1. Maybe it was the crappy quality on YouTube, or maybe I'm just missing something, but I for one was not so wildly thrilled about Journey's End. Despite some clear attempts at humor, it mostly felt like one plot device after another, quantity over quality. I suppose that with the set-up that The Stolen Earth left them with, it was a question of wrapping up a lot of threads with cheap thread (the type that breaks too hard), or tying off some with the really high-quality polyester stuff. Couldn't afford both, of course. And the Beeb is nothing but economical.

2. See? I am good at procrastination and posting my stuff all at the same time.

Before we begin, though, a quick note about the linkage of this fanmix: Normally, when I make fanmixes, I post links for each individual song, because I know that sometimes, people are just here for the music and couldn't give a damn about my fannish leanings. Then, too, are some who share my fandoms and do care about the music, but don't need another copy of "Wonderwall", or just really, really don't like Portishead. And all of this is perfectly fine, because music is music, and even if it doesn't touch you one way it will, eventually, in another.

This mix, however, is not a collection of separate songs. Like most things, it started out as something else: a Doctor fanmix. But then there was Rose, and just when I'd finished with them, a song would come screaming "Master!". Which got me thinking, really, about the usual limitations of fanmixes, their structure. Unlike fics, they're usually centered around one character, one show, one pairing, and it's good, but not real. People don't fall in love just once, and, at the risk of sounding like a Girl Scout friendship song, love doesn't detract from itself. So I tried to do something different. This mix is a love story, not two.

Which brings me back to my original point: that this mix is meant to be treated as a whole, in the order I put them in, no songs left out. This, to me, is the story of Rose and the Doctor, the Doctor and the Master, the ones he loves but loses. As well as the titles and order of the songs, here is significance, too, in the instruments. Songs for the Doctor are string quartets, or cellos: deep, resonating, layered. Rose I envisioned as the lighter, though no less beautiful, piano (with a bit of Reinette thrown in there as well); the Master, of course, is represented by drums.

...I ramble muchly. SORRY, PEOPLE, SORRY.


( in which there is zoe keating, tori amos, bear mccreary and other fun stuff )

1. If anyone has a few minutes to spare, I would love them forever if they could give their input for this. It's for a good cause, people!

2. First Heroes fanmix, and it's for a character that gets twenty minutes of screentime for the entire two seasons.

...But she is sort of awesome, yes?



( going somewhere older than i was, strapped into something tight, keeping me small )

1. Graggh. I need to finish all these fic-fragments on my computer before it sizzles and dies (or I do). Must... summon... motivation...

2. The literary cycle is weird. I hated the Narnia books when I was younger (along with Tolkien and Twain and almost every other classic writer), but having recently re-watched Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I want fic. Fic about a movie based on a book that I would never read.

Hmm.

...In any case, Caspian recs. Got any?

3. Warning: this fanmix really doesn't make sense, and is in no way consistant. (Which is sort of on par for my stuff.) But here it is regardless - because, come on. The boys need love too.



( are you a hunter just like me? a lot of heart, a little crazy )

1. So, last Saturday I saw the Shakespeare Free-For-All production of Hamlet with my cohorts. Despite the fact that - in typical Wash D.C. fashion - it poured most of the day and was disgustingly hot the rest of it, it was actually a rather pleasant experience. Most of the time was spent sniggering over the Hamlet/Horatio. It was an unusually energetic performance, really. Jeffrey Carlson (the actor playing Hamlet) was flopped around a LOT. And the first time he and Horatio were onstage together, he jumped on top of him.

Also, I discovered that there are Shakespeare graphic novels. How cool is that?

2. After reading cerebel's Chase The Higher Ground, I want to see Iron Man again. And Prince Caspian, even though it made me cry.

3. 3rd of the Turchwyd femslash mixes, completed even if it's a little late. (And yes, Alice and Emily are the infamous Torchwood Lesbians. You know the ones.)



