How Are You Doing?

[jjpor]

 I realise I've not been very active at all, either here or in Doctor Who fandom generally, for the past...well, longer than I care to recall, to be honest.  We can discuss my feelings on the Chibnall Era (which is what I choose to call it because, no, I don't like it much, but it isn't anything to do with Jodie Whittaker or the Thirteenth Doctor) some other time.  There are more important things going on at the moment.

This is, I think it is fair to say, a pretty strange, scary time for pretty much the entire world and everybody in it.  I'd wager those of us who indulged in dystopian fantasies about what might happen if X or Y won a particular election, or if a particular referendum mandate was indeed seen through to its bitter end, didn't quite expect anything like this to happen.  Myself, I'm managing to get by both work-wise and personally, and keep myself and those I care about as healthy and safe as I can.  However, I realise that depending on your personal circumstances that could be a lot easier said than done.

So, I don't know, I just thought I'd post something here and just ask how people are doing, and offer my good vibes and best wishes to all of you.  It's been a while, but I hope all of you are keeping as well as can be in the circumstances, and if you'd like to offer your greetings (from a safe social distance, of course), I'd be very glad to hear from you.

Comments

[persiflage_1]

Hello stranger!

Me and mine are currently all safe and well. I am not enjoying my unprecedented holiday from work as much as I might since I'm not getting paid (boss won't pay me until the Govt's employee retention scheme gets going - and that might not happen before the end of April, so things for me are fraught).

I'm doing my best to stay positive-ish, however. Or at least to hold the gloom at bay.

Stay safe and well.

[jjpor]

Thank you - you too.

I'm lucky enough to have a job I can do from a laptop, so at least I'm still getting paid, but I appreciate that an awful lot of people are in a much worse situation in that regard. The govt really need to pull their finger out and get that scheme up and running, but this shower don't do detail (or much at all), do they?

But it's really good to hear from you. I'm glad you're okay at the moment and managing to stay positive-ish, because that isn't an easy thing to do at the moment.

[persiflage_1]

Yeah, my sister's working from home for Avon and Somerset Police (on the admin side). She's struggling a bit with the isolation, although, apparently several of her colleagues got wind of this and emailed, IM'd, or texted her today, and she said that helped. My mum's more or less housebound anyway these days thanks to Parkinson's Disease, but my brother is there with her, and only goes out for fresh bread and milk, and such like things.

The Govt really doesn't do detail or thinking at all. Useless shower.

I'm glad to have heard from you, too!

[jjpor]

Yes, I think keeping in touch with people however you can is very important, because isolation and lack of contact does start to weigh heavily after a while. You like to think you're a quite self-sufficient person, until it isn't a matter of choice anymore. It does make me a lot more empathetic towards people who spend their lives alone all of the time.

I think it's also true what people have been saying about working from home, that it's important to have some sort of routine, or at the very least a structure to the day. I think that makes things a lot easier too.

[persiflage_1]

It's true that routine and structure are very important for people who are working from home.

But don't forget - you're not actually *working from home*. You are *at home, working, during a global crisis*. That is not the same thing at all and I think it's foolish for anyone to assume it is. During a normal WFH scenario you don't also have to worry about maintaining necessary supplies, or whether any of your friends or family is about to fall dangerously ill, or whether people will comply with social distancing rules if you do have to go outside, or what the tally of the dead is going to be on this particular day, or whether our useless Government is going to pull its collective finger out and do its goddamn job! We are in a disaster scenario, and we have to allow ourselves the mental space to deal with that f*ckwittery every single day ON TOP of actually trying to get any work done while at home.

[jjpor]

That's definitely very true. And I think it's important for the people who are in that position to bear that in mind and make sure that their priority is the people it is in their power to help through this, and the self care that is necessary to make sure they are themselves in a position to provide that help. That's definitely my priority.

[persiflage_1]

Good. Self care is more important now than it's ever been before.

[jjpor]

I'm in full agreement with you on that. :)

[thisbluespirit]

Me and mine are currently all safe and well. I am not enjoying my unprecedented holiday from work as much as I might since I'm not getting paid (boss won't pay me until the Govt's employee retention scheme gets going

I was wondering about that and meaning to ask, knowing your boss's usual lovable habits. *eyerolls* And then I didn't because I thought if it was bad you might prefer not to have to think about it! I'm sorry - I hope the gov't stuff comes through sooner than that. *hugs*

[persiflage_1]

Thanks. I hope it does too, but I'm not exactly holding my breath on that score.

