#and i'm performing BADLY the audience is NOT PAYING ATTENTION and when they do it's because i tripped and knocked over

[macroglossus]

i know this is like. ironic i guess to say but i think that my habit of overanalyzing and picking apart all of my actions and reactions to everything and pathologizing the mostly innocuous/unremarkable things i do has really just like. made it so it doesn't even feel like the things i do belong to me so much as they belong to someone who's performing in the way they assume someone would do if given x set of circumstances and y set of recurrent behaviors. or something. do i ever really feel sadness without the conscious action of "here is what sadness might feel like, here is where sadness might feel in the body, am i actually sad or am i just parodying what i've seen people do when they're sad and i don't even realize it." just feel like i'm observing and commenting on what i do instead of actually doing anything of note

[tossawary]

There has to be a term already for when stories accumulate this... "narrative debt" that they end up not paying back. When stories fail to stick the landing when it comes to character development or thematic development, a mismatch between what the beginning of the story apparently constructed and what the final scenes ultimately ended up being.

I want to compare it to "The Empty Mystery Box Problem", almost, where the story lays on twisty element after twisty element to pull you into some great mystery, only to ultimately reveal that the writers never had a cool explanation for any of this and were pretty much just jerking the audience around to keep them watching for as long as possible. It has a similar feeling of investing your attention, only to get nothing satisfying and to feel betrayed for caring.

There's a disconnect between author and audience. A sense that perhaps the author, who has their own visions in mind, is not even aware of what they ended up depicting in the execution. As an audience member, I do sometimes have to ask myself, "Was I just projecting my own arcs onto this while the author wanted to do something different? Am I upset just because I didn't get the resolution I anticipated?" And sometimes I come to the conclusion that, no, if the author always intended for the story what they claimed, then they did it badly, and the parts that I found resonant were definitely there, just... perhaps done accidentally and/or carelessly.

Like, let's say that there's some show that ends up depicting a protagonist who has substance abuse issues.

The show repeatedly shows the audience that the protagonist feels dependent on alcohol, we see lots of shots of them drinking, often at very inappropriate times. As the plot goes on, the show even appears to be showing us the consequences of this addiction, in that the character's relentless over-drinking apparently negatively affects their job performance, their love life, their relationships with friends and family. The character is miserable, perhaps even explicitly expresses some of their depressed feelings, and it seems obvious that taking a known depressant is a big part of this tangle. There may even be some looming threat that if the protagonist doesn't get this issue under control or get help, there will be even more serious consequences.

So, we've spent aaaaall of this screentime dwelling on this obvious character problem, but then... well, one way for the story to handle it poorly is to just not handle it. It's just never really addressed. A potentially great character arc about someone struggling with addiction just fizzles out because the plot climax takes up so much space that you think... maybe the writers... somehow forgot that they made unhealthy alcohol dependence an enormous part of the character's life? Maybe???

Like, there's not even a visual cue at the end that the character is now making an effort to tackle their addiction or something. There's not even a single line of dialogue in the epilogue to tell us that the protagonist went through rehab and they're sober now or something. What you may have read as a very serious problem just vanishes overnight. A story element that ate up aaaaall that screentime just never gets any satisfying resolution.

I'm not saying here that I need to see the story handhold a character through the rehabilitation process. It's not a requirement that all characters overcome their addiction by the end of the story. Sometimes, a story ends a little sadly, yeah, or is an outright tragedy. Sometimes, one problem is solved and another sticks around. I just think it's disorienting when I THOUGHT that the story was trying to actually say something about substance abuse, they spent all this fucking time showing us scenes that revolved around that element, and it turns out that the writers were like, "Oh, yeah, I guess! We weren't really thinking about that as a serious problem. We mostly just had the protagonist drinking all the time because it looked cool, and I guess that part ties in pretty well with how they were fucking up their life, actually, but we dropped it because we didn't think it was important."

