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agentark · 4 months

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trying to enjoy my silly little time traveling sci-fi show while clara and the doctor say the most devastating things to and about each other every other episode like my god

If the Doctor is still the Doctor, he will have my back.

Clara, I'm not your boyfriend. // I never thought you were. // I never said it was your mistake.

Please, just...Just see me.

Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?

Clara, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm exactly what you deserve.

There was one other man. But it would've never worked out. He was impossible.

When do I not see you?

Die with whoever comes after me, you do not leave me.

I don't care about your rules, or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way, you'll come back.

Immortality isn't living forever, that's not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying. She might meet someone she can't bear to lose. That happens, I believe.

I let Clara Oswald get inside my head, trust me, she doesn't leave.

Longest month of my life. // It could only have been five minutes. // I'll be the judge of time.

I will die, and no one else here or anywhere will suffer. // What about me?

Everything you're about to say, I already know. don't do it now, we've already had enough bad timing.

Don't run. Stay with me.

I was lost a long time ago, she was saving you.

If you think because she is dead I'm weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all.

The day you lose someone isn't the worst...it's all the days they stay dead.

I'd know you anywhere.

What were you bargaining for? // What do you think? You.

If she says so.

I had a duty of care.

People like me and you, we should say things to one another.

Look how far I went, for fear of losing you.

You said "memories become stories when we forget them." Maybe some of them become songs.

hand in unlovable hand

#also of course any iteration of 'my clara'#or that line in before the flood where bennett is like 'youre just doing this to save clara' and the doctor is like 'yeah? and?'#like even w/ 11 we start to see just how far the doctor will go for her but 12 really drops the pretense that he cares about anyone but her #just finished a rewatch of Clara's episodes and feeling the entire spectrum of human emotion about them #may I one day experience a love half as insane as theirs #clara jumping into his time stream means they have 900+ years of inextricably linked history whether they know it or not like....#yeah i'd be unhinged about you too #everyone say 'thank you missy' for bringing these two together and nearly causing the destruction of the universe #doctor who #clara oswald #doctorclara #I'm not ready to start Bill's episodes what happens to her makes me physically ill #twelveclara

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markantonys · 26 days

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however insufferable i am about gawyn now, i will only become 100x more so once we have show content for him. this is a promise, this is a warning, this is a threat.

#gawyn on MY screen in approx 2025........it is almost too wonderful to believe!!#for every episode i will flood the entire show tag with gawyn screencaps captioned 'recalled as shouting thank god it is my boy'#gawyn trakand #wot #gawynposting #he's only even my 5th-ish favorite character but the fact that it's taking SO goddamn long for him to arrive in the show #has built up an incredible amount of anticipation!#especially because it's a real ???? for what the show will choose to do with him #elayne and aviendha it was pretty easy to imagine how the show would handle them once they arrived (and everyone else was already in s1)#but gawyn? there's so many directions they could go with him and i'm on the edge of my seat wondering which one they'll pick #plus elayne's casting was already known before i met her in the books and avi's was revealed shortly after i met her #whereas i met gawyn 2 years ago and still have no clue who will play him!

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trishabeakens · 1 year

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He doesn’t even work there.

#darkwing duck #ducktales #darkwing duck oc #dwd oc #bud flud #bud flood #the liquidator #liquidator #quackerjack #kimbra flud #my art #my oc #trishabeakens #qj's episode came before dry hard so I wanted to use him for a silly shitpost

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variousqueerthings · 5 months

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but what about those things that aren't ghosts?

Under The Lake/Before The Flood. this is just a solid couple of scifi episodes honestly, plus I mean. a bangin Predator-like alien design (last season we had Facehuggers, this season we have this, I feel like someone was doing a little rewatch of those movies, but I'm not mad)

I actually didn't take cohesive notes for most of s9, unlike the seasons that came before it, because. just didn't wanna. I was enjoying the watch, so this will be more from memory from here on out (good luck me)

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 10/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored, or given agency to her emotional interiority): 4/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 7/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 5/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 3/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 8/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 7/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 9/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 7/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 8/10

FULL RATING: 68/100 (if I can count….)

See? Solid! although I will be poking at that companion thing, because my main gripe about s9 -- now we've seen the whole thing and we know how it goes down -- is how little it managed to centre Clara on the whole, both emotionally and just... relevant to having the individual plots happen. this is not an issue in every single episode, but I'd say over the half of the season had Clara be largely irrelevant. the episodes where she is relevant show her off very well, but it's just a shame that in her final season she's not put front and centre

I just don't feel like I understand her, still. but, to the episode!

OBJECTIFICATION: As far as I can remember there's nothing in the way of this in this episode. there's three female characters (including Clara) and they're all quite different, Clara is the only one not dressed for the place, but then she's just hopping about in time, not preparing for being chased through an underwater base

Idk, it's been a long time since I last wore a skirt or a dress or heels outside of a little drag, and while I'm quite flouncy in my presentation, I just think if I knew that anything could happen I'd generally veer semi-practical and Clara is consistently not a practical dresser, just as-is, consistently. but maybe that's the pull of skirts and heels -- genuine question, because I'm so far outside of this living, because I just feel like Clara's expression of self outside of a couple of episodes (Time Heist my beloved, and tbh Zygon Invasion 👀) is often just... blandly fashionable in a way that doesn't say much about her character or work for the setting she's in

this isn't the worst episode for it, but it's something I really couldn't stop thinking about it by this point. I feel like every other nu!who companion -- tbh including Amy in her fist couple of seasons even though I didn't like that her wardrobe was often to show off that Karen Gillan was "hot" -- has a far stronger identity tied to wardrobe

anyway. enough rambling on one point, I didn't rate this lower, because she's not being objectified here, I just wish there were less bland choices being made

