mxmayor - Tumblr blog

[mxmayor]

Where the hell is my phone????

*shakes blankets one by one*

Thunk

There it is

[mxmayor]

One peculiar thing about Doctor Who Series 11 is that it feels…. almost too carefully constructed. Like, casting Jodie Whittaker is the One Big Risk they could take and everything else has to be a carefully distilled amalgam of stuff that has already been proven popular. 

Not to say that that they haven’t taken any other “risks” (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab both being a bit “controversial” amongst the stealth racist and imperialist crowd) but even those were tempered by a sort of caution, a fear of making the audience TOO uncomfortable, confronting TOO much at once

And there are a lot of elements to the “formula” and feel of Series 11 that give me the impression that they’re trying to do Tennant Era 2.0 (minus the Time War angst and melodrama) and I don’t know how to feel about that

Don’t get me wrong, I am really enjoying Series 11, it’s been pretty fucking solid so far, a lot of really interesting ideas being introduced, and I’m excited to see where they’re going with it, I just feel like it’s not going as far as it could?

Kerblam! could easily have been a really effective and scathing critique of Amazon and late capitalism as a whole (indeed it seemed like it would be at first) but at the last moment they had to pull back and make it an incoherent milquetoast “eghh…. systems arent bad actually it’s individual people being naughty…. what can ye do?”

Say what you will about the Moffat era’s many flaws (and the RTD era too for that matter) but the one thing you can’t deny is that they did take risks. Thinking in particular of the EXPLICITLY anti-capitalist themes in Thin Ice and Oxygen last year.

Can’t help wondering if this newfound caution is just a temporary aspect of the Playing-It-Safe And Regaining The Audience approach for Series 11 that might go away next year or if we’re just doomed to be stuck in a One-Step-Forward-Two-Steps-Back spiral

[mxmayor]

Evelyn Smythe, a Big Finish companion to the Sixth Doctor, taught at Sheffield Hallam University and I’m picturing her getting onto Graham’s bus every night after teaching and them having a sorta friendship/rapport.

At some point Six and Thirteen meet and Graham and Evelyn are like “Oh hey, it’s you from the bus!”

[mxmayor]

[mxmayor]

Things I want to see: Thirteen putting snacks in her fanny pack and eating during the most inappropriate times and her companions looking at her like “really??” And then she’s like “yeah I brought snacks (:”

[mxmayor]

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[mxmayor]

“There’s no good taste, there’s your taste” is a nice sentiment, but let’s not pretend there isn’t media that we enjoy precisely because it offends our aesthetic sensibilities, not in spite of it.

[mxmayor]

i have no explanation for this…

[mxmayor]

Someone: A movie can’t be wholesome and dark at the same time. Those qualities are mutually exclusive.

Me:

[mxmayor]

alright don’t be mad but. i never read the great gatsby. i know i was supposed to. yes, it was assigned to us. i even know, more or less, what happens in the book. technically, i wrote an essay about it, i think, once or twice. 

at the time, i hadn’t read any book assigned to me. ever. it wasn’t that i didn’t like to read. i loved reading. but homework took place in a function of my brain that i couldn’t access. i would sit in libraries or at my desk and just. not do my homework. i spent hours like this, days like this, years like this. just not doing what was assigned to me, no matter the consequences, no matter how badly i wanted to be doing it. i just wouldn’t. and i wouldn’t go to class because i didn’t want to deal with the fact i didn’t do the homework. and then i wouldn’t get the homework. so i didn’t do it.

i remember realizing while i was doing college applications that i had actually, real-life fucked up. that it was permanent, what i had done. that i had a C- of an average and no future to look rosy at. and i still couldn’t make myself do things. i tried to submit applications only to realize i’d shoved off the date to the very last moment. and i was fucked.

it takes me three years and two transfers and three new starts before i am actually real-life trained how to study, how to read, how to enjoy being assigned things. 

and i watch parents of my students yell at students for being the same person i was six years ago: screaming at an A-, confused at skipped classes, punishing missed homework. and these students don’t have an answer. they just don’t do things. even if they want to. and they look at me, confused and defeated and without an answer for their parents. “i just can’t,” i hear a lot, and i understand.

parents don’t like “executive dysfunction” as a reason. “anxiety” and “depression” are often misdiagnosed as “procrastinating” and “lazy”. kids just learn they’re like this. that they’re always going to be. that it’s their fault, permanently. they are surrounded by books they didn’t read. and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like suffocating.

today i started “the great gatsby.” i promise. one day, it’ll feel easy.

[mxmayor]

One of the reasons I feel so comfortable using Tumblr over other social media is because this site is clearly too incompetent to be evil.

[mxmayor]

So i went on a date to a haunted house and made friends with the girls behind us. As we’re going through, one of them is holding my hand and a guy leaps out and separates us. I panic as my date is pulling me along, I reach back for her and grab her hand in a group of three other performers and start getting out if there. After a bit I look back to check on her and I discover I’m holding the hand of a six foot tall zombie creature and not a 5'2" girl.

Cue the most terrifying realization of my life.

I had basically kidnapped this performer from his section and abandoned the girl and her friend behind us.

[mxmayor]

Unfollow me now if you support the royal family, I don’t need that kind of drama in my life. Supporters of the Jacobite rebellion can stay but you’re on thin fucking ice

[mxmayor]

[mxmayor]

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Some of you have spurned

Vulture Pony

in the tags , declaring him “illegal” or “very cursed”. Just remember that he is mobile and he can echolocate doubt

[mxmayor]

people on facebook have such sophisticated political commentary

[mxmayor]

Me intellectually: totally understands meltdowns and overloads

Me @ myself anyway: what kind of immature idiot am I, crying because there’s people and I’m tired? Literally no adult ever has done this besides me