Amateur author and period drama fan. Writes fanfiction for Downton Abbey and The Hour under the pen name Silvestria and currently working on original projects as well.

You can now read University Challenge in Russian, Chinese and Spanish! I make no guarantee for the quality of the translations but they have been done with my permission. If you are reading in translation or wish to translate any of my stories into another language then please get in touch!

Currently watching Mr Selfridge, Dancing on the Edge, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, and Death in Paradise. Snarking over Downton Abbey is a constant.

Rose Explains Titles: Explantion of aristocratic titles.

Rose Reads: Reading outloud. (Also see the tag "Rose reads".)

Mary Crawley's Tumblr (University Challenge verse)

Downton Abbey meets musical theatre

Will answer questions about Britain (Britpicking), aristocratic titles, Latin & Ancient Greek in exchange for biscuits. Also always more than happy to give opinions on characters, plot development and so on or to respond to queries about own writing.

1/871»

tardisinwonderland:

I don’t think I’ll ever land…

“Sometimes I wonder why the rest of us even film scenes because Emilia Clarke comes in as Daenerys and completely just, steals the show. When she makes her appearance everything before her is forgotten, which is why she’s at the end of the show normally. She’s got dragons for crying out loud!” - Kit Harington

(via jonsnowball)

Dancing on the Edge | 1.02

» Some random (disgruntled) thoughts on Clara and "The Doctor's Name"

pamelaluscombe:

squirrellyfries:

silvestria:

SPOILERS

“He hardly ever hears me but I’ve always been there.”

This line would have more resonance with me if Clara’s arc so far had been about her doing amazing things for the Doctor and him never noticing. Rather than Clara being sweet and often brave but not particularly special and the…

This has also been my general problem with the finale (and my problem with 7b as a whole). Jenna-Louise Coleman does an amazing job as Clara and makes her very likable - but there isn’t any character arc to her. Or even consistent character traits, really..

Your idea about making her a shy second companion sounds awesome. But it could even have been something as simple as making her afraid of death and having to overcome that in order to make that sacrifice at the end. To save not just the Doctor, of course, but the universe at large.

We already saw what could have been a glimpse of that sort of arc in Cold War, where she was initially gung-ho about volunteering to talk to the Ice Warrior but backed off and was scared when she saw the mutilated body of the dead crew member and noted, “It all became sort of.. real.”

Her conflict could have been that she wanted the travelling and the adventure but was scared of death - which could bring a lot of intricacies to the fact that the Doctor had seen her die twice before. Extra drama that could ensue there once Clara finds out about her “impossible girl” mystery (ideally revealed to her BEFORE the final episode). And of course when it’s revealed what she must do in order to save the Doctor in the finale, she resists. But then perhaps she sees all the stars going out, the people dying, and she finds her courage (maybe consoling herself with the Peter Pan quote “To die would be an awfully big adventure”) and fulfills her destiny.

It would be another story of the Doctor taking ordinary people and letting them become heroes. Which is, in my opinion, the story that Doctor Who is best at. :)

Yes! I love this idea. Imagine an entire DW season dealing with the theme of being afraid to die. I mean, so much of DW is about death anyway this would be such a great theme to explore and the show is capable of it.

And this is why Moffat needs to STOP. He just doesn’t seem to care about things like RTD did. It’s sad because I do like Matt Smith’s Doctor; it’s just a shame he’s given shoddy material to work with.

I guess he cares about different things. There are a lot of things I’ve really liked about his tenure on Doctor Who - I guess I like individual episodes as entertaining, clever 45 minutes, rather than being invested in the show as a whole. Mainly because it doesn’t have that heart that it used to have. And I really like Clara - Clara the character rather than Clara the plot, if that makes sense.

YES YES YES!! Although I am positive that we will be obsessing together about this as soon as we see each other, I still agree totally with this. I miss RTD but thank god that he was the one to write POW if only he could have written this last one :(

I’m sure we will be obsessing over it! :D I mean, there was a lot to like and I do love Clara but… yeah… all of what I wrote above. And yeah- I can only imagine this storyline in RTD’s hands. Though possibly with RTD we wouldn’t have got an episode as delightfully magical and clever as The Snowmen at Christmas - one of my favourite all time DW episodes.