( she said, 'roll out and make your mark, pull on your boots and march. meet me where you'll find me doing my own part' )

I shrink to admit it, but once I got over the... er, blondeness, I did end up liking Jenny the Knock-Off Time Lady. Why? Who knows. It certainly wasn't her perpetually overexcited demeaner, or her "Toxic" routine, or jail-escaping skills, or the rather questionable fact that she was born wearing eyeliner. To be completely honest, her most appealing factor was probably the way that the other characters played off of her. For instance, the Donna-Jenny dynamic. We had all expected the Doctor-Jenny thing to be going on, and it was great (from Tennant's side, anyway), but I for one did not anticipate Donna doing the maternal and actually making it... nice. I aw'd.




( you can't say goodbye, we never really met... you just burnt my bed and tore out the stars and kissed my forehead )

1. ...This has got to be the funniest thing I've seen all week.

2. Part two of the femslash-fanmixes. (Yes, I know.)




( tie yourself to me, no one else - no, you're not rid of me )

Yesterday I decided to clean out the attic. I'm not sure why, exactly; it seemed like a good idea at the time, but then again, these things usually do. And while I got rid of a lot of stuff, I also made a vacuum-cleaner bag explode & shower everything with mouse crap, banged my newly pierced ear on a doorframe, broke two china plates and got stuck in a bin.

And that was just the first hour.

The point of all this, though, is that afterwards I was listening to music and thinking certain... fannish thoughts... So in honor of fuck all, I started work on a bunch of DW/TW fanmixes, which seem to mostly feature obscure Torchwood-femslash pairings (read: Suzie/Gwen) and the Year That Never Was.

...I fear I may be growing certifiable.

Also, to my knowledge the "dark between the bedposts" title is originally mine, but it sounded vaguely familiar in that heard-it-in-a-dream-or-fic context, so if I've accidently ganked anything of anyone's, let me know. (Knowing my track record, it's an unhappy possibility.)




( i'm the glass you break to touch, but you never want me much )

So I as I was saying - what was it, yesterday? - I recently watched Voyage of the Damned and as some of you might know (doubt it), I wrote a little rant about it. But as I realize nobody actually reads these rants I will recap: I did not like Astrid. I think Kylie Minogue is a talentless dolled-up twit, and having her run around in a French maid costume and dominatrix boots for the majority of the episode did not endear her to me. However, I was mildly fascinated by the manner of her ressurection - not in terms of good luck Astrid but rather well, THAT was a bit stupid of him - and of course, it got me thinking about her death, and that led to the fact that in Doctor Who, there are few men looking tearful as they plummet to their deaths.

I realize that Doctor Who is a fairly progressive show, what with JACK HARKNESS Donna, Rose, Mister McGoogles and whatnot, and Torchwood oversteps 'fairly progressive' and lands somewhere in the vicinity of SHAG SHAG SHAG bit a' swearing bit a' blood SHAG. Despite this, there is a disconcerting amount of women in refrigerators (or spaceships, or what have you) in the Whoverse. I mean, unless a man - and I mean HUman, not alien equivalent - is completely useless, idiotic, or just a downright bastard, there's a pretty low chance of him getting knocked off, whereas women drop like flies. In Doctor Who, the dead women are usually used to kick the Doctor's Guilt-O-Meter to whatever the proper number is that week; in Torchwood, the deaths are plot development. Perhaps because it's in no way billed as a "family show" and thus has more deaths in general, Torchwood has a lot of these WIRs - a lot of gals stabbed, raped, strangled, shot, taken over or killed in some other interesting manner.

I'm not sure if this is a reflection on the fact that in our society, it's easier to feel outraged by the deaths of women more than men or just the fact that they scream better. In any case, I'm trying not to make assumptions. I love both shows, and the after-images of the Feminist Explosion better not block out the TV screen. I just think they deserve an... epitaph, of sorts?

(And, of course, I was bored.)


( an epitaph for 23 women dead or close to it )