#I'm having an identity crisis of sorts (or rather; I'm finally acknowledging that it's been going on for a long while now)

[viktor-sinclaire]

hi it's me with a post you can ignore, I just have literally nowhere else to vent so i might as well do it here hahahaaaa

feeling so fucking useless all the time lately. Just absolutely useless.

Unsatisfied with everything I do related to art or any of my regular passions. It's like nothing I do is appealing to me anymore.

I have all these lofty ambitions, but at the same time i have no actually good ideas. My creativity is at an all time low, and it's pathetic.

Stuck fighting with myself about who I am and who I want to be, forcing myself to grin and be happy when I'm not. I'm NOT who I am anymore. I'm someone else, someone different.

I don't feel like what I thought "myself" was, for my childhood. I'm too different now to be that same person.

I have a future. I have a fiancé. I have a job, and I'm studying for my career. I have things going for me that I'm happy about. That isn't the issue.

But so much of what I used to be is gone now. My creativity, my free time and motivation, everything is gone or severely stunted. It's really fucking with me in terms of identity, because of how my brain links and associates things to each other.

Who am I? Am I who I was meant to be, or am I poor imitation of what i think I'm supposed to be? How do I get my passion back, my creativity, my inspiration?

I just want to feel comfortable and normal, for once in my life.

[circular-time]

I wrote a rant about my dashed hopes for Season 13 months ago, during Comic Con I think? I never posted it, because I didn't want to be a wet blanket, and it was long and rambly, and maybe I just needed to get it off my chest in private. On the other hand, I'm still mourning something that really mattered to me, and I want to make a space for that before the new season starts.

WHILE acknowledging that I am not owed anything as a fan. Doctor Who has to keep changing and regenerating or it will stagnate and die. It's just my bad luck that it looked like the show was headed in a direction I've wanted for decades, and then it didn't.

[Spoilers to S13 trailers as of October 30]

TL;DR: I want a SF show with a BFF-ship between two women in the same vein as broships like those between Watson and Holmes, Kirk and Spock, Fraser and Jay, Scully and Mulder. Yes, I've gotten hit with the Thasmin bug too, but that really isn't the point.

The point is, women in the real world tend to form strong friendships and Get Shit Done thereby, and that's what I relate to. I went to a women's college. Most of my friendships and relationships have been with women. Much like PoC, I crave seeing my reality exist in the media I consume. But the last time I saw that dynamic portrayed on TV was Xena and Gabrielle over 20 years ago. It's a blind spot in an industry dominated by male writers and producers, who don't know how to portray women's friendships (And yet male bro-ships are common in all media formats).

I believe this is a loss for everybody. It omits a huge swath of human existence. Plus it misses out on a powerful interpersonal dynamic that's perfect for an effective team of adventurers/problem solvers in science fiction.

Before Xena, the last BFF-ship I can remember was Nyssa and Tegan working together in episode 1 of Castrovalva, while the Doctor was unconscious. The audios occasionally allude to their being BFFs, but again, probably thanks to male writers' blind spots, they almost never act like it, and seldom pull off anything through BFF Teamwork (tm). Barbara's friendships with Susan and Vicki were great, but she was more of a mom figure for them.

Since the Doctor's usually a he, there are very few opportunities for BFF relationships to occur on my favorite show. Thirteen's regeneration offered such a chance. I think it was even more important for Chibnall to reestablish that 3 companions are possible, and I loved the fam for two seasons. But there were very few points when Yaz and the Doc tackled something together.

Meanwhile, the synergy between Jodie and Mandip in real life was exactly the sort of BFF chemistry I wanted to see more of onscreen. But it didn't seem to occur to Chibnall and the writers to let some of that bleed into their characters.

Instead, they kept having the male characters tell Yaz and Thirteen about themselves. Ryan reminds Yaz she's a cop, the only time that thorny issue has been addressed. He has a heart-to-heart with the Doctor to help her process her identity crisis, telling her who he thinks she is and how to feel about it. And that's after the Master plays Thirteen's Evil Psychotherapist.

Graham has that lovely scene on the Cyber-ship where he talks about how impressed he is by Yaz. And when it comes time to broach the Thasmin question, we don't hear it from Yaz; instead, it's Captain Jack intuiting Yaz's unspoken feelings, comparing her relationship to the Doctor with HIS relationship to the Doctor, advising her how to cope with those feelings.

Midway through S12, I started to notice how often we saw Yaz and the Doctor as people, rather than plot agents, mostly through the eyes of the guys.

So when Ryan and Graham chose to stay behind, while I will miss them both, I couldn't help getting excited. FINALLY, the writers would have to write Yaz and the Doc doing stuff together and relating to one another, without mediating their characters through a male POV. We'd had two seasons of a TARDIS family, which I'd enjoyed, and now I was getting the female-buddy show I've always wanted, at least for one shortened season! I was so stoked.

But when I came online the next day, all hyped to talk about Team BFF, people were talking about this Bishop chap. Who? The streaming service on which I'd watched Revolution of the Daleks had not included an S13 trailer. So I hadn't gotten the memo.

I tracked down the missing trailer. And lo, my hopes were dashed. Yaz and the Doctor weren't even IN IT. It was all about this John Bishop guy's experiences; the Doctor was an enigmatic side character in HIS story, instead of Yaz and the Doctor being the protagonists (or even present) in the trailer for what I'd been thinking of as "their" season.

See why I was disappointed?

And then the interviewer at Comic-Con spent more time talking to Bishop's actor than Mandip or even Jodie, and I wrote the rant that I didn't post until now— extensively edited to remove the claws.

I'm avoiding trailers and spoilers now, as I usually do before the season starts. The fewer my expectations, the better I'll be able to take it as it comes (good advice from Chesterton.)

And I promise I will do that, instead of sitting there with my fingers in my ears griping because the writers and showrunners didn't magically cater to the precise tastes and wishes of the One True Fan (me) they don't even know exists.

I'll hold onto a glimmer of hope for Team BFF in spite of Mr Third Wheel. Maybe Chibnall's team will respond to the enthusiasm of those who are big fans of Thirteen and Yaz, instead of the frustrations of those who are already looking ahead to a new Doctor and showrunner even before this season has aired. Maybe they'll realize that hey, the one and only time you have two female leads in SF, you make the most of it. But I've tamped my hopes way, way down so as to be able to enjoy what we're given, even if I don't get what I wanted.