Yes to all of this. And I really hope you’re right about the next season!

• Some random (disgruntled) thoughts on Clara and “The Doctor’s Name”

SPOILERS

“He hardly ever hears me but I’ve always been there.”

This line would have more resonance with me if Clara’s arc so far had been about her doing amazing things for the Doctor and him never noticing. Rather than Clara being sweet and often brave but not particularly special and the Doctor spending all his time staring at her and trying to work out what’s going on with her.

In fact I honestly don’t know how “The Doctor’s Name” is any kind of climax to any kind of character arc. What I mean is that it has no emotional impact. The Doctor is trying to solve a mystery about Clara. He solves it. Ta da! Clara does something incredibly brave and selfless and that’s cool but it doesn’t really come as a climax of anything - it’s just there as a thing she does because of reasons. Clara has often been portrayed not as cowardly but as sensible of risks - she doesn’t run off, she questions the Doctor’s judgement, and so on. These are good qualities. However, there is a big jump from this characterisation to a person who is willing to die to save the Doctor’s life. That is something River would do, not Clara. And her reasons? Because she suddenly discovers that the entire point of her existence is to save the Doctor. But that bares no relation to her character as Clara Oswald. In fact she doesn’t have any opinions on it, just accepts it totally. And I don’t see any reason why she should. In fact, considering how naturally frustrated she’s been with the Doctor for keeping things from her, I think she’d be a bit more sceptical still. There is a total disjunction between what Clara says and feels and what she does here.

Compare with The Parting of the Ways. Rose turning into Bad Wolf is very similar in many ways to Clara’s sacrifice in The Doctor’s Name except that everything Rose did was the culmination of a carefully drawn character arc. If Moffat had been writing the season finale I suspect the reason Rose broke into the Tardis with a big, yellow truck, looked into the Vortext and became Bad Wolf would not be because she had finally realised that she had a place in the world and could change things and that her life and the lives of the people she knew were worth saving but because the Doctor left her a message saying, “By the way, Bad Wolf destroys the Daleks so you have to become Bad Wolf so you destroy the Daleks because this is a thing that happens.”

Clara could easily have been given a storyarc that made sense with the plot role she played. Here’s what I would have done. She would be the second of two companions, say two friends travelling together, and the other would be the alpha companion - the typically “feisty” one. It takes the Doctor much longer to realise that Clara is the girl who saved his life and died on two occasions and he can’t believe it because Clara is basically an apparently useless companion who is always saying, “Are you sure about it?” while her friend is much more gung-ho. But the Doctor doesn’t realise because he’s so self-absorbed and childish that actually Clara has been quietly saving his life in small ways all through the season. Clara discovers in the penultimate episode what the Doctor knows about her previous selves and is shocked and doesn’t know what to do and blames him for keeping it from her. At the same time she is curious because she finally gets a glimpse of how amazing she could be if she only stepped out of her shell. In the final episode she understands the truth and the Doctor also sees that it’s been Clara all along and realises how amazing she is - he just hasn’t noticed that this meek, shy Clara is just as courageous as any of the other past Claras. When the Doctor finally gives her his approval, Clara is filled with a sense of her own strength and possibility and is able to make this incredibly brave sacrifice for the man who, in accepting her, is finally worthy of it.

So that’s what I would have done. And then my response to the episode would have been, “OTPPPPPP! TEARS EVERYWHERE!” as it was with The Parting of the Ways instead of what my reaction actually was: “Hmm. Interesting. So, um, what happened there again?”

I’m getting quite tired of characters who were quite literally made for the Doctor. River has no existence without the Doctor and now Clara is formed to save him. Even Amy’s entire life was mapped out based on one encounter she had with him as a child.

“To art and love.”

(Source: simsimhae, via villettess)

pheasantjumpers:

I’m born, I live, I die. 

Dancing On The Edge ›› Carla

(Source: morgana-warlock, via oswinxchinboy)