Safety Lights Are For Dudes

Yesterday I offered a sweepstake: the person who won could ask me to write 500 words on a topic of their choice. As it happens two people said exactly the same answer, so here is entry one of two. Adelle asked me to write 500 words on “why you blog and what you get out of it OR puddings”. Tempting as puddings are, I'm going for the former...

First, a definition: as far as I am concerned, blogging does not just mean “writing a blog”. That’s part of it, certainly, but just as vital are reading other people’s blogs, commenting and moderating comments, sharing links to interesting blogs written by other people, etc. If you just write without doing any of the rest of it, you’re Doing It Wrong.

That out of the way, there are several reasons why I blog.

1, Habit.

I’ve been doing it for over 15 years, now. I started before the term “blog” was even a thing (yes, of course, on LiveJournal), and I continue now it’s old hat and out of fashion. Very often I get the thought “I must write something about that”, and almost a quarter of the time I actually get around to doing it.
When I got out of the habit of blogging for a while when my depression was really bad, it made things far worse. I lost some of the web of connections which strengthens my feeble grasp on sanity. This was not a good thing. I am glad I have reaquired the habit, if not quite as prolifically as at some points in the past.


2, Mental Health

It helps me, a lot of the time, to get things down. Sometimes just writing it helps, sometimes posting it publicly helps; often it’s the easiest way to tell loved ones what I am thinking. For example: this morning I have been turning the nightmare I had last night into a fic which may or may not get posted publicly later; the nightmare is now less scary because I’ve pinned it down to the screen and made it squirm.

Additionally, like Andy has, I have found that my friends tell me that my blogging helps them; both in understanding where I am coming from and in clearing their own thoughts, or even just so that they know they are not alone in thinking or feeling X or Y. Every time I think I have overshared, someone will post a comment or send me an email or a twitter DM saying “thank you for posting that, it really helped me to deal with a similar thing”, or words to that effect.


3, Community

If I didn’t blog I wouldn’t have such a strong and diverse friends group full of interesting people. I reckon 90% of the friends that I really value I met through blogging, and a further 5% on top of that are people I met online before ever blogging. My attitude to blogging and it’s component parts is shared by a lot of others, and thus a little overlapping set of communities are formed, and it’s genuinely the biggest, most lifechanging thing I have ever been involved in. I met all my current partners either directly or indirectly as a result of blogging. I joined a political party because of blogging. I can’t overstate the importance of blogging to me, really.


and I think you'll find that's exactly 500 words ;)

staceyuk asked If you could have your perfect episode of Doctor Who, what would it be like?

I've written a lot of Doctor Who fic in my time, and there are certain things that are headcanon to me. Thus Doris is Benton, and the Used Car Salesman thing is just a cover, and Doris was there holding the Brig's hand when he died, and is with him in CyberBrig heaven. Mickey and Six had loads of adventures together when Mickey was in the alternate universe, because two unfairly maligned characters, etc etc. Also, at some point Six and River have had a massive, curl-shaking row. So any perfect episode wouldn't contradict any of that. I think we can categorise the elements that would make up my perfect episode of Who thusly:

The essential things, which are are all actually possible:

It'd have no plot holes.
It'd have good gender balance yet not make a big song and dance about it.
It'd have sparkling dialogue.
It'd have the right balance between funny and scary and tearjerking.
It'd have bits in to make old fans go squee that don't make new fans go "wut?".
It'd be just familiar enough to be Doctor Who but original enough to surprise me.

(all of the above have happened in this most recent series, but not consistently, and never all of them in the same episode)

The still technically possible but less likely things...

It'd have a bit on Gallifrey where Colin would have a speaking part as Maxil, who has lived for thousands and thousands of years, even as the Doctor who borrowed his face has gone through several regenerations. This would be all poignant.
It'd be directed by Graeme Harper.
The post-credit twist would be the revelation that the high priestess of the Sisterhood of Karn is a future incarnation of the Doctor.

And then the totally impossible things:

It'd be multi-doctor, and would have at least one lady Doctor, but preferably several (Joanna Lovely and Arabella Weir could return, but Helen Mirren would be ace). Helen Mirren Doctor and Colin Doctor would start off very huffy with each other but grudgingly respect each other by the end.
Colin would not be unfairly skated over in favour of Tom, and would be allowed to wear what he wanted.
It'd have all my favourite characters in - Suranne Jones!Tardis, Barbara, Jamie and Zoe, the Brig, Liz Shaw, Leela, Peri, The Inquisitor, Uncle Davros (but only if he's played by Terry Molloy), Morgaine, at least 3 incarnations of Missy/The Master, Omega (original, not fifth-era, at least as far as costume goes), Don Warrington!Rassilon - and some new ones that I can't even conceive of, but would be just as ace as those. It'd therefore have to be quite long, and you'd need the services of a good necromancer for some of those to appear.
Some of the awesome new characters would be played by Vincent Price, Cousin Di, Sheila Keith, Christopher Lee, Hedy Lamarr and Grace Kelly.
It'd be co-written by Mary Shelley and Sally Wainwright, and script edited by Douglas Adams and Bob Holmes.

And magister has just suggested a plotline which I thoroughly approve of:

All of the different incarnations of the Master (Delgado, Beevers Crispy-face, Diana Rigg, Ainley, Derek Jacobi, Sheila Keith, Sir Lee, Vinny P, Boris Karloff, Angelina Jolie, Charles Dance, Charles Grey, Beard-of-Evil Leonard Nimoy, etc.) gang up with each other to kill Simm!Master because he's an embarrassment and that's how we get Michelle Gomez who all the others declare to be perfectly suitable. The method of killing Simm!Master involves a great long chase through space and time and lots of doctors' stories, and a ridiculously overcomplicated plot... which would actually succeed.

You can tell that I'm a person who actually liked The Five Doctors, can't you? Oh yes, it'd have to have the Raston Warrior Robot in as well. Or even several of them. Anyway, I suspect that this is an episode of Doctor Who which would please me, and probably a few other people, but lots of others would hate it. And in the end, that would be what made it the perfect episode of Doctor Who; because no episode can be a perfect episode unless it completely divides fan opinion.

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