The Doctor is happy for Charley to decorate the Tardis for whatever holidays she wants, as long as he gets to relax and enjoy his tea! He did offer to take her on a trip to see the origins of Yule or Saturnalia, but for some reason, Charley didn’t think an ancient holiday was a fantastic idea.
And a happy holidays to everyone, too!
(via everandeverprolixity)
Does anyone remember a one-shot Fitz/Mason crossover fic that turned up in the tags a while ago? I remember asking the author who Mason was, not having seen Dead Like Me at the time… I’ve found another Fitz/Mason fic on AO3, but it’s much longer, and definitely not the same one.
Anybody?
Have you tried act_three on Livejournal? I think I remember seeing a Dead Like Me crossover there at some point. I haven’t seen Dead Like Me at all, but I do remember there being a fic like that.
I’m reading “The Turing Test”. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
It is worth the pain… and the confusion. Also, it gets better every time you reread it.
I’ve read it twice and I still don’t understand anything that happens towards the end. Turing’s over-sexualized view of the Doctor was really annoying.
I’ve read it three times, and I think the point of it is that you don’t understand it. It’s a very subjective book - we only get a fraction of the story. None of the narrators know what’s actually going on, and none of them really come to grips with the Doctor. It’s this ambiguity which I think is the real strength of this book. The more I think about it, the less I’m absolutely certain what’s happened. However, what I feel more certain about is how confusing, strange and simply terrifying being caught up in the Doctor’s world (especially when he’s desperate and manipulative) is. It fascinates me as a historian, as it shows the problem of when a series of events has not been completely described, or when the witnesses either don’t understand what they’re seeing (a small example - there are bigger ones too - is when Turing talks about the Doctor screaming about a woman who had betrayed him, just after he tried to open his blue wardrobe and found that it was… a wardrobe - the reader knows that it’s the TARDIS, and probably what the Doctor screams is something along the lines of ‘she’s betrayed me’, meaning the TARDIS, but Turing doesn't know that) or is lying/leaving things out/embellishing them (which I get the feeling sometimes happens). For me, reading The Turing Test is an exercise in trying to figure out which narrator I can actually trust.
I really disagree your second sentiment. I understand that people have different opinions on Doctor/companion romances (and yes, Turing isn’t really a companion, but that is basically the role he plays in The Turing Test), so I’m going to leave the question of whether it’s annoying to the side, and instead explain first why I disagree with your premise. I don’t find Turing’s view of the Doctor over-sexualised at all. In fact, Turing’s admiration of the Doctor’s physical beauty is not the central thing at all, but his fascination with the Doctor’s mind. Also, it’s very romantic, rather than lustful. Yes, there is a sexual component to it, but it is not the primary one. The only person to mention the possibility of them having sex is Graham Greene, not Turing.
Also, Turing’s approach to the Doctor is quite ambiguous. He is in awe of him, he loves him, but at the same time he is so strange and unexplainable that he terrifies him. The Doctor doesn’t fit into any preconceived categories (where is he from? for whom does he work? etc etc) and the Doctor himself can’t (and when he can, often won’t) give any answers. Turing’s narrative is not dominated just by a love story, but by a constant mental tug-of-war between the part of Turing that is unconditionally in love with the Doctor and the one which is at best wary, at worst terrified of him.
Personally, I love this whole relationship. It works well within the story (tying into the overarching question of the narrative of what it means to be human, and whether a non-human can love - Turing and the Doctor are obviously parallels to Daria and Greene), it feels very in character for Alan Turing (he’s one of my research topics, so I feel I can say that with some certainty) and is a welcome change from the whole 'oh-the-Doctor-is-wonderful-and-amazing-and-everything-he-does-is-great’ thing (which we find for example with Karl in The Year of Intelligent Tigers, or for that matter with a number of companions, e.g. Sam and Rose).
(via mbrainspaz)
(via anxiouspineapples)
