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https://ia801609.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.881511/gov.uscourts.cacd.881511.37.6.pdf

Glorious.

-Ls

Here is an about-100-pages out of 600 preview. Might be enough for a mission.

-Ls

I'm only a few pages in but out of all the people to be Sue-ified, said to rival Arwen in beauty, and be given a brooch made of pure mythril called "The Star Of The Dúnedain", capitalisation not mine...

...I would not have guessed "Sam's daughter".

Edit: Since this is just actually literally fanfic and not a Fifty Shades situation, does this mean agents could theoretically kill it?

Edit 2: Glorfindel (yes, Glorfindel) is the new BBEG. Best line so far: "Of all the people in Middle-earth, Sauron hated and feared Glorfindel the most."

Demetrious Polychron tried.

Apparently writing fanfic and publishing it doesn't give you access to the IP. Who knew?

-Ls

(Yes this is real.)

EDIT: Have a video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcgFl0mxBXg

Aladdin is just an adaptation of Nights, after all!

—doctorlit wishes we can pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars

That being that he tends to... not really care about the actual plot points or how coherent the plotting is, so long as he can get to a resolution that feels emotionally poignant. These specials really show off the worst of that approach.

The idea that the bi-generation ripples backwards creates an even further gaping Hartnell-Troughton-Pertwee-Baker-Davidson-Baker-McCoy-McGann-Eccleston-Smith-Capaldi-Whittaker shaped plothole of why are none of those doctors dealing with various issues, but I suppose the universe is a big place. Honestly I think that whole idea creates an lot of really unfortunate and I hope that it's never canonized beyond word of god.

Most of all I'm just excited to see Gatwa's first real episode. I have no idea what to think about him yet, but I'm optimistic.

After almost an entire year, I've finally written something vaguely resembling a mission! (Well, besides the Badfic Games piece, but that's the Badfic Games piece). Set to the Harry Potter canon, the mission itself sets a record high at over 20,000 words that, truth be told, I'm not sure all belong. It's my first time actually trying to work some character development along as well, so I'm not sure how I did there.

On top of the mission, I also have a 9000 word Interlude involving the agents going dumpster diving in HQ. It's a bit shorter and less character than the mission and more of a goofy little romp.

As normal, I can be contacted through email or over Discord for those interested in betaing. Thanks!

and I apologize for making this discussion longer than it should be.

I'll just add that I am on board with this.

--Ls

Okay, I could have sworn I had a River Song "spoilers, sweetie" banner to drop in here and protect everyone from, well, the spoilers. But I can't find it! It doesn't show up in the Board archives, and I guess it was long enough ago that I hosted it on Photobucket instead of Imgur. So we don't get that. Though this should cover the preview text. ^_^ Okay, explaining the pictures and some spoilers thoughts:

The Star Beast

The rose: the Doctor starts out panicking about hearing the name Rose, and the tail end of the episode has an imminent doom just like Beast's rose.

Glimfeather: honestly the Meep just reminded me of Glimfeather. It's the eyes and the way they both speak their sound effects. "Meep, meep."

Captain Marvel: looks like the regeneration effects Donna pulls out, but also, this is Binary Star Cap. "Binary" is practically the theme of these specials.

Elsa mug: Donna spilled the coffee. And, of course, "just let it go".

Donna is amazing. Always has been. A lot of Rose's blasé attitude to the alien in her shed (including challenging the person who apparently knows all about aliens on his choice of pronouns when everyone else is sensibly freaking out) can be justified on the basis that she has a chunk of Doctor subconsciously influencing her. I liked the idea that having a child meant the metacrisis was spread out and not as lethal as expected; that was good.

I didn't like "let it go" as a solution, which was a patented RTD reset button. The fact that it was bookended by the bizarre sexism of "a man would never think of [just getting rid of the dangerous thing]" and the extremely confusing trans person who is comfortably trans says "I finally feel like myself" was just icing on the cake. (So she didn't feel like herself after changing her name and appearance to reflect her true identity? She picked a presentation that wasn't comfortable, because it would be if she ever got rid of the Doctor locked away in her head? Sounds like the Doctor ruined her entire life to this point, good job dude!) But saving Donna did have to happen for the rest of the specials, so, eh.

Wild Blue Yonder

Artoo: Robot! In a white corridor! That was given a message by a woman!

Titanic: Well, they're on a ship, that's in trouble. And the captain went down with it.

Labyrinth guards: there's two on each side. And they speak in riddles. And look freaky.

Technodrome: is in Dimension X, while the spaceship is Beyond the Edge of the Universe. It's also driven by mutants and a giant brain, which encompasses everyone except Donna.

Not a lot to say on this one: I think it had the weakest CG of the three, but was the best of the specials overall. The first half, down "my arms are too long", was incredibly suspenseful. And Mr. Isaac was great.

