It is Imperial March once more, meaning that I get to spend a month exploring and celebrating my inner villain as part of EvilCo's celebrations.
I wrote a post last year about what Imperial March actually is... in short, it is a month (March - ah. yes.) in which one celebrates villainy in fiction - films, novels, video games, anything that tickles your fancy*.
A year has passed since, and in that year I have grown - as cannot have escaped anyone's notice as it is one of only two things I talk about these days - into an almost hard-core Whovian.
In that year, I have fallen in love with the evilness of the Daleks (they just need a hug, honest) and the Time Lords (because if anything they're the real proper villains of 70s and 80s Who - I can't wait for them to come back) and simply the way in which Doctor Who portrays villainy - sometimes it's rather camp (The Master, anyone?) and sometimes it's a bit wobbly (Ice Warriors - they do look like muppets) and sometimes you have a hard time believing something so cuddly can be evil (The Yeti - I just want to pet them), but so often it's much more complicated than just putting down a flat, two-dimensional monster.
Yes, the Daleks are pretty much the embodiment of evil - they were based on the Nazis, after all, who are a go-to standard if you want a shorthand for something really evil in fiction - but yet this is explained because in the end they are the result of a mad scientist's meddling with genetics and there's an almost touching scene in the Eccleston serial Dalek when the last remaining Dalek (or is it?) gets really rather desperate.
The Master - well, he and the Doctor are basically the embodiment of the Foe Yay trope (I heartily support any Doctor/Master shipping) - see also this - but in the end his evil is because the Time Lords caused him to go insane and because he really wants to attract the Doctor's attention (this latter interpretation may also be due to me spending too much time reading fan fiction, which isn't nearly so bad as people make it out to be).
Sure, there's plenty of villains and monsters that are really a tiny bit, well, shit (looking at you, Dominators), but this is off-set by having villains like - is it spoilers if the episode aired 30 or more years ago? - a former Academy lecturer rising through the ranks of Time Lord society until he becomes acting Lord President and basically being willing to sacrifice all of time and space and the Doctor in return for immortality, or an earlier example of a Time Lord Judge (then Chancellor) willing to falsely accuse the Doctor of murder so he (the Judge) can be elected Lord President by default.
Or what of a power-hungry scientist playing the media and politics in a scheme to take over the world (I love Enemy of the World, and that has only partly to do with the fact that Patrick Troughton is in it twice).
So, as a first part of my Imperial March celebration, I made a set of election posters for EvilCo (click for large - warning, quite large indeed)**.
The rest of the month will be spent doing other artsy things. Writing blog posts about other villains. I may put in a post about Michael Corleone and the Corleone family - I haven't lost my Godfather-fanness yet. Doing drawing - I can't draw but practice makes, well not perfect obviously, but better - and doing poetry because I like poetry.
Fiction, perhaps - I still have last year's Imperial March story to finish.
I cannot update daily, due to thesis work, but I will put a new Imperial March thing online whenever I have something.
And that's a promise. I may even keep it.
Or not. MUAHAHAHA.
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*is it just me or does 'tickle your fancy' sound rather smutty?
** Yes, I know. Obviously the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors don't do elections, and I daren't be sure about the Daleks seeing as they have a parliament and also an emperor (constitutional monarchy? Which also forces one to ask - how can there be a Dalek Emperor? Unless I am mistaken in my belief that an emperor is different from a king in that an emperor generally rules multiple territories and peoples, and Daleks are a bit too genocidal to rule over other species. Unless of course you consider several Dalek factions to be different peoples. Also, how is there a Dalek Emperor in the first place - is he somehow more Dalek than all other Daleks? Or what?). I know the Time Lords do have elections, but they're too xenophobic to even consider letting non-Gallifreyans (or even just non-Time Lords!) run for office. This poster is meant as a bit of a joke.
** Yes, I know. Obviously the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors don't do elections, and I daren't be sure about the Daleks seeing as they have a parliament and also an emperor (constitutional monarchy? Which also forces one to ask - how can there be a Dalek Emperor? Unless I am mistaken in my belief that an emperor is different from a king in that an emperor generally rules multiple territories and peoples, and Daleks are a bit too genocidal to rule over other species. Unless of course you consider several Dalek factions to be different peoples. Also, how is there a Dalek Emperor in the first place - is he somehow more Dalek than all other Daleks? Or what?). I know the Time Lords do have elections, but they're too xenophobic to even consider letting non-Gallifreyans (or even just non-Time Lords!) run for office. This poster is meant as a bit of a joke.
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