The OTHER way for a story to handle an arc like this poorly is to do a total reversal at the end. The author is not only blissfully unaware that they have been telling a nuanced story about substance abuse until now, they don't even think that addiction is real. The ending yells really loudly: "Not ONLY is this character's drinking actually NOT a problem! It helps them save the day! And also every other character has been super mean to them about this; everyone else needs to grovel at the protagonist's feet and apologize for saying super mean things like, 'Don't you think it's inappropriate to show up drunk to a child's birthday party?' Because the WORLD would have ENDED if the badass protagonist hadn't been doing the objectively correct thing of being hammered all of the time."

At which point, the only thing to do is leave the show behind, because caring about it is a waste of time. But it's hard to stop thinking about it because the show paid all of this time... into a narrative element that felt SO obvious and crucial and like it was going somewhere... and it was an accident??? Like, the story was good when it was making all of these interesting promises, until the end came around and it turns out that it couldn't pay the bills and/or never had any intention of paying.

"The Empty Mystery Box Problem" except the box is wide open the entire fucking time and there's cool stuff in it, but the writers apparently aren't paying attention to the box or what they're putting in it!?!?!

[sinkat-arts]

Semi-professional data-science-y thoughts from a UX designer re: 10% kudos to hits ratio ahead.

tl;dr: As everyone has already said, it's Not Great. Just read the tags and summary to decide if you want to read something.

tl;dr2: ... and I took that personally.

Alright, no one asked for this, but the post of someone saying they only read fics that have 1 kudos per 10 hits is floating around twitter. Since it's part of my job to pay close attention to analytics to evaluate the success of my designs and user flows, I figured I'd just... info dump. It's aggravating that at least one person is out here using a terrible metric based on a misleading piece of data to ignore whole swaths of amazing stories.

"Hits" is raw data, and that's pretty useless! In the case of AO3, it shows any entity accessing the fic, once per 24 hour period (so if you hit a fic 4 times in one day, it'll only count the first time as a "hit". It will restart your count the next day.). It does not weed out junk/irrelevant data. This includes: - People who keep the tab open for weeks at a time so it refreshes when the tab is focused. - People who visit often to reread. - People coming back every time a new chapter is released. - Authors visiting often to reread / edit. - People who were never going to read because they weren't the target audience based on the tags / summary. - Web crawlers. Bots. Etc, etc, and on and on. What you want are good faith hits from your target audience.

You can only leave kudos ONCE, regardless of how many times you visit.

Which means that a better measurement to get accurate conversation would take into consideration only UNIQUE visitors who spent a significant amount of time on the page, indicating that they read at least enough of the fic to indicate that they are actually part of the target demo. THAT'S the number you compare to the number of kudos received. (Note that this is still a bit of a gray area since someone can open the story and just leave it open without reading. Short of looking over someone's shoulder, this is the best you can do... unless AO3 adds heatmaps to our stats page, which I don't see happening any time soon, haaa.)

EVEN IF the data itself were good, a 10% conversion rate is astronomical as a KPI (key performance indicator, a measure of success). So we're clear, a "conversion" is an instance of a person seeing the thing (your fic) and doing what you want them to do (leaving a kudo). Not that you can really compare fic satisfaction to an ecommerce funnel, but your average conversion rate on, say, a marketing splash page is LESS THAN 3%. If you hit 5% on your campaign, you're having a pizza party in the office, guys. And marketing campaigns can be incredibly sophisticated affairs, fueled by massive research efforts, seo work, algorithms based on user behavior and all kinds of creepy ass data collection, etc. Fic promos are... you know. We chuck them up on social media and pray people see them.

So not only are hits as shown in AO3 a very poor metric to calculate conversion, a 10% conversion rate as a MINIMUM bar for entry is just ridiculous.

Clearly, I've thought about this a lot. I've gotten stuck watching my "conversion rate" go down as hits increased but the kudos didn't move. I've felt badly - so badly - about my proudest moment (where writing is concerned), go nowhere after I finished it. Thinking about it in terms of realistic conversion rates helps me, so I'm mostly sharing this information for anyone else out there it may help.

Super cool that that person is happy with their method of finding fics to read. They're depriving themselves of some really awesome stories, though. A far better way to decide whether or not to read something is to use the search function and filters to narrow things down and then simply read tags and summaries.

