List of Televised Doctor Who Stories Whose Titles Make Use Only Of Words Appearing In The Titles Of Previously Televised Doctor Who Stories

> Political turmoil rocked the nation’s capital again on Tuesday evening as politicians from both parties responded to President Trump’s — you know what, never mind. This is a story about ducks.

lol

ah, I miss Gravity Falls

thankfully, unlike some people, I still have a bit of Steven Universe left to catch up on

I need to rewatch Gravity Falls season 1 and watch season 2 for the first time.

I haven't found a way to watch it, sadly.

ah

I have a BESW who does all that silly thinking for me XD

Well, if rpg.se chat TV night becomes a thing, maybe I can push for it.

Amazon, Hulu...

Hulu hates Australia, unfortunately.

Hah! A place more hated by streaming than Guam!

lol

I hadn't seen Amazon's TV service before; looks OK, but wow, that's expensive.

(We aren't international, but we ping international by location; we're legally US, but not legally a state. There's an us-shaped hole in both distribution contracts and "are you in a place you can watch this" algorithms.)

Looks like Apple and Google Play will also stream it.

I can't confirm though.

There's also a DisneyXD streaming site that keys off one's cable TV subscription, so that's probably not useful for you.

Yeah, I have access to a few streaming services that don't mind being shared among family members, but I'm not about to sign up for any of the ones with less content that are also just plain worse.

@kviiri honestly it's not even about that. Sci-fi as a genre has an unfortunate infestation of people ranging from what I might call "ethically negligent" all the way to malicious moral bankruptcy, many of whom are bestsellers

Where does "conscience breaking and entering" rank on that list of character crimes?

@Lord_Gareth ...when did it start? o.o

@Yuuki I dunno, somewhere below John Ringo writing a literal breeding advantage into blonde haired, blue eyed people?

@Lord_Gareth Like, among authors? And their fans? Or just the latter?

@kviiri both. Let me stop being a phone here, sec

@Lord_Gareth o.O as in "that's what the mating rites of that society selected for?" or "blonde hair and blue eyes were the genetically dominant traits, with other hair and eye colors being recessive?"

Hm, I haven't read of much the scifi of 2000's, so I don't know about today. I used to read Asimov quite a lot, but I grew bored of his style.

@Shalvenay Lemme summarize that novel for you

When an Evil Alien Empire invades Earth, an All-American Libertarian and his Space Capitalist allies use the power of money to overthrow their oppressors and the evil liberal cowards who support them! In the process a series of plagues kills people on Earth who are (literally) unclean, or slow, or "stupid", then finally makes anyone blonde-haired and blue eyed both more fertile and more inclined to attempt to take advantage of that fact all the time.

And I wish I was exaggerating there, and I'm really, honestly, truly, not

@Lord_Gareth yeah, blah.

@kviiri So, before I begin here, some caveats

In any field you will encounter the usual facets of the human experience. One of those facets is scumbags; another is otherwise-good people who have troublesome beliefs or experiences which in turn harm others without necessarily meaning to.

Orson Scott Card was a pretty cool guy right up until someone tried to tell him gay people are human beings too, f'rinstance. That had nothing to do with his sci-fi or fantasy work, it was just...run-of-the-mill evil, y'know? Banal, vicious, ordinary

@Lord_Gareth Just...why? And I speak as a blond blue-eyed man. Why?

With me thus far?

@GreySage I cannot answer that question and remain in the bounds of polite discourse. Suffice it to say that there is no amount of suffering I find inappropriate for Mr. Ringo's life and no amount of failure too great for me to wish upon his work

Sure

@kviiri Alright. So, with that out of the way, I could talk about the troublesome roots of sci-fi as a genre. The founding of the genre came overwhelmingly from white authors who ranged from, shall we say, misguided folks to people like H.P. Lovecraft who were fantastically prejudiced and fearful to the point of self-parody, but honestly while that's part of the problem it's not the main reason sci-fi tends to attract problems

← 20 messages moved from RPG General Chat

What is the main reason, then?