The Giggle

2001 ape: the human race tearing itself apart, plus that little story about picking up a skull and throwing it at each other.

Gandalf: Kate Stewart! And Mel! And the Celestial Toymaker himself, and even the Master's favour accomplice, Red Nails Lady.

Jareth: there is literally a maze in this. :D And a camp musical number starring the main villain.

Thor and the hammers: there's two of them, and a hammer, and they're throwing things to each other, and Thor's lightning looks kinda like regeneration energy.

So yeah, this one had the weakest plot. The initial crisis (the Giggle itself) was unrelated to the main threat. Why did it even happen? Just because the Toymaker was bored? I guess… sure. I'm also baffled that we were told over and over that it makes people think they're right, but when Kate shows it off she just… launches into weird conspiracy theories? Is that what it's normally like in her head? (Though I note Wilf, last episode, spends his entire scene going "I knew it!". That was clever foreshadowing.)

I liked the scenes in the past. The labyrinth, the random creepy dolls, all established the Toymaker as a threat. "Well, that's alright then!" was great. And I appreciate the Doctor's plan: take a 50% shot at winning outright, while having "best of three" in his back pocket. He did NOT want to let the Toymaker at any complex games, not like back in the day.

Back in the present… why did shooting one satellite end the Giggle? We were told it chose to activate after it was fully connected, but why would it deactivate? And what happens when someone puts a replacement satellite up? And, if they could give the satellite false coordinates, why did they need a big gun rather than just crashing the thing? (Answer: because the Toymaker needed to shoot things.)

Bi-generation: RTD wants it to be a big new thing (he's been going on about it rippling backwards so all previous Doctors also bi-generated), but, like… the Fourth Doctor met a partial incarnation of his next self in the run up to his regeneration (the Watcher). In one adventure he met a Time Lord who was acting as a mentor to his own next incarnation; in both cases they merged to complete the change from one to the next. Bi-generation, to my mind, is just the same thing from a different perspective. 15 said that 14's retirement and recovery ripples down to him, so 14 is clearly still in 15's past. At some point, 14 should regenerate again and fade away, passing his essence to 15 and closing the time loop.

Catch: I don't fault the choice of game. If you outnumber your opponent, go for a physical contest! Not sure why the Toymaker let the Doctor choose though. And the filming of it was weird. Can none of the three of them catch a ball?

I should note that there's a line of dialogue confirming the Toymaker's connection to the White and Black Guardians. Something about "Order and Chaos and Play"? I approve of that. But it does mean UNIT have just locked a Guardian in their basement, which seems ill-advised.

I don't object in principle to splitting the TARDIS - again, it's just a temporal loop of sorts. But if the whole point is that 14 needs to retire, why does he need a TARDIS??? We literally established in dialogue that he will keep on using it to go wherever he pleases, so like… he's not gonna stop running! So until he goes, any 21st century stories are going to have a huge Tennant-shaped question mark over them. "Daleks are destroying London, the Doctor is held captive - is 14 having tea, or scones?" "The Master has returned, and UNIT is desperately searching for the Doctor - or will be, as soon as Kate gets back from having cucumber sandwiches with 14." It would be silly enough without a TARDIS in his garden; with one, it's going to lurk there in every story.

I suspect it's a ploy to keep Tennant in play, so they can pull him out again if ratings start to drop. But I feel like it's damaging to Gatwa's incarnation to know that the Most Popular Doctor is literally still hanging around.

I did like the confirmation that UNIT are actively recruiting former companions, though. Because, well… you would.

hS

I also think it's someone with a very weird, sad, personal grudge, and I hope someday they get help resolving their issues.

Re. "Loli," beats me. We had someone(s) determined to correct our explanation of the term for a couple years, too. I had to edit a topic I don't care about at all to explain that sometimes, two words that share a stem end up shortened the same way. As if English doesn't do that all the time. Sheesh.

~Neshomeh

These are low edit, but high vandalism articles (relative to our overall pretty infrequent vandalism). For example, the "How to Make a Character Page" article has been vandalized several times now. I don't think it will hurt anything to restrict editing those types of pages to admin-only. Updating them in any major way is probably a matter for community discussion first, anyway.

(Before anyone asks, we probably are moving at some point and we will have more options to choose from then, but I don't intend to discuss that further until after the holidays. {= P )

~Neshomeh

I pretty much agree with your assessment of the first two eps, but I... did not really enjoy The Giggle. The performances from all the actors are great, no complaints with any of them! I really look forward to seeing what "Thor" (I think?) does going forward. ^_^ It was just the sheer amount of a$$-pullery in the plot that didn't work for me.

