Hello, moot! How are you? I'm rewatching THORS (once again) and I'm ugly crying while mouthing along their lines but that has nothing to do with my ask. Just thought it would be nice and polite to say hello.

Anyway my ask is I've seen people (official DW/BF people and fans) call River a Time Lord, human+, Proto Time Lord, and not a Time Lord because it's a title not a species. Personally, I've gone with human+. But another moot argued she's a Time Lord. What's your take on it?

Hiiii great to hear from you :D My name’s Tree by the way! Aaaah good for you, I got a love-hate relationship with that episode but those last ten minutes are 😭 *chef's kiss* I should rewatch it, it is that time of year, and I haven’t seen it since my Doctor Who Christmas Specials Rewatch last December!

Anyway!

I most often call River a Proto-Time Lord, or sometimes a part Time Lord/part human. (I’m not sure Proto-Time Lord is accurately descriptive, since it kinda sounds like it should refer to ancients like the Founders who weren't born with regeneration, but it’s the word I generally use because it feels closest to capturing the complexity of River Song!) Human+ sounds cool too though! (Especially as in, human+Time Lord.)

Because — while yeah, she is a genetically modified human with no known Gallifreyan DNA — it’s clear Kovarian did a lot more to deliberately make her resemble a Gallifreyan than just the Time Vortex related things like time-sense and regeneration. Her two hearts! Her respiratory bypass! No way those are related to Time Vortex exposure — it's Gallifreyan biology. Kovarian wanted her to be a match for the Doctor in every way.

Honestly, since there's no one really like her (apart from her clones), I think a lot of it's down to how she relates to herself and her identity.

I think the Doctor was really excited to learn that she's like him, in many ways — and that kind of affirmation would mean a lot to someone who grew up feeling like an outsider, having been told she was a just weapon, so she would have a connection to her Time Lord-ness as well as her human-ness.

But that doesn't mean she wouldn't still introduce herself a psychopath long before attempting to explain her species to a stranger.

(I don't think most qualified Academy graduates would consider her a Time Lord, though. Eyyy, nine times out of ten, they're too dead to say.)

september reading

there is literally no way it is september. impossible. anyway this month we have  horror, Fake Dating, the rashomon effect, a time war, and most importantly, no neutrals to be found anywhere

the old man & his sons, heðin brú (tr. from faroese by john f. west) published on the faroe islands in 1940 and the first faroese novel to be translated into english, this is a story about the dramatic shift in life style during the 30s on the faroe islands, from hardscrabble subsistence farming/fishing to market economy. interesting look at changing life on isolated isles, and a much lighter (and shorter) take on the stubborn autonomous subsistence farmer than laxness’s independent people. 3/5

the white shroud, antanas škėma (tr from lithuanian by karla gruodis - english/claudia sinnig - german) a modernist, fragmented, nonlinear novel about a lithuanian poet gone into exile, now working as an elevator operator in a new york hotel, who is involved with a married woman but might also be terminally ill. in between the present timeline, the book flashes back (both in the character’s own writing and in third person) to his youth in lithuania, his torture at the hands of the soviet regime, his time at a DP camp in germany and so on. quite interesting, with some great writing. 3/5

things we lost in the fire, mariana enríquez (tr. from spanish by megan mcdowell) really good collection of horror-ish short stories that also touch on gendered violence, child abuse, poverty and argentinian history (esp. dictatorship and disappearances) - some stories are more overtly horror, with clear supernatural elements, others are more ambiguous. i don’t read (or watch) horror stuff so i’m a bad judge of how scary this is - i found it more gruesome and upsetting than terrifying, but the dread is strong in this one. favourites: adela’s house (hungry haunted house), end of term and the title story (women & self-inflictred violence), under the black water (the poisoned oil-choked river is very bad but maybe.... there’s something worse in there). good, vividly gruesome, sharp sharp sharp. 3.5/5

axiom’s end, lindsay ellis i really like lindsay ellis, of all the ~youtube video essayists~ she’s probably my favourite and this book a) has a cool premise - aliens + conspiracies + alien communication and b) a really cool cover, and it’s lindsay, so i was super excited for this one. and it would be unfair to say i was disappointed with it; it’s a fun first contact romp with really good pacing, cool aliens, on-brand lindsay ellis humour and some interesting ideas on communicating with someone who is truly alien and incomprehensible. it’s fine! i enjoyed it and will definitely read the sequel, it’s just... i was hoping it would be AMAZING, and it just wasn’t. no huge problems (except for a few lines i would have liked to take a red pen to), just.... it was fine. 3.5/5 