← 1 message moved from RPG General Chat

The main reason is that the question at the heart of sci-fi and its identity as a genre is 'what if', and 'what if' is a loaded kind of question. It's a vital one! Speculative fiction is something I love and adore, personally, and the introspection and theorizing it does has been amazing over the ages

But 'what if' is the sort of thing that causes not just run-of-the-mill annoying soapboxing, but platforms for beliefs that are distantly cruel at best, and malicious, vicious, and deliberate at worst

Hm, makes sense.

"What if we got rid of all the gay people?" and then the author writes a utopia kinda deal, y'know?

Ringo did that with 'what if libertarians took over the world'

Never really thought of it that much, but it makes sense.

And it's not like authorship is exactly free of folks looking to spread a message. In and of itself that's fine

@Lord_Gareth I would argue that every author is looking to spread a message

But like any other form of speech you're going to get folks who need a serious lesson in being functional human beings that nevertheless decide the world has to hear whatever viciousness they've cooked up.

@GreySage I don't really disagree there

@Lord_Gareth And sometimes those vicious writers are really good at writing stories (no matter their cruel messages)

And mind you, there's other issue. Sci-fi, like fantasy, has this perception of being a white and/or male territory in which others are unwelcome intruders. The publishing industry around both is...difficult...for other perspectives to get into, at best, and actively hostile at worst

Which is a damn shame considering that several influential founders of sci-fi were/are women, some of whom are even still alive.

Aye

As communities, sci-fi and fantasy can be prickly, resistant to change and, to be blunt, prone to the sorts of neckbeards that are so thick and overgrown that they extrude feeding tentacles

Folks not actively trying to be mean to others can nevertheless aggravate the problem because they see any change as a threat to their hobby or interest

While discounting both the fact that the people trying to get their voices heard are A. their fellow fans and B. playing the game as it's "supposed" to be played, by writing and publishing their own stories

Which leaves these new authors between a rock and a hard place, facing difficulties getting published and no support from what is supposed to be their own community

@Lord_Gareth There is a black author of African sci-fi who I recall saying "we need to tell our stories ourselves, or other people are going to tell them for us."

@doppelgreener I have also heard this quote but I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the author, and now I feel guilty about that

In context it was also about non-Africans writing Africa-based sci fi.

@Lord_Gareth @BESW might recall

@kviiri So in short while it doesn't help that the foundations of sci-fi were difficult at best and I'd more accurately say "mostly terrible people", thus normalizing using the genre as a platform for racism, sexism, and other small-minded viciousness, the biggest issue is and remains that there's a large audience out there of folks who have those vicious beliefs and have interests and hobbies just like anyone else

And for those folks, speculative fiction can feel like vindication

I see what you mean, now. Thanks for the explanation!

This has been today's episode of 'things Gareth is mad about because it should not be this hard to clean house'

Well I mean... it seems like a good topic to be mad about, if you got to be mad about something.

@doppelgreener - Any particular interjections? I was kinda relying on you there to let me know if I was crossin' lines w/r/t Be Nice

@Lord_Gareth You did fine. This is somewhere in the vicinity of the line, but in context and it being the only thing of this nature I'm going to let that slide.

& like, the policy is to Be Nice to everyone regardless of whether they're on the site, alive, etc, but it's well known at this point that H. P. Lovecraft was profoundly xenophobic and wove that into his work (when he wasn't just outright writing poetry about black people being subhuman), and statements like this are matter-of-fact assessments I don't think Be Nice is intended to snuff.

@doppelgreener Though I should note for the sake of completeness that he did get better later in life, notably due to the influence of his wife. Unfortunately the time of his severe but very positive moral introspection coincided with him ceasing to write fiction

So most folks remember him as the guy who was afraid of French Canadians

@doppelgreener yeah -- Be Nice itself crosses the line when it is used as a cudgel against matter-of-fact statements (instead of against things that are intended to convey non-nice-ness)

(And not necessarily undeservedly so; in a lot of ways his work is his legacy and that work was, as you noted profoundly racist and xenophobic)

@Lord_Gareth Oh, that's good, and is something I don't know much about. I only know of, say, how he married someone from another culture, but he considered her to be "acceptably" inside of his own culture's practices and inside of his own tolerances. Which is still xenophobic of her culture and ethnicity.

