BBC/Moffat's decision regarding the 50th Anniversary trailer of Doctor Who

So, it happened. The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary trailer was screened at San Diego Comic Con, and afterwards not only did the BBC fail to comply with their promise to upload the trailer for the rest of the world to see, but show runner Steven Moffat told the audience present at the event that if a single one of them 'leaked' the trailer to the rest of us, there would be no more Doctor Who exclusives coming their way.

Now, I am not going to discuss whether it was Moffat or the BBC behind this decision (read: threat), nor am I going to focus on the fact that this trailer was made event-exclusive.

What I am going to focus on, is the fact that the BBC chose an American run event to showcase this trailer, rather than a UK one, despite the fact that Brittish tax payers and licence payers are the ones who actually fund the show, despite the fact that there are several eligeble events taking place in the UK all the time that the BBC could have chosen as their venue.

Now, I am a fan of a lot of different television shows. A lot of them are American products. When that is the case, the show will be aired in the US first, and the rest of the world is forced to wait a certain amount of months before networks in other countries can begin airing the very same episodes. Now, this worked back in the days before the internet, when television viewers were ignorant to how far the plot had advanced outside the viewing schedule in their own countries. But now we have the internet, and specifically fan communities where people from all of the world gather to discuss and share their enthusiasm for this particular show.

This is all fine and dandy if you happen to be privy to American television schedule (read: live in the US or have legal access to US channels), but if you're not, you don't stand a chance to be part of the community without having every single piece of the plot spoiled to you before you get the chance to actually see the episode in question (unless you resort to illegal streaming or downloading of the content in question). Even when there are services like Hulu, where American viewers can view the latest episodes online, foreign viewers cannot even pay to access the service. Legally speaking, we are forced to wait no matter what. It's an outdated and unfair system, and it needs to change, but that is not what this particular incident is about - although it is somewhat related to this.

Thing is, if you're an American fan, you tend to get things served first, and now that is beginning to come true also if the productions in question aren't an American product. Here is where the problem lies, here is the reason so many Doctor Who fans are downright pissed off by this latest move by Moffat and the BBC.

Because, firstly, Doctor Who is a product of the BBC, which is funded by taxes and a special yearly television license in the UK. To sum it up, the British television owners pay for this show to be made (regardless on whether they actually watch it). Secondly, Doctor Who isn't merely a television show, its 50 year long history has made it a staple within the British culture. Thirdly, there are events taking place in the UK all the time, several of which would have been plenty suitable for event-exclusive viewings like this one. Just a couple of weeks ago, I personally attended London Film And Comic Con, which was crawling with people, and there are other suitable candidates happening in the time to come. It would have been a natural choice for a show with such national importance as Doctor Who to have its first viewing of the long-awaited trailer on UK soil.

Instead, the trailer was flown halfway across the world, made exclusive to the handful of people rich enough to follow it, or lucky enough to live near the event in question.

I'm not complaining that shows like Bones, Castle and other American products are showcased at San Diego Comic Con, or that they show exclusive content for the shows there. The event is close to where the shows are produced, so it makes sense to showcase them there. I don't complain as a fan of both shows in question that I don't get the chance to attend or access event-exclusive content for these shows. Nor am I complaining that I personally don't get to view the event-exclusive trailer for the upcoming Doctor Who special. I am not a British citizen, it is not my television license that pays for production, so I have no claim to this privilege.

But there are millions of fans in the UK who have this claim, who are being cheated out of the chance to view this event-exclusive because the BBC decided to prioritize an American run event rather than finding a more local equivalent which would give British citizens a fighting chance. Even with the economy, the average UK citizen would be able to put aside money for train/coach tickets and finding cheap lodgings for a night or two. But only a handful would have the money or option to book enough time off at work to fly halfway across the world for the exact same thing.

The BBC are sending these people the message that they will prioritize fans in a whole other country rather than the viewers back home who they can actually thank to be able to even make this show. That is not just, and millions of UK fans have the right to be pissed off at BBC for this decision, and millions of other fans have the right to be pissed off on their behalf.

