#but also i'm very much sticking my head in the sand and not applying that lesson to my own life lol

[businesstiramisu]

I am re-reading Worth the Candle

[fictionadventurer]

Reverse unpopular opinion on Moffat Who?

Oh, gosh. I've been undergoing an internal Moffat Who renaissance lately--I haven't watched any, but it's been coming to mind so often, and it's really driving home just how formative those stories were to me--so I'm not sure I'll be able to arrange my thoughts coherently, but I'll try for a few bullet points.

There is so much writing skill on display in his episodes. The plots are so tight--set-up and payoff on a detailed level that you rarely see in television. The word-smithing is wonderful--he has a gift for a turn of phrase that sticks in your head, can make something poetic or pithy or just plain hilarious. The way he can grapple with big ideas and themes and still make a small, concrete story with characters you care about is just wonderful.

The style! His stuff has such a specific voice to it--certain rhythms to the dialogue, certain themes he returns to, certain things he thinks are funny. It's most obvious in the RTD era--when you hit a Moffat episode, everyone suddenly talks twice as fast. Some people might see such a distinctive style as a detriment, but in an entertainment landscape where everything can get sanded down into bland homogeny, it's refreshing to see work that is so personal and specific.

I love how his era understand that Doctor Who is a fairy tale. The fantastical entering into the ordinary. But the fantastical isn't there to save us from the boring drudgery of everyday life, but to make us appreciate just how wonderful the world--especially ordinary life--can be.

That fairy tale focus also makes his era the most explicitly Catholic of any era of Who. It understands a sacramental worldview where the ordinary and the extraordinary intertwine.

I've got major problems with how he can handle romance and sexual stuff, but when it comes to marriage, there is no one in the entertainment industry who does it better. The wedding isn't the end of the adventure, but the beginning of it. Fidelity is a grand adventure; love can get you through anything. It is beautiful.

He understands that the Doctor is a legendary heroic figure, something out of myth whose actions have saved the universe countless times--but he's also an idiot who makes colossal mistakes and wears stupid clothes. Neither side of that characterization undercuts the other one. It neither deifies nor deconstructs the Doctor.

I love how so many stories in his era build off of ideas from earlier eras. Sort of like a second draft or a remake. Digging deep into concepts that were only shallowly glanced at before. It's the fandom instinct toward meta applied to episodes that actually got on-screen.

As a showrunner, I like how he gives other writers a bit more leeway to write the episodes with their style. And I loved the arcs in Series 5 and 6 especially--a significant thread that weaves through multiple episodes, but also doesn't take away from the standalone nature of the individual stories.

He gave the Doctor a family! The Eleven-Amy-Rory-River family is about as good as it gets for companion groups, to my mind. Rory especially is one of the greatest characters in the show--showing the heroism of the ordinary, faithful man and how that can be even better than the showy heroism of the Doctor. And River is the rare companion that I can actually ship with the Doctor, because her life is as strange and time-twisted as his is.

I love that his era focuses on time travel as more than a way to get to the setting of the episode. We get to dive deep into time travel mechanics, twisting back and forth across time in a single episode, delving into time loops and cause-and-effect and out-of-order relationships, and the very human effects all this timey-wimey nonsense can have on people.

It's funny! There is so much humor while never devolving into parody. So quick-witted and clever.

It's a show run by the best kind of fan--one who likes diving in to all those nerdy details, but understands at the end of the day that it's just a show and we can have fun with it. One of my favorite Moffat moments comes in the commentary track for the Series 5 Weeping Angels two-parter. There's a point where he's just riffing mercilessly on how silly the Weeping Angels when you think about it. They can't move when they're seen--makes them kind of weak, doesn't it? Like, he imagines a group of them running into trouble: "Why didn't you invade that planet?" "Oh, sorry, we couldn't. There was an insect." This is one of his greatest creations, basically the only New Who monster (as opposed to friendly alien) deemed worthy of repeat appearances, yet instead of being arrogant over it, he's willing to poke fun at it like any other element of the show. It's just so fun.

Even if the rest of his era had been garbage, I would have loved this era for The Day of the Doctor alone. What a triumph of an anniversary special. Beautifully, intricately plotted along several timelines. Set-up and payoff in layers upon layers. Plot resolutions hidden in jokes. A way to bring back Rose that wasn't just inane fan-service but was central to the entire story. Bringing in all the Doctors in a way that didn't clutter up the episode. But best of all, it healed the wound that the Time War had wrought upon the show. The Time War had served its purpose in restarting New Who and giving new depths to the character; the episode didn't erase that. But it challenged the idea that the Doctor had to end Gallifrey for the greater good. For such an idealistic show, it had always been odd for it to argue that the ends justified the means. This episode, at last, destroyed that argument. The Doctor doesn't have to justify the way he ended the war because it can't be justified! It was horrible! So he shouldn't do it! He can be clever and kind and find a better way to save everyone! It's so wonderfully Tolkien-esque and means so, so much to me.

