Thread by @scribblesscript

Ooh! A #DoctorWho book about privilege dynamics, refugees, and police brutality, and it's by...

Oh.

It's time to read Tragedy Day, the 24th Virgin New Adventure, by a certain G Roberts.

Without whom I'd not have had a career? Without whom I'd not have bridges to burn? Without whom there'd be nobody to vague about my 90s drug habits in vengeance for my bigotry? Inquiring minds want to know.

Credit where due, the book begins charmingly. The planet established is rightfully generic, and the OCs are quite the insipid couple, but I'm a sucker for Hartnell era fanservice.

If I didn't know the author were gay, I'd never have guessed. There's an awful lot of straight nuclear family stuff.

Ah, yes, rambles about foolish students talking politics they don't understand.

Maybe what happened wasn't shocking.

I don't want to make reading this book all about hot takes on recent events, but it rather feels inescapable. Stories don't exist in a vacuum from politics, particularly when their authors are part of the politics.

OH BOY

GUESS WE'RE GONNA START AT A RUN

This book describes the Doctor as "a fairly typical example of a woolly-minded bleeding-heart liberal."

Well well well well well well welly well well

On the one hand, this book is engaging the politics of indigenous peoples with anger at them being relegated to camps rather than having any power over their place in society.

On the other, it's just mad that they can't assimilate into society as equal citizens to everyone else.

As opposed to, you know, losing their culture and land in the first place

This book hilariously assumes a future with VCRs

Well, I'll be. That sounds downright leftist.

Lmao

Dangerously close to interesting politics here

Maybe the author has some issues with gender

And then he surprises me with Benny advocating gender-neutral language

Hate to admit it but this is my exact sense of humor

I love coming across artifacts of an era like this, authors arguing what Doctor Who should be

Unusual choice of Tragedy Day to feature the About the Author within the text.

Of course, even even satirizing a right-wing monster, the book straightforwardly regurgitates him a beautiful, dumb trophy wife.

This book is repeatedly close to being both a very fun read and a cutting satire, and then misses both.

Like, take this. This still feels relevant. But it's more interested in a joke about obsessive fangirls than gun violence. And so it feels a bit trivializing, too.

It scrapes by with wit, but only barely, and many passages don't fare so well.

I...

Ernie the spider-human hybrid assassin is one of those bright, cartoonish ideas that's fun at first and then never escalates or becomes more interesting. Reading an entire subplot about him without any significant interaction with other characters is a total slog.

Tragedy Day is probably Roberts' best NA, judging by what I've heard of Zamper. It's a competent thing with distinct characters, a few interesting setpieces, and decent if muddled satire.

However, it's less fun or funny than it thinks, and isn't doing much beyond that.

Going into the climax now, fairly standard megalomaniac with shark lair submarine stuff. Which, you know, is a fun trope, but.

I mean, really, I should love satire like this. But it's just kinda insubstantial.

I feel like this passage is a bit characteristic. It's more on the side of the elderly protestors, but my God it has a cynical view of kids in the process.

It's also kinda amazing how quickly this book abandoned the indigenous population subplot.

This reads as extremely kinky to me

I admire the effort this book puts in to make the spider climb up a water spout.

Aaaand Ernie the spider dies without substantially interacting with ANY of the other characters.

Gratuitous padding, that.

We definitely needed an entire subplot to accomplish this.

It's Quentyn Martell all over again

Because those are all the same thing

I mean, where to begin. Like, fascism=communism is already a hell of an inaccurate take, but anarchism? The philosophy against a government? Advocating totalitarianism???

It kinda feels like it's only thrown in there as a reaction to the pro-anarchism in Paul Cornell's books.

Which, well, Roberts' books are always reactions to the era. This book is positively gleeful in how it states the manipulative drama of the preceding arc is over and everyone is now great friends having old-fashioned adventures. But this feels more petty.

No Future: Anarchy is cool, Doctor Who is punk, here's Yates in leather pants saying fuck the system
Tragedy Day (aka the literal next book): Anarchy is totalitarian fascism

Gotta say, I prefer Yates in leather

Oh gross, now the child antagonist is fantasizing about hooking up with Bernice

Is there a more trite satirical hot take about media to be had?

I am almost finished this book and haven't tweeted about the gay character (yay) because he's a boring drip (snooze)

Jesus. It's been a while since I last read a book that hated people this much.

The women hug and kiss this boy to congratulate him on resolving the plot.

The Doctor, however, is a man.

(to add an extra cherry on top to this wtf cocktail of heteronormativity and gender essentialism, Forgwyn is gay)

Disappointed by the payoff to the subplot about the Doctor's ring, in which he promises to take someone offworld, but they die offscreen before he can.

How tepid.

Oh my shitting hell.

The book ends with the Doctor giving a speech about how the colonists (a few of whom wiped out the natives of the planet) should go expand and settle across that world.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

At least the gay character gets a date at the end.

Did... Did the Doctor just end capitalism... With manifest destiny????

Tragedy Day was not a good book.

I'll take its brand of muddled, banal centrist satire over the transphobic mess that is The Highest Science still, but this was definitely not a good book.

It's safe to say that his politics were never particularly left, but here, it's not even as structured, witty, or generally entertaining as his best work.

This author has nothing when he fails to be funny, and this failed to be funny.