And if you start reading and don't like the style... nothing is keeping you there. You can bounce (which, hey, a bounce rate is another metric that would be far more handy than a raw hit counter).

Anyway... behold, my absolute failure of a fic (which resulted in wonderful comments that have made me cry because folks were moved or took the time to leave interesting related information or drew things for me or still periodically send me really cute bears).

[destinyc1020]

Technically that anon isnt wrong, studios pour significant amounts of money to campaign for oscar nominations, and studios hire PR firms, consultants and strategiests just to catch the attention voters. Im not trying to undermine austin nomination, I think he did a good enough job to deserve a nomination, but oscars are more about who has the best campaigns, stories they kinda dont judge on the performance alone. If they were judging on performance alone, than the nominations would have looked very different especially last year when the lead actor category was fairly weak compared to previous years and many international actors last year who received rave reviews from audiences critics and from film festivals but b/c they didnt campaign (due to lack of funding compared to studios) in addition to the fact that the academy cares very little about films that exist outside of NA and Europe.

To clarify all the men who were nominated deserve it but we both know there are so much politics behind the scenes. Paying voters is a real thing ( harvey weinstein literally was accused of doing this during the shakespeare in love campaign).

Well WB had money to spare, and "Elvis" was their biggest ticket to the awards season, so yea, they did what all other studios do, which is pay for their actors to go on the campaign trail. All actors do it when the studio is backing them. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I don't see anything wrong with that?

BTW, Harvey was bullying ppl and talking badly about Saving Private Ryan and buttering people up (from what I heard) to push Shakespeare In Love (his Miramax film), but I don't recall reading anywhere that he was actually PAYING people to vote a certain way. 🥴

Are you sure about that? I wanna see those receipts. 🤔 Cuz that sounds illegal.

Anyway, Harvey's in prison now, and I'm sure he's been made an example of to others lol 😆 😂

[your-nanas-house]

Fire-eater

pairing: Jerome Valeska X Reader, Jeremiah Valeska X Reader

warnings: ???

words: 1451

summary: Jerome wants to ask out the fire-eater

note: Sorry for the mistakes and the English. Thank you @valeskasknife and @itsyouimagines .

.............................................................................................

Circuses are a form of entertainment that includes something for almost everyone. As a touring unit of clowns, acrobats, animal acts and a host of other performers, the circus has a history dating back to the heyday of the Roman Empire and so was Haly's circus which also had performers: acrobats, clowns, a snake dancer, the blind soothsayer, the circus strongman, contortionist and fire-eater.

Almost everyone had a role there, and everyone was always on stage at every show, but no one is really as they show themselves to the audience.

Jerome and Jeremiah didn't have their own show there in the circus, they just looked after the animals and other things.

There weren't many people there who were the same age as the twins apart from Y/n, the fire eater and her sister who was a year older, she was the contortionist and her name was Ashley.

Jerome had had a crush on Y/n for several years but although he wanted to get closer to her he never really succeeded, the girl often spent time with John Grayson or kept to herself, she got along with everyone, she talked to him and didn't treat him badly, she was nice unlike the others but they weren't best friends neither were they engaged as he would have liked. He just had to be able to take a step forward and ask her out but he couldn't, he froze every time he stopped in front of her, it was a feeling he hated, that strange thing he felt in his stomach and the heat rising in his cheeks or the blood rushing down to the south.

He wanted to ask her one night after the show, before Jeremiah could do something and ruin everything.

It was supposed to be just like any other night, everyone was supposed to perform as usual and all the things were ready for the performers or so Y/n had been told as she walked out of her trailer putting on her coat and heading towards the backstage of the tent where the screams were coming from. When she arrived she saw Haly angry at Ashley, with the other performers getting ready and watching the scene, the girl approached Jerome and Jeremiah without looking away from the fight "what's going on?" the two quickly turned to look at her answering together "Haly is yelling at your sister" she snorted a laugh smiling "I can see that but why? other guys?" Haly sighed moving towards her touching her shoulder "we'll find a way to fix it Y/n, don't worry" Ashley sighed rolling her eyes "why is it so important that she perform? It's just a game of flame" the girl raised an eyebrow smiling amused "I'm not understanding what the problem is" she helped Mary with her costume listening to her, "there's no liquid you use to create the flame and Ashley who was supposed to take care of it didn't do it" Y/n sighed reflecting "there's nothing left of it?" Haly shook his head "no, but we'll find a way".