Why I ship

In this entry I intend to get very personal. I consider myself a very open person. I have no qualms about telling my life's story to the next stranger I meet in the street, so why should doing so anonymously on the internet be any different? I'm 25 years old, closing in on 26 in a few short months. While the people around me measure their past and current relationships in months and years, mine can be measured in weeks. My longest, most serious and meaningful relationship ended five years ago after having lasted two months. Ever since then my lovelife's been at a standstill. I haven't feelt that zinge in five years. And I wonder if I am even capable of falling in love with someone. It's been so long that I don't know if I can trust my memory of what it was like, trust that I ever truly was in love.

I don't know why I'm like that, because all my life I've been surrounded by love, by people who've stayed together their whole lives and who still love each other after decades of being together. Both my sisters are happily married, my parents, my grandparents... Me, I have my doubts that I will ever find someone. Sometimes that thought upsets me, other times I just accept that's the way it is. I think my doubts regarding my romantic future is definitely a contributing factor to why I ship.

For anyone here who's unfamilliar with the term "ship", here's a brief explanation. It's when you read a book, watch a movie or a television show and you get invested in the idea or the actuality of two people becoming a couple. I'm not talking about your average "I hope they get together at the end", where afterwards you place the disc back in its casing, or the book back in the bookshelf and don't think that much more about it. I'm talking about getting so emotionally invested in the characters and the romance that you not only *want* the people to get together. You *need* them to. You get excited when the romance is good and upset when it isn't. And usually you don't stop at just watching/reading, you talk about it with your friends, you go online and search for communities where you can find likeminded people to discuss it with. The real passionate look for fanfiction/fanvideos to either help them through the bad times or to elevate the good. The more creative bunch of us, we make them ourselves and share them with other likeminded shippers.

Again, for those not familliar with the terms I bring up, I will explain:

- Fanfiction is the phenomenon where a person takes characters from books, movies, tv shows and so on (from now on referred to as fandom), and use them to write new stories. Some authors may use the setting in a fandom and bring in their own original characters. Both are classified as fanfiction. These stories can be directly linked to events taking place in the fandom that either changes, expands on or explains the things that took place, they can be original concoctions that take place in the future, past or in between the fandom's running plot, or they could be based in alternative universes and realities. The general misconseption a lot of the uninitiated have is that fanfiction mainly consists of poorly written erotica/porn, but the truth is that while, yes, there are a lot of sex-centered fanfiction out there and a vast majority of it is so badly written you don't know whether you should laugh or cry, that is still only one small portion of the fanfiction total out there. There are a lot of stories where sex only play an indirect part of the plot, and stories that are of no sexual nature whatsoever. And most importantly, while I may be mentioning fanfiction in regards to shipping, there are vast amount of fanfiction that have little or no romantic content whatsoever, where the adventure and/or friendship gets the full attention.

- Fanvideos is the cross between fanfiction and music videos. They are fan made and there are many different ways to go about it. The more popular types of fanvideo are the slideshow and the typical music video. Generally the vidder (creator of the fanvideo) use a song as the core of the video and place the images and/or video clips accordingly. This can be done randomly, or the vidder could try to match the images/clips up to the lyrics/rhythm/mood of the song. This is typical either for character/shipper videos and action/adventure videos. A step up from that is to make a video that tells a story, this could entail summing up the plot of an episode/arch/movie, a character or a pairing's story, or the vidder could use the clips/images to tell a new story, to manipulate what we see to make it seem like something else entirely is happening. The really good vidders can drag in clips/images taken from other fandoms and still manage to keep the story revolving around specific fandom characters/ships.

There are of course several other creative ways of expressing love for a character/ship/fandom, but these two are the ones I primarily use, so that is what I'm going to focus on. So back to what I was saying before.

