fannish share of the day, today and yesterday

[martasfic]

1. Two fannish shares of the day, because I never got around to it yesterday:


My little fannish brain is about to go 'splodey from the Sherlock trailer and having it sink in just how awesome Tennant's first Christmas special on Doctor Who was. It's only fitting that today's fannish share be a wee bit of Wholock. (Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover - more common than you'd think.) This is an old favorite.

(Original creator unknown.)



and:

Apparently when Colin Baker was asked what outfit he'd like to wear as the Doctor, he described Nine's clothes. Fandom being as it is, someone had to switch up pictures of the two of them wearing clothes. And frankly, seeing Eccleston in Six's jacket and pants is a joy I didn't even know I needed in my life.

Consider this my fannish share of the day. It's worth it.






Things I've been reading lately:

Fanfic:

1. Idiothropy by Writernon (Sherlock humor)
2. The Science of Forward Motion, by thisprettywren (Sherlock angst, and how)
3. The Mourning Woman by M_Leigh (Sherlock character study on Molly, post-Reichenbach)

Journalism + Blogging:

1. How Did Jameis Winston Evade a Rape Charge?, by Emily Bazelon
2. Would Someone Just Shut That Pope Up?, by Patrick Deneen (on the sudden divide between social justice and culture war issues
3. 12 Years a Slave and Our Hopeless Conversation About Race, by Ross Douthat

Things I've Written:

1. On Keeping the Christ in Christmas
2. The Blue Cross/Blue Shield Blues
3. the future is now (on Amazon drone-based shipping)
4. Afghanistan or Iraq? (analysis of John's + Sherlock's first meeting)
5. and of course, my Sherlock fanfic

Also: my latest Pinterest shares

Also #2: latest FaceBook goings-on.



1.

As much as I love the pope (and I really do), I apparently will never be able to see a photo of him without being reminded powerfully of Humma Kavoola from the 2005 Hitchhiker's movie. First associations are a powerful thing, apparently.

2.

According to Rachel Held Evans' recent round-up of superlatives, Jesus feminism is a thing. Who knew there was a fancy-schmancy name for how I understood what my Bible (which is not the same thing as its self-appointed interpreters) were saying about gender roles, going back to the first time I remember hearing Genesis 2-3 in Sunday School at about the age of six. Eve is the only companion worthy of Adam, and it's sin (you know, that thing Jesus died so there'd be, among other things, neither woman nor man) that created a situation of inequality between them.

On that topic, Bill Hibels puts that point clearer than I can, and gets many other things just about right (as does his magnanimous spouse Lynne, though Bill's the one talking about the Fall + egalitarianism) in this post. Do give it a looksie.

http://lynnehybels.blogspot.com/2013/11/evangelicals-and-gender-equality.html

3.

"The Doctor finds love - -and evil droids - in 18th-century France."

This may well be the most Doctor-ish tagline I've ever seen. A very nicely-done episode, but I'm mainly laughing at the summary. Because straightforward plotlines are for losers.

4.

Tonight I was supposed to go see "Waiting for Godot" with Ian McKellen + Patrick Stewart. The thing is, after writing all afternoon (combination of fanfic + the Anselm paper), I felt so mentally burned out I was in *no* mood to go. So I called the theater and asked if I could trade in the tickets for another night. The benefit of having a sore throat + raspy voice: people assume you're cancelling because you're sick.

Since it was more than an hour before the show and I was a single ticket next to an empty seat, they thought they could sell it. Three cheers for sympathy treatment. I now have tickets for a Saturday after the holidays, and a special performance with my boys to look forward to. Plus I got to come home, make mini-pizzas, put on my PJs and watch the tail end of series one of Doctor Who. (I'll let my fellow Whovians ruminate on the irony: I got to see the introduction of David Tennant because I didn't want to go somewhere.)

On that topic, I'm sure it's been noted, but can we say "Christ-figure"? And for that matter, Adam-figure? I owe James McGrath a long-overdue blog post on Who and religion one of these days, and I just may have found a topic worth ruminating on. I have been keeping my eyes open...

5.

I know I'm late, and anyone celebrating this (Rhapsody? anyone else?) is almost certainly in bed, but... a Gut Sinterklaas to all. I actually got to tell a group at the daycare next door about the tradition today, and while I was telling them the story (I left out Zwarte Piet for the sake of avoiding controversy) their teacher put chocolates in some paper slippers they'd made.

If you're not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

6.

How did it get to be the weekend?

I feel like I should be a bit embarrassed for enjoying this so much. The afros. The glitz. The POCKETS. And don't get me started on the announcer at the beginning. It's not quite a racial thing, more a "That's just *so* '70s" thing. Let's just say the music is the least entertaining thing about this video, and that's not at all a knock against the song.

7.

I read today that Nelson Mandela attended Methodist schools. I'm not claiming him as a member of my particular group, but I do like knowing people coming from the same spiritual tribe as myself played a role in his intellectual and philosophical formation. In all things, charity, as the phrase goes.

Comments

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Re Tenth Doctor as Messiah: our very own altariel had an essay, as it happens, entitled "He's Not The Messiah: undermining political and religious authority in New Doctor Who" in:

The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the new Doctor Who (Published by the Science Fiction Foundation
edited by Simon Bradshaw, Graham Sleight, and Tony Keen, with a foreword by Robert Shearman;January 2011 Paperback, 180pp, £10
ISBN 978-0-903007-08-5. Hey, it's not an SSP if I'm pimping a friend's work, right? ;-) )

(Which, shamefully, I forgot to put on last year's birthday/Christmas list. Hmmm, my MIL wanted to know what I want this year...)

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

I'll have to read the essay. This is why we have interlibrary loan, yeah?

The more I think about it, the more I'd agree that the Christ-symbol thing was too hasty. I do see elements of Christian imagery throughout, in very specific ways, but to say any one character is a symbol for any specific Christian motif is an oversimplification. I was actually thinking just last night how interesting it was that Doctor Who trades in religious imagery so much of the time, but it does it in a way that also undermines it. I was watching the final defeat of the Master in the series three finale and the way the Doctor embraced him and said the one thing the Master couldn't bear to hear ("I forgive you") - it was much more inclusive than anything even Christians imagine. There's a wonderful skeptical, humanist trend in some of the Who moments I've seen. It seems to walk the line between dismissing religion and challenging it to grow into something better in a wonderful way.

Not that I needed another reason to love this show...

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

ILL rocks.

(Some of the other essays may be spoilery for the rest of the RTD era, though - there's an incentive to catch up before your ILL arrives ;-) )