The contortionist rolled her eyes again before walking away "I don't understand why it's so important, it's just the kids who like her trick" "kids take most of the seats at every show and if you think that's the situation you should pay more attention to the audience during other people's shows instead of fucking someone" Jerome hinted a smile holding back his laughter and Jeremiah held back a smile, Ashley turned to look at her "say that again, sweetie" she smiled innocently "I don't think that's necessary, cupcake" the contortionist narrowed her eyes before walking away insulting everyone.

A few minutes had passed since she had left and Y/n still hadn't had a chance to speak amongst all the voices that were trying to figure out what to do and how to solve the problem before the show started "it's not a problem...I do it with powders, it won't come out like liquid but it'll come out something" John thought for a moment frowning as he was interrupted by Jerome's voice "isn't that harder and more dangerous?"

Y/n turned around slightly surprised and nodded "it is but I learned it first with the powders and then with the liquid so...I'll go back to the beginning and try not to burn myself" Haly touched her shoulder again "are you sure?" the girl nodded "I am but it'll be different and less impressive than the other one so I'll have to figure something out" the man shook his head "no, it's ok, just do it with the powders without anything too spectacular, do you have the powder you need? "she smiled nodding "hmmm...no, I need baking powder" John snorted a laugh "baking powder?" she nodded seriously "baking powder or cocoa but I don't want cocoa in my mouth so baking powder, more flammable more of an effect" Lila approached slowly "or you can do the show with me" Y/n chuckled becoming serious quickly answering "you had your hopes, Lila" she thanked Jeremiah who had gone to get the baking powder entering the tent to finish getting ready.

Her time came as the Graysons exited the stage, John stopped next to her lightly massaging her shoulders "it'll be fine" Y/n nodded slightly "I hope so" she smiled turning around hopping to calm herself "do you have one of the usual jokes before you go in?" the girl smiled nodding "always...What do you call an overcoat that goes up in flames? " the boy shook his head thinking about it for a moment "A blazer!" she giggled at his reaction "I regret every time I ask you that" they heard Haly's voice calling her and she sighed keeping her temper and walked in meeting Jerome's gaze smiling after sending him a wink.

The show wasn't bad, the flames were more ball shaped due to the powders but still impressive.

Unfortunately that night the ginger couldn't ask her out as he didn't get a chance to be alone with her for a moment because of his twin.

He quickly exited the trailer when he saw her come out "Y/n" the girl looked up as she continued to brush her teeth "I wanted to ask you something" she nodded smiling as best she could before Jeremiah approached not noticing Jerome "Y/n, did you resolve with your sister?" "Jeremiah.." The two boys looked at each other as she spit out the toothpaste and drank some water to rinse her mouth "you can never really solve it with Ashley, can you?" she smiled putting her toothbrush in the pocket of her gown "problems with your mother? Do you need a place to stay again? Ashley left with a blonde boy earlier" they shook their heads "no, I just wanted to make sure you were okay" the ginger with glasses smiled blushing slightly making her smile more "I'm fine, thanks" Jeremiah nodded "good night" the girl nodded shifting her gaze to Jerome murmuring "good night Miah...what did you want to tell me Jerome?" he shook his head visibly annoyed "it's not important".

The boy tried again in the morning.

He came out of the trailer when he saw her walking outside stopping again when he saw her with Grayson "I have a new one" John sighed stopping while shaking his head "no, please, I don't want to hear it" "too late" the girl giggled "Why was the firefighter lovesick? He couldn't get over his old flame" the boy huffed shaking his head smiling "see you later, yeah?" Y/n nodded still chuckling "sure, just know that my repertoire of fiery jokes isn't finished".