I am a shipper. I admit it, I get so invested in pairings, both actual and potential pairings in fandoms that I enter this obsesive state of mine. It doesn't happen with all pairings I see (all my ships stems from TV shows), I am more than capable to just like a pairing without it breaking my heart when they don't work out, but it's just with some ships there's this gut feeling I have. Something in me reacts to what I see in front of me and for some reason I *need* those two to work out. I feel that pang. I can relate to one or both of the characters, or not. I can be physically attracted to one or both of the characters, or not. Either way it's like I fall in love with the pairing, or something close to it. I get shivers, I get knots, if things are good with my ship I can remain happy for days. If it doesn't, my mood easily drops.

It might seem insane to use the fictional world to compensate for what you feel is lacking in the real world. I'm not really sure if that is what I'm doing, but I know I partly make my ships my link to love, to romance. The things I feel regarding my ships, some of it I think I have yet to feel about an actual living and breathing person. Maybe I will find that with someone, I *hope* I will find that with someone, I'm just not counting on it.

Fear is no laughing matter

Yesterday one of the most terrifying things that could happen to me happened; a piece of my tooth fell out. I'd say 'go ahead and laugh', only I don't really understand what's so amusing about other people's misery. I am terrified of dentists, which actually is one of the common things to be afraid of, but many people suffering from this phobia find it shamefull. I don't feel particularily ashamed of having this phobia, however I do know what it's like to be made a mockery of because of it, so I do understand why other people don't come forward.

I haven't always been this way, there was a time where I had no problem sitting in that chair, a time where the sound of the drill didn't cause an anxiety attack, a time where the word 'dentist' didn't cause chills to go down my back. I know exactly where my phobia stems from and if I had the chance to go back and erase one incident from my life, it would be that one fatefull session.

I was thirteen years old and I think it was the first time I went to the dentist alone. It was also the first and only time where I drilled without sedatives. Safe to say it hurt, but the excruciating pain was not the worst of it. The dentist didn't stop drilling, even when I screamed from the pain. I waved my arms and the dentist only stopped to yell at me. Eventually all that was left was the polishing, and I was promised that that wouldn't hurt. Well, it did, only the dentist didn't believe me when I said it. I was told polishing didn't hurt.

Immediately after this experience I was proud that I had made it through, the terror didn't set in until it was time for me to go back. The sound of the drill was enough to make my teeth hurt, even with sedatives. We even tried putting music on my ears to neutralize the sound of the drill, but no matter how much I tried to block it out, it didn't work. I barely got through that session.

Eventually I was allowed to have treatment under anestesia. I was still a bit afraid, and walking into that room and seeing all those equipment... that was incredibly scary. But then they set the anestesia and I was asked to open my eyes (I hadn't even realized I had closed them), apparently I had been asked to do so one more time, but by that time I was completely knocked out. When I came to I was groggy and my mouth ached a bit since they had pulled a tooth and I was still bleeding from it. But what I remember the most about that time was the huge relief to know that everything had been fixed and I hadn't needed to be awake from it.

The next time I headed into the dentist's office I was confident that they had recognized my problem, and that I would be able to get this treatment from now on. However I was told that that wouldn't be possible. The woman even haughtily said I was too old to be afraid, and she even forced me to sit and listen to the drill. I never went back to that place. The next time they called me in to an examination I was so hysterical my parents eventually let me get out of it.

A piece of a filling fell out from one of my teeth, and I was filled with terror. Even though I knew I should get a new filling right away (which meant undergo drilling), but I simply couldn't go through with it, so I got a temporary cement filling to stop the problem from getting bigger. When that too fell out I didn't do anything. I just couldn't face another dentist. A little over four years ago I woke up having the most excruciating pain, it was like someone was drilling in my tooth, only there was no drill. I had no choice but to go to a dentist. They wanted me to have a root canal, but I just couldn't go through with it. Instead I had it pulled. It was an uncomfortable experience, but not one filled with terror. However I knew I couldn't pull every single tooth I had, so the problem wasn't solved.

Last year it happened again, a piece of a filling fell out. This time it was a tooth further out, which meant a much more difficult procedure to have it pulled. I didn't do anything, I just couldn't bear the thought. And while I knew where this road would take me (waking up in horrible pain) I was simply too afraid to go in and even try to do something about it.

