We conclude Volume Ten of Lara's Ramblings the same way we ended Volume Nine, as Steve Lyons takes us back to the past with another First Doctor novel. How does it stack up against The Witch Hunters? Find out now (or in a week when it goes public on the blog). ko-fi.com/post/Past-Do...

Past Doctor Adventures: Salvation by Steve Lyons

Lara's Ramblings published a supporter-only post on Ko-fi!

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Just signed. I may not write out and out books but I sure as shit don't trust AI companies not to come for a blog just as readily. Probably even more readily. If you're at all a creative type, prob worth paying attention to this.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 🏳️‍⚧️@eliseswords.eurosky.social · 4d ago

Head's Up & Sorry Author Friends, My gov's latest decision is gen ai companies don't need licenses to train their gen ai on ANYONE'S work within Australia. All authors get is an opt out. Author's Guild have concerns about how well that opt out will work, and so do I. Sign your opposition in link!

The thing about Digger is that I totally get why it wouldn't be to everyone's tastes, I'm not even sure it's *entirely* to mine even as I enjoyed it a lot and thought it was very clever.

Being someone who writes a lot about media and culture from the nineties (despite never experiencing them) is strange sometimes. People will really be like "Yeah once 9/11 happened everything got really grim and cynical" and it's just like... OK yes there was a darker mood in the air...

As a victim of online CSA, it's very frustrating to me that even in broadly progressive spaces it is *so* easy to have any discussion of people who harm/abuse children devolve into violent fantasies of retribution against said perpetrators.

Nearly sixty years and it still boggles the mind that The Tomb of the Cybermen named its ambiguously ethnic villain Kaftan. Anyway on an unrelated note, I hope you'll make some noise for my new white man villain, Bass Pro Shops Trucker Hat.

Had a thought during Sparkstember that with Dolly Parton passing away there are no women mentioned in the 1977 song Ladies who are still alive. This is not true, however, as as far as I can tell the daughter of Sara Lee's founder, after whom the company is named, is still alive.

The chances of Orson Welles being in a movie with a Weird Al Yankovic song parodying the stylings of DEVO are low, but never zero. A sobering thought.

So Katie Zacharia can transition out of having a job after like five days but if *I* wanna transition into being a woman it's gotta be a whooooooole thing...

Had an idle thought recently about why much of the tone of the whole "Let genre fiction be serious/earnest again" discussion rubs me the wrong way even as someone who does think there can be too much irony and cynicism in modern culture.

So the sudden profusion of every single outlet that you can possibly buy something at doing a "Wrapped" is definitely driven by AI, right? Like why the fuck would I possibly want a Bupa Wrapped?

Oh dear I'm writing an essay on the horrifically racist debacle that was Rhodesian independence for university and I've fallen down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia editors who are *way* too into Rhodesian history. Fucking cursed user page lmao.

Heaven help me and I know it kind of makes me a sick fuck... but I do still really like The Man in the Velvet Mask. There are very few pieces of Doctor Who quite like it, and in all honesty I cannot begrudge people who would say that that is a straightforwardly good thing.

I try not to be a snooty bitch but sometimes I really cannot help but think that, like, a large proportion of online Doctor Who fans would really benefit from ditching all the forums and discourse and just watching classic eras of the show with someone you love.

I'm having a lovely time at my blog, posting quotes about writing, and wittering on about my novel in progress and the craft in general. Come and have a sticky, especially if you have any questions about your own writing! kateorman.wordpress.com #writing

Kate Orman@kateorman.bsky.social · last mo.

For years my Wordpress has just been for announcements, but I've started properly blogging there about writing -- what I'm writing, the craft itself, etc. Fer yer interest: kateorman.wordpress.com

Also, I know other people have said it but good Lord is it gross to hijack the language of rehabilitation to cape for some random white guy who has functionally gotten off scot free for literal sexual assault for a decade.

Lara S. Ramblings (The S Stands for Silly)@larasramblings.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Jacob Geller situation is really fucking annoying me. "Um, you say you're against prisons yet you don't like this YouTuber anymore for doing a sexual assault?" Bro the question we're asking here is "Does he get to still have a YouTube channel," not "Does he get sent to Angola State Pen?"

Well, well, well, look who's back in business. Got everything you could want here, folks. Cosmic horror. Existentialist philosophy. Yeah, we're gonna talk about Levinas. Oh you wanted a good book? Well sorry we're fresh out. Got quite an ending, tho. dalesramblingsblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/09/b...

BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures Reviews: The Face-Eater by Simon Messingham (or, “I’d Like to Take His Face… Off”)

Of course, it was all a lie. A beautiful, beautiful lie. Sometimes the magic trick just doesn’t work. Sometimes the pull of the Wilderness is just too strong. And sometimes the lines you&#821…

dalesramblingsblog.wordpress.com

Very considerate of Jim Bakker to die right as I'm about to start writing about faith healers and televangelism.

Didn't expect to spend a good chunk of my day today talking about sexual assault and people's bullshit mental gymnastics. May not have been very good for my mental health, to put it mildly.

Even seen people arguing in full sincerity that Geller being married now must mean that he's reformed and doesn't believe it's OK to sexually assault women anymore. I fucking can't with you people, Jesus. Lord knows no married man has ever mistreated a woman, or even his wife. Go kick rocks.

So I've thought about this for a while and I don't know if anyone else has ever made this link but like... given the allegations against John Nathan-Turner, it is perhaps... suspect that he was so vehemently opposed to changing the gender of the actors playing the twins in The Twin Dilemma, right?

The Jacob Geller situation is really fucking annoying me. "Um, you say you're against prisons yet you don't like this YouTuber anymore for doing a sexual assault?" Bro the question we're asking here is "Does he get to still have a YouTube channel," not "Does he get sent to Angola State Pen?"

I think it's bold of The Celestial Toymaker to so accurately recreate what people who hate absurdist theatre see when they watch a piece of absurdist theatre.

People taking RTD's "There never was a script for the 2026 Christmas special" as "There never was a storyline, however putative" is kind of the perfect illustration of how shoddy most Doctor Who viewers' grasp on the production of television really is.

Also just weird to go from Bell of Doom where the Doctor is good-naturedly chortling to her and then in the opening moments of The Steel Sky he calls her stupid and annoying like five times.

Lara S. Ramblings (The S Stands for Silly)@larasramblings.bsky.social · 3w ago

Are there known production reasons for why Dodo seems like such a different character in Episodes Three and Four of The Ark compared to One and Two? The first half really goes all in on bashing her, belittling her and demeaning her like there's no tomorrow...

Are there known production reasons for why Dodo seems like such a different character in Episodes Three and Four of The Ark compared to One and Two? The first half really goes all in on bashing her, belittling her and demeaning her like there's no tomorrow...

God the chap playing the Commander of the Guardians in The Ark just... isn't very good at all, is he?

You know, given everything we know about what William Hartnell's health was like at the time, giving him a big speech at the end of The Massacre was a massive gamble. But he really does absolutely crush it, to his credit.

Absolutely losing it at the examples given by Wikipedia to demonstrate the attractiveness of high cheekbones.

Oh hey. So. Writing for @wildernessdispatch.bsky.social may have accidentally reawakened my urge to yap about old Doctor Who books. Long story short, you can now read my thoughts on The Face-Eater at the Ko-fi for as little as $5. ko-fi.com/post/Eighth-...

Eighth Doctor Adventures: The Face-Eater by Simon Messingham

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