promethia

Warnings: Includes spoilers for Pyramid at the End of the World and the next time trailer for Lie of the Land. So long. So very long. Not properly edited. Seven years of accumulated symbolism is such an unwieldily thing, guys, I'm sorry.

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Bill started out on this show, I thought, remarkably devoid of symbolism. Clara and River and even Amy, to an extent, all entered the show dripping in symbolism. With names that begged to be analyzed and new veins of metaphoric imagery flowing from them.

Amy was about fairy tales and growing up. Apples and stories. She and the Doctor were lost children, running away together, learning how to grow up.

River was about life and the power of grace and the flow of time. She was associated with water and forests and music, life and death and renewal. Her appearance told us the Doctor was going to grow and heal and and again be a force for life and wellbeing.

Clara was about clarity and power and rules, and about mirroring the Doctor. She brought with her flowers and eggs and birds: symbols of fruitfulness, rebirth, and freedom. On her first appearance she symbolically healed the Time War by severing the Doctor’s connection to the Daleks.

Missy came in and co-opted all the symbolic threads the others had established and made them evil: a twisted mother figure. Queen of no natural forces, but of the undead. And her influence twisted up Twelve and Clara and spread over their whole era, as they gripped tighter and tighter to each other, unwilling to let time and nature run their course.

To see even an episode or two of any of these women was to understand, quite quickly, major things about what they would mean.

This did not happen with Bill. Bill was remarkably, intriguingly, and somewhat reassuringly . . . flat.

( Read more... )

*deep breath* Ok, if you're gonna play at guessing at Moffat Who, sooner or later you have to put your cards on the table. So here's how I see this whole thing going. It's a question of . . . aesthetics. Let me show you:

( Narrative seeking order . . . )

(If you leave a comment and I've disappeared, I'm sorry. I have today off and then life goes sideways for awhile. I will do my best.)

Let's have some Doctor Who, shall we? Good, I'm glad we're agreed ; )

Things with whose perfection I am entirely incapable of putting up right now (vid edition):

Moves Like Jagger (Eleven/everyone) by lady_with_cats So, I have this song on my iPod at the moment, and I keep cracking up at inopportune times because . . . well, you'll see. Because the Doctor knows he is a smooth gq fucking rockstar, and he might even be right.

Safe to Shore (Amy, Eleven) by niyalune This vid almost makes me feel like we are back in season five again, just enjoying the joys and sorrows and adventures of Amy and her Raggedy Doctor, all while connecting it to season six and its complexities, and oh I love it so. The essence of these two together.

I Would Hurt a Fly (Eleven, his relationships, and his journey) by gnattery I won't mince words: this vid is the reason for this post. Because somebody made an epic, meat-y, meta-y vid about the relationship between the Doctor/the TARDIS/the Time Lords/the Master/the Universe/the Doctor's own darkness/Amy/Rory/River/and everything else. Oh, and it's beautiful. That's all.

(I know I owe comments on my last post--please forgive me. But I loved your insights and I will get back to it. Also: have watched Avatar: Legend of Korra and suspect it might be amazing, if flawed.)

Hi guys *waves* Is anybody still around? I'll apologize here for my general Not Being Here for the last I've Lost Track of How Long. You'll have to excuse me because Life and also Things Far Too Boring to Talk About and, yes, you may feel free to hate me for abandoning you /guilt

But the internet is for dissecting television in obsessive detail, so on to the Doctor Who:

I've had another thought that I'd like to contribute to the ongoing efforts to fanwank season six into some sort of emotional continuity for the Pond family. This time it's about Amy and what I think has become the accepted wisdom about her behavior in the second half of the season (?): that she was repressing her feelings about what had happened with Melody because that is Amy and how she deals with adversity. This is the girl who had never told her fiance she loved him, after all.

( Not buying it )

This is one of those fics you finish and realize you've been waiting around for:

The Moon Rises Over and Over Again by quidly (Doctor/River, Amy/Rory, the TARDIS, 11500 words, R)

A 'this is why I read fic" fic. A "this is why I watch this show" fic. An "oops, didn't realize I'd stopped breathing there for a moment but I don't really care" fic. It's about . . . people being bigger on the inside. And how those spaces relate.

Give yourself a good hour to read, but please, read!

Hey, look at me trying to write things \o/ I still have no idea of what to do with AGMGTW, really, but as I finally found myself getting excited for the show again with the prospect of MOAR AMY + RIVER GOODNESS, I figured as good a place to start as any would be to stick them in a room and see what happens. Really very thoroughly unpolished, all dialogue, not sure if I even like and/or agree with all of this, and I wasn't terribly comfortable writing Amy even before Moffat decided to change everything we knew, so . . . /nervous rambling

Anyway, I think transparency in the writing process is a good thing, so here's me practicing what I preach!

Spoiler/Spec Warning: Spoilers through AGMGTW. Some speculation based on a close study of some shots from the trailer for the second half of the season, developed from a conversation that I don't think contained any specific spoilers about what was going on, but you know how these things go in fandom . . .

Head has been entirely too full of theories and spec lately (anybody else really looking forward to the hiatus?), so here's a few strands of possibly related, possibly unrelated theories that I've had floating around and needed to write down so as to get them out and see how crazy they sound.  All of the "things are never quite what they seem" variety.

Spoilers for all aired episodes.

( Lots of stuff under the cut . . . )

So, awhile back cinderbella333  asked me for some vid recs . . .

And awhile back before that elisi  taught me all about RTD-Who and Torchwood, and good luck getting her to express anything without throwing in a vid or two or twenty ; )

And back even before that, I asked a fairly facetious question because I felt like making fun of the Tenth Doctor (like you do) and ended up getting a lot more than I'd bargained for (and if that's not an argument for always asking the facetious question, I don't know what is).

So here is this thing that I have put together.  Of vids.  Lot of vids of Torchwood and of NuWho that I have watched and with some words about why I like them.  You might think of this as A Thing I Have Put Together for Cinderbella (and anyone else who might like to watch some vids, and also for myself since I quite wanted a list of my own for reference).  Or you might think of this as Vids and What I Have Learned About Them, in the manner of some end-of-the-semester project for Fandom104: Introduction to Audiovisual Modes of Critique and Expression.  Or you might think of this as Things I Think and Feel about the Whoniverse because, while this is a very long list, I make absolutely no claims to either comprehensiveness or objectivity.  This is simply a list of vids that happened to grab me and that I watched a lot because they seemed important to me in my own little corner over here.

I have tried to be very organized with different sections and descriptions so that anyone looking for something specific might find it.  And if you happen to know a real LJ or Dreamwidth link for anything I only have a YouTube link for, do please share.  Obviously this has been a very long time in the making, both in collecting materials and in the choosing and typing up and organizing, so here's hoping somebody besides myself will find it of some use.

( And there's a My Little Pony vid at the bottom, if you make it that far . . . )

Ummmm . . . I think I'm addicted to cropping icons.  It must engage the same part of the brain as Tetris.  And architectural drafting.  I can't stop.  I'm not sure I want to.

Also, somehow the only way I can really see what needs changing is by posting things publicly.  So here's a bunch of what I assume to be works in progress.  Man . . . look at that!  Yeah, that was a mistake.  What was she thinking?  =D


      
       

Remember a long, long time ago when I was working on a big, long fic with, like, plot and other uncharacteristic things like that that was all about a weird post-Big Bang AU in which Amy wakes up back in Leadworth and River and Eleven are her parents?  Well . . . *cracks knuckles*

Long rambling, my first ever Amy/Rory scene, and a plea for Amy recs under the cut:

( Click, click . . . )