, short writing courses) and build a following as a writer. (See what I did there? Never a bad time to self-promote ;) ) Having your own projects like this will help you in the future when you're going to try to publish and sell your books!

Talk with friends and a writing community. Never underestimate the passion that will burn inside you when talking about your story, or when others are talking about theirs. Surrounding yourself with a positive writing community can be the best thing for you as a writer.

Write or read (your story) every day. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you need to write 1000 words a day, that's a lot. But maybe try for 100? That could maybe only take 5 minutes, and at the end of the year that's still over 36 thousand words of a novel. Or just read your story, and I've always found it helped me get in the creative mood.

Make a playlist of songs that remind you of your characters, your story, or just puts you in the mood to write. Then play it ONLY when you're having trouble writing. Playing it while writing will not help, you'll get annoyed with the songs.

Just really can't do it today? That's okay, take a break. You deserve it. There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else have ways they push themselves to keep writing? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Writing!

get up and go write.

write for the people who will one day pore over the words you've chosen.

write for the people who think you could never have gotten so far.

write so you can bring words to life.

write so one day you can look back and see how far you've come.

write to inspire people who are too afraid, or who cannot, put words to paper.

write, because if you don't create this, who will?

and if anything, get up and go write for yourself. there's still so far to go. take a break, breathe, but go back. there's still so many things to share.

I AM BECOME A BLADE | WOMEN WITH DAGGERS

The Love Witch (2016) Courage, Anxiety and Despair: Watching the Battle by James Sant Alexa Demie for Wonderland Vivienne Westwood AW 2020 Olivia Cooke in House of the Dragon (2022 -) Medea by Alphonse Mucha Medea by William Wetmore Story Katie Mcgrath in Merlin s3 promo The Death of Lucretia by Joos van Cleve Judith with the Head of Holophernes by Fede Galizia Rekha in Deedar-E-Yaar (1982) Vanessa Hudgens Gaultier FW 2008 Lucretia by Rembrandt van Rijn   The Field Guide to Evil: Cobbler's Lot (2018)

no offense but why do cat owners let them on counter tops? do they not shed and it gets on the food

You think i have any control over these bitches

Photo by Gianluca Grisenti