Dividing up the content surrounding the Wilderness Years of Doctor Who has been an interesting experiment of trial and error. I had initially planned to read the two Companion Novels during the time time I was listening to the Lost Season 23 audios, but it became clear that these books would be a slow burn, and in the end it did take me about 18 months to get around to finishing them both. Is this a commentary on their quality? Perhaps. I'm still glad I read them though, and it helps provide a good context to where tie-in media was at during this era of the show. I'm also glad I got them out of the way before I dive into the Wilderness Years proper.

I also decided that, since most of the content released during the Wilderness Years is at least somewhat contemporary, I would tackle the two Third Doctor radio dramas beforehand as well. All four pieces of media are set during the original run of the show, and each takes a different approach that I think helps lay the groundwork in a big way for how future works such as the novel ranges in the 90s and Big Finish later on would approach creating content set during previous eras. And I have to say, the audios have already come a long way from where Slipback left off less than a decade earlier.

The two novels were bought used as they are no longer in print, but the two radio plays are available as audio books from sites such as Audible. I've ranked each story based on it's medium, though I found both audios superior to the novels.

( But he was a good man, and a brave one. It's silly, I know, but I feel as though I've lost my best friend. )

I signed up for the smallfandombang, which I'm optimistic I'll be able to tackle since it's one story rather than multiple fills, and actual gives me an excuse to hyper-fixate on properties that no one aside from me really cares about. I've also made some headway on my buffyverse bingo fills - especially now that the deadline is later than I thought it was. At the very least I should have something fun to contribute to the amnesty round assuming my brain doesn't turn to pudding after the election.

I've been making my way through the other Halloween sequels and I'm starting to resign myself to the fact that no shlocky horror movie sequel is gonna hit quite like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 did. I did end up really digging The Boy though so maybe that sequel will offer up something I can latch onto. Assuming my schedule isn't thrown off I plan on spending part of this weekend watching those '00s horror movie reboots all in one sitting, so maybe one of those will surprise me too.

In semi-related news I'm gonna try to rewatch Hocus Pocus tomorrow so I can make an attempt to make it through the rest of that novelization/sequel that came out a couple of years back, especially in light of an actual sequel being greenlit. Since I know the "lead" of the novelization sequel is queer I'm kind of rooting for it to be an adaption of that, but either way I'm just hoping to enjoy the book. I did enjoy the author's take on some of the clumsier elements of the film.

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because there isn't all that much to talk about. Mostly, I've fallen back into Anime in a big way. As of this morning, I've watched 180 episodes of it in 2020 so far. On Twitter I've been keeping a running tab of the shows I've finished/caught up on, and the tally so far includes Ascendance of a Bookworm, Golden Kamuy, Fruits Basket, Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Banana Fish, and Given, and this week I've been making my way through Dr. Stone. It's been actual years since I've consumed it in this volume where I didn't have to schedule it and make myself watch it. There's an element of it this time around as I make a point to watch it while exercising, but it doesn't feel like I'm making myself do it as a chore. I'm really excited to knock out some shows I've been putting off for actual years. I've yet to see Weathering with You though, which is a massive personal failure on all fronts tbh.

I've tapered back on picking up new live action shows for the most part, but I have been slowly binging the new season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and keeping up week-to-week with my usual shows like Doctor Who, Supernatural, Legacies, and The Good Place. Doctor Who in particular has been a journey this season as it's ranged from the mediocre (Orphan 55) to the fantastic (Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror) to the "they're throwing so much stuff at us I can't keep up (Fugitive of the Judoon). I think this'll be a pretty definitive season for the Thirteenth Doctor's era, and I'm really excited to see how it all ultimately shakes out. I have my theories but I'm not married or beholden to them in a way that could really disappoint me, but I am holding out a sliver of hope that this could be setting the stage for the circumstances that the Valeyard emerges from (even though I haven't gotten to the Sixth Doctor yet, I have a cursory understanding of that lore). I also think if we're ever going to get another season of a spinoff I will not name here, it'll be announced within the next couple of months. Because actors age and there are only so many opportunities in this franchise that sometimes feels like a ticking clock.

