elisi | The key to the success of River's and the Doctor's relationship.

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The key to the success of River's and the Doctor's relationship.

Well, the Doctor and River don't exactly have an easy time of it, what with the timey-wimey-ness and her being in prison etc. And then this popped into my head. The quote comes from India Knight's My Life on a Plate. (My eclectic reading finally pays off!) Although just because this is very silly, doesn't mean it isn't true!

And hey, I can even add a little meta, courtesy of

betawho:

I find it amazing that I’m enjoying the River relationship because I’ve always been a strong proponent of the asexual club too. I liked that he was different that way, and I always just figured he either didn’t have the same drive because he was alien, old, or just because he’d realized that for the life he wanted to lead it wasn’t going to work, so he just pushed it to the side to the point where he more or less forgot it. It just wasn’t on his radar.

On the other hand, I’ve also always thought that if he did decide to go there, he’d be a fantastic lover. He’s got all the traits for it, gentle, passionate, enthusiastic attention to detail, and absolutely nowhere else he has to be right now.

And that’s when it hit me. For years we’ve been watching this gorgeous, confident, sensuous, obviously sexually satisfied woman striding around, and all that time she’s been his wife. He’s the one who’s been satisfying her!

When I realized that, my poor little geek brain practically exploded. Doctor, you dog! :D

Can we say QED? *g*

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Hah! Cool! Someone is actually reading what I write.

I love the macros on here. So true.

Hah! Cool! Someone is actually reading what I write.
Well it was AWESOME. I was v. pleased to have an excuse to post it. (And I'm glad you didn't mind...) Anyway, re what you wrote, then the first part is very much along my own thoughts, esp after watching TIA/DotM for the first time. Because the flirting between them is off the scale, yet he is genuinely shocked when she kisses him. It's like there's this invisible line over which he does not step, and it's not so much the kiss as the fact that this is normal for them. Because he doesn't go there. And seeing him slowly get to grips with who/what she is is wonderful. (He doesn't get it until AGMGTW of course, and then he's all 'Yay! We do kissing and stuff!' because she's his equal and that makes it OK. I love it. (And am apparently incapable of being short or concise. But I love the progression. (Esp the way he's totally come round to the kissing thing come LKH and it proves his downfall...)

I love the macros on here. So true.
*beams*

Realizing that this was posted FOREVER ago, but can I just say I love both of you girls? I agree with this:

I find it amazing that I’m enjoying the River relationship because I’ve always been a strong proponent of the asexual club too. I liked that he was different that way, and I always just figured he either didn’t have the same drive because he was alien, old, or just because he’d realized that for the life he wanted to lead it wasn’t going to work, so he just pushed it to the side to the point where he more or less forgot it. It just wasn’t on his radar.

On the other hand, I’ve also always thought that if he did decide to go there, he’d be a fantastic lover. He’s got all the traits for it, gentle, passionate, enthusiastic attention to detail, and absolutely nowhere else he has to be right now.

And that’s when it hit me. For years we’ve been watching this gorgeous, confident, sensuous, obviously sexually satisfied woman striding around, and all that time she’s been his wife. He’s the one who’s been satisfying her!

When I realized that, my poor little geek brain practically exploded. Doctor, you dog! :D

and this:

Well it was AWESOME. I was v. pleased to have an excuse to post it. (And I'm glad you didn't mind...) Anyway, re what you wrote, then the first part is very much along my own thoughts, esp after watching TIA/DotM for the first time. Because the flirting between them is off the scale, yet he is genuinely shocked when she kisses him. It's like there's this invisible line over which he does not step, and it's not so much the kiss as the fact that this is normal for them. Because he doesn't go there. And seeing him slowly get to grips with who/what she is is wonderful. (He doesn't get it until AGMGTW of course, and then he's all 'Yay! We do kissing and stuff!' because she's his equal and that makes it OK. I love it. (And am apparently incapable of being short or concise. But I love the progression. (Esp the way he's totally come round to the kissing thing come LKH and it proves his downfall...)

sooo much I can't even. That's exactly what I was thinking about Eleven's sexuality and how he comes to terms with it, both before River and when he's getting used to her, and ahhhh I love ♥♥♥

Realizing that this was posted FOREVER ago, but can I just say I love both of you girls?
Of course you can! Although

betawho isn't a girl. ;)

sooo much I can't even. That's exactly what I was thinking about Eleven's sexuality and how he comes to terms with it, both before River and when he's getting used to her, and ahhhh I love ♥♥♥
Good, isn't it? (I can't ship him with Companions. Like, at all. Not because I can't see the attraction - he was obviously in love with Rose - but he would just never, ever go there. And River is the proof, if that makes sense.)

