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savvyliterateSo, Sunday, right? I should talk about my week, but it could be summarized in the following: I brought back $75 in groceries from a Trader Joe's in Baltimore; Steve Jobs died and that not only really sucked, but totally ate up two days; I have rediscovered a love for Tumblr; and I worked a lot. I will be very grateful to get to my off days this week. One A1 and one Express cover to go, and I'll be finished.
Once again, I'm weighing changing my LJ and fanfic pen name. The moniker "DQBunny" was created in 2000 to reflect the fandoms I was into at that time: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Sailor Moon. While that was great at the time, I don't feel like it's been me for a number of years now. The main thing holding me back was twofold: DeviantArt doesn't allow you to change journal names once you've picked a name, and I accidentially squandered the "savvyliterate" moniker on LJ when I tried doing a non-LJ blog six years ago and created a syndicated feed for it. "savvyliterate" has been my second moniker since 2004 -- it's what my Gmail and Tumblr is, and I feel it reflects me so much better. I'll see if I can come up with some other alternative.
My real purpose today is to meta more on the Doctor/River relationship and the flaws. Oh yes, I OTP this pairing like crazy, but I'm not blind. There's a huge flaw that becomes apparent in "The Wedding of River Song," and it's one that fans of Harry Potter should recognize.
What happened to the Doctor and River is what I call the Harry/Ginny syndrome. See, in Harry Potter, JK Rowling tells readers via interviews after the fact what a kickass woman Ginny is suppose to be. She reinterates that she is Harry's soulmate. Ginny did some amazing things: Restarted Dumbledore's Army, led the resistance at Hogwarts with Luna and Neville, tried to steal the Sword of Gryffindor, because a superstar player for the Harpies and an awesome journalist. We're told about all these things, but we don't actually see them happening because we're looking at the story through Harry's POV and most of these things take place apart from where Harry is.
In River Song's story, we see that River can be amazing on her own. She led the expedition to the Library, pulled off the ultimate Cleopatra heist, can bring Daleks to their knees, etc. Even though she was created to be a weapon for the Doctor, because of the nonlinear fashion she's presented, we know she can do more. As apparent in a deleted scene from "The Impossible Astronaut," where the warden lists the number of River's breakout attempts and we see how she's "modded" her closet, she pretty much runs the Stormcage, it doesn't run her. We know she loves the Doctor. However, the big gap here is the same one that happens between Harry and Ginny -- we don't see the relationship actually developing. We only see it already established for River and at its very beginning.
There's a huge plot gap between "Let's Kill Hitler" and "The Wedding of River Song" where River is at University getting her doctorate. She's a few pages into her journal from what we saw at the end of "Closing Time," which means at some point she spent time with the Doctor, and I imagine it's post-"God Complex" for him. None of their previous issues come up during "Wedding" other than him suddenly spouting off that he doesn't want to marry her. While Mels did throw that around, I think that was her spouting off more than an actual desire, and I still think the Doctor yelling and goading River to get angry was more a show for the Silence/Kovarian and River's protection than anything -- especially since when in "Let's Kill Hiter" that the Doctor not only not berate or get angry with River when she did succeed with killing him, but was furious when she was tortured. There's something that happened between LKH and Wedding that not only had River properly falling in love with the Doctor, but the Doctor being OK with marrying her. Because, face it, it's the Doctor. As I've said before, he could have just ordered her to look into his eyes then grabbed her to break the time lock. But, he didn't. I think he's been in love with her since the closing scenes of "A Good Man Goes to War," when he allowed himself to finally acknowledge it. We know, thanks to Moffat, that what the Doctor whispered to Melody in LKH wasn't the Doctor's name. I believe he said was, "Tell River that I love her." Melody's response, "I'm sure she knows," echoes the Tenth Doctor's message to Rose in "The Satan Pit." "Tell Rose ... oh, she knows."
