So I decided to give in and finally get Netflix. Thought that seemed more pleasant than having a life. First I'm going to finish watching Doctor Who S6 (I had to return the DVD to the library once I got to mid-S6, and I was getting sick of seeing the bad Finnish DVD subtitles, anyway - I'm used to watching only with English subtitles, where you don't run into awkward translations for "sonic screwdriver" and so forth) and then watch Sense8 which has been recommended to me by so many people and frankly, has Freema Agyeman so I want it. And then probably one of the about 10 series and films I've bookmarked already.

Just watched "Let's Kill Hitler". You know, most of S6 is so full of stuff that I'll soon need a rewatch of everything to process it. Might really rewatch 5 and 6 both. But I think I'm rather becoming rather fangirly of Matt Smith's acting. And Amy and Rory are so lovely.

I just want to say that I'm super-excited about the latest news about the new Doctor Who companion.

( Cut for spoilers, though it's all over and hard to miss )

This definitely seals it; I'm so going to watch the new series as it airs, never mind that I'm several seasons behind. I already watched the Christmas special and I know roughly what happened in the end of the last season, so I don't think it'll be too hard to figure out what's going on. And I just checked when we're going to get it in Finland, and guess what? Like with the Christmas special, we're getting Series 10 only one day later than the UK! So brilliant! I can watch it pretty much in real time!


I've just started watching S5, by the way. I still need to finish my write-up on my many thoughts on S4 (not to mention write my Torchwood S2 post!) but I decided to just skip the specials because I just didn't like them much at all (except for the Wilfred bits, and some of the Master stuff). Also, Journey's End has the unfortunate effect of making me kind of hate Ten, and considering I do generally love him, I didn't want to add to that by all the purposeless angst-wallowing that the Specials are.

So straight onto Eleven it was, and oh, so far I'm totally liking both him and Amy. The Eleventh Hour was a bit full of things and had pacing problems, but I really enjoyed it as an introduction to the characters, and the amount of backstory Amy gets there makes it easy to relate to her and see what's going on with her. And I thought The Beast Below was magnificent. Liz 10 was a lovely character, too, and Amy totally has my heart now, if there was a part she didn't have by the end of The Eleventh Hour. I'm still getting used to how young Eleven looks, but it's interesting to observe him, and there's something deliciously explosively adventurous in his and Amy's dynamic so far. I'm pretty sure I will have watched S5 at least by the time S10 starts, so that's something.

Anyway, being so excited about this - both Bill and S5 - is fun! I've been all sorts of exhausted by RL lately, and not feeling great, so feeling excitement is delightful.

Because I'm supposed to be editing Fandom_Stocking fic, here, have instead a fandom meme via various people. Though it's for 2016, most of the stuff I mention isn't something that actually came out in 2016, since much of my fannish existence was watching Doctor Who and Torchwood DVDs from years and years ago. And also when book-reading, I only occasionally read stuff from the current year.

Your main fandom of the year?

Doctor Who / Torchwood. There were a few months in the early half of the year when I was more occupied with something else, but most of the time, my obsession with the Whoniverse was what kept me sane (well, for a given definition of sane).

Your favourite film watched this year?

I didn't watch many, so I guess I'll go with Ghostbusters. It was fun and feel-good, there were women being awesome and being friends and hunting ghosts together, and for once men were totally secondary, and there was Holtzmann. I'm not pretending it was an unprecedented cinematic artwork, but I had lots of fun.

Your favourite book read this year?

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. An instant favourite, and the first book in ages that I reread within the same month of reading it for the first time (that was partly because it was my Yuletide assignment, but I also adored reading it again). Also, its stand-alone, A Closed and Common Orbit, as well as Catherynne M. Valente's Radiance (a wonderfully weird, imaginative and gorgeously written steampunk AU space opera scifi mystery etc.). Radiance was probably objectively the best, most mind-blowing book I read in the year, and I need to reread it to appreciate it even more. But the Becky Chambers books were sanity-saving at a time when much needed, and ticked most of my fannish boxes and some I didn't yet know existed.
( Read more... )

So, I've been meaning to write my main thoughts about Torchwood S1 for quite long already, but it got a bit long and I had trouble focusing to finish it. So by now I've also rewatched Doctor Who S3 (writing up my thoughts on the last few episodes might take a while, too) and started Torchwood S2. But I'll keep those separate from this post. Most of these thoughts were written before I started watching S2, so I'm just focusing on S1 now. Spoilers ahead, obviously. Kind of long.