Jerome approached her "Y/n" the girl turned around continuing to smile "Jerome! good morning!" he smiled back at her slightly nervous for unknown reasons "thank you for getting the right flour yesterday and substituting it with the one Jeremiah gave me" "you don't have to thank me...would...would you like to go out with me?" he met her gaze seeing her smile disappear and turn into an expression of shock "go out? like...like a date? " he nodded and she smiled incredulously "you're aware that I'm not Ashley but Y/n, aren't you? we're not twins..." the ginger nodded "I'm perfectly aware of that, Y/n" the girl nodded slowly smiling from ear to ear "Yes! yes..sure, why not, I'd love to go out with you" he smiled mirroring her smile while nodding "great...have you had breakfast yet?" she shook her head agreeing to go to a café in town to have breakfast with him...

Taglist:

@gabile18

@mrsfullbuster500

@trainer--taylor

[pynkhues]

Hi! Do you think there is a before and after in your life after watching Good Girls?

I mean, I know it wasn't the best show ever haha, but what I'm trying to say is if this whole experience and everything we've talked about the plot of the show, do you feel it's taught you anything?

Hi! Y'know what? Yeah, I do. This show has meant a lot to me (in case people couldn't tell, haha), and while it's absolutely deeply flawed, I also really do believe that you can tell when the people involved care about what they're making, and I felt that with this show. There might have been oversights on a range of different levels, or different priorities, but there was also a great deal of care to things like performances, and thematic throughlines, and prop and costume symbols, and paying homage to obvious influences, especially iconography of 1960s French heist movies and 1990s erotic thrillers. It all told me that there was a team of people behind this who wanted to make something a bit different and a bit special.

Nothing in this show was ever perfect, of course it wasn't, but I don't think stories need to be – if they did, I think we'd miss out on the things that help great storytelling grow and progress, and I think we'd lose the risk component of it all too. I just think the people making the thing need to give a fuck about what they're doing, what they're trying to say, and the characters at the centre of it, and I think this show did on every level.

And yeah! Writing meta and critique for this fandom has made me a better, more attentive audience for sure, and I think that alone has been rewarding, but I also think writing fic in this fandom has helped me to develop writing muscles I didn't even know I had. In that sense, it's not even just the show, but it's the community here who've sent me questions that have made me think more deeply or helped me to articulate thoughts I was already having or debated with me (and honestly, even debates that maybe ended badly, of which there have been a few!) or with others, and the people who have prompted me to write things I might not have otherwise. I think I've learnt from all of that, and I love that because if you're not learning something every day, then what's the point of anything at all?

And y'know, while there have been things in both the show and the fandom that I've no doubt found frustrating at various times, the rewards and the delights and the magic of it all have always outweighed that, and I don't think that's something I'll ever forget either.

[sanstropfremir]

swf anon here! (also im the same person who sent in the ask about beg and gain so im excited to hear ur thoughts about them!! when i saw coca n butter use the eden concept, it made me think of gain's paradise lost for some reason. and i went to watch that and it made me miss her a lot :( i hope she's doing well)

-

mnet is very weird with this show's editing. not all the performances are shown in the episode but they do upload all the fancam clips before the episode airs. this is so they can calculate the video views and counts at the end of the mission. i believe they upload them a week before but they aren't made public to every country. ur location has to be in korea; i was lucky that someone uploaded it for this round instead of trying to navigate through blurry clips.

for this episode, only lachica, hook, and coca n butter performed (but as an audience, we've seen all the performances if that makes sense). the judges votes aren't a high percentage of their overall score. its similar to kingdom in which public votes are valued more (for kingdom it was fanvotes and for swf its video views/likes). in the last mission, ygx received the lowest scores from the judges but because of their video views/likes, their rank went to one of the top 3 and they were able to escape being eliminated. judges' comments have been shorter and shorter as opposed to the beginning where there were definitely more attention on them. i think its because of the public's backlash? maybe that also influenced their scoring.

i think mnet should just have the episodes be the fancam clips instead of editing it so weirdly where u cant see anything.

