Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

This vid really reminded me of the tragedy in the love story of Amy and Rory. It's beautifully put together. Makes me tear up every time I watch it.

Well...so..huh. That's it then.


( Spoilers )

I have two things to say about Curse of the Black Spot.


( Spoilers )

Thanks to those who sent me V-gifts for Christmas and also to all those who were so lovely in response to my news about Chris's new job being permanent.

So it only took me...eight hours to catch up on my f-list (300 odd entries) and that was with skipping all the Castle, Human Target, Fringe, and The Mentalist entries and just keeping the focus solely on Doctor Who and TVD and real life stuff.  I hadn't really read since Christmas Eve.  Christmas was long.  Just three days in a row and I got food poisoning.  That is what I get for eating other people's food apparently.  People who don't pay attention to food safety standards.  *sighs*  Normally I cook, but with having bronchitis (still) I didn't this year.  I would say life is punishing me except too much good stuff has happened lately for me to really think that.  But seriously I've spent enough time hugging a toilet bowl this month to last me a lifetime.  Needless to say I didn't get as much writing done as I would have liked.

I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special today.  I was amused and entertained but also disappointed a lot.  There wasn't enough Amy and Rory and what there was was mindless and silly.  Also white space suits?  Seriously?  Space is filthy.  White space suits?  I don't think so.  Also was disappointed in the lack of continuity and the flagrant violation of previous canon.  I generally like Eleven but there were a few times in this ep that I just wanted to slap him or shake him or point out the obvious.

Was annoyed with Eleven for saying shut up so much.  Not being a good role model to kids.  Not that I don't ever tell my kids to shut up, because I do, but I do so sparingly and usually nicely and in more than one language.  Seriously, they know be quiet in like five languages.  Also wasn't thrilled with the child abuse storyline in Doctor Who.  Then again, I wasn't thrilled with it in Fear Her, either, but somehow it seemed less blatant then or handled better or something.

But I had a good time with it otherwise.  I've more or less reconciled myself to the fact that DW will never be great with it's current show runner in charge, but it can still be good-ish.  I...really hope SM gets bored of Who and moves on.  I'd really like someone in charge who is more concerned about the show being excellent and giving all of its characters actual development and less concerned with peeing on everything that came before to make it his marking his territory like a dog.

Also the CGI in the opening segment?  Looked like a cartoon.  Not real at all.  So how much has DW's budget been cut since David and Russell left?  Because it seems like special effects have gotten worse and worse the last year and that space shark was...ridiculous, though the little fishies were cute.

I do like Eleven in the same way that I liked Seven and Five.  They will never be favorites but they entertain me and I can have fun with them.  I hope once season six starts we'll get back to seeing Rory and Amy for an appropriate amount of the screen time.  I think SM forgets that DW is supposed to be viewed through the eyes of the companions and not through the eyes of the Doctor.  It's always been that way.  That's what makes it accessible.  *sighs*

Sometimes I feel like fall/winter is one big cold interspersed with a day or two here or there of actually feeling well.  My mind has pretty much shut down this week, although there have been brief moments of clarity where I did some writing.  LoF is squeaking along slowly but surely.  I've got 3 fics I need to beta but honestly every time I even think about it my mind goes, "Focus?  What focus?"  So hopefully I'll get around to it.  If any of you want to send them to other people I won't be offended.  I'm just so out of it.

It snowed Friday night.  We had about eight inches by Saturday morning.  Now it's mostly just cold and ice with snow on top.  We were pretty much snowed in all weekend because they didn't plow our road until about 4:00 p.m. today.  I went out and got snow boots for T.  He walks home from school so he definitely needs them.  Also waterproof gloves and a hat.

There is just about nothing funnier than watching chickens walk in snow for the first time.  It was hilarious.  The general consensus is that they don't like it.  We scattered some hay on the surface of the snow and they seemed to like that better, but spent most of the weekend in the coop.  The ducks didn't mind it, as long as the ice was broken in their little pond, they were happy.

We spent a lot of time in front of the tube since we were snowed in and it was so cold outside.  We watched all of the kick ass Martha episodes of DW, which means Human Nature/Family of Blood and Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords.  Then we watched End of Time parts one and two (Martha was so, so pretty in that ending scene with Mickey and oh, squee that moment with Rose!) and then the first seven episodes of season Five.  Rose had only seen the first two and T had only seen the first one.  You know what?  I really, really loved season five this time.  Even the Skittle Daleks episode (which was still bad science wise and history wise, but it was way more fun watching it with my children than on my own.  Part of that might have been my daughter's comments.) was enjoyable.

I think it's because I'm so far away from my expectations now.  When it first came out I had such high hopes and such eagerness for it to finally be on the air, and of course a lot of that was disappointed, but it was such a fun romp and I saw so many subtle nuances in it that I missed last time.  There are far, far more allusions to Rose and Donna than I ever saw last time around and even one that I noticed to Martha.  And there is a surprising amount of subtlety to Matt Smith's acting that I didn't notice before, either.  I'm seeing a lot more hidden pain in the Doctor.  If you really watch his eyes and these micro expressions he makes, you see it.

I'm not nearly as annoyed by the big crack either.  It's still omnipresent and in your face, but because I've seen it all play out I don't mind it so much.  I did notice some things referred to in End of Time that came to pass in season five, especially the weeping angels of old reference.  River continues to grow on me.  I find myself falling in love with Amy again.  She's smart (maybe a little unbelievably sometimes) and quick and clever and that's good, usually.  I fell out of love with her towards the middle of the season before, but I'm seeing a lot of little things in her character that I missed before.  Not massive character development, mind you, but knowing how the season ends I am firmly convinced now that that was on purpose.  And Rory, of course, is love and always will be.  We're going to watch the rest of it over the Thanksgiving holidays and I'm actually anticipating it, though I'm not sure if anything will overcome my dislike of the Silurian episodes.

The kids have dentist appointments tomorrow, so that's going to be one big two hour block of boring.  I need to remember to take a book.  I've got some Doctor Who books I've never read so I'll grab one of those.   My son's conference is Tuesday.  I hope they've plowed the parking lot.  I don't want to try to walk two blocks to his school in the ice when I've got a bum knee.  It's doing fine, but if I do anything to twist it or torque it or fall down, who knows what will happen?  They don't expect it to start melting here until Wednesday with rain on Thanksgiving.  Which reminds me, I need to take the turkey out of the freezer.  Better go do that now.  Hope everyone's weekend was nice.

Title:  Unfinished Business (1/1)
Author:  amberfocus
Fandom:  Doctor Who/Heroes Crossover
Characters/Pairings:  Doctor/Rose, Claude Rains
Genre:  Action/adventure, angst, fluff, romance
Rating:  Teen
Betas:  amyo67, jeprdyfrndly, thetesh
Summary:  86 years after Journey's End, and ten years after the death of Ten2, an immortal Rose seeks the help of the invisible man to find her way back to her original universe and the original Doctor.
A/N:  Written for challenge 56 at then_theres_us, which is to do a crossover fic using one of the characters from any tv show or movie played by Chris, Billie, David, or Matt.  I used Claude from Heroes, played by Christopher Eccleston.


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