The Belfry

This is hilarious: when you go to the Twitter homepage now, you (or I, anyway — this could be happening in my own solipsistic bubble universe) get this:

The next line is this:

We expect to be back in <%= deadline %>.

I just find the uncovered code and the “reason” hilarious. Also now I can’t get that Earth, Wind, and Fire song out of my mind. Thanks, Twitter.

twitterstatus:

Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.

Oopsie!

arletterocks:

A word on “creepy”: I know it gets thrown around a lot without necessarily being explained, so I’ll take a crack at it.

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YES.

You know the scene toward the end of The End of Ten— I mean End of Time episode where the 10th Doctor has snuck into Donna’s wedding so he say good-bye to Wilf and give them some dough and emo over Donna a bit more? And you know the character of the Woman in White who turned out to be a Time Lady? Well, everyone is sure she was meant to be the Doctor’s mother because when Wilf asked the Doctor who she was Ten just looks *significantly* over to where Donna and her mother are, so of course the mysterious Time Lady was totes his ma because also the last scene where he and she look at each other before he does his shooty thing that undoes Rassilon’s evil scheme of whatever the hell that was (destroy all of time, “ascend” to… some place that doesn’t exist any more because you destroyed it, ooookay psycho Time Lord). Anyway the last scene where the Doctor and Mystery Time Lady look at each other and cry. That’s supposed to mean “oh noes I’m killing my mummy!” “But you must do it, son, for the Universe.”

Pffft. That wasn’t his mother. That was Susan, his granddaughter, who was certainly old enough now to look like an old lady, who maybe hadn’t regenerated yet, anyway who had gone back home to Gallifrey probably after that guy she went off with at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth died because he was only human and she was a nearly-immortal Gallifreyan. Anyway, I see this scenario where she called her grandfather and the Doctor took her home (maybe he tried to argue her out of it, or maybe he just did as she asked and now feels twice as terrible because he had wanted to argue her out of it and didn’t try), and she made her way up in Gallifreyan society.

But here’s why I think this woman was meant to be Susan: the Doctor has never mentioned his parents, and never given any indication that he gave two shits about them. Either they died when he was relatively young (really died) or they didn’t get along at all. He’s also never mentioned a wife or girlfriend back home, so I’m thinking she’s either dead or the relationship wasn’t a success. Maybe he didn’t get on with whatever kid he had either, because until he told Donna he’d “been a father before” he’d never mentioned them either. He’s only ever very vaguely mentioned his “family,” naming no persons. The only actual family member we’ve ever seen him with and caring about is his granddaughter. There’s no reason to dig up a previously unmentioned and mourned for mother and add her to the mix.

Also, why would looking at Donna’s mother make him think of his own. The Doctor never showed any interest in Sylvia that would make him think of her in sentimental terms as a mother figure for himself. Think about it. He was talking to the grandfather of his friend who he traveled around with and can’t anymore for the tragic reasons we all know. And Donna, the friend, was getting married and going into a whole new life. In his first life he left his granddaughter to get married, and he gives her a farewell speech about how she’s a woman now and needs to live her own life. When Wilf, Donna’s grandfather, asked the Doctor who the mysterious woman was, and the Doctor looked in the direction of Donna and her mother, he was thinking, not of his mother, but of his granddaughter. QED.