As an aside, I started watching The Outpost as well on a whim. It's one of those syndicated fantasy shows produced for international audiences and hidden away somewhere obscure in American broadcasting - in this case, summers on The CW. I'd always been kind of curious about it since the premise seemed kind of fun, and I have to say I've really been enjoying it. I'd been a while since I indulged in low budget scifi/fantasy outside of Doctor Who, and it kind of makes me feel nostalgic. It also really makes me want to play Dungeons and Dragons again, since it kind of has the vibe of a lovingly created solo campaign. There's definitely a layer of cheese, but none of the actors feel like they're above it and the enthusiasm really translates on screen. I'm only pissed I got into it right as the CW seems to have yanked the free streams of season 2 off their website, which means I'm probably going to have to pay money to watch it on Amazon Prime (which is where I've been watching the first season for free through IMDb TV).

I haven't done any writing this month, and I'm content to take a break for a little while longer to fully recharge. I've been making my way through Sword of Destiny, the second short story collection for The Witcher, at a slower pace than I would like since I really want to watch the show. Hopefully I'll be able to have it done this week and I'll have watched it before I'm surrounded by other nerds at Katsucon. (And speaking of cons, I found this nifty website tool where I've been able to catalog every con I've ever attended, which is super neat and useful.)

But yeah, I've been able to keep myself busy that's been pretty effective in starving off bad vibes from a certain franchise fall-out and the dreariness of winter. Hoping I can keep this energy going for February as well.

The title of this post would probably look better without the Oxford comma, but I'm keeping it in on principle.

I started the Third Doctor's final serial, Planet of the Spiders, during lunch today and I wasn't expecting the Jo Grant scene and it kind of knocked me flat even though she didn't actually appear. I know that, with a couple of exceptions, UNIT largely becomes a non-presence in the series after the Third Doctor regenerates so I'm really glad they seem to be honoring this part of the show's history (except for Liz Shaw... and the Master for obvious reasons.) One of the handful of new fics I was planning to write during NaNo was a Second Doctor-centric Christmas fic where he, Jamie, and Zoe find a way to visit Victoria for the Holiday (with some not-so-subtle Jamie/Victoria content) but now I kind of want to write a Christmas fic for Three's ensemble as well. It wouldn't be that hard logistically and it would help fill the Doctor Who void since I think if we do get a special this year it'll be another New Year's one. Which is... fine. But I really want to see Jodie Whittaker in character wearing a Santa hat.

As far as NaNo itself goes, I'm using it to finish incomplete works from the 2010s so I can start off 2020 with a clean slate, but so far I'm mostly beefing it because I spent last week finishing up some Fictober overrun and recovering from one of the worst work weeks I've ever had. I have a couple of mostly-finished works that I'm hopeful I can polish off today and get posted just to give myself a shot in the arm, and in the end it's not a huge deal since I'm not officially signed up with NaNo or the mini version. But hitting my (revised) Fictober goal of 13 fills really felt good and I'd like to keep that momentum going.

The other project I have going is Buffyverse Bingo, which I've started two fills on... only they're not on the same line. However, they both fall on lines that contain the free space, so I just have to choose which line I want to do and stick with it. One of them is a Willow/Tara fic that I've very excited about, especially since I haven't written a ton of F/F fic, and the other is a Xander/Oz fic that's a homage of sorts to a fic I really liked as a teenager... when I definitely wasn't gay nope I just read it for the art. A challenge I've run into that I wasn't really expecting was dealing with the "Buffyspeak" of it all, especially with Xander (who has a sizable speaking role in the Willow/Tara fic as well). I rewatched a handful of season 3 episodes last week which definitely helped, but I think I'm just gonna have to resign myself to the fact that some of the dialogue is not gonna be up to the standard I want.

Also, speaking to that Xander/Oz fic - it made me really happy that the author chose to archive and preserve their old writing from *checks notes* 1999 so that it was still accessible for fans like me. It motivated me to archive my own, very shitty fanfic that I wrote when I was a teenager on a dedicated AO3 account. One in particular I got very emotional about because I assumed it was gone forever since I wrote it exclusively for a forum that later banned me (and no longer exists) and never posted it to Fanfiction.Net... but it turns out I did mirror it on an old, forgotten deviantART account. Like, it's still very bad in that crappy OC, vaguely self-insert kind of way. But I remember working very, very hard on it at the time so it's nice to be able to have something to show for it.