[thisbluespirit]

Noo, I think you might die of oxygen starvation if you attempted that! ♥

[persiflage_1]

Eggs-actly!

[thisbluespirit]

Hello you! ♥ I am glad to hear that you are okay so far, and it's always great to see you pop back up. When you didn't even for who_at_50 with the new Who, I thought we had ALAS lost you forever. I see we need to try harder!

I think I can officially say that most of my flist Did Not Like the finale (to varying degrees of Doctor Who is dead to us and where do we go from here upwards), and you can vicariously share in our dismay here should it make you feel any better about the giant retcon of horribleness. (I was moved to write a double drabble of mourning even.) Anyway, when I've recovered and feel like a DW fan again, I'll let you know. How about you?

Or, if we should focus on the positive, Sacha Dhawan was pretty good, right? ;-p

[jjpor]

Hello there! I'm very glad to hear from you, and I hope everything is going as well as it can at the moment. You'll have to do a lot better than that if you want to lose me. Otherwise, I will keep resurfacing, Nessie-like, and then disappearing again into the mist. Maybe I was just a clockwork toy submarine, or a fuzzy photo of a swimming circus elephant, or a boat wake seen under unusual lighting conditions all along...?

Well, as you know, I'm a big Master fan, and I thought Dhawan was pretty good indeed. I think Whittaker and the other regular cast members, and quite a lot of the guest stars, are really good too. It's the boring, almost completely risk-averse stories, isn't it, that's the problem? And all of Chibnall's Chibnallisms coming out in new, horrifically mutated forms on a weekly basis? And based on the couple of really quite likable scripts he wrote for Eleven a few years back, I'd thought he might be getting over those. How naive I was...

To be honest, I kind of lost my enthusiasm for the new era about halfway through the previous series. I kind of made myself watch this one, Who completist that I am, but couldn't really muster the will to go writing anything about it. I know Who continuity has always been something that has been made up as it goes along, and is retconned on a regular basis, but I took that finale as a personal insult, really. XD I should do something with who_at_50 again, maybe focusing on the "classic" series, but we'll see. I've been cheating on Who with other fandoms again and stuff like that. I'm not proud. ;)

Anyway, it's good to talk after...how long, now? Wishing you all the best, and let's hope all of this passes as quickly and benignly as it possibly can.

[thisbluespirit]

I've been cheating on Who with other fandoms again and stuff like that. I'm not proud. ;)

Shocking! How could you?

I mean, it's not as if I've written like 20,000 words of Star Wars since January, including a fic about Obi-Wan Kenobi's mother!

Well, as you know, I'm a big Master fan, and I thought Dhawan was pretty good indeed. I think Whittaker and the other regular cast members, and quite a lot of the guest stars, are really good too.

Oh, yes. Which makes it worse. And the stories were less risk averse this year and even mostly less dull and I was almost feeling hopeful... and then we got the finale. And now I just feel weird abou DW. I've decided at the moment that Big Finish and other EU things and Moffat Who feel comparatively unaffected but I can't Classic Who at all any more which I hope passes sometime soon, but it was a weird sort of betrayal in a way that nothing else has been, and I did not like it. I don't like feeling this way about Classic Who, either. :(

And based on the couple of really quite likable scripts he wrote for Eleven a few years back, I'd thought he might be getting over those. How naive I was...

I've never trusted him, never! He's my nemesis! Although, I would very much have liked to have been proved wrong on that front. (You can share my nemesis if you like, but he's been mine since at least 2007 so I got here first.)

[jjpor]

I mean, it's not as if I've written like 20,000 words of Star Wars since January, including a fic about Obi-Wan Kenobi's mother!

Call me back when you find yourself creating another pseud on AO3 in the hope that nobody you know will notice you writing fic about roleplaying game vampires. XD

If nothing else, it shows a real lack of character on Chibnall's part, or at least a flagrant disregard for the "rules," which boil down basically to "you may play with Doctor Who for a while, provided you don't go monkeying around with fundamental parts of the setting or premise in such a way as to poison the chalice for whomever comes after you." Moffat, for all his bluster and Machiavellian twists, never did that because I think whatever else anybody may say about him he loves Who to bits. Also is a much better writer than Chibnall, but that's really by the by. I'm not sure Chibnall does. Or at least, he'd rather create his own show that shares a title and the most basic elements with Doctor Who, while disregarding everything else.