What made yesterday different was that the piece that fell out was not a filling, but a part of the actual tooth. I broke down, completely, utterly. There was no talking me up for the poor unsuspecting people in my class who witnessed it. I was shaking and crying when I called a clinic to ask about how happy gas worked, at the end of the conversation I was still not convinced this method would work on me. But what the woman on the phone did was give me new hope, because she let me know that one of the other clinics in town offers anestesia. I had to work up my courage to call them, but at the end of that conversation I made an appointment to get an overhaul of what needs to be done and the cost would be.

I was nervous when I showed up for my appointment, and it didn't help me to hear the drilling from a nearby room as they took my x-ray. I was shaking and crying while talking to the dentist and his assistant, but they were both incredibly nice to me. There was no judgement of any kind, I was assured that many others both older and 'tougher' are unable to undergo treatment without anestesia, that there is no shame in it. I managed to sit in the chair while the dentist examined my mouth with the mirror and took additional x-rays. And after he revealed exactly how many holes I had (18) and how he also wanted to pull two of my wisdom teeth, I was completely calm. Because he assured me that he would be able to fix all of this in one session under anestesia, and that we could do this already next month.

I managed to sit there and talk nutrition, dental hygene and everything with that man, and I was both calm and collected when I left that place. The price is steep, but if it means getting it all fixed without any traumatic experience, then it doesn't matter. And knowing that I will be able to do this should I need it in the future, I think my general relationship with dentists and professions related to dentists will improve. Not to the degree that I will be able to undergo treatment while awake, but the idea of having a check-up will probably not cause an anxiety attack.

I am sharing this part of me with you, first of all to show that I am not ashamed of being afraid, no matter how much I have been riddiculed for it. I also want to put a story behind a phobia, so that those lucky enough to be without phobia may understand better what it really is like. Because I know I'm acting irrationally, we know we're acting irrationally when we are faced with our fears, whether they are dentists, doctors, snakes, spiders, insects, the dark, flying, small confined spaces, huge crowds, large open spaces, or something else entirely. But we are unable to control it. Nobody wants to be afraid of anything, they just are. I would love to be able to walk into a dentist's office, sit down in the chair and let them do the work, because it is no fun to feel my teeth rotting in my mouth. Trust me.

I hope anyone reading my story thinks twice the next time they want to laugh at someone's fear. It might seem silly to you, but it's dead serious for whoever having this phobia, and people laughing is not going to help them one bit.

So long, farewell...

Last night marked the end of Dollhouse, the latest creation from the infamous Joss Whedon. I was thirteen years old when I first was exposed to his brilliance. Buffy was my gateway drug, not just to Joss, but to the fandom world in general. It was the first show I wrote fanfic for, the first I made fanart for, the first I vidded, even the first I attended a convention for. Considering my dedication to Buffy, it was only natural that I embraced the spin-off Angel. It took me longer to give Firefly a try, but when I did it became one of my alltime favorite shows. I knew then not to doubt this man's vision. Dr. Horrible came next and I have to admit the concept of a super villain/hero musical sounded a whole world of weird, however once again it was love at first sight.

So when I heard the announcement that Joss was going to make another show, this time with Eliza Dushku in the lead (whom I've also followed the career of since she dazzled me in Buffy), I was confident it was going to be brilliant.

Dollhouse has so far been the one project of Joss that didn't take off instantly with the fans. I loved it, but many fellow Whedon fans didn't share the sentiment. I think that comes down to several factors.

* First of all Fox got in the way. Clearly they didn't learn from the Firefly days to lean back and trust Joss' vision. The pilot was scrapped and Joss was forced to take the show in a different direction. I'm happy they decided to include the original pilot on the DVD box set, because it gave the fans the chance to compare it to the pilot that actually aired. Fox's desired pilot was all fast paced action and very little mythology and character focus, which is where Joss real powers lie. The original pilot, however, it had the mythology, the character focus, it felt much, much more like Joss than the Fox approved pilot did.

