TFW You Learn Your Titty Art Was Found On The Walls Of A Murder Scene. Buckle Up For This Ride!!

I have been thinking a lot about what a cancer diagnosis used to mean. How in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when someone was diagnosed, my parents would gently prepare me for their death. That chemo and radiation and surgery just bought time, and over the age of fifty people would sometimes just. Skip it. For cost reasons, and for quality of life reasons. My grandmother was diagnosed in her early seventies and went directly into hospice for just under a year — palliative care only. And often, after diagnosis people and their families would go away — they’d cash out retirement or sell the house and go live on a beach for six months. Or they’d pay a charlatan all their savings to buy hope. People would get diagnosed, get very sick, leave, and then we’d hear that they died.

And then, at some point, the people who left started coming back.

It was the children first. The March of Dimes and Saint Jude set up programs and my town would do spaghetti fundraisers and raffles and meal trains to support the family and send the child and one parent to a hospital in the city — and the children came home. Their hair grew back. They went back to school. We were all trained to think of them as the angelic lost and they were turning into asshole teens right in front of our eyes. What a miracle, what a gift, how lucky we are that the odds for several children are in our favor!

Adults started leaving for a specific program to treat their specific cancer at a specific hospital or a specific research group. They’d stay in that city for 6-12 months and then they’d come home. We fully expected that they were still dying — or they’d gotten one of the good cancers. What a gift this year is for them, we’d think. How lucky they are to be strong enough to ski and swim and run. And then they didn’t stop — two decades later they haven’t stopped. Not all of them, but most of them.

We bought those extra hours and months and years. We paid for time with our taxes. Scientists found ways for treatment to be less terrible, less poisonous, and a thousand times more effective.

And now, when a friend was diagnosed, the five year survival odds were 95%. My friend is alive, nearly five years later. Those kids who miraculously survived are alive. The adults who beat the odds are still alive. I grew up in a place small enough that you can see the losses. And now, the hospital in my tiny hometown can effectively treat many cancers. Most people don’t have to go away for treatment. They said we could never cure cancer, as it were, but we can cure a lot of cancers. We can diagnose a lot of cancers early enough to treat them with minor interventions. We can prevent a lot of cancers.

We could keep doing that. We could continue to fund research into other heartbreaks — into Long Covid and MCAS and psych meds with fewer side effects and dementia treatments. We could buy months and years, alleviate the suffering of our neighbors. That is what funding health research buys: time and ease.

Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir here. But it is a quiet miracle what’s happened in my lifetime.

Man, Ophelia gets even more screwed in this version.

Hamlet, Scooby-Doo Style

[This is one of the funniest, most brilliant damn things I’ve ever read.  It dates from very early Internet days and I thought it deserved resurrection to Le Tumble]

This recently discovered folio edition of “Hamlet” follows other known versions closely until Act V, Scene II, where it begins to diverge at line 232, as will be seen:

KING: …`Now the king drinks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin, And you the judges, bear a wary eye.

Trumpets sound. HAMLET and LAERTES take their stations

HAMLET: Come on, sir.

LAERTES: Come, my lord.

Enter FRED, DAPHNE, VELMA, SHAGGY, AND SCOOBY

DAPHNE: Wait!

SHAGGY: Stop the fight!

HAMLET and LAERTES put up their foils

KING: I like this not. Say wherefore you do speak?

FRED: Good lord, I pray thee, let thy anger wait. For we, in seeking clues, have found the truth Behind the strange events of latter days.

VELMA: The first clue came from Elsinore’s high walls, Where, so said Hamlet, Hamlet’s ghost did walk. Yet though the elder Hamlet met his death, And perforce hath been buried in the ground, ‘Tis yet true one would not expect a ghost To carry mud upon his spectral boots. Yet mud didst Shaggy and his faithful hound Espy, with footprints leading to a drop. This might, at first, indeed bespeak a ghost… Until, when I did seek for other answers, I found a great, wide cloth of deepest black Discarded in the moat of Elsinore. ‘Tis clear, the “ghost” used this to slow his fall While darkness rendered him invisible.

FRED: The second clue we found, my lord, was this.

KING: It seems to me a portrait of my brother In staine’d glass, that sunlight may shine through.