I'm actually really sorry to hear that the finale has made you feel that way about the classic series. I hope it passes. It just made me think that maybe I won't watch anymore until Chibnall's gone and somebody else has the opportunity to set things back on the right track.

[thisbluespirit]

Call me back when you find yourself creating another pseud on AO3 in the hope that nobody you know will notice you writing fic about roleplaying game vampires. XD

If you're really worried about it, you need a sock account! ;-p But, ha, whatever works, and I have been known to write the odd vampire myself. (And since that was mostly old telly stuff, very odd vampires indeed.)

I just shamelessly wrote SW Prequel fic under my usual pseudonym anyway without any thought of what the subscribers might say.

I'm actually really sorry to hear that the finale has made you feel that way about the classic series. I hope it passes. It just made me think that maybe I won't watch anymore until Chibnall's gone and somebody else has the opportunity to set things back on the right track.

It just changed too much. I'm sure I'll come back around, but I still feel weird about it - it's not what I thought I was watching all this time.

I'm sure Chibnall does love the show; he's been a fan of it for long enough, after all! But his love takes strange forms and we're not obliged to appreciate them! :/

[jjpor]

Hehe, yeah, the failure to create a sockpuppet suggests I actually secretly *do* want people to read it. I'm clearly psychologically complex or something.

I think I'd write Star Wars fic (that quarter-million-word epic about Captain/Admiral Piett that's surely coming one day soon) quite brazenly, though. Star Wars is ace. Even the prequels :D

Yes, questioning a fellow fan's love of Who is unworthy of all of us. My apologies to Mr. Chibnall. ;) But yeah, just because he seems to be enjoying himself doesn't mean the rest of us have to play along. I think a ret-retcon is probably needed to restore classic Who to its rightful state. So, fingers crossed whoever comes after him is thus inclined.

[thisbluespirit]

You have layers!

I think I'd write Star Wars fic (that quarter-million-word epic about Captain/Admiral Piett that's surely coming one day soon) quite brazenly, though. Star Wars is ace. Even the prequels :D

I know people in the Imperial side of fandom; I'm sure they'd be happy to have you!

I think a ret-retcon is probably needed to restore classic Who to its rightful state. So, fingers crossed whoever comes after him is thus inclined.

Here's hoping, but it still feels weird if people can just keep changing it like that.

[jjpor]

Like a cake. Or an onion.

Imperial fandom. :D I'm not sure they'd like my take on Piett, though. I know he's easy to feel sympathy for, but he doesn't deserve even a little bit imho. Admiral Ozzel had more integrity, and it cost him. I have Thoughts re just about all of those Imperial officers from TESB, based mostly on stuff I've read about WW2 German generals and their varying relationships to the regime. I know this probably doesn't come as a surprise to you at all, given my track record. XD

I agree - changing things like that all the time does feel weird, and that's why Chibnall shouldn't have done it in the first place. Show some restraint, man.

[thisbluespirit]

Imperial fandom. :D

They're real! They reblog my gifs of Julian Glover, and understand about the awesome of cheesy Thriller episodes where James Maxwell and Julian Glover move in together and bury girls in the back garden. (Well, Julian does the burying in knatty knitwear like a manly man while JM sits inside being dangerously into classic lit and pop music and angsting over how upsetting it is to have to kill girls). Or at least the one who's very nice and part of B7 fandom does and these are the important things in life.

I don't know if they have any rules about takes on Piett, though. They seem the sort of fandom that's small enough to welcome anyone with a well written 250,000 word epic. :lol:

[jjpor]

these are the important things in life.

Indeed they are. :D

Well, if and when I ever do write my Piett-bashing epic, I know there's an audience out there for it...!

[john_amend_all]

I'm in a reasonably good position, having a job and being able to work from home. I'm seeing the government's furlough scheme from a different angle, with higher-ups in our company demanding documentation for our users on how it's going to work when we don't actually know that ourselves yet. So we're having to Do Something by lunchtime rather than plan out what might actually be useful. It's a bit of a change from what usually happens because, to give them credit where it's due, HMRC are very good about publishing what we need to know in good time.