* Secondly the concept behind Dollhouse is probably one of the hardest things to realize. I mean, what is the one most important thing to any show out there? That they have characters that people can connect with, and here we have a show where most of the character ensemble aren't even themselves, not only that, they don't even have the same personality from one episode to the next. Finding an angle to show that and still have us connect with the individual characters, that's probably the hardest thing to accomplish. Of course it takes more than one episode to do it.

As time went by and new episodes aired (each topping their predecessor) many who'd viewed Dollhouse as a disappointment to start with (but had continued watching despite of it) began to come around. And I was beyond thrilled when I found out Fox actually had learned a lesson from the Firefly days and renewed the show for a second season.

It came as a shock, at least to me, when Fox so quickly announced Dollhouse's cancelation, and for several reasons. First of all I got immediately afraid they were going to give Dollhouse the Tru Calling treatment (where they had renewed the series only to stop shooting six episodes into the second season, giving it a very up-in-the-air ending), but I was quickly assured that they would let the season run its course. Secondly it came as a shock because the announcement came after the airing of "Belonging", which I still think is the most powerful episode in the entire show. It was hard to understand that *this* was the time Fox chose to cancel it.

Now, at the end of the journey I am both grateful and amazed at how Joss managed work in what had to be seasons worth of revelations into the remaining episodes. He gave us a proper ending with answers and conclusions, while still keeping a few mysteries to himself. I'm very sad this has to be the end, but at the same time I am just so darn grateful for what I got and I want to give my thanks to everyone who was involved in the process.

I now can't wait to see what Joss will come up with next. All I know is that whatever it is I will watch it, and I will love it.

Rules in life

The list of rules I intend to present in this entry is currently haunting our inboxes, but I felt the message was just too good not to share here. According to it Bill Gates gave a speech for high school kids where he talked about today's youth's misguided concept of reality and how these kids because of that are set up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss..

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds... Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Obviously Mr. Gates worded his speech to specifically apply to high school students, but I think many of the points he makes applies to a much wider demographic. Our expectations when entering the working world straight from school be it high school, college or university, they hardly if ever match up to the reality we meet. The wages aren't what we imagined. Our boss demands more of us, not to mention tolerates way less bullshit than the teacher ever did. We don't have unlimited chances to correct mistakes we make, one too many and we have to look around for another job.

The general life lessons applies to all of us. The world doesn't deal in fairness, and the sooner we realize that, the better equipped we are to handle it. Sometimes bad things happens to good people and fortune is bestowed upon the undeserving. But whining and self-pity will not accomplish anything. If you are unhappy with something in your life, it is on you to do something about it, to make the change happen. It might not always be enough, but it will sure as hell take you further than sitting on your ass and doing nothing.

A teacher of mine once described the way of life the following way:
"We do something we don't enjoy [work], so that we can be able to do the things we do enjoy."

With that he was not insinuating that we don't enjoy whatever it was we chose [or was chosen for us] to do for a living, but he was talking about how we in life make compromises. Nothing comes for free. What we desire is proportional to the effort necessary to achieve it.

However, we always have to remember rule number one for the times where despite our strongest effort, things don't go our way:

Life isn't fair!

The concept of beauty

In my tender preteen years a boy in my class made up a nickname for me that would forever haunt me. It wasn't particularily clever, nor did it catch on with the rest of the class. However it made a play on the fact that I had a double-chin. I have since then been very self-concious about that and my appearance in general. So much that when I graduated the norwegian equivalent to high school I made the choice to drop my dream at the time, which was becoming an actress. I simply knew that I didn't have the looks to make it and I saw little point in putting in all that time and effort and then achieve nothing.

A year ago, almost to the day, a middle-aged woman took the stage in Glasgow, auditioning for a national talent show. A woman who, if she didn't think it herself, had probably been told again and again by others that she would never make it. Not because she didn't have what it takes in terms of talent, but because her talent wasn't wrapped in the package the world expects it to be. On that day she wowed three judges and the crowd behind them did a standing ovation. When it aired a couple of months later she became an overnight world-wide sensation. The world's eyes were opened.