Although betawho isn't a girl. ;)
I'm sorry! I assume too much. My apologies.

(I can't ship him with Companions. Like, at all. Not because I can't see the attraction - he was obviously in love with Rose - but he would just never, ever go there.)
*nods* Yeah, I'm about the same… Platonic ftw. And even if Eleven seems a bit less lucid about that than Ten—"Humans decay. They wither and they die."

And River is the proof, if that makes sense.
It does! Took so much for him to wrap his head around what they would have…

I'm sorry! I assume too much. My apologies.
No worries. Took me a good while too...

*nods* Yeah, I'm about the same… Platonic ftw. And even if Eleven seems a bit less lucid about that than Ten—"Humans decay. They wither and they die."
Ten was angst on a stick. Eleven's more balanced. And... sensible? Ten kept running away from his pain (before exploding). Eleven retired.

It does! Took so much for him to wrap his head around what they would have…
RIVER! *curls up into sad ball*

Ten was angst on a stick. Eleven's more balanced. And... sensible? Ten kept running away from his pain (before exploding). Eleven retired.
*ponders* This is actually pretty interesting. I never saw them like that—oh, of course, Ten was angsty. And he bottled up like MAD. But he'd entirely internalized the idea of loss—it didn't even ever seem to surprise him (except for his own death. Sob story). He'd lost so much it seemed it was his way of coping, always expecting it, always carrying on. Eleven never seemed to accept it. He told Amy she'd "be there till the end of him"—he should have known better… He threw those huge temper tantrums, those rages when things just slipped past his control… Well, admittedly he expressed his distress and pain. And I never bought retirement to be the solution… To clear things up—retirement could have worked, not intervening in the others' troubles anymore. But settling in London like he seemed to? Living on that cloud? The Doctor NEEDS to travel… Then again, he mentioned to Amy that he really needed someone to travel with, that alone, it would just be that big old universe he knew all too well, in the end. And if he couldn't find it in him to have anyone else after the Ponds… kinda makes sense he would stop traveling. But in my mind, it still sounds very destructive of him. Like feeling he was losing everything led him to letting go of everything he might have left. Every memory, but also every hope. Leaving only the grief. The more I'm talking, the less I can decide whether this is actually a healthy way of mourning or not!

RIVER! *curls up into sad ball*
You can share my bucket of tears… not all of them sad tears, but still.

(I'm sorry this is so awfully late. I've been so late in dealing with messages/stuff to read/various alerts. So yeah, can't wait to read your meta but it is quite a ways down the list ;P)

My bad, wrong choice of words. I don't think Ten was angsty, so much as broken. And I mean that quite literally. To quote from this post where I liken Ten to Wesley from AtS:

When you strip everything else away, the self that Wes is left with is like glass; sharp, brittle. Damaged. Wes has the potential to snap. More than potential, even - keeping a woman in your closet for the summer is not the action of a sane man. Most of the time he's not that guy, but he's been there. He can be.

[...]

Wes is capable of giving everything he is and has and believes in, under the right circumstances. It's horribly powerful and terribly dangerous, because under the right kind of pressure Wes can do things. Like lock a woman in his closet. Like blowing up the building, and himself with it. Like stealing a child from its father. His intentions are good but it hardly matters, because at the edge of his tolerance Wes would probably burn the world to reach them. He has all the power of utter desperation at his fingertips, and it's never very far away.

You could substitute Ten for Wes throughout. Ten bottles... And then he explodes. It's no accident that *the* Ten vid is Handlebars - and that is was made more than a year before Waters of Mars aired. That fault line was a part of him and it was what made him so very dangerous.

Eleven is more volatile, but I think this is healthier. (My basic theory re. Ten & Eleven is that Ten is like an unstable element which then changed to a stable one.) And 'retiring' (which was basically just grieving for his lost family) strikes me as far better than running away alone (which is what Ten did - and we saw how that ended up on Mars).

Mostly then all my Ten thoughts can be summed up in this meta: The Hollow Men which I might or might not have linked you to before? It's very bleak.