FRED: But see, my lord, when placed before a lantern–

KING: My brother’s ghost!

HAMLET: My father!

VELMA: Nay, his image.

FRED: In sooth, that image caught the Prince’s eye When he went to confront his lady mother. Nor did his sword pierce poor Polonius. For Hamlet’s blade did mark the castle wall Behind the rent made in the tapestry. Polonius was murdered by another. The knife which killed him entered from behind.

LAERTES: But who?

FRED: Indeed my lords, that you shall see.

HAMLET: And if this ghost was naught but light and air, Then what of that which I did touch and speak to?

The GHOST enters.

GHOST: Indeed, my son.

SHAGGY: Zoinks!

DAPHNE: Jenkies!

GHOST: Mark them not. Thou hast neglected duty far too long. Shall this, my murderer, live on unharmed? Must I remain forever unavenged?

SCOOBY and SHAGGY run away from the GHOST. SCOOBY, looking backward, runs into a tapestry, tearing it down. As a result, tapestries around the walls collapse, one surrounding the GHOST.

GHOST: What?

FRED: Good Osric, pray restrain that “ghost”, That we may reach the bottom of the matter. Now let us see who truly walked tonight.

FRED removes the helm and the disguise from the GHOST’S face.

ALL: Tis Fortinbras!

FRED: The valiant prince of Norway!

FORTINBRAS: Indeed it is, and curses on you all! This Hamlet’s father brought my own to death, And cost me all my rightful heritage. And so I killed this king, and hoped his son Would prove no obstacle to Norway’s crown. Then Claudius bethought himself the killer (As if one might be poisoned through the ear!) The brother, not the son, took Denmark’s throne, And held to Norway with a tighter grip. I swore an end to Denmark’s royal house. I spoke to Hamlet of his uncle’s crimes. Then killed Polonius to spark Laertes. This day, with poison’s aid, all might have died, And Denmark might have come to me as well As my beloved Norway and revenge. My scheme blinded them all, as if by fog But for these medd'ling kids and this their dog.

KING: The villain stands confessed. Now let us go. For much remains to us to be discussed. And suitable reward must needs be found For these, our young detectives and their hound.

EXEUNT OMNES. Copyright 1993 Michael S. Schiffer

This is my headcanon now.

We know that Varys tried to convince Aerys to keep the gates closed the Lannister army and that Pycelle encouraged Aerys to open them wide. That indicates that they were both present in KL during the final days of the Rebellion. My question is this, do you think once the doors were open and the Lions started sacking the city, that both the master of Whispers and Grand Maester simply ‘vanished’ until the dust had settled?

I believe Pycelle probably went to his apartments, barricaded the door, and waited until Lannister troops came to escort him safely to Tywin's forces. The Grand Maester, as a position, benefits from "maester neutrality," so that does assist him in not being seen as an Aerys loyalist, even if Northern troops happened to get to him first.

Varys though, almost certainly disappeared into the labyrinth of secret passages honeycombing the Red Keep to ensure the safety of his person. He perceived that he would have probably been killed in the sack. and so he'd look for a place no one knew until he could arrange to surrender himself to Robert. Robert's legendary status as those who pardoned his former foes probably worked in Varys's favor there.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Dogs have had many jobs throughout history, in this case: Revenge.

Of course, you call Biden the old guy who needs a nap, and there's Trump sleeping through his court trials and through the RNC and through his own son's speech

Me, too! And you can't convince me otherwise.

I intensely disagree. I think that's actually part of what set your blog apart. While there are other sites that review the books and such (though it takes some digging to find good ones), the way you showed both how they fit in their eras, and how they could never have fit in the eras, and considered what they said about the show both when they were set and when the books themselves were written, gave tremendous clarity on your themes and ideas.

I mean, I started reading your blog when you were only up to Marco Polo, but I think The Time Travelers was when it first started to really evolve from an interesting, quirky take to a fascinating and arguably definitive take on the show. Showing the contrast between what was, what might have been, and what maybe should have been couldn't really have been done in another way.

And there are a number of those that the blog would be far poorer without - The Time Travelers, the Two Doctors [Troughton version], Interference [Pertwee Version], The Well-Mannered War, Spare Parts, The Song of Megaptera, and The Nightmare Fair in particular are all absolutely crucial pieces of your arguments about the eras. I can't imagine the blog without them.