As mentioned last week, in Slayers Next, Lina Inverse pulls the same move to save Gourry Gabriev. However, because we follow their relationship in a linear fashion, we see it developing at the same time for both of them. Gourry was the one who fell in love first, during the events of the first series. Lina follows in Next, and we see that affection gradually grow as he scolds her for not thinking of his feelings when she faked her death, when Auntie Aqua noticed their bond, Gourry telling Lina he'd protect her for the rest of his life, then Lina's reactions to Gourry being kidnapped and the huge hole it left in her life. All of this gradually layered atop each other to where Lina faces down Phibrizzo and thinks, "I choose Gourry over the universe!" and does so by casting the Giga Slave. It makes complete sense to the character because of everything that came before and how we see that this truly kickass independent woman has fallen in love and entangled her life with someone else's to the point that she makes the selfish choice.
Moffat does a good job in River's speech by quantifying it, by having her explain that the universe loves the Doctor so much in addition to herself. He is loved by so many, but none more than River, and she is in the position to make the selfish choice. But, because of the constraints of TV, we don't see that actual point where she develops those feelings on her own -- the result of her searching for a "good man," which I interpret to mean as searching for the truth of who the Doctor is and not what the Silence fed her or what Amy told her as Mels. Likewise, we don't see the Doctor accepting that his future is with River.
I really wish this would be explored in a NSA (New Series Adventures novel), or best yet, a trilogy of them where the Doctor and River have proper adventures together set during this unexplained time between LKH and Wedding. There is a history of the NSA filling in these gaps before -- the story of Martha's walk around the world from the end of series 3 is told in "The Story of Martha." These books would have to be written in a slightly different fashion than other NSAs, with the addition of a bit more romance. Think more of the Eighth Doctor Adventures where some of that leeched through and, in the very last book written (but not published), the Eighth Doctor slept with Bernice Summerfield -- the Doctor does love his archaeologists! The NSAs are set up as standalone adventures whereas an arc involving the Doctor and River in this time period would need to involve emotional development for both of them and harken back a bit more to the older books set after the original series ended in 1989. I would love to see Moffat tap a writer that not only can handle a good adventure, but the romantic secondary plot and have that person create a few stories to fill in that gap. It would solve a lot of issues I think people would have with the Doctor/River shotgun wedding marriage.
Once again, I'm weighing changing my LJ and fanfic pen name. The moniker "DQBunny" was created in 2000 to reflect the fandoms I was into at that time: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Sailor Moon. While that was great at the time, I don't feel like it's been me for a number of years now. The main thing holding me back was twofold: DeviantArt doesn't allow you to change journal names once you've picked a name, and I accidentially squandered the "savvyliterate" moniker on LJ when I tried doing a non-LJ blog six years ago and created a syndicated feed for it. "savvyliterate" has been my second moniker since 2004 -- it's what my Gmail and Tumblr is, and I feel it reflects me so much better. I'll see if I can come up with some other alternative.
My real purpose today is to meta more on the Doctor/River relationship and the flaws. Oh yes, I OTP this pairing like crazy, but I'm not blind. There's a huge flaw that becomes apparent in "The Wedding of River Song," and it's one that fans of Harry Potter should recognize.
What happened to the Doctor and River is what I call the Harry/Ginny syndrome. See, in Harry Potter, JK Rowling tells readers via interviews after the fact what a kickass woman Ginny is suppose to be. She reinterates that she is Harry's soulmate. Ginny did some amazing things: Restarted Dumbledore's Army, led the resistance at Hogwarts with Luna and Neville, tried to steal the Sword of Gryffindor, because a superstar player for the Harpies and an awesome journalist. We're told about all these things, but we don't actually see them happening because we're looking at the story through Harry's POV and most of these things take place apart from where Harry is.
In River Song's story, we see that River can be amazing on her own. She led the expedition to the Library, pulled off the ultimate Cleopatra heist, can bring Daleks to their knees, etc. Even though she was created to be a weapon for the Doctor, because of the nonlinear fashion she's presented, we know she can do more. As apparent in a deleted scene from "The Impossible Astronaut," where the warden lists the number of River's breakout attempts and we see how she's "modded" her closet, she pretty much runs the Stormcage, it doesn't run her. We know she loves the Doctor. However, the big gap here is the same one that happens between Harry and Ginny -- we don't see the relationship actually developing. We only see it already established for River and at its very beginning.
