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) )

Oh, a recent little tiny thing I posted on AO3, written for the who_contest Drabble challenge. I didn't share it here earlier, because my laptop was running low on charge and my charger was Elsewhere. Posting it now that I remember! I am rather proud of actually managing to write something that only ran 100 words. I find it so much harder to write one hundred words than one thousand! Especially for anything complete. I actually wrote another drabble for the same prompt as well, but I chose this one because it managed to be more of a complete story (I'll post the other one on AO3 when I get around to it). Even if it means a continuation of only posting light-hearted stuff into that contest. Oh well, light-hearted is good, and I enjoy writing fun things.

Besides, I love this inordinately, because Victoria is a lot more awesome than people typically give her credit for.


Victoria's Strategy (100 words) by AuroraCloud
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Victoria Waterfield, Jamie McCrimmon, Second Doctor
Additional Tags:Drabble, Women Being Awesome, Classic Who Companions Are Awesome, Alien Planet
Summary: The Doctor and Jamie need to rescue Victoria again... or not.

I just realized that I forgot to share my latest completed and posted fanfic, which was written for who_contest for the prompt "Urban Legends". I originally had a longer and plottier story in the works for this prompt, and I wish I'd gotten that written, but it just wouldn't be written on time, and finally after abandoning it, I came up with this story. Seems that "short and whimsical" is the one type of story I actually manage to write for that community.


Never Boring (581 words) by AuroraCloud
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor & Bill Potts
Characters: Twelfth Doctor, Bill Potts
Summary: You can trust the Doctor to always find the weird stuff.


Also, if you're a member/watcher of the who_contest community, remember to vote in that round! It doesn't look like we've got enough votes yet. And I don't mean you should vote for mine, just vote. (I think the other story is better and meatier and should win, but you decide your favourite, obviously.)

Oh my goodness, my First Doctor & Vicki & Steven ficlet won the "Reach" challenge! I'd never have thought! Thank you to everyone who read, voted etc.

If you missed the fic and want to read it, it's here: Like Siblings

Last night, I posted my Second Doctor Era manifesto over at tardis_library! Witness me trying to put into words why I love this era and its characters, and rec a whole bunch of different kind of fics in it. I took care not to repeat any of the recs I've already made at the community, so it doesn't include all my favourite stories, but I tried to create a wide selection of excellent fics that deserve attention and show different aspects of the era and the fandom.

Since it's a manifesto for a rec community, it includes a lot of fanfic recs, and there are some spoilers since I assume most people know the era at least partly if they're looking at this. I'm thinking of creating a for-new-viewers version of this in my journal, though, where instead of reccing fics I recommend episodes/stories to watch if you haven't seen any of the era or have only seen one or two stories. So stay tuned for that if you're interested!

I guess that took care of reccing Thursday for me, heh. Even if it was technically Friday when I posted it.


In other, entirely unrelated news, while the Finnish WWF's seal webcam closed at the end of May with just that one evening of serious seal action (or inaction, rather), the osprey webcam now includes three osprey chicks! They've all hatched within the last week or so, and now they're already moving about in the nest a bit, at least some of the time. Go see baby dinosaurs squabble! Though at the moment it's really hot in Finland, so they're mostly lying down in a vague heap while Mama Osprey shields them from the sun with her body. Poor thing, she must be hot, she's panting a lot.

But baby ospreys are really totally mini-dinosaurs.

Also, there's now a flying squirrel webcam. They're mostly nocturnal animals, so you're more likely to see them/it climbing out and running up the tree etc. in the evening / night (the webcam has night vision), but sometimes it apparently peeks out or steps out during the day, too. I haven't yet seen the squirrel, but there is activity every day, if you manage to catch it.

There's also a wolverine webcam, and I mean the animal, not the superhero. It also has a night vision version. Sometimes bears have been sighted on it, too! I'd say this is somewhere pretty far up north, based on the vegetation. And finally, there's a forest deer webcam, which sometimes has deer on it, and when it doesn't, it still has a peaceful Finnish woodland pond.

Okay, I need to start doing actually useful stuff.

I managed to, on the last day, write a ficlet for the latest drabble/short fic challenge over at who_contest, with the theme "reach". So here is my first foray into writing the First Doctor era, with Vicki and Steven. I'm afraid it's frightfully silly. Some day, I might finish a more serious entry for that contest! Or not. I rather enjoyed writing this.

Title: Like Siblings
Rating: General Audiences
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 546 words
Characters: First Doctor, Vicki, Steven Taylor
Spoilers: None
Summary: The Doctor finds out that perhaps Steven and Vicki have taken to each other too much like siblings.

Read it here (at AO3)