@doppelgreener She called him out at a party and that event is considered the start of him Learning Better. Howard was being casually and persistently anti-Semitic while talking with his friends and his wife finally went "if you hate Jews so much why did you fall in love with one"

It was the metaphorical hatchet the dude had been in need of most of his life.

@Lord_Gareth :O!!!

Whoa.

But that doesn't really help ease the legacy he left behind, y'know?

Like, it's great that it happened.

But the damage was done, and has been done, and is done.

It's definitely different to, say, Herge actively working to move past his prejudices over the course of his work on Tintin.

Now! To move on to something less depressing, have you done any reading of Dungeon Life Quest? Did you decide to stick with it?

@Lord_Gareth -- speaking of less depressing -- part of me wants to rope you into a short-form game at some point or another, but I don't know what systems you play/want to play :o

@Shalvenay I would give a mean look to a baby pony to get a decent Fate game in my life

...I should not do grim metaphors before breakfast

That was too hard

@doppelgreener I didn't realize it as a kid, but the Blue Lotus has a certain irony to it. It basically devotes a lot of time to saying the Chinese are far more smart, advanced and human than Western media typically portrayed them as... and then portrays the Japanese in the very same style of racist caricature it denounces with the Chinese.

@Lord_Gareth I'll have to let you know if the quasi-standing group of Stackizens I'm in with decides to run another Fate game (we already ran one Fate short-form and it was pretty sweet)

I guess that's... partially understandable based on the historical context, with the Sino-Japanese conflicts ongoing at the time of its creation.

@Shalvenay Biggest obstacle for me is Retail Scheduling, which is sorta like normal scheduling but done by whoever designed the star alignments for cosmic horrors

@Lord_Gareth understandable -- I've heard plenty of cosmic horror stories about that

@Lord_Gareth I could edit it? (I could replace it with an awesome grim metaphor.)

@doppelgreener If y'think it's too much for the room, feel free. I'm honestly not sure. I, um. Sorta got people to stop beating me on a daily basis by turning off my mouth filter and letting the shadow of Columbine suggest to them that they ought to be nice to me

But four years straight of doing that turned into a lifelong habit

@Lord_Gareth (it wasn't but I can't resist taking up the opportunity)

[Checks]

Pfffffffffft

@Lord_Gareth :D

@doppelgreener But yes, my previous question?

@Lord_Gareth btw, thank you for being mindful. I appreciate the mindfulness you're giving to your activity in conversations like this.

Oh! No, I haven't read any Dragon Life Quest yet, sorry. Got a lot going on.

@doppelgreener Gonna be honest, at least part of this was making friends with the moderator of a different and troublesome community, & realizing exactly how much he slogs through to perform the basic act of Keeping the Peace.

And while my idea of The Peace may be different from the Stack's I do appreciate, y'know, the need. 's a public space.

[hugs LG]

@Lord_Gareth I'm glad that happened. :) Lots of moderation here occurs quietly by design, but I can say over the mere two weeks I've been a moderator it can be a lot of work. RPG.SE's diligent community means it's a lot less work than it otherwise would be, which I am so grateful for.

I've found as well that Not Acting is as important for a moderator as Acting. It's part of finding the right amount and time to act.

@doppelgreener My heart overflows with sorrow. My life will now exist beneath the shadow of this event. Alternately "Aight, lemme know if/when you hit it up." One of those.