There's a huge plot gap between "Let's Kill Hitler" and "The Wedding of River Song" where River is at University getting her doctorate. She's a few pages into her journal from what we saw at the end of "Closing Time," which means at some point she spent time with the Doctor, and I imagine it's post-"God Complex" for him. None of their previous issues come up during "Wedding" other than him suddenly spouting off that he doesn't want to marry her. While Mels did throw that around, I think that was her spouting off more than an actual desire, and I still think the Doctor yelling and goading River to get angry was more a show for the Silence/Kovarian and River's protection than anything -- especially since when in "Let's Kill Hiter" that the Doctor not only not berate or get angry with River when she did succeed with killing him, but was furious when she was tortured. There's something that happened between LKH and Wedding that not only had River properly falling in love with the Doctor, but the Doctor being OK with marrying her. Because, face it, it's the Doctor. As I've said before, he could have just ordered her to look into his eyes then grabbed her to break the time lock. But, he didn't. I think he's been in love with her since the closing scenes of "A Good Man Goes to War," when he allowed himself to finally acknowledge it. We know, thanks to Moffat, that what the Doctor whispered to Melody in LKH wasn't the Doctor's name. I believe he said was, "Tell River that I love her." Melody's response, "I'm sure she knows," echoes the Tenth Doctor's message to Rose in "The Satan Pit." "Tell Rose ... oh, she knows."
As mentioned last week, in Slayers Next, Lina Inverse pulls the same move to save Gourry Gabriev. However, because we follow their relationship in a linear fashion, we see it developing at the same time for both of them. Gourry was the one who fell in love first, during the events of the first series. Lina follows in Next, and we see that affection gradually grow as he scolds her for not thinking of his feelings when she faked her death, when Auntie Aqua noticed their bond, Gourry telling Lina he'd protect her for the rest of his life, then Lina's reactions to Gourry being kidnapped and the huge hole it left in her life. All of this gradually layered atop each other to where Lina faces down Phibrizzo and thinks, "I choose Gourry over the universe!" and does so by casting the Giga Slave. It makes complete sense to the character because of everything that came before and how we see that this truly kickass independent woman has fallen in love and entangled her life with someone else's to the point that she makes the selfish choice.
Moffat does a good job in River's speech by quantifying it, by having her explain that the universe loves the Doctor so much in addition to herself. He is loved by so many, but none more than River, and she is in the position to make the selfish choice. But, because of the constraints of TV, we don't see that actual point where she develops those feelings on her own -- the result of her searching for a "good man," which I interpret to mean as searching for the truth of who the Doctor is and not what the Silence fed her or what Amy told her as Mels. Likewise, we don't see the Doctor accepting that his future is with River.
I really wish this would be explored in a NSA (New Series Adventures novel), or best yet, a trilogy of them where the Doctor and River have proper adventures together set during this unexplained time between LKH and Wedding. There is a history of the NSA filling in these gaps before -- the story of Martha's walk around the world from the end of series 3 is told in "The Story of Martha." These books would have to be written in a slightly different fashion than other NSAs, with the addition of a bit more romance. Think more of the Eighth Doctor Adventures where some of that leeched through and, in the very last book written (but not published), the Eighth Doctor slept with Bernice Summerfield -- the Doctor does love his archaeologists! The NSAs are set up as standalone adventures whereas an arc involving the Doctor and River in this time period would need to involve emotional development for both of them and harken back a bit more to the older books set after the original series ended in 1989. I would love to see Moffat tap a writer that not only can handle a good adventure, but the romantic secondary plot and have that person create a few stories to fill in that gap. It would solve a lot of issues I think people would have with the Doctor/River shotgun wedding marriage.