In The Star Beast, I could shrug it off because it was mostly there to make statements and the character stuff was good enough to carry them, and it helps that I mostly agree with said statements even if I'm not sure they really would solve the problems they're purported to solve. ^_^; With this one, the nonsense got in the way of my investment in the story. I especially wish the final, uh, showdown, had been treated a little more seriously. Also the myth part. Is that the bit that was mentioned under the Fourth Doctor? 'Cause it really felt made-up on the spot to me, I think partly because so little time was devoted to it.

IDK, both eps 1 and 3 feel like they were made for people who don't think very hard about things, and that's not who I believe DW's audience are. Here's hoping ep 4 is more like ep 2.

Re. ep 2, though, I still don't understand the Technodrome reference. Maybe it's just been waaay too long since I watched that iteration of TNMT. {X D

~Neshomeh

Should we make it the mini type for the One Thousand and One Nights mythos altogether?

I love the vibe of the one paragraph that starts out “so far, so good,” and then goes on to describe the agents suffering and in pain, and then says the badfic continues “before the agents could get too comfortable.” That is some extremely PPC-tone narration!

“Family tradition” is quite a weird euphemism for “crimes committed against your ancestors.” Like, strip the fantasy elements away from it, and it’s basically, “Sorry, Akira, but your grandmother Ariel got straight-up murdered, and then your mom Melody also got murdered, so now it’s a tradition, and you’re going to have to die. There’s no way out of it, we are forever beholden to what has come before us, and have no choice but to repeat the horrors of the past. That’s just how it works, and we can’t question it.” Stupendous, with emphasis on the “stupe” part. Also, I didn’t understand right away that “sweaty” was a typo of “sweety,” and thought Melody was being written to be a cruel mother figure for tragic purposes. I’m awful for laughing, but the mental image of a mother greeting her child in the morning with “Good morning, Sweaty” was so unexpected it became instantly hilarious.

Cave of . . . Wounders?

Three figures approached from inside the mouth-entrance of the cave.

A hulking man wearing a skull mask hoisted a massive hammer. “Bow before me on the fields of Kombat, weakling!”

A clown wearing a purple suit grinned and drew a dagger menacingly in front of his mouth. “Let’s put a smile on that face!”

A green ogre-demon with an unsettling amount of eyes opened his hands, flames pouring out of them. “My chaos consumes all in the end!”

—doctorlit would have traded Ariel his legs for her singing voice, no sea witches necessary!

Harry gets taken to Grimmauld Place to prepare for his hearing.

Warning: Harry has an average teenage boy reaction to a fantasy about his crush. If you're uncomfortable with the implications, stop reading at "Oh, Harry really hoped Pansy Parkinson didn’t have a painting of an albatross at her place." and resume reading at the next scene.

Haha "Classically Abby but for wizards" is definitely an observation!

Héloïse is not named in the books, but I'm glad you enjoyed her appearance. I feel like if this Harry ever got an owl, Draco would beg him to name it Abelard ;P

You're not the only one taken by surprise, but let me put it this way: in this world, Pureblood supremacy is very much already enshrined, and so Lucius would go for a more moderate-conservative politics because it still upholds his snobberies without putting him in a position that could backfire for him if things go sideways (c.f. Lucius being considered slippery in the books for not actively doing anything to bring Voldemort back). Narcissa, meanwhile, is convinced her brother-in-law coming back to power will enable her to reunite with her sister. The rhetoric is mostly a sideline to the family relationships that form the Malfoys' loyalties.

Yes, Reg is running! It's a four-candidate field, though. We'll see how he does...

Gary and Rose view Hermione as posh, but it would technically be inaccurate. Hampstead is fashionable, but Hampstead Suburb Garden is not as posh as the rest of Hampstead. It's still a very expensive location, though, so Hermione is upper-middle-class. But when you're working-class teens like Gary and Rose are, everyone with more wealth than you is posh. They're not quite pinging the fact that poshness has its own signifiers that even upper-middle-class or the nouveau riche pick up on. (And often some posh people don't live as conspicuously consumer-rich lifestyles as you might expect!)

Yes, I intended Scouring Potion to be some chlorine variant!

Haha, I'm glad you liked Draco's commentary. And the prank, well... yeah. Sirius pulling humiliating, hurtful pranks on people is a part of his character that gets a bit overlooked (unless, ofc, you're a Snape fan), and Draco was resilient for owning it regardless and turning it into something to bother Harry with :P

Ah, well, we forget these things in the rush of a Situation happening...

Thank you for reading!

Somehow I confused who had clamied it.

--Ls

Zingenmir's the one who claimed it for a mission. I'm just having fun poking around at Lord Potter tropes that may or may not show up in PKH and its related ilk.

LILY YOU ARE THE GOAT FOR CLAIMING THIS THIS IS AWFUL