elisi's humble abode

Welcome to the meta café! Help yourselves to tea and scones! (No really. This is epic and vast. It’s taken me days to write. You’re going to be here a while. It's just over 8500 words long. And image heavy.)

Before we begin, I shall just point out a Moffat joke. Because I think there are a lot of jokes we’ll only really get now. From Time of Angels:

DOCTOR: The writing, the graffiti - Old High Gallifreyan. The lost language of the Time Lords. There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple Gods.
AMY: What does it say?
DOCTOR: Hello, Sweetie.

In conclusion: FUCK YEAH, RIVER SONG!

Also, Moffat - you are a genius. Now I’ll admit that when I first watched this episode, my feelings were pretty perfectly captured by this gif (I have never actually SEEN MLP, but that did sum up my reaction. There were also RL issues wrapped up in this, but mostly I think the crack was just obscuring my vision. Mmm crack.) However, I am now in this frame of mind. It is, without a doubt, my favourite episode ever. Because it is the most beautiful. And this post is, basically, an attempt at conveying all the things I see. (I love it so much it’s almost embarrassing. Good thing I’ve got no shame left when it comes to TV shows...)

I shall start us off with the whole story summed up in only two images. Yes two. And you can marvel at how clever Moffat’s metaphors are. (I’ll get to how clever his plotting is later on.) Also I make no real distinction between River-the-character and River-as-metaphor. Because that would be impossible.

( SPOILERS for EVERYTHING! )

Was going to pimp these last week, I think, but time... /o\ Anyway, these are both awesome vids, and as different as can be. In both cases, spoilers up to (and including) The Girl Who Waited:

Eleven Is Cool by humansrsuperior.

Description: Eleven is cool. ;) An Eleven appreciation vid. ♥

(The hats, the twirls, the dancing, the bowtie... there is no bad!)

~

Hardly a Hero by thewaterseeker.

Summary: And I'm hardly the hero/This is the only thing I know to do/To make it through

(Full lyrics here. Even more beautifully - and painfully - apt after The God Complex. Srsly, this is my Doctor.)

Because we are watching one long, continuous story, and it's timey-wimey and told backwards, but also hugely dependent on what came before (i.e. Ten).

( Spoilers up to LKH, just to be on the safe side )

So, shortly after AGMGTW there were a lot of discussions about what impact the revelation at the end had on people and the show. One discussion in owlsie’s LJ turned rather silly (/understatement), although funnily enough a good amount of our silly speculations turned out to come true in LKH, albeit in a slightly different way to what we envisaged. The post in question is flocked, but owlsie kindly allowed me to copy and paste the relevant parts, because I wanted to share it... Click on the cut to see why! :)

(I know I still have comments to reply to from last night's LKH meta. I'll get there, but I was just feeling in a silly mood.)

( MANY MANY SPOILERS!!! Oh and keep all liquids FAR away. )

Oh forgot to mention - couldn't have written this without promethia_tenk!

( Spoilers for AGMGTW )

Right, here you are. This thing has not let me have any peace the last few days, but it is done now, so I’m inflicting it on you! :) Now the sticking point was that it is pretty much hurt/comfort - nothing wrong with that, but it’s not normally my cup of tea... There are exceptions however, and the degree of earnest heartfeltness in this piece is bordering on the ridiculous.

However, I managed to weave all kinds of other meta-y things in there - f.ex. you can see it as a subversion (gender-flipping) of the manpain trope if you like. Or as an examination of the ways in which River is a mirror for the Doctor. Or as a character study. Or a First Time story. Or just a bit of shameless shipping...

Title: She Can Be. She Will Be.
Summary: For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned. (St Francis of Assisi)
Characters/pairing: Eleventh Doctor/River.
Setting: Some time post-DW6.07 (SPOILERS!!!)
Rating: 15. (Non-graphic sex.)
Word count: 3000 words approx.
Dedication: For Promethia, who helped make this what it is.

( She Can Be. She Will Be. )

It's late and I'm half asleep, but...

If I had a Doctor Who 'manifesto', it would be this vid from this week's Confidential.

(Not sure 'manifesto' is the right word... It just sums up all the reasons I love my show. The hows and whys, the way it breaks my heart and puts it back together. There are good Doctor [Eleven] vids out there - most of them technically more impressive - but this one just hits all the right buttons for me, putting forward what I see.)

Because quite a few people have raised interesting points, and I’d be saying the same thing to all of them - plus I should probably have included this in the original post...

( Spoilers for 6.1 and 6.2 + speculation )

1. It struck me today, that who River is, is more important than who she is in relation to the Doctor.

2. For anyone wanting to (re)delight in all the wonders of S5 before we embark on S6, let me pimp the brand new and very, very shiny:

Eleventh Dimension by di_br: A series 5 vid masqueraded as an Eleventh Doctor vid. ;)

topaz_eyes and I were having a v. interesting conversation on solitary_summer’s LJ, but when she posted the following comment I realised I needed to make a post, because even just thinking about the answer I knew it’d fill up about 4 comment boxes. (It ended up around 8000 words, in the end. Approximately.) Plus it was wildly off topic for the post it was in…

Because this post is all about Ten and Eleven and power. (And related topics, such as their place in the universe and whether this has changed with a new head writer and how god-like they are etc. Did I mention that I ramble?)

Disclaimer: Whenever I compare something, I’m not saying that one is better than the other. I love Ten HUGELY, and wouldn’t want him any different, and ditto for Eleven. Nor am I saying that I am right, just that this is how I see things, and I love how the character of the Doctor has grown and changed. Same man, different time. That’s the key for me. (Gorgeous, gorgeous banner made for me by kathyh - because I wanted those words illustrated, and she then distracted me hugely with Teh Pretty... Also thanks to owlsie for the podcast, and (since we share a brain) about half of this belongs to promethia_tenk. Don't ask me which half though.)

( Spoilers for all of S5 and the Christmas Special )