( Torchwood S1 ramblings ahead )

After thoroughly depressing myself thinking about the world situation today (not like I can just ignore it), I decided to distract myself now with a couple of Doctor Who episodes. The first two episodes of S3, Smith and Jones and Shakespeare Code. Love them both. S3 is a mixed bag for me, containing some great stuff and some not-so-good, but I definitely love the beginning. Smith and Jones is the best first-episode-of-series that I've seen so far, and I love Shakespeare Code, even if the witch characters are a overly campy. (Oh my, a Doctor Who monster that is campy, surely you must be kidding!) Shakespeare's so great there and Martha's great in it, and 57 academics punching the air, and all that. I generally love the literature-centric episodes, they always make me want to read. I guess that's what I'll do now until it's bedtime.

And Martha, so good to see her again. I don't like the way her story becomes so much about her unrequited love for the Doctor, so I'm probably going to complain about that when I go on, but I love her otherwise. She just got a bit unfairly treated by the writers (not to mention the Doctor), but she's great herself. I love having a more bookish and studious sort of Companion for a change, and she can still hold her own in an adventure as well. And on a shallow note, she's so, so pretty. S3 is overabundant with pretty, really, what with her and Ten and also there being Jack in the last few episodes. So much pretty. Why don't I have the right kind of Martha icon to use now? Well, the Tardis is always good.

I've got Martha's Theme stuck in my head now. It's so pretty. No, I'm not going to find words other than pretty, it's too late in the evening for that.

I feel better now. The world's not fixed, but stories have a power to fix you, at least a bit. One of my motivations to keep writing. Who knows, maybe one day my stories can do some good as well.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, thanks for offering any of my tiny fandoms! I'll be delighted with a story from any of these. The letters may say more about some than others, but it's not a measure of what I care most about. I made sure I picked fandoms where I'd be equally happy to receive a story. Beyond the Do Not Wants, you can ignore any part of prompt or letter if it gets in your way.

Generally, things I Do Not Want: Incest, rape or non-con, graphic violence and goriness, major non-canonical character death, character bashing. Also no child abuse or animal abuse. And no drastic AU of the high school / college / werewolf / vampire sort, or changing historical to modern or fantasy/scifi to mundane world. Basically, I prefer playing in the world of the canon we know. Generally, I can enjoy the sort of AU where you change a canon event and see what comes out of it, but I have no particular interest in that in these fandoms right now. Also, I don't want the story to promote sexism, homophobia or racism, though in the world of some of the canons it makes sense some characters would have such attitudes.

I'd prefer matching the tone and darkness/lightness level of the canon, though in the case of Custard Protocol I would enjoy a more serious story as well, if that's what flows better for you.

I throw in some ideas both in the prompts and in the letter, but don't feel obliged to fulfill any of them. As long as you write about these characters in these worlds and avoid my Do Not Wants, I'll be glad.

A few things I particularly like:
- female characters who are strong, smart and capable in a variety of ways, not just the traditional-male-hero strong
- strong bonds between female characters
- strong bonds between family members, members of the same crew/team, or friends
- same-sex romance
- expressing feelings through sex
- in pairing stories, I'm equally happy with stories with or without sex. If there's sex, I prefer it not to be the entire story; I'd like to see at least some development of characters/relationship.
- wonder and amazement about the world
- in the worlds where it's appropriate, technobabble / science babble is fun if you can do it, but not required; I don't know much about technology, so you'll be able to fool me easily, though *g*

And, well, anything I listed in the specific prompts and specific parts of the letter.
On to the requests! And because my layout doesn't show LJ cut texts (need to change it as soon as I have the time), the requests are in the following fandoms: Custard Protocol - Gail Carriger, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua, Skuggserien - Maria Gripe, The Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers. The letter lists them in that order.

( Custard Protocol - Gail Carriger. Primrose Tunstell, Tasherit. )

( The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua )

( Skuggserien / The Shadow Series - Maria Gripe )

( Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers )

So I just watched The Army of Ghosts / Doomsday (that being the two-part finale of Doctor Who Series 2, in case you don't know). And I want to get a train of thought down. Not a real comment-on-episode thing, but something that rose up in me from watching it. Though not created only and specifically by those episodes, but overall by the show itself. Doctor Who isn't always good, but when it's good, it's powerful. And one of the reasons I love it is that it can get me in touch with something fundamental, and at times when I need it.

Finishing watching the episode, choking with tears again as I did the first time, I thought: this show is one of those stories that reminds me of what really matters.