I mean, sure, you could maybe have saved a few here and there for the book versions without a major problem (Campaign, maybe), but, on the whole, they're an essential piece of the texture and meaning of Eruditorum.

I suspect it may also have (marginally, at least) helped sales and the Kickstarter; saying you're going to review the spin-off books means a lot more when we can see how good and important your reviews of those are. The book versions clearly weren't just going to be longer; they would be richer.

Finally, the reviews of the books spaced around helped prime us for the onslaught of book reviews in the Wilderness Years. I was finishing up viewing the entire series around the time you started the blog, but the books were completely new to me. I mean, I was aware they existed, but figured they were typical tie-in media: enjoyable but inessential. Because of your approach to the books, they were clearly shown to be an important and worthwhile part of what the show really was and is. (I actually bought The Time Travelers right after reading your blog entry on it.) It also created some preparation for reading about large swaths of stories I had never experienced. Without those, it's entirely likely I would have dropped out after Survival and other than The TV Movie, would have just waited around for Rose to pick back up. And while I imagine there may have been a bit of drop-off there anyway, I'm convinced it was far smaller than it would have been otherwise.

http://philsandifer.tumblr.com/post/104783235786/i-also-might-not-have-done-any-time-can-be

I also might not have done any Time Can Be Rewritten entries. I’m not sure there’s any era that wouldn’t have been improved by saving those for the book, both on blog and in book. Actually, I think that’s probably it. Now that I know there were book versions, I’d have conceived of the non-episode...

Can you please spread this as far as it will go? 

[Not the anon, but I'd be interested in your answer to these objections.]

I don't have any problem whatsoever with the ideas in the episode - conceptually, it's brilliant. "The Moon is an egg" is a contender for the best premise Doctor Who has ever had. Playing it out against a backdrop of a humanity that has lost interest in space exploration and, in the process, in its own future gives the story real weight and resonance. And putting the fate of the Moon's life and humanity's future in the hands of three women of wildly different generations and experiences is terrific, giving a fantastically feminist spin to a golden-age yarn.

But I've watched it three times, and every time, I found the execution in both the writing and directing badly lacking, and despite some lovely moments (particularly the last scene), it feels like a near-miss to me.

To begin with, the entire thing is set up by the Doctor telling Courtney she's "not special", which Clara suggests will impact her entire life, and Courtney responds with, "You can’t just take me away like that! It’s like you kicked a big hole in the side of my life! You really think it? I’m nothing? I’m not special?"

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I was a young disruptive influence myself, but I don't buy this. At all. I mean, a rebellious 15-year-old responds to getting told they're "not special" basically by rejecting it and forgetting that person exists, assuming they care in the first place. And if they do go into a deep funk and freak out about it, honestly, they're probably immature and spoiled, which certainly isn't how Courtney's been built up. Her entire reaction rings completely false, and, worse, it basically means she spends the entire episode moping around. It feels like those artificial Hollywood stories about parents who are evil for missing the kid's baseball game because they were making a living and, you know, putting food on the kid's table when they get back from the game. The drama falls flat, and Courtney, who I really liked in The Caretaker, ends up being written like an obnoxious TV 10-year-old. Ellis George is appealing when given the chance, but she can't sell this guano. This failure is especially egregious in a season that excels at building the stories on vividly real drama and characterizations.

(I do love the bit where the Doctor suggests the astronauts shoot her first, though.)

And this sort of thing comes from a script that delivers its ideas in an incredibly sloppy way. The clearest example is probably the spidery death of Red Shirt Astronaut #2. He gets all of two lines before getting spidered to death 1/3 of the way in, at which point Lundvik stops to give a eulogy about how he was the guy who trained her, and apparently his name was Duke, and she’s really upset about all this, and I’m just mildly surprised the astronauts actually knew each others’ names for all they’ve actually acknowledged each other at this point. Maybe if the script had cared to develop any of the astronauts at all, this might have some impact, but it doesn’t even get around to telling us Lundvik’s name before the end credits, let alone give her any sort of apparent personality beyond the intensity Hermione Norris gives her. Of course it doesn’t bother with the red shirts. I mean, were we really supposed to care when she delivers her eulogy?