i think it reminded you of paradise lost because they tried to do it sexy and didn't really succeed lmao. also you are a pretty longtime follower then thank you <333333

ok the logic with counting the video views by releasing all the performances at the same time actually makes a lot of sense, i suspect they probably changed it because of how fucked the kindgom voting and streaming (there were actually streaming/views for kingdom too, the votes just had more weight. why did the kingdom scores involve so much math) ended up being. it does make the episode editing really weird though, but i don't really know what a better solution would be, honestly.

they're probably shortening the judges' comments because now it's not the judges bringing in the viewers, it's the dancers themselves. at this point i don't really think the judges actually matter that much, they're just kind of there as a part of the structure of this type of show. obviously i love boa and she probably says smart things and i'm sure taeyong is trying his darndest, but the show's been on long enough now that nobody is paying attention to them.

also yes i agree it's annoying as fuck when they don't just edit the full performances into the goddamn episodes like come ON. i get that reactions are funny and to be completely fair we got some beautiful ones during kingdom but i think it's different for swf because mnet REALLY does not know how to film dance. like at all. it's painful. obviously i yell about it all the time (although for these most recent fancams they actually kept the camera relatively still, so maybe someone finally heard me complaining), but from the clips i have seen that are taken from the full episodes it is so painful how badly the editing botches the flow and timing of these choreos. when will they learnnnnn???

[scifinal]

DW s12e10: It's Quite Unfortunate That This Child Keeps On Regenerating

It's only fitting that the first post on a blog called "SciFinal" should be about a season finale.

Not that fitting is the fact that in said post I'm going to begin where it all started for me.

Part One: How I Even Got into This Mess of a Show in the First Place

While I call myself a huge Doctor Who fan, even a – *gasp* – Whovian, I must admit I am not as familiar with the franchise as I would like to be; I've seen the new show, I've seen Torchwood (though, admittedly, I had to force myself to finish the fourth season – but that's a story for another day), I've listened to a handful of audio dramas (including Kaldor City, which I consider to be canon for both DW and Blake's 7) – mostly Torchwood audio dramas, but who cares, – I've read a couple of comics, I've got a novel or two somewhere on my bookshelf, I've seen the first couple of seasons of the classic show, but that's about it. I can't say I grew up with it – it wasn't on TV when I was a kid, there isn't an official Ukrainian dub, et cetera, et cetera. I first heard about it when I was about thirteen, when my classmate did a project about something they liked – and was pretty dismissive of my peers' hobbies at the time, believing myself to be somewhat above them, so I didn't pay much attention.

Then somebody finally pressured me into watching it (I believe I was fifteen or something back then) and I loved it. The first two episodes of the first season, I mean. I watched those, texted my friend something like "consider me a Whovian now!" and abandoned the show completely only to return to it maybe several years later.

I loved it. This time, for real.

Doctor Who has been with me ever since that time, it has a big soft spot reserved for each and every Doctor ever in my heart, and for each and every companion. I know full well it's cheesy, and it's stupid, and it's technobabble-y, and it's glorious in all of its cheesy technobabble-y stupidity.

And I hate this finale.

Part Two: Doctor, Why

I hate this finale – because I hate Chris Chibnall. Mind you, not the gentleman himself (I don't even know what he looks like, and I can't be bothered to Google), I hate what he did to Doctor Who.

Now, when it was revealed that the would replace Steven Moffat I felt... nothing. What did you expect? I had no idea who the man was. I know now he's made Broadchurch, and I know he wrote a bunch of stuff for Torchwood back in the day, including Cyberwoman. I had to drop Broadchurch because of how well-handled the depressing atmosphere was, and I love the flawed, dumb, sexy-cyber-bikinied, almost-fifteen-minutes-of-Ianto's-whining-including (I know because some time ago I literally cut almost every single moment of Gareth David-Lloyd whimpering, moaning, groaning, screaming, and mugging at the camera out of the episode and made those bits and pieces into a beautiful clip show called "I HATE THIS" to explain exactly why his face was and still is so punchable) mindless fun that is Cyberwoman (this is also one of the two episodes in which they actually do something fun with the pterodactyl living inside Torchwood's underground base). The latter also led to the creation of one amazing in how it develops Ianto's character audio drama entitled "Broken". I love Broken. I am now forcing you to look at its cover because of how much I love it.