@doppelgreener Yep. The hat never really comes off, and anything done exists with the hat on it forever

@Lord_Gareth haha. Mostly, I recently was diagnosed with depression, and now a remarkable amount of my time and energy is going into putting in place all the habits and things that will help me move past it. I'm safe, and this diagnosis is a good thing — I was consciously dealing with the symptoms for years, so the diagnosis occurred as an opportunity to move past them. I've also received very helpful treatment from and with some wonderful people.

@Lord_Gareth Totally. The mod hat is glued on.

@doppelgreener 's good to hear man. Finding help can be hard; accepting it can be harder

@Lord_Gareth Thank you. :)

For me it was pretty easy -- I'd been progressively identifying some of the symptoms since University, and trying various solutions to each of them that weren't working, so someone saying "oh, all of these things are depression, you can get that treated" was AMAZING. like, yes, of course, definitely, gimme!!!

I've described it kinda like this: imagine an athlete participating in running races who recognises that somehow he's not as fast as everyone around him, and he's doing his best and running decently, and has been working hard to become faster, catch up, etc, without any luck -- but he's still doing his best.

And then a physician comes over, glances him up and down, and says "do you know your foot's broken?" and talks to him about casts and treatment and physical therapy and all the while the athlete's mind is being blown.

[Nod-nods]

@Lord_Gareth I might be able to accommodate something this summer.

@BESW Bullying baby ponies? That's sick bro.

How could you

Eh, it's just Diamond Tiara.

The African author was probably Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor, but I have a hard time tracking her essays and articles down after the fact.

[rummages] This is relephant, but now I'm thinking it was NK Jemison I'm looking for.

@doppelgreener NK Jemison. Probably you're thinking of this or this.

I say

@BESW I don't entirely recall what it was, but I remember it coming up in context of a white author who had told an Africa-based sci fi, and I recall you trying to measure to what degree his work was genuinely representative, or to what degree it was falling prey to prejudices and exoticism and primitivism and other junk. You found very strongly divided opinion on the matter.

Ooh, right. Was that in Skype?

yeah that was actually on one of our saterdays

@BESW I read those, and that was nice! I haven't read the Relephant link but read the other two, and NK Jemison pointed me to Decolonise, not Diversify as a way to actually break down the barriers in fiction for black authors from this tweet.

or at least I recall you talking about it and I think it was on a Saturday

Found it in the Geek Night chat log.

mk

@BESW That's exactly it!!! (@Lord_Gareth)

Thank you very much for that!!!

BESW are you sure you're not some kinda necromancer

'Cause you just unbury this stuff like "ARISE TO SERVE ME AGAIN"

What, it was only from November of last year.

And Greener gave me great context for the search.

but you're not necessarily not a necromancer...

I'm an informagician.

Nice. That works for me. :D

My incantations are Boolean.

Ia, ia! NEQV WHILE NULL

Aaand I'm caught up with the nightly Twitter haul.

@BESW Have you played a game by the name Renowned Explorers: International Society?

I have not.

Hrm. I've been kinda leaning in that direction w/r/t Fate ideas lately but it's somewhat difficult to encapsulate. The easy version ("Victorian-era pulp globetrotting pulp adventures") doesn't quite capture it

[watches trailer]

So, it's playful and cheeky. Exploration and discovery are primary goals. Conflicts are frequent but can be resolved using a multitude of methods, not all violent. There are strong supernatural elements, of the folklore-and-faiths variety.

don't let @BESW tell you he isn't a necromancer, I have seen him raise the dead before

blatant slander is what I do :P

Dead campaigns don't count.

@BESW Yes. The game also heavily features puzzles and also multiple ways around conflicts

Such as strongarm vs. diplomacy vs. theft

Okay, so I'd probably use UnWritten as a source for mechanical inspiration.

(It's the Myst franchise RPG.)

I'm gonna be in and out, I'm in HotS matches

hot smatches

@doppelgreener Language warning.

@BESW WHOOPS. Yes. Definitely. Language. Lots. Colourful swearing.

liek woah.

REIS looks amusing, but not really my usual style of game. [adds to wishlist, waits for sale]

(It's on GOG, so that's nice.)