People spend so much time on stupid, harmful, useless things. You all know what they are, let's not stop to list them. There are a few kind of things that really matter. This show helps me keep them in my mind and heart, helps me hold onto them no matter what.

One of them is seeing what's out there, experiencing the world. We can't all do it in a Tardis, but it's okay. We can learn about the world, we can study it through science or learn what others have studied, we can travel to places, we can just keep our eyes and ears open where we are right now, try to see what's really there, try to understand it too, and keep both our minds and our hearts open to it.

Another thing that really matters is stories. That's not something that's usually in Doctor Who itself, because obviously, it's not about stories, it is a story. But I've been thinking a lot lately about how much stories matter. Not just as ends to something, you know, to teach values or make you feel a certain way. Though it is important that through stories, you can relate to other people, you can find comfort, you can find all sorts of things. They can be life-saving. But also, there's something very deeply human about stories, we need them, we wouldn't be what we are without them. Powerful stories can make you connect with something very fundamental. I can't explain it well, but somehow stories are valuable and important in themselves. And they're certainly among the most important things in my life.

And there's love. I don't just mean romantic love, I mean all kinds of love. Family, friendship, all kinds of companionship. It's significant that right there in the end, Rose has her family to go back to. She still has love. And, though I understand they didn't plan it at this point, in the end the Doctor first meets the woman who'll later be his best friend. In my head at least, Donna matters to the Doctor every bit as much as Rose does. And overall in the show, whether there are romantic feelings between the Doctor and his Companion(s) or not, there is love and connection, friendship and travelling together and defending the world together, and that matters.

The show is rather big on the importance of doing the right thing and defending things that matter, for example. And that is important. But because the real world is a more complex place where the decisions aren't always about something as clear as defending the planet from the Cybermen and the Daleks, and it's late and I'm tired, I'm not getting deeper into that right now. Just saying it's important that there are stories that make us think about that, especially with the world often trying to derail us.

So yeah, if anyone's wondering why I love Doctor Who, it's not the aliens and spaceships and things. There's more at the core of it, something that really matters. Not in every episode, but in enough of it. It makes a difference in my life and in my thoughts, and I love it.

Finding it hard to post anything of content. Work started again and it exhausts my brain and leaves too little time. I took a week to have time to even watch The Girl in the Fireplace. Though damn, a good Doctor Who episode does have the power of making everything feel better!

Anyway, I started participating in Write Every Day, held at fan_girlishness's journal this month. The point is to, well, try to write something every day and check in daily about it. I've just started a new original project and I thought this is just the thing that could help me keep going, even with work and all. Turns out I was right. Within about a week I've written 7000 words - the majority of it this weekend, so apparently getting those few hundred words written each night during the week really helped keep the channels open and get me into the story. I hope I don't depress anyone who struggles with getting anything written. For the record, I tend to write fast when I do first draft, at least if I have any idea of what I'm doing. I can spend a very long time in the editing phase afterwards. I'm curious to see how it'll continue with this story, because there'll be parts where I so far have no idea what I'm doing. I hope it'll clear up as I go on. Next week will be quite busy and it will be a lot harder to keep writing, but I'm going to try to get a little bit each day, even if it's just one sentence or so.

I'm starting to really get into reading again, and one of the books I'm reading now is Gail Carriger's latest, Imprudence. If you don't know it, it's alternate history / steampunk / fantasy / historical romance / adventure kind of thing and lots of fun. It's the second part of her Custard Protocol series (the first part being Prudence) and that is a follow-up to her Parasol Protectorate series which is just as much fun. I'm very enamored of those books, fannish even. I'm probably going to post a squeeful post when I'm done reading. I heartily recommend it. It's the sort of book that's deceptively light and fun, easy to read and a bundle of entertainment, but has a brain and a subversive element entangled in there, too. Including strong, awesome, smart and capable female characters of many kinds, and romances also between characters of the same sex, and here and there some discussion of society, norms and breaking the said norms. I adore the characters and the alternate history of Victorian society she's built there. And there's an airship. Called The Spotted Custard and with a somewhat eccentric young lady for a captain.

Anyway, reading such things and thinking about Doctor Who keeps making me want to drink lots of tea and eat things that sound very British. Yesterday was a grey, windy, drizzly sort of day, perfect for staying in, writing like crazy and drinking tea. And then I'd have more tea and toast with jam, and feel like I'm on one of the endless tea times on board the Spotted Custard, only with my characters for company. I wonder if I can get them to call me Lady Captain? That would be neat.

I do think it's time for bed. Proper fandom posts, which I want to write, require more presence of mind than I have left today.

