Photos, Who, Victorians

[icepixie]

Okay, people, I'm jumping on the photo meme bandwagon. (How could I resist?) Tell me what mundane part of my life you want to see pictures of! Shoes, house, bookcase, computer, my favorite [insert noun here]...whatever. You can even request stuff from Kenyon or Exeter, since, given the amount of pictures I've taken over the last two years, it's not entirely unlikely that I'll have a picture of it.

Heck, request multiple things. I like taking pictures.

*

So I watched "Pyramids of Mars" yesterday, and oooh. Sarah Jane is awesome. Competence is so becoming on a companion. Also, pretty dress. Not to mention just the right amount of snark and willingness to talk back to the Doctor. Hee.

The story was...not scary in the least, but that's okay. It was period, and that's cool. Tom Baker's googly eyes still kind of freak me out, though.

The Awesomeness That Is Sarah Jane inspired me to try "Genesis of the Daleks" again, and...it's just. not. happening. It should be interesting, but it's not. I'm somewhere in episode four or five, I think, and I just can't make myself finish it. Perhaps it has something to do with Harry.

*

Part of me is giving serious thought to writing the Eight-and-Charley-meet-the-SAJV-gang crossover my brain keeps threatening. And then somehow making Rebecca Fogg Charley's great-great-grandmother or something, because hee.

*

Judith Flanders's Inside the Victorian Home is love. Yay for social historians who can write both authoritatively and engagingly. As with all studies in the social history of the later nineteenth century, this makes me think that, had I been born then, around age four I would've gone up to my parents and said something along the lines of, "I've got...a disease...called, um...well, it doesn't matter, but the upshot is that I'm now a boy; please start treaing me like one," so that I could actually, oh, go to school.

Her chapter on servant life is one of the better ones as far as detail goes; in fact, it is so detailed that it makes me want to go lavish praise on the inventor of the washing machine, because OMG, ow. Taking apart a dress and sewing it back together by hand every time you wanted to wash it? Ack.

Comments

[calixa.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's Harry stopping you from watching Genesis of the Daleks; that's just an incredibly hard one to watch. It meandered a lot and I personally found most of it boring. However, it does have one of the best lines everrrrr: HARRY SULLIVAN IS AN IDIOOOOTTTTTT!

. Taking apart a dress and sewing it back together by hand every time you wanted to wash it? Ack.

I would kill myself.

[icepixie]

It does feel like it could have accomplished in four episodes what it gets through in six. They keep going back and forth across the quarry to have uninformative-but-very-dramatic dialogue with two sides that are totally not differentiated at all, and I just. don't. care.

However, it does have one of the best lines everrrrr: HARRY SULLIVAN IS AN IDIOOOOTTTTTT!

Hee!

I would kill myself.

Me too. (Washing your clothes with bar soap. Wringing them out by hand. Eleventy-billion different chemicals for each different color or fabric, all of them having to be done in a new pan of water you heated over the fire, because otherwise the colors would run and mix. I would go live naked in the woods.)

[alorarose.livejournal.com]

oo, take pictures of your room!

[icepixie]

Okay!

I'm gonna post all the pics requested of me maybe Tuesdayish.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

"Pyramids of Mars" is one of the first Four stories I ever saw (or, really, one of the first DW ever), and granted, I was in about ninth grade, so maybe I was 13/14, but Sutekh scared the crap out of me. Not so much while I was watching, but I could not get that image out of my head later that night to save my life. It's one of the first times that ever happened to me, which is why I've become increasingly careful about the images I fill my head with. (That one doesn't really bother me now, though!)

I'm really fascinated by your reaction to "Genesis," though. It's one of those I'd most like to see again, of those I don't have on tape (which are many!). It's such a classic Who story, so I wonder why you're having so much trouble with it? Harry really bothers you? Pity, in any case--maybe come back to it later--I know I've tried books at the "wrong" time and am amazed at coming back to them a few years later how much better they've become ;)

I'd imagine the Victorians were thrilled with being able to wash anything at all--one of the Globe tours I was on in London regaled us with details of the water-soluble vegetable dyes used in Elizabethan clothing, which meant the closest you came to washing them was to air them for a while. Must've been a rather potent experience, standing in the sun for a show at the Globe! Does your book say how often they'd actually go to the trouble to wash a dress? I'd think not so often, unless you had tons of servants?

