Aurora's Sundry Notes

I watched the latest Doctor Who episode, Ascension of the Cybermen, the first part of the two-part finale. Comments ahead, full of spoilers for the episode.

( Here be spoilers )

I just watched the newest Doctor Who episode, The Fugitive of the Judoon (ep. 5 of S12). If you haven't watched this one yet, my advice: stay away from spoilers until you do. Avoid the internet, maybe. And don't read the rest of this post because it will be full of spoilers.

( SPOILERS! Many spoilers! )

Okay, here are some initial thoughts actually about Spyfall parts 1 and 2 before I crash into bed. So, spoilers ahead for the two newest Doctor Who episodes. Nothing super analytical, but what comes to my mind first. This was supposed to be brief, but surprise surprise, it wasn't.

( SPOILERS under the cut - Doctor Who, Spyfall parts 1 and 2 )

Season 12 of Doctor Who will only start airing in Finland on January 9th; we'll get both parts 1 and 2 of Spyfall on that day. I assume after that we'll get the episodes very soon after the UK premiere as we did last year, but I'm not going to see Spyfall part 1 before the 9th. If you think that before that date, you might not manage to avoid posting spoilers without cut-tag, posting spoilery icons or other spoilery stuff that can't be cut, would you please let me know e.g. in comments to this post? I can make myself a spoiler-free filter to read until then. I'm not the sort of person who minds every single spoiler (like, I don't know, generic promotional pictures of the TARDIS team or other people we've already known will be in the episode; basically I've seen the trailers that were published before the first episode aired), but I'd rather not learn big plot details or other major stuff before the first time I see it for myself.

Mind you, I've probably seen one major spoiler (I say probably because I very quickly looked away and didn't exactly dig into it to make sure) and I'll whine about that when I know for sure if it's what I thought it was. But at least I'd rather not get any more, or have that one confirmed before I see the episode. (For the record, I didn't see the possible-spoiler on DW/LJ. So far nobody here has spilled anything that was a problem but it's pretty hard to avoid the entire internet for a week.)

In other fannish matters, I'm sort of planning to take part in snowflake_challenge but I've only begun to write the introduction and am not finished yet. I figure this journal could use a general public intro post anyway, so the timing is good, I've just been tired and not good at getting things done. It's not that easy to write one, especially since I'm always wordy. I don't intend to respond to every challenge, but I'm trying to do a few that inspire me, at least.

In podcast dramas, I started listening to EOS10 today, after hearing a lot of recommendations for it. If there are those among my friends/readers who are further into it - for how long does it continue to focus so heavily on alcoholism and addiction? I listened to the first two episodes, and for fairly short episodes they focused a lot onthat subject, and it's a topic I don't enjoy. I live in a country that has a... very problematic attitude towards alcohol as a culture, and where most of the art and entertainment features drunkenness and alcoholism, while I'm a person who doesn't drink a lot, and doesn't particularly enjoy getting drunk... look, it didn't exactly make social life easy when I was younger. I'm also just plain sick of the topic by now. I don't mind it in moderate amounts (say, the way it's handled in The Bright Sessions), but this feels like much. The podcast sounds well made and I'm always interested in space stories, so I'm willing to power through if it'll soon switch to other topics, but I'd like to know for how long I have to listen to guys talking about alcoholism, because I've kinda done a lot of that just through being born in Finland.

(And I realize alcoholism is a serious mental health problem in itself and there are undoubtedly people who really benefit from it being handled in fiction. It's just that, well, I explained it above already, I've got my reasons.)

To end on a positive note, I think I've finally got my library books problem under control. Not though speed-reading everything at once, but 1) I was able to renew Realm of Ash so I'm no longer in a hurry, 2) I'm just going to buy an ebook of The Priory of the Orange Tree and read it leisurely, and it's easier to hold up that way given it has about 800 pages, and 3) I read a bit of Middlegame and poked around reviews and decided that it's too dark for me at this point, so I returned it to the library. Now I'm just going to read my currently ongoing books without stressing about deadlines for finishing each, and after that I'll take care not to place so many holds anymore.

Dear Public Call Writer,

I didn't manage to fit the character/era-specific prompts into the sign-up, so I'm posting them here. I also include my general likes and Do Not Wants from the sign-up, just in case. Please don't be discouraged if I seem to have more prompts or things to say about another era/relationship than the one you matched on - I assure you I'm equally interested in all that I requested, otherwise I wouldn't have requested them. I've got so much more on the Second Doctor era because there are so many characters and relationships I requested there, so it's hard to be concise yet not leave people out. But all the others interest me as well! And as always, these details and prompts are only meant to help you if you're the sort of writer who works better with more information and prompts. If you prefer to go without them, pay no heed to them, except kindly heed my DNWs!

( Likes )

( Do Not Wants (DNWs) )

( Second Doctor Era )

( New Who )

( Multi-Era (New Who/Classic Who) )