Was away for a couple of days, and yesterday was mainly spent geeking out and drinking copious amounts of tea. I recently got a bunch of science and steampunk things out of the library, and have been happily reading Mark Thompson's Down to Eart Guide to the Cosmos. Once the nights get a little bit darker here, I mean to start being a lot more active in stargazing like I've dreamed of being for some years, and gorging myself full of interesting information about the night sky is my way of preparing. I really want binoculars soon.

And once my brain decided I needed a break from all the fascinating information and the "a few degrees southwest of Star X, you will find the fascinating globular star cluster M-such-and-such, which by the way is not visible in Aurora's location because she's so far up north, but it's one of the most beautiful sights ever" I started to read Sydney Padua's The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. It's an alternate history / steampunk comic where Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage develop a steam-powered computer in the 1800s and use it to fight crime or, at least, geek out. Apparently this is something I've waited all my life to discover, or something. The webcomic is here, should the hypothetical reader be interested, but I'm reading the book format. In addition to comics, it has a wonderful amount of footnotes and endnotes, containing entertainingly written information about the weirdness of history of science, feeling like it's custom-made for a history-and-science geek like me. Read about half of it in one go.

It was lovely to sink myself into reading, because while I'm normally quite a bookworm, I've had a terrible time making myself read anything in the past few weeks. Somehow I just can't focus on anything for more than 10-20 minutes; I've tried so many genres and styles, but nothing appeals to me enough. Except, apparently, interestingly written popular science, and alternate history comics. In the past weeks I did read a lot of fanfic (mainly Doctor/Jack), so maybe I just have trouble of focusing on longer fiction, or fiction with characters I don't know already. I did just get Gail Carriger's newest book, Imprudence, in the mail, so I'm going to give that a try. I already know the characters in that one, and Carriger writes entertainingly and easily enough, while still being quite clever and with awesome female characters, LGBT relationships and such goodness.

Didn't even turn on the computer until the evening, when I watched some Doctor Who. Started on rewatching Season 2, I now watched New Earth and Tooth and Claw. Which means that up next is School Reunion, which was one of my favourites of S2 the first time around. K9, Sarah Jane, Ten as a schoolteacher, Anthony Head's evil schoolmaster - how could I not adore it?

I am trying to be marginally more productive today, though. Seeing as it's almost midday and I haven't yet changed out of my nightgown, I'm not holding out much hope, though. But I do mean to make some pie.

I'm also trying to figure out how to go on about finding some actual friends on this LJ. It was much easier way back when - the first time I had one of these, I started out with a bunch of friends I already knew from elsewhere, and LJ being much more active than it is now, it was easy to get to know people through conversations in friends' journals and communities. How to start from the scratch at this point, I'm not sure. People still at least somewhat active in my fandoms and ships, do not be surprised if you find yourselves friended. Once I find the courage to do so, anyway.

Hello there! I want to get started with this journal, and feel like doing so with a little introduction.

I started this because I've been longing for a place to be unabashedly fannish and talk in detail about fandom things and other objects of geeky interest, and hopefully find other people who want to talk about them, too. I used to do that in the old times, back when LiveJournal and message boards were the place to do fannish things. And I miss it, oh, do I miss it. Proper conversations instead of just retweeting and reblogging and whatnot. A chance to really get to know like-minded people in the same fandoms. I don't know how well it's going to work out anymore, now that people and fandoms have moved mostly away from LiveJournal, but this is still the kind of fandom participation I do best, so I'm going to give it a try. What is inspiring me is that I've now got a fandom that's big enough there might still be some people around who do LJ - namely, Doctor Who. But I probably will write about other fandoms and interests than just Doctor Who, if I keep going on at this.

I'm going to do a separate post about my Doctor Who obsession soon, but just to get started: I am awfully late to the party, I started watching the show a little over a year ago, and now have watched all of Ninth and Tenth Doctor, no more yet. So most likely much of the fandom who still is around has already had all the discussions I want to have, years ago too. But who knows, maybe there still are people who'd love to talk about these things, or at least read my ramblings. Maybe there are other latecomers like me, or people who've been waiting to get some new blood into the fandom. I'm going to give it a try. At worst, I'll still have a place where I've put my ramblings and can look at them later. At best, anything could come out of it.

So, a little about me before we start. The basic info: I'm a woman in my thirties, eternal fangirl and not feeling as grown-up as women in their thirties are supposed to be. I live in Finland, and I speak Finnish as my native language, but I'm comfortable enough using English a lot. I've done LJ before, I've done other fandoms before, but I felt like a fresh start with this journal, because it's been some years and I don't want to feel like I'm going back to the old thing, especially since it'll be all new fandoms I'll talk about here.