It is not my intention to compare my story to that of Susan Boyle [1][2][3][4][5]. I am fairly sure I made the right choice not to pursue my acting dream. Over six years have passed since I made the decision, and I am still searching to find my true purpose in life. I don't believe acting was that purpose.

But what links me to Susan is the subject of beauty. After clicking the youtube link my friend sent me last April, and watching Susan's Glasgow audition, which moved me tremendously, I immediately showed it to a friend, who made a comment about her beauty, or lack of as it was. But is Susan actually ugly? I ask because when I look at this woman, that is honestly not what I see. I see something in her that just shines through, in her eyes, in her smile. And that makes her beautiful to me. I know it's a cliché to say that beauty comes from within, but I think there is a reason why it is a cliché. Because there's a lot of truth in that saying.

When I reached the norwegian equivalent to jr. high there was a boy in my class who was physically good looking, however his rotten personality made him look utterly revolting to me, so much that I couldn't believe there had been a point where I had considered him attractive. Whenever I look at him, even when I see pictures of him, all I see is this hideous grin on his face, his teeth gritted together while his mouth remains as open as the face muscles allow. No matter what that is what I see when I see his face.

It is the complete opposite with Susan. Like me, she has the double-chin, the grey in her hair and we both have the not-so-desired physique. But when I look at her, I see beauty. Not the conventional kind, but the kind that truly matters. It shines through her.

And when I look into the mirror, and I take off the "glasses" that only focuses on individual faults and lacks, and I look at the whole person who is staring back at me, I can even call myself beautiful. Sure there are plenty of photos of me that I wish never saw daylight, but even conventional beauties have their off days. A bad angle, some unfortunate lighting, clothes that doesn't compliment them. If we were to keep the critical "glasses" on all the time, then we would quickly realize that no one, not even the world proclaimed beauties out there will truly measure up.

Our perseption of beauty is truly distorted.

Sometimes I am just curious...

Have you ever glanced at a stranger as you pass them on the street, as they sit in front of you on the bus, stand in front of you at the check-out line... and wondered who they are, what they are thinking, what their life is like?

If you are anything like me, then these thoughts have occurred to you on many a random occasion. You won't do anything about it, but for a fleeting moment you wish you could read minds. You wonder if this is a social butterfly or a lonely soul. What do they do for a living? Does it make them happy? Have they found love yet or are they still looking? Are they looking at all? What are they most passionate about? Do they care what other people think about them? Do they sometimes wonder about complete strangers like you are now?

Today I read the absolute best written article I've read in my life. Unfortunately it is only available in norwegian, so those of you who doesn't understand it will just have to make do with my musings around it instead.

A man collapses after dismounting his bike. Witnesses run over to help, an ambulance is called, but it is too late. The only thing the man carries on him that helps identify him is the key to his apartment. According to the national register he has no living relatives. He is buried on the city's bill and no one comes to his funeral.

A journalist decides to find out who this man was, what his life was like. The people in his building didn't know him, even claimed there was no one living in that house by that name. The people he went to school with couldn't remember him.

It's a story about a mentally retarded man, who as a child was put in a special class, hidden away at a special school. He never had a job, no significant other and all that comes with, thirty odd years ago he was turned away from his own half-sister's house. He got no real help from the city and was merely stowed away in his apartment.

There is, however, a bright side to this story. Another lonely soul who lived three floors above him for several years became his friend and confidante. He accepted this man as who he was, did what he could to take care of him. Together they went on long drives in his friend's car and had even done so the day before his death. His friend had not been in his funeral, simply because he didn't know about it until afterwards, but he was present when they buried the urn.

It is not a happy ending, but it is nice to know that this person who everyone else seemed to have forgotten even existed, that he had a friend after all. Someone who knew him, who could tell his story.

From what I can tell, it seems this friendship probably started out with a random exchange of words, maybe as the two met by the mailboxes, or the doorway, or something equally random, ordinary place. And I think that's how many, many friendships out there starts out. One person says hello to a stranger they are curious about, and the stranger answers. So think about that the next time you catch yourself wondering about the strangers around you. Maybe these really are friends that you just don't know yet...