zeno’s conscience, italo svevo (tr. from italian by william weaver) imagine you’re a businessman in trieste who does a little unsuccessful writing on the side and one day you decide to take english lessons to improve your business opportunities with the uk and your english teacher is JAMES FUCKING JOYCE who tells you that you need to keep writing. incredible. anyway these are the autobiographical notes of one zeno cosini, a hapless hypochondriac smug self-delusional fool, who just cannot quite quit smoking, marries the one sister out of three he least desires, & works as an accountant (for the man who married his most-desired of said sisters) despite his rather tenuous grasp on bookkeeping. my favourite scene is when his future sister in law (2nd most desired) complains lightly about her difficulties with latin, he tells her that he believes latin is a man’s language and even roman ladies probably didn’t actually speak it, only for her to correct him on a latin quotation. i will say tho that this book is way to long to maintain the endearingness and often drags. 3/5 tfw u write for an audience of one but that one is james joyce so fair enough

der hund/der tunnel/die panne, friedrich dürrenmatt dürrenmatt (in addition to having a cool-ass name) really fucking slaps!  his stuff is really good, and often really really wild. these three stories are all weird & slightly existentially scary, two degrees left of reality, and just. so interesting! we have a man stalking a street preacher and his monstrous dog, a train going through a tunnel for way too long (and it is very scary), and a man becoming involved in a pretend-trial (or is it) and becoming convinced that he actually is a murderer (or is he, really?). anyway, dürrenmatt.... slaps. 4/5

wow, no thank you., samantha irby a mix of memoir and comedy blogpost and social critique blogpost about growing up poor & black, dating while fat, chronic illness, and settling down in rural america. it’s fine. i haven’t read irby’s previous collections so maybe i’m missing that emotional connection, but i thought it was mostly...okay?? not especially funny imo & i prefered the more serious chapters of which there weren’t enough. 2/5

they say in harlan county: an oral history, alessandro portelli really impressive oral history about life in harlan county, appalachia, focusing on the labor strikes and conflicts in the 30s and 40s, but really exploring life and politics in the region from the first non-native settlement there to today. really interesting, sometimes inspiring and often infuriating and probably worth reading if you’ve ever listened to which side are you on. 4/5

rashomon & other stories, ryunosuke akutagawa (tr. from japanese by jay rubin) fun fact: if you read the short story “rashomon” expecting to get the, y’know, rashomon effect, you won’t get it bc the film actually takes its plot from the story  “in a grove”. anyway this is an interesting collection of classic japanese short stories, many of which are actually about unreliable witnesses/narrators. i particularly enjoyed “in a grove” and the truly disturbing “hell screen”, but found this particular collection just a bit too long. 3/5

women without men, shahrnush parsipur (tr. from farsi by kamran talatoff & joceyln sharlet) a magical realist feminist novella about 5 women in iran who all try to liberate themselves from men in one way or another, more or less successfully (one of them turns into a tree, another becomes undead), until they end up in a semi-utopian garden together for a time. disturbing in its depiction oppression and sexual/gendered violence. i don’t really know how i feel about it, but it’s a really unique and interesting reading experience; very fraught and ambivalent in the end. 3.5/5

take a hint, dani brown, talia hibbert i think this is the first actual pure genre-romance book i’ve read... in years??possibly ever? idk. anyway this is mostly a pretty fun & sweet story about ambitious & emotionally constipated phd student dani brown and security guy with tragic past zaf ansari, who begin a fake relationship for Various Reasons (as you do) and both develop Real Feelings (as you do, predictably). it’s mostly really enjoyable but man i’m really not used to Romance writing & it’s a lot. in the end everyone is very genuine & earnest & emotionally honest which.... not to be even more emotionally repressed than dani but i cannot deal with that. anyway given that 2020 truly is the gift that keeps on giving this was a fun fluffy delight & i might  read more from the series. 3.5/5

this is how you lose the time war, amal el-mohtar & max gladstone two agents (red and blue) on opposing sides of a time war (the futuristic techy Agency vs the eco/organic Garden - neither of them is Good or Bad exactly) start writing letters as they hunt each other through the strands of time’s braid and eventually (inevitably) fall in love. really interesting concept of time travel and different timelines (if, like me, you conceptualise past as down and future as up, this will trip you up so much), very lyrical writing that sometimes toes the line to overwritten but mostly really works. 3.5/5

DNF: the madman of freedom square & the iraqi christ, hassan blasim (tr. from arabic by jonathan wright, german tr. by hartmut fähndrich) bindup of these two short story collections about iraq. these are incredibly brutal, depressing & horrifying stories about a country in a constant state of war & struggle. couldn’t bear it, probably not ever & certainly not right now. 

allegro pastell, leif randt (audio) this is brilliant, bitingly funny novel about a millenial couple, tanja & jerome, and their on-and-off long distance relationship. they are privileged (and half-aware of it), attractive, successful, very in touch with their own feelings (couldn’t be me), self-reflective, faintly ironic in everything bc sincerity might be cringe, and you will hate them. these are people who perform their feelings rather than feel them, dissect all their opinions and impulses to the point of both paralysis and narcissism, engage in constant navelgazing and cannot form any relationship that isn’t based in constant evaluation and judgment. they pride themselves on their nonconformity but are really the greatest conformists of all, and the most square, boring, spießig people under the veneer of their urban liberal drug-and-club lifestyle. had so much fun with it even as i was constantly cringing at these people. 4/5