Aurora is not my real name, though I might wish it were. I feel vaguely silly about the username I chose, because it sounds a bit like something I would have taken back when I was 16 years old and still had unicorn posters on my walls. But want to know how difficult it is to find a decent, pronounceable and memorable username without random numbers that hasn't been taken? I came upon this name one evening when I was walking home, there was a most gorgeous sunset on a partly cloudy sky, and I thought about how much I've always loved sunsets and sunrises with clouds, painted all sorts of blazing colours by the sun. The name might be a bit fluffy, but I like it.

And really, I'm creating this for a fandom that includes a character called River Song. How much do I need to excuse myself?

A handful of random or less random bits of information about me before we launch head first into fandom things:

- I'm inordinately fond of tea. A bit of a tea snob I am, too, all about loose-leaf tea and pots and considering my favourite types of green tea and trying to find a delicious enough Darjeeling and so forth. But in a pinch I'll throw the snobbery to the wind and have any kind of tea - well, almost. Not Lipton's Yellow Label. But most others will do to satisfy my addiction if I'm deprived of access to my own substantial collection of teas.

- I'm bisexual, though more likely to be attracted to fictional characters and stories than real people, it seems. Not that I would mind finding a partner who isn't fictional, if it ever works out. As it is, I'm single and ever falling in love with stories.

- Creative writing is one of my biggest passions.

- I have a day job and I'm not going to speak of it here.

- I adore theatre, especially musicals.

- I'm usually quite the bookworm, too. I read most kinds of things, but the majority is genre fiction such as fantasy, scifi and historical fiction. I will occasionally launch into tirades about how genre fiction is not any worse or lower quality or less meaningful to people than fancy award-winning literary fiction.

- I love stargazing and astronomy, though I've yet to become more earnest about it than just looking at stars on dark nights, learning constellations and reading the occasional popular science book on astronomy. I'm thinking of starting by buying binoculars some time soonish.

- I'm generally a bit of an amateur science geek, but very amateur.

- I'm a friendship enthusiast, and the thing I love most is bonding with other people who love the same kind of things as I do and are willing to talk a crazy amount about them, and then do other things together as well. I would say the most important things to me in my life are friends, creativity and fannish obsessions.

- Some other things I love: chocolate, pretty notebooks, music, ballet (watching, can't do any myself), flowers, animals, trees. A non-exhaustive list.

About fandoms: there's no hard-and-fast rules about what I get attracted to, except maybe this one: I'm a characters junkie and an emotions junkie. Anything I love has to have engaging characters, emotional depth and interesting relationships between characters. I want to have interesting, active female characters, and I want to have male characters who are more than just the standard male stereotypes, I want to have three-dimensional characters who matter to each other and who I can care about. I like characters who are more than what meets they eye at a first glance.

I don't usually care about real-world relationship dramas and such - there needs to be some intriguing save-the-world story going around these fabulous characters, and preferably something about the world that's at least a bit off compared to the one we know. Slash potential and queer characters are lovely things when available. I'm a sucker for non-romantic relationships like friendship and family being made much of. I love to see same-sex bonding, whether it's friendship, family, same-sex romance or anything else.

I love things that have a balance between fun and depth, light and dark; neither pure fluff nor pure angsty drama. I guess the biggest deal is feeling that the creators love what they are doing, that the story is made with love and devotion and it radiates out to me. And that it looks outside stereotypes and boxes. I like good, strong stories, but I'm much more likely to forgive plotholes and worldbuilding holes than shoddy characterisation and lack of emotion. Finally, I tend to be a bit of a monomaniac in my fandoms, loving one thing hugely for a long time and occasionally having smaller obsessions on the side. I expect Doctor Who will stick for some time. My interests list can be something of a hint as to what else I love, but well, if I keep writing this journal, you'll see from the posts what catches my attention. I expect most fandom things will be written publicly. If I write more private-life stuff it will most likely to be locked.

To end with, I'll say that if anyone comes along who shares at least some fannishness / interests with me, thinks we might get along and would like to get to know me better, please feel free to start following me! Though I'd prefer to get a comment or a message saying why you do so (provided I didn't friend you first or we haven't talked a lot on some community already), so I know you're really someone with shared interests and such, not just someone who randomly adds people without much common ground. I am doing this to get into contact with people who share some of the same passions.