[jjpor]

Yes, I'm in a similar position to you, I think, job-wise, and I've been reflecting on how fortunate I am really, in the circumstances, compared to a lot of other people in less secure positions. And yes, there's a lot of stuff like that going on at the moment, as regards Doing Something rather than actually planning properly. Without sharing any details, my employer has had problems with overseas teams, based in countries with much stricter quarantine regimes than we currently have, essentially being unable to work for the foreseeable future, with workload needing to be repatriated at a time when half our teams here are still trying to move over to working from home. It's a bit of a shambles, really.

I tend to think, as someone who most definitely did not vote for them, that the government are trying to do their best (now, after too much politically-motivated dithering), but the whole thing seems to have caught them on the hop and the dearth of talent in the upper echelons of our political class is more obvious than ever. And it's already been pretty obvious indeed these past few years. Hopefully those much-maligned "experts" are steering the ship as best they can now, despite the best efforts of the elected component.

Anyway, I'm really glad to hear from you. And I hope everything is going as well as it can for you. Best wishes until all of this is over, whenever that might be.

[ravenskyewalker]

Good to see you turn up again! I've been pretty scarce here, too, but do keep an eye out.

DW S12 actually moved me to mostly quit watching - watched Spyfall, liked Sacha Dhawan's Master, figured that if he showed up again it wouldn't be until the finale, so watched nothing else until Timeless Children... which I decided was garbage, although Whittaker managed to finally act in a way that reminded me of the Doctor (because she seems to wake up and act when she can spark off Dhawan), despite being held captive and having everything endlessly explained to her, *yawn*.

Anyway. I've been surprisingly addicted to playing Pokémon Go since September, and am finally grinding my way toward Level 40 (which is the last Level to reach).

I'm well so far in this pandemic mess, but am furloughed from work and applying for unemployment (waiting on paperwork, which could really show up much faster, as my sister considers it her life's work to call me up every day and demand that I stop procrastinating, which I'm not even doing here).

Mom's safe so far in her assisted living house.

I'm in one of the states in the USA where it seems to be showing up a lot, California. My sister and her kids are in another, Washington state, where there are lots of Chinese and Indian tech workers with some atrocious hygiene habits, such as spitting in the street and coughing openly all over. Fun times.

Unfortunately, I've already lost a longtime coworker to COVID-19, as he was away on a trip in February and probably picked it up on a plane or in an airport. When our bookstore had to close in March, I texted him to ask how he was doing. He texted that he'd got back home, got very sick, and was being tested for COVID-19. When I didn't hear from him again, I texted to ask how he was a couple of times with no response, then heard on the unfortunate date of April 1 (April Fool's, but not a joke) that he'd died.

I imagine this will be a growing problem, considering how badly-handled it's been by two major countries, and that a lot of us will eventually have known someone who died of it.

[thisbluespirit]

Unfortunately, I've already lost a longtime coworker to COVID-19

Oh, I am so sorry! ♥

[ravenskyewalker]

Thanks, my dear. This has been one hell of a year already and it's only early April...

[jjpor]

I'm so sorry to hear about your co-worker. As you say, there's going to be a lot, lot more of that kind of bad news before this thing is over. I'm glad you're okay so far and I hope your loved ones stay as safe as they can.

I'm pretty much in agreement with you, I think, as regards S12. It was so terribly dispiriting, after a fairly dispiriting S11, and that finale was just the poisoned cherry on top. Who am I kidding - I'll probably watch S13 when it comes along, assuming it comes along, but unless something really changes and a lot of ret-retconning takes place, I don't think I'll enjoy it much.

Pokemon Go has passed me by completely, but I know people speak very highly of it. ;)

Anyway, it's really good to hear from you. Stay as safe and healthy as you can, and with any luck this too will pass in time.

[kaffy_r]

Hello there! This comes from more than a month in the future (I do love time travel, don't you?) I wished you a belated Happy Birthday today, and among the wishes were hopes that you had a deficit of worries and a surplus of joys - I still hope those things for you. I'm glad to hear that you're managing to get by.

Like you, I've been absent from The Intarwebz, even though I haven't wanted to be. But I'm trying to get back into things.

(Thanks, by the way, for differentiating between Chibs and Thirteen and her Fam. The latter two I love; the former? I've been underwhelmed. I'm not twisted up in knots about the last twist of the last series, mind you, since I don't think it changes the nature of our favorite Gallifreyan, nor does it mean that she's not of that planet ... it just sets up a fascinating mystery that I hope Chibnall hires better writers than he is to take on. It's just that Chibnall lacks the ... hmm ... inner fire? Glow? that I think is needed to be a Who producer/showrunner.)