Here we go. Now, back to the point of me rambling pointlessly

In his video "Sherlock Is Garbage, and Here's Why", a well-known YouTuber hbomberguy pointed out how Steven Moffat's problem is that he is more than capable of writing a good one-off episodes, but ultimately fails at managing multiple complex, overarching stories, as visible when you look at the difference between Moffat's individual episodes and his run on the show.

Now, I believe that Chris Chibnall suffers from the same affliction: he's a good screenwriter but a terrible, terrible showrunner. Sure, he's made Broadchurch, but Broadchurch, in its essence, was a complete singular story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There were no bigger, incomplete arcs expanding at the expense of other episodes, and the show did exactly what it was originally designed to do: it told an uninterrupted story.

Here comes Chris Chibnall's run on Doctor Who.

Now, while Steven Moffat was ultimately not very good at managing overarching stories, he tried to do so nonetheless, and the fans seemed to like his attempts. And while I can't be sure as to whether it was Chris' original vision for the show or he and his co-writers were merely trying to emulate Moffat, he attempted the same. A friend of mine has even pointed out how, to her, it was painfully obvious how the writers of the finale were desperately trying to copy Moffat's style (to give you some context, she grasped it from a 30-second clip of the CyberMasters' reveal, and that clip basically consisted of me filming my laptop's screen and laughing at their design, making the video wobbly and the audio distorted). At the time of writing this post this friend hasn't seen a single episode of Chibnall's era and, as far as I know, has no wish to do so – mainly because of two reasons that both have something to do with the finale:

Somebody's already spoiled it for her, so who cares;

I ranted to her about how shit this finale is and now she hates everything about Chibnall era.

I am very sorry for the latter, since I genuinely believe there are some nice episodes in these seasons, and I especially like the "historical" ones, they really are quite a lot of fun, I like Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison fighting badly CG-ed alien scorpions, I love Lord Byron and Mary Shelley running around a haunted house trying to escape from a Cyberman (even though it's all too similar to the Agatha Christie episode from Russel T Davies' run), I adore that episode about Rosa P–– oh, wait, no, that one was crap and ripped off Blake's 7... Anyway, I love Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, I am a big fan of Graham, I like Ryan just fine, and I can put up with Yaz, even though it's been two seasons and I've still got no idea what's her personality supposed to be, and I absolutely love the new Master (he reminds me of a cute little pug with a big Tommy gun). There is plenty of good stuff in these two seasons, they are lots of fun to watch, but this finale... Oh god, this finale.

Part Three: We Had All of Time and Space at Our Fingertips and We Ended Up with This

We are getting to the point of this whole thing. I would love to begin with the obvious, the twist, but there's so much wrong with this who-cares-how-many-parter than this one big thing.

It is inept. It is impotent. It is incompetent. It is bad at almost everything except its okay camera work, somewhat good (for a British TV show, I mean) effects, and its really solid performances.

Its editing is tone-deaf to the extreme. There is a moment in the final episode where Ko Sharmas asks who will be the first to cross the Boundary and step into the unknown, and immediately it cuts to Yaz walking towards it, all fast and silent. I would love to show you a clip of it, but I don't have one and I can't force myself to download the episode and sit through this shitshow again just to present you with a ten-second clip. Nonetheless, that part is not edited like a dramatic moment. You edit comedies this way. Bad comedies. Bad editors edit bad comedies this way.

Its plot is incoherent. There are several plot threads in this finale, and they're managed in a way that doesn't make the viewer care about all of them at the same time, rather the viewer goes "oh, I've completely forgotten this was happening" and then, before they can even begin to care, the show cuts to something else. It's all over the place and oh so annoying.