As an aside, I've been tempted to start my free trial of Apple TV+ so I can binge Dickinson, but I've been holding off because Disney+ debuts tomorrow and I'm already watching too much TV. Once I finished the Third Doctor's run tonight, I'll also be putting Classic Doctor Who on hold for a while - theoretically until after season 12 ends if it's gonna come back in "very early 2020" as has been reported, but I may tweak those plans if that's changed. I'm looking forward to the premiere of The Mandalorian as much as I really can be, since the trailers don't really give away much for what the show is actually about. His Dark Materials premiered last week, but I'm still only halfway through reading The Subtle Knife, so I'm probably gonna hold off watching it until I'm at least finished with The Amber Spyglass. I fear I'm gonna run into the same issue with The Witcher, but I do want to make a concentrated effort to give these books their due rather than simply diving right into the show. And it's not like there isn't gonna be a huge gap between seasons I'll have time to get caught up during.

So much to do, so much to read, so much to write. Thank god Buffyverse Bingo has an Amnesty period in December.

I tend to not post these kinds of lists anymore, but with the various meta analyzing the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy in the context of the words of the Brontes and Jane Austin, I've been slowly adding more classic works to my reading list, though I still have a ways to go before I can dive into them (His Dark Materials and The Witcher are currently my priority).

I've put an asterisk near titles I've only partially read (or in some cases am in the actual process of reading).

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Repost this and bold the titles you’ve read.

( Under the cut for length and not because I'm hiding my shame )

I didn't really do much this past weekend. I wasn't really expecting to do much though, since it's the last free weekend I had before my summer of plans™ begins, but it still felt underwhelming. I got a haircut and went grocery shopping, but aside from that I just kind of messed around online without much of a purpose. I even have a brand new Nintendo Switch from my birthday that I've barely played. I did get a few hours of reading done which was nice.

I used to be able to write fic during dead periods at work, but after trying to take some stabs at it the past month I've realized that it's almost impossible for me to break out of the "work" headspace I'm in and do something more creative. This is a bummer as it's easily the time of day when I have the most energy to do something like that. Maybe once I break my new laptop in I can try writing on the train again like I used to, but I suspect that, if anything, I'll fall into playing my Switch or Reading during that time. Either way, at least I've mostly broken my habit of playing mindless mobile games for hours upon hours and then dropping them after a couple of months. Even the better ones (SimCity and Hogwarts Mystery) seem so monotonous now.

A new Hunger Games book was announced today, and I'm having memories now of devouring those books whenever I had a free moment on the Subway or sitting around Campus and honestly that's the kind of energy I'm trying to get back. As much as I love audiobooks, and how much they've allowed me to start reading again, maybe it'll be good for me to actually sit down and physically read some books. I still have about half of My Name is Trouble left, so I'm gonna see how that goes.

Preface: This year I made it my goal to read every book of substance in the new Star Wars canon before I saw The Last Jedi (barring incomplete Young Readers series Adventures in Wild Space and Join the Resistance). I came very close to reaching this goal, only stalling on the last book - the novelization of The Force Awakens, which I still have five hours left to listen to when my viewing of The Last Jedi is slated to begin in less than three. I've also opted to read Cobalt Squadron after seeing The Last Jedi due to fear of spoilers.

Not only am I happy that Star Wars has reignited my love for reading (even though most of it is via audiobook), but I've fallen in love with the Star Wars story, both the good and bad parts, and I'm excited to see how The Last Jedi continues that story.

( A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... )

Watch Status Roundup:
Cardcaptor Sakura - 48/71
Natsume's Book of Friends - 2/80
The X-Files - 74/210
The Golden Girls Extended Universe - 76/442

So a project that I've been working on for the past year has been reading all of the new canon Star Wars books, and I'm making pretty decent progress. So far, I haven't encountered any books I've disliked, though there are some I've definitely liked more than others. Or at least, that was the case until very recently. Maybe. Part of the reason I'm writing this post is to sort out my feelings on the book Battlefront II: Inferno Squad and why it didn't really work for me.

Warning: The following post contains minor spoilers for Star Wars Battlefront II: Inferno Squad.

( Laughing at death is not a great response... )

Watch Status Roundup:
Digimon Tamers - 34/51
Cardcaptor Sakura - 35/70
The X-Files - 74/210
The Golden Girls Extended Universe - 76/442