[icepixie]

Pyramids: I think it might be the wormhole-made-of-disco ball-lights that's throwing me off, honestly... ;) I dunno, Sutehk is just so...eh. He's a bit of a moustache-twirler Maybe it's not so much the villain as that I can't quite believe the main characters are ever in danger, for whatever reason. I tend to respond better (where "better" = get scared) to things like the creepy ticking robot at the beginning of GITF, or the ghostly typing in TDD.

Genesis: I don't think it's Harry. I think it's that I can't see much difference between the two factions, and I don't really get why I should care one way or the other. It's just so draggy. It could've been chopped to four episodes, easy.

Does your book say how often they'd actually go to the trouble to wash a dress?

Washing day was usually Monday. Common ideas of cleanliness-being-next-to-godliness meant that if you skipped a week, you would have immense guilt. Also, most people didn't have enough clothing to go more than a week without laundry. This is for people with at least one servant, which was all but the very far bottom of the middle class. Actually, I think even those without servants tried to do it once a week as well. (Much of the working class seems to have been composed of domestic servants. What few weren't in service, I suppose, didn't do washing all that often; the book concentrates on middle class domestic life, and so there's not a lot of detail about the ends of the spectrum. But the middle class had expanded by leaps and bounds in that period, so probably there were a lot of people who did their laundry once a week.)

[nickless.livejournal.com]

I wanna see a picture of all of your Dr. Who paraphenalia. All of it. *g*

[icepixie]

So that'll be...one paperback novel and a bunch of LJ icons, then? *g*

I'll be posting the pictures in a separate entry on Tuesdayish.

[nickless.livejournal.com]

And a million-plus downloads, apparently! *g*

[icepixie]

*cough* ;)

[rensong.livejournal.com]

Part of me is giving serious thought to writing the Eight-and-Charley-meet-the-SAJV-gang crossover my brain keeps threatening. And then somehow making Rebecca Fogg Charley's great-great-grandmother or something, because hee.

I would so totally read that!

I wonder if they're ever going to make a Secret Adventures of Jules Verne box set, cause I would buy it. I miss SAJV. ::pouts::

[icepixie]

I would so totally read that!

If I can figure out a way to have it not get tangled up on itself in plot-related bits, then I will totally write it.

I'd love a SAJV boxset. *sigh*

[sleepingcbw.livejournal.com]

Tell me what mundane part of my life you want to see pictures of!

Your mom, obviously.

[icepixie]

Obviously.

[wildtiger7.livejournal.com]

Pictures: your favorite location on the planet.

[rowdycamels.livejournal.com]

I want a picture of the outside of your house. (Assuming that AOL lets me look at it.) Also, a picture of the inside of your fridge.

The Awesomeness That Is Sarah Jane inspired me to try "Genesis of the Daleks" again, and...it's just. not. happening. It should be interesting, but it's not.

Ugh, I still haven't finished my copy of that. I think I got stuck somewhere around the endless bits of Sarah Jane Hanging Off A Scaffolding. Some More. and then decided that... I'd rather be doing schoolwork than watching tv. Which is just sad. Yay for New Who! (Which I just watched, by the way. FWAH.)

[icepixie]

I want a picture of the outside of your house. (Assuming that AOL lets me look at it.) Also, a picture of the inside of your fridge.

I'll put all the photos on the next CD I send you. We will defeat AOL!

Ugh, I still haven't finished my copy of that. I think I got stuck somewhere around the endless bits of Sarah Jane Hanging Off A Scaffolding. Some More. and then decided that... I'd rather be doing schoolwork than watching tv. Which is just sad.

It is sad. Some other Old Who episodes are much better, but that one...eh.

[rowdycamels.livejournal.com]

I'll put all the photos on the next CD I send you. We will defeat AOL!

MUAHAHHA!

It is sad. Some other Old Who episodes are much better, but that one...eh.

and there's so much potential for a cool story there, too. bah.

[icepixie]

and there's so much potential for a cool story there, too. bah.

Seriously. If you ever get Netflix, or find a video rental place with the episode, watch Pyramids of Mars. It's much better. And it has sneeeeaking.

