fuckity why

Like, I get the whole "you weren't supposed to like him" thing and "Peter Capaldi did such a good job that people wanted to see more of him" but I'm not just talking about Malcolm Tucker being liked or enjoyed, I'm talking specifically about him being a comfort character, as is defined below:

This is kind of the opposite of the intent here, isn't it? Malcolm Tucker is so evil, toxic and potentially violent that seeing him should make the audience recoil. His mere presence should make you feel stressed, when he suddenly shows up your brain should go "oh shit".

And yet, here I am, two days sick, burning up with fever, feeling like a train running me over might be considered an improvement on my physical and mental state at this point and all I can find comfort in is cutting up my favourite Malcolm Tucker lines from the entire show together - for no reason except that seeing him makes me feel calm and collected.

I haven't managed to decipher what it is about Malcolm that brings me comfort. I don't think it's just because he has Peter Capaldi's face. There are other characters Capaldi has played that I disliked immensely and even if I leave those aside, it wouldn't explain why Malcolm is more of a comfort character for me than even the Doctor is (honestly, I'm not lying).

It might partly be the swearing, I think I find great enjoyment in the wittiness and the creativity of the swearing, as a person who also swears a lot and considers it a form of strong expression. It might be that his anger and toxicity are so overblown, so extravagant, that I can't actually take them seriously. Like Malcolm breaking into a sweary rant feels akin to someone breaking into song in a musical. You just sit back and enjoy it aesthetically.

It might even be that he embodies a certain inevitability of things going to shit. Armando Iannucci said something along the lines of "in every episode, something goes a bit wrong and then Malcolm shows up and makes it even worse". That's very accurate! NOTHING goes right in that show. For four seasons and two specials it's just disaster after disaster in which "success" is usually just "the minister wasn't fired today" and Malcolm is often at the center of it all, making everyone miserable and everything ten times worse.

He's the opposite of a comfort character, really. A comfort character shows up and makes you feel that "it's going to be alright". For example, the Doctor is a good comfort character, because nine times out of ten, he beats the monsters and keeps everyone safe. Malcolm shows up, you know nothing is going to be alright and it's probably going to be a lot worse than has been implied so far - and that can be comforting, too, because it's not about the outcome being good or bad, it's about it being predictable. And, as I grow older, I find myself enjoying a predictably shitty outcome, because life does actually suck so, so bad sometimes and I can't always be confronted by narratives in which things end well, they often exhaust me. Sometimes, I just want to see things go to shit, I want to experience second hand anger and frustration, I want to look at a catastrophe in the eye and laugh about it.

Synopsis: A new teacher at Roundview has to deal with her first Parent's Night. She meets a man that has quite the large amount of baggage and gossip around him.

a/n: a fic! From me?? Nah son. Thats crazy. Multi-chapter love for this man coming tho. Slowly. One day. Love you alllllllll.

“Let’s take a mini-break,” Clara suggested, in a tone that was more command than suggestion. “I found this little place in the countryside. With a pool. We could get out of the heat, enjoy a little added privacy.” 

Malcolm leaned forward, “Spend every minute with one punter or another fucking asking me where I am? When will I be swooping back in to clean up their messes? It’s a fucking nice thought but…”

“Well, I’ve already booked it so you might as well pack a bag.” 

Malcolm opened his mouth to protest when Clara spoke again. 

“Sadly my bag was too small to fit a single pair of knickers in it. But I suppose I’ll just have to do without….” 

That’s what this all about for you, isn’t it? Does it never occur to you that your poisonous male obsession with conflict is making people despise politics?

So I got massively distracted and decided to do something utterly pointless: in The Thick of It S03E06, we get a ton of shots of newspapers and also one really neat shot of the BBC News website, above. The biggest fake bit is obvious–the video of Nicola Murray saying the PM is the right man for the job or whatever–but there is, I think, another fake bit mixed in with some real bits. Two article titles seem barely readable to me in the Other Top Stories section on the right side of the page:

The second one is a little easier to read imo, and says, “Tories rebuff spending cut attack.” This is an actual article, dated 10 June 2009, so we can roughly place the episode (and all other articles?) to that time frame as well.

The first one is, I think, “[name] plan to reform UK politics,” also dated 10 June 2009. Which is also a real article, except in Real Life the name in question is Gordon Brown. I don’t think the name in the TTOI mock up is “Brown,” because the third letter looks a bit like a Y and the first letter looks a bit like a T, so I’m guessing the in-universe PM’s name is actually Taylor. (Unless maybe that says “Tories plan,” which would be kind of hilarious.)

Peter Capaldi in Local Hero (1983)

Peter Capaldi in Local Hero (1983)

All his LIVES?

The layered black hoodie look?

It's just as we suspected, my friends - Peter Capaldi actually IS the Doctor.