started watching the Doctor Who special and got as far as "I would burn down the world for you, darling" and I'll let you know how the rest of it is if I ever stop crying
okay, I finished The Star Beast and you know what this is? I think it's post-cringe.
I mean, not that Doctor Who of all shows has ever shied away from cringe, but this feels... conscious. Feels like a decision was made to say fuck you, this is a goofy sappy rocketship show and we aren't too cool for primary colors and googly-eyed rubber monsters and multiple passionate speeches about Love.
Could the trans acceptance stuff have been more subtle? Yeah, and isn't it fucking awesome that it's not? They had the opportunity to do a "just happens to be trans" and instead they said "if you were Donna Noble's nonbinary trans daughter she would hug you and love you and fight for you and tell everyone how lucky she is to have you."
...
anyway, two more episodes until David Tennant inevitably has to die again and cries directly into the camera about it for, lowball estimate, forty-five solid minutes
Thinking about it more and I know I'm reading a lot into a silly nerd show and giving it extra points for the fact that I already liked it
but I feel like it's really powerful that its key argument for trans rights is... just love. Not theory, not politics, not even justice as most people would understand the term, not begging for understanding and making a case. Just showing a family that already loves their trans daughter, that always has, with absolutely no air spared for a balanced debate about whether she deserves to be loved.
and a lot of the reason this special hit me like a train of bricks was that I'm a debate kid, I'm terminally online, I'm Jewish... I'm real easy to bait into a philosophical argument about why it's logical to end the violent enforcement of Gender. so it's really good to see something that's extremely mainstream (and British!) and produced by cis people going no, actually, we're not going to have this conversation, we are simply going to model respect and care and love.