[elflore.livejournal.com]

Sarah is indeed teh awesome. *g* Genesis...isn't bad, but it suffers the same problem a lot of the Who six parters did...it feels padded like crazy. Plus Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, had that tendency in his stories...he very much wrote pulp serials, collections of adventurous events which often aren't so important to the plot.

Harry was a sweet guy, but generally superfluous. They invented him before Tom Baker was cast, not knowing if the new Doctor was going to be an athletic, action type...apparently they were thinking he might end up more First Doctor-like, more of an old man again, in which case they'd need an Ian Chesterton. (Dunno if you've seen any first Doc yet, but Ian is *awesome*.)

Who, SAJV Xover: Despite never having seen SAJV, this sounds great to me. *g*

Oh, and I've been meaning to ask you...how are you liking Anansi Boys?

[icepixie]

Yeah, Genesis is...plodding is a good word, I think.

Harry's all right, or at any rate what I've seen of him is okay, I suppose. I can see the superfluousness, though.

I'm trying to figure out a way to write the SAJV xover in such a way that it will be satisfying, but that I won't get bogged down in plot. I'm not getting anywhere fast. But another Charley fic sprouted like a weed tonight (and required me to slog through parts of Zagreus again for a definitive answer to my earlier questions about Charley's sisters--I really hope that Charley's mother/that information only appears in the first third, 'cause I just can't make myself go through the other two), and I'm still trying to finish one I've been working on for a while, so, yay?

Oh, and I've been meaning to ask you...how are you liking Anansi Boys?

Haven't started it yet, actually. It's on my list after the Nathaniel Hawthorne biography I'm starting tonight. (The list at my LJ is in no particular order. You might have noticed. ;)) Have you read it yet?

[elflore.livejournal.com]

Charley's family: Naw, there really isn't anything about her family after she starts jumping into the other worlds and times. Though of course there's the Gallifrey audio about her sister, which I've not heard yet.

Anansi Boys: Oh yes, read it when it first came out, loved it...Gaiman is my favorite writer. *g*

[icepixie]

Charley's family: Naw, there really isn't anything about her family after she starts jumping into the other worlds and times.

Excellent. I think I finally worked out the birth order for her and her siblings, which had been bugging me for a while. (Sissy is mentioned as the youngest, and given that Margaret was said to be engaged, while Charley left when she was still in school, I'm thinking Charley is the middle child.) I got strange vibes that Charley's father might be dead, although it was never explicitly mentioned. Also, I'm torn between whether her father is a baronet or a knight. Either one gets Louisa Pollard the title of "Lady," while the kids don't get any honorifics (I imagine that, since it's never been mentioned, Charley is just "Miss" and not "Honorable" or whatever.)

Oh, well. Time to make things up!

Though of course there's the Gallifrey audio about her sister, which I've not heard yet.

I haven't heard it either, and for the purposes of the thing I'm writing, I'm blithely ignoring its existence. *g*

Anansi Boys: Oh yes, read it when it first came out, loved it...Gaiman is my favorite writer. *g*

More and more I wonder if you and asinpterodactyl were separated at birth. *g*

[elflore.livejournal.com]

Charley's family: Hmmm...I've not thought this through enough, it seems! I'd always sort of vaguely assumed Charley's sisters were older, that she was the baby of the family, but apparently that's wrong. Her father I'd just sort of assumed was your typical cliche distant aristocrat father, rather than dead...I dunno, though. Are you a member of the Outpost Gallifrey forum yet? I bet if you posted there all the facts--including any from the Gallifrey audios--would be compiled for you in no time. :?)

[icepixie]

I too thought that Charley was the youngest of the three sisters, but I can see her as a middle child as well. She's definitely not the oldest, though! Hee.

I only wonder if their father is dead because he's not mentioned at all in Zagreus, beyond Lady Pollard saying that Charley takes more after herself with her strong will, while Margaret and Cecilia have "more of their father in them." There's nothing to really confirm either way.

I'm resisting the OG forums because a.) I don't need the time-suck (or I won't, once I've graduated from job search-hell) and b.) frankly, they kind of scare me. *g*

[elflore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...not much to add here, this all makes sense.

The OG forums aren't so bad...I tend to skim them. :?P I think they could certainly be of great help for this kind of project, though.