[csleko]

Boba Fett Helmet (Take 2)

Apparently I never actually posted the original on Tumblr. Hmm. Should I post it separately, or just combine it into this one about the new one? I'll combine them.

VERSION 1 (The not-so-good one)

I've gone into detail about advantages and disadvantages of printing in resin, and they all apply with this first attempt at printing the helmet. Resin printers generally have smaller build plates, and even though the Elegoo Saturn's main selling point was its large plate, it was still too small to print these pieces without further cutting them down. The two bottom pieces needed to be cut in half, and the dome had to be cut into quarters. Because of this, there were many gaps to fill in and seams to try to cover up, and some parts didn't line up 100%.

Also: in a rare case of the resin printer's precise detail working *against* me, you may notice a lot of polygons from the 3D model showing through despite my best sanding efforts. ALSO also: Yes, I do have to leave sticky notes for myself reminding me to leave things the hell alone while glue is drying.

My main method of filling in seams and gaps was to just drip resin into them and hit it with my UV flashlight. You can also do this to "weld" resin print pieces together, but I find it easier to use superglue to hold them together, then seal the attachment points with resin. If I spent a little more time, I probably could have completely eliminated those dome seams.

Time to paint. Did a whole coat of green, then taped the crap out of it to do the red visor part. Didn't bother taping the cheek indents because I was going to have to paint over them anyway, so it didn't matter if they got red on them. I ended up doing them by hand instead of spray painting. I also had to do the tan ear pieces by hand because I didn't have any tan spray paint.

You may notice the "brow" doesn't quite line up with the bottom, and because of that the antenna base that's supposed to sit flat against the side of the helmet...doesn't, and leaves a pretty big gap. Besides just looking wrong, this made it difficult to glue the piece on because it left a lot less contact area with the helmet. The left ear piece warped while printing, so that in addition to the brow sticking out too far kept it from sitting flat. And for some reason the antenna came out really bendy, so it drooped under the weight of the rangefinder.

So yeah! That's everything wrong with version 1, and why I decided to give it another try with my new printer.

VERSION 2

I'm glad I experimented with the Bo Katan helmet first, because I learned a lot of helpful things from that project. Like the fact that my head isn't as big as I thought, so I don't need to print large sized helmets. Also that it's better it to just wait out the hours for high-quality prints, than to rush them and try to fix the flaws afterward.

Because this helmet is slightly smaller than the first one, and my filament printer has a massive build plate, I didn't need to cut any of the pieces to fit. I was even able to print the whole dome. The helmet model consists of two bottom halves, a vent section that goes between them on the back, and the dome. Shockingly, printing them as designed does wonders for fitting them together and much more effectively minimizes gaps, seams and alignment issues.

Fortunately, the less detailed printing method made the polygons much less of a problem. Unfortunately, much sanding and filler is needed to smooth out those rough layer lines.

NOTE: I use a caulk called Kwik Seal for filling and smoothing, but if you go out to get some of this stuff to use yourself MAKE SURE you pay attention to the labels and get the white one. There's also a transparent version that comes in tubes that look exactly the same except it says "transparent." The transparent stuff SUCKS for prop making. It's VERY sticky, and according to the label it can take 2+ weeks to fully dry and cure before you can sand or paint it. The white stuff has a much more manageable consistency, isn't sticky at all, and dries in MINUTES. And yes, I did learn this the hard way. Luckily it didn't ruin anything.

And just to be sure it's absolutely as smooth as I can possibly get it, I hit it with two coats of Plasti-Dip.

And yeah! Pretty much the same painting process as the first one, since that actually worked out pretty well. Except I actually got some tan spray paint to do the ear pieces. And the stripes are actually orange this time. On version 1 the paint went on orange, but faded to an almost yellow when it dried. So I just used a darker orange. Not thrilled with how they turned out, but I decided to let it go before I ruined something trying to redo them too many times.

AND THE ANTENNA ISN'T DROOPING ANYMORE. Resin is weird sometimes. I figured it *must* have been something to do with curing it, but no amount of extra time in the UV bucket would make the first antenna less rubbery. I even tried reprinting it and modified it to make it detachable so I wouldn't have to rip the whole base apart again to change it out, but it still came out droopy. The good news is I never actually glued the rangefinder onto the first antenna, so I was able to just pop it off and stick it on the new one, and I didn't have to print another one.

The files to print this helmet can be found on Thingiverse.