The plot armour is painfully obvious despite every attempt to disguise it. There wasn't a single, solitary second when I believed the Doctor was really going to sacrifice herself and, lo and behold, here comes the old guy ex machina to do it for her. The only questions I was asking at that moment were "How are the writers going to prevent the Doctor's death now that they've seemingly created themselves a way to go on forever?" and "How can Whittaker care so much about her performance in this scene she's literally almost crying?". I wholeheartedly related to the Master asking "So why are we still here?" and shout–– hiss–– mumbl–– whatever-ing "Come on, come on, come on!" – at that point I've suffered through at least forty-five minutes of utter nonsense, people going preachy, religious Cybermen with Dalek motivations, that absolutely ludicrous scene in the previous episode when the show was trying its worst to make me perceive autonomous flying Cyber-heads with laser eyes as a serious threat, a shit twist and... Oh.

I've got to finally touch on the shit twist, haven't I?

It doesn't make sense. No, I mean it. I guess it makes sense from the show's writers' standpoint to retcon everything in a way that would allow them to go on forever without having to come up with a way to circumvent limited regenerations, yes. And I won't be touching upon all the lore people say this twist has ruined. No. It doesn't make sense as it is.

The twist is revealed to us by a madman that claims to have hacked into a database, claims to possess control over the Doctor's mind, and gives the Doctor and the audience no actual solid proof that the Timeless Child is, indeed, the Doctor. We have Ruth, sure, and she's nice enough (damn, I want that vest), and she's a Timelord that happens to own a TARDIS that looks like a blue police telephone box, and she calls herself the Doctor. Here's Ruth:

I really like Ruth. She also makes no sense from the show's timeline standpoint, since the Doctor's Type 40 TARDIS only got stuck looking like a police box in 1963, so there's no reason for the Doctor to not remember being her.

We also know that the Judoon have identified Ruth as "the Fugitive"... except in one of their previous appearances in the show they weren't able to identify their targets exactly and thus were seeking out non-humans. There is a possibility that they were only looking for a Time Lord on Earth.

You know what? It's possible that Ruth is actually the Master messing with the Doctor. I have just as much proof of this as I have of the fact that the Doctor is some kind of an endlessly regenerating superbeing.

But this is not the most maddening thing here. I loathe it, but I don't loathe the twist itself: I loathe its lifelessness, I loathe how empty, how unemotional, almost robotic it feels. When somebody'd spoiled the finale for me, I got angry, and I started asking questions, and when later I saw the actual thing...

This gif. I can't even explain how accurate it is. I stood there, in the middle of my kitchen, episode paused, holding a cup of cold tea and desperately looking around as if in my surroundings I could somehow find that emotional reaction that this show failed to evoke. I was ready to burst into tears of how empty it felt, and how empty I felt, and how the same show that has Christopher Eccleston go from literally foaming at the mouth with pure hatred to shocked silence in a matter of second because of one sentence that you, a viewer, can't help but be astonished by failed to make me feel the tiniest speck of literally any emotion. And slowly, I felt that vast void in my chest fill with sheer, pure, flaming hatred for the person who made me feel nothing, for the story that left me not bored – but empty.

And the next moment, in its own unique way of being absolutely tone-deaf, the show introduces the CyberMasters, looking ridiculous, being asinine in concept, making me burst into laughter with their dumb design. Wow.

So.

Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who is no longer a show. Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who isn't even, as somebody on Stardust said, a fan fiction. It's a rollercoaster. A lackluster rollercoaster that lifts you from the vast caverns of frozen hell, devoid of any life whatsoever, soulless and abandoned, to the heavenly torture of being so bad, so utterly awful and ridiculous, that you can't help but laugh as you watch something you used to love be distorted and deformed to the point where you can't recognise it anymore nor really care. This is what Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who has become. And I'm going to continue my ride on that grotesque rollercoaster. I'm going to pirate that ride and get on it again. Because I'm a masochist. Because I want to feel something, even if it's hatred towards those that make me feel nothing.

Because some time ago my fifteen-year-old self watched the first season and learned a lesson that I hold dear after all these years – that I can't abandon hope, and that someday, somehow, things are going to get better. That the future is being written right now. That the future can change.