Or there's little details like Courtney taking a big antibacterial bottle with her in her spacesuit. Even the Doctor’s advanced spacesuits look large and cumbersome, and seem unlikely to have pockets large enough for that. But even if they do, does Ms Disruptive Influence really seem like the kind of girl to go through the hassle of carrying around a full-size bottle of Windex in her spacesuit?

Even the climactic debate between Lundvik, Clara, and Courtney has moments that feel off. When Lundvik proclaims, “It is killing people. It is destroying the Earth,” Clara responds with “You cannot blame a baby for kicking.” All the coastal cities were flooded. Lundvik rightly calls it “the greatest natural disaster in history.” The baby kicking metaphor kinda breaks down once you’ve broken the 100 million mark on your death slate. All this sloppy writing climaxes, of course, with the moment where Clara asks the world to vote, but they only get 45 minutes, meaning we actually only get the votes of Europe, whoever actually has lights in Africa, and the American East Coast. That 45 minutes is completely arbitrary, just to put a bit of faux-cleverness in the cold open. Changing the deadline to 24 hours wouldn't impact the story in any negative way, and would allow the entire world to actually vote.

None of this is helped by the directing; the color is badly washed out, removing any sense of wonder to the moon, but that's the only limp attempt at atmosphere in the thing. None of the horror builds tension. The action sequences, while thankfully not the point, are poorly done. Rather than papering over the flaws of the script, the directing only exacerbates the parts that don't work, and don't help the bits that do.

Which brings me to the backdrop. The idea of the world having abandoned space travel, only recovering it when shown something truly beautiful, and thus embracing its future, has a powerful relevance. But this idea is basically mentioned offhandedly in a couple of lines. We never see this world, and the few mentions of it by the astronauts aren't enough for it to really sink in emotionally. The Doctor's speech at the end almost seems to come out of nowhere.

As I say, I love the idea conceptually. I snarked about the science on my blog, but I don't actually have a problem with that; I'm not going to object an awesome idea like "the Moon is an egg", and if I'm not going to object to that, who cares about the fact that the Space Shuttle had no ability to make it to the moon and its landing is ludicrous? It's all in fun, and complaining about it really isn't much more than snarking. I mean, yes, when you can say with a straight face that Michael Bay’s Armageddon had a superior grasp on astronomy, physics, and how the space program actually works, you could probably at least check the first paragraph of the corresponding Wikipedia pages before filming. But Moffat’s fairy tale approach hasn't bothered me before, and I love it more often than not. I mean, if you don’t like the moon hatching into a dragonfly, you’re probably watching the wrong show.

But the characterizations, atmosphere, and world-building all feel sloppy and dashed-off, leaving it to stand strictly on its ideas (which are admittedly grand) and some magnificent Doctorishness. That's enough that I certainly don't hate it, but it's very much the mess the Anon claims it to be.

Poppycock, sir! Kill the Moon is a mess.

I mean, I assume you’ve read my review of it, so where do you disagree?

Heck, there's a very good chance Littlefinger has an appointment made with Illyn Payne's sword. After all, it probably won't take long for Ned and Tyrion to put the pieces together in a conversation (one could say interrogation, but this is Tyrion we're talking about).

Hypothetically speaking, what would have happened if Tyrion managed to escape the Inn at the Crossroads before Catelyn captured him? Or better yet, if they hadn't crossed paths at all?

Catelyn makes it back to the North and starts preparing for war (which definitely makes her the protagonist of any Northern subplot), Tyrion ambles on down to King's Landing. When he gets there, it might be Ned laying charges (though his investigations may go differently, who knows when he's listening to Littlefinger). That means the entire matter is brought before Robert straight away and the Starks don't look great because the evidence against Tyrion isn't very strong and the people who were actually present for the bet about the knife know that.

So what we've got instead of rapid escalation to war is instead more of a slower-burning armed feud. Maybe Tywin retaliates with some border raids on the Riverlands (oops! were those your peasants?), but it's less likely he'd just walk in and start trying to burn the whole Riverlands down.

From there, we're back to a race as to whether Ned figures out the incest first or Robert dies...but Ned's got the time to gear up for war in this scenario, and he's probably not listening to Littlefinger anymore either.