/long random comment

Ohhhh, pretty interesting. You Ten vs. Wes post basically turned around my view of Ten—actually no, it didn’t turn it around at all but added a whole new side I hadn’t fully acknowledged, so thanks for that ;) I often tend to analyse a character through the way they handle their relationships and the most personal sides of their lives, so Ten was basically summed up in my head with that crushing, ice-cold sense of internalized loss—carrying the losses he’s had, and always expecting to lose more, and walking away quiet and hollow. "Waking alone at the hour when we are trembling with tenderness", like you very well quoted. And that is Ten indeed, but only part of the picture. So despite the Time Lord Victorious, which is admittedly hard to miss, I managed to overlook that whole deadly edge, lurking beneath the surface in Ten, when I compared him and Eleven. That desperation that made him frantic. And of course that is also what makes him. In that regard, he is indeed much more unstable than Eleven, more unpredictable. And maybe that is even linked somehow, in the psychology of the two of them. Ten seemed a lot more lucid than Eleven, but Eleven’s hope—even when it let him down in the end, when "Nobody dies today" was a promise he couldn’t hold, when Amy would obviously never see the end of him—did allow him to see the light. They both carried darkness within in different ways, but Ten’s desperation was different, because the deadliest are the men who have nothing to lose, and Ten thinks he’ll lose it all. And besides, you’re right to say being more volatile is healthier. Bottle up, bottle up, bottle up and in comes the crack. So Ten takes it, loss after loss, without a word ("You don’t talk, you never say." Hello, Martha.) until he SNAPS and turns deadly. (It took your meta to make me fully aware of how terrible his punishment to the Family of Blood really is. The things I miss sometimes, I swear.) Even in his moments of anger (you gave me hope and then you took it away… not that he spared Home in the end, mind), Eleven wasn’t quite that. Like Clara saw, even through the grim mask of his grieving—Eleven is kind. I wouldn’t call Ten kind, not quite. Ten is… wonderful, and the Family of Blood quote that never been much weighty in my head.

/long random comment
Love ’em. Ever so thought-provoking—thanks again!

And that is Ten indeed, but only part of the picture. So despite the Time Lord Victorious, which is admittedly hard to miss, I managed to overlook that whole deadly edge, lurking beneath the surface in Ten, when I compared him and Eleven. That desperation that made him frantic.
There's always layers... And if you're focussing on one, it's easy to miss the others.

Like - Ten's issues have always been there, right from the start: 'No second chances. I'm that kind of a man.'

Like Clara saw, even through the grim mask of his grieving—Eleven is kind. I wouldn’t call Ten kind, not quite. Ten is… wonderful, and the Family of Blood quote that never been much weighty in my head.
I sort of wrote a short post (almost a manifesto) three years ago: My Doctor.

(Sorry I'm so brief, but you've really said it all very well. Can't think of much to add!)

There's always layers... And if you're focussing on one, it's easy to miss the others.
Indeed. Trying to get better at that ;) I tend to see characters as a whole, an ever-moving whole, something in flux and possibly paradoxal, but the layers POV requires some adjusting…

Like - Ten's issues have always been there, right from the start: 'No second chances. I'm that kind of a man.'
Yes! I was so remembering that while reading your meta.

(Sorry I'm so brief, but you've really said it all very well. Can't think of much to add!)
No problem, and lol! Took me long enough. But I’m very pleased you think so ;)

Indeed. Trying to get better at that ;) I tend to see characters as a whole, an ever-moving whole, something in flux and possibly paradoxal, but the layers POV requires some adjusting…
I have no idea how to see a character as a whole - well of course they're a whole, but the characters I like/am interested in are those that can't be defined as one thing. (River is the Doctor's Wife. River is the Doctor's Killer. River is the Doctor's storyteller. River is a lost child. River is a Pond. River is a child of the TARDIS. River is the Fairy Godmother of the show... And those are just some of the most basic layers. River contains multitudes, that is why I like her.)

Yes! I was so remembering that while reading your meta.
:)

River is the Doctor's Wife. River is the Doctor's Killer. River is the Doctor's storyteller. River is a lost child. River is a Pond. River is a child of the TARDIS. River is the Fairy Godmother of the show... And those are just some of the most basic layers. River contains multitudes, that is why I like her.
♥ That's all I can say, lol. (Loving the icon too! Kinda want to snag it…)

River is EVERYTHING and I love her.

The icon is by

withaddedsyrup, so snag away. :)

LOL, I visited the person's profile and snagged a dozen… ;P

I know that feeling...

ALWAYS MORE SHINY ICONS ♥

And I have an icon that fits that! :)

It's the icon of icons! All the meta spirit.

Well in Firefly speak 'Shiny' means 'Good' or 'Cool'.

Down to each detail, then ;)

Indeed!

Is there a link to this post you wrote betawho? I would love to read it. :)

It was from this comments to my meta. Very long & insightful. :)

Awesome. Thank you so much. Can't wait to read it.

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The key to the success of River's and the Doctor's relationship.

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