PLOT-POINT: Clara is largely unimportant to this plot. she doesn't really need to be there, in the sense that there are quite compelling stories for the single-episode characters, and for the Doctor, but she's just. there really

this is also a thing that s9 kind of brought to the fore, although it was an issue from the start, which is that Clara is a very ungrounded character for most of her run. there are episodes where she's more real, and where her interaction with the plot is about her in some way, and in which the tension between her and the Doctor make sense to me, but every season she's in she becomes a slightly different character without the journey being shown onscreen, and her tensions with the Doctor, which can be broadly divided into

s7: the impossible girl question s8: the "making each other worse" season s9: the duty of care

just... don't follow on from each other in my opinion. I keep looking for Clara as a connected character, and there are some things that follow through (which is what I hold on to), but for the most part she just shifts with the plot, rather than the plot in some way interacting with who she is. again, these episodes are not the worst for it, having a few episodes where the companion character is taking a backseat is fine, but this is her final season

there are 7 episodes this season, if we take the doubles each as their own (Sleep No More and Face The Raven being singles), and it takes place after the finale of Clara having lost Danny, having betrayed the Doctor, and having threatened to - and fully intended to - kill someone. there is a lot of potential Stuff to zero in on, but we're just not gonna do that. Clara is just not the character I care about in most of these episodes, because the episodes don't really care about her. she's a secondary or tertiary character in her own adventure a lot of the time

COMPLEXITY: this plot feels pretty Doctor Who, I enjoy it a lot. I like the bad guy, I like the melancholy, I like the scifi nonsense. could it have been done in one episode? maaaaybe, but I enjoyed spending time with these characters, so I'm okay with that. sometimes you wanna spend more time in the world, just cos, and this is one of those times for me. there's a couple of questions that remain, but again, I think that's standard for DW

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: this is pretty much a standalone story in the season. I didn't rate it lower, but maybe I could have, idk. it's Clara again, I wish Clara meant more -- it didn't need to further the Doctor's and Clara's relationship more, but I think because I don't understand it very well to begin with, I would have liked a... something or other that went beyond what was there. this is not an episode issue, it's really a Clara-era issue. I think I'll just never quite get what the writers were going for with her, and it's just that s9 is the season that confirms that for me

COMPANIONS MATTER: Clara spends most of her time running around and waiting for the Doctor to tell her what to do. there's the end of part 1 where they become stuck in different points in time, and I thought "ooh now Clara takes control of the situation on the base" and she... doesn't. the Doctor calls her and continues to give instruction, then the phone gets stolen by the ghosts and her big idea is "hey this guy could go fetch it for us"

she has a few neat lines, I liked her scene with Cass, where Cass is essentially telling her to go fuck herself for getting the man she not-so-secretly loves in danger, and insisting they go after him, but that is kind of my point -- Clara does not drive this episode at any point, except for that moment and it's... not a great look for her. she's the asshole, she convinces someone else to do something dangerous and then has to be convinced to go after him

I did like when she lost Cass and called out for her, before remembering Cass is deaf and calling herself an idiot. there are these neat little moments I hold onto with Clara's character and that's one of them

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: the Doctor sorts out the main Stuff and that's fine. I like that this Doctor is afraid sometimes and deals with things via their wits, but also with a bit of "well this might not work, let's fuckn see!" The Fisher King coulda just killed him, but the Doctor just crossed their fingers essentially and hoped for the best and then bluffed to win

also I mean. Fisher King kinda sexy. idk where else to put that. any big big alien that goes "lol Time Lords are losers" is right and sexy

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: there's quite a few little casual references in this episode which I liked. Magpie Electricals, ofc the fact that Prentiss has knowledge of the Doctor via UNIT (UNIT again... they're villains in my head honestly), the security protocol, etc. it just feels very grounded in nu!who canon in a way that's fun and doesn't overwhelm the episode with nostalgia references

“SEXINESS”: there's this bit at the beginning where Clara asks if they can go back to this one place they were where she left behind most of her dignity, and listen, I'm being peevish maybe, but it is a pet peeve, so. maybe if I dig at it more I can say why I don't like it, but in the end maybe I'm just tired of M*ffat-era's way of doing sex and sexual reference. that is also the only reference, s9 doesn't do this a lot, but it also just plays back into Clara as a character. who are you? why are you in space? just to fuck about and have a good time? are you the villain Clara? are you a Space Tourist From England That's Just In It For Yourself? or do you respect the places you go, does this mean anything to you?

overanalyses my pet peeve

but also. so much of Clara is just. quipping. gimme more than quips, gimme substance dammit!

INTERNAL WORLD: it's relatively simple. underwater spooky base. spooky base before it was underwater. did they really build nuclear sites like that in Scotland? genuine question, I have no idea

again, feels very grounded in Doctor Who, but casually

POLITICS: I complained back in *checks notes* s7? I think? whenever Centre Of The Tardis was. that M*ffat-era sucked at putting people of colour in his stories, especially men of colour, without them being villains or stereotypes. I feel like I need to go back and look over s8, and have more of a think about s9 as a whole, but I do note that this episode on the whole was having a much more fun time with infinite diversity in infinite ways than I have often felt M*ffat-era has had. it's not the bastion of representation in the sense that it's something that ought to just belong to DW as-is, it's just nice to simply see people

and obviously Cass is grounded at the forefront of the story, and is very important to the emotional core of the plot, as well as various tensions and plot concepts. I'm not deaf, but on the whole it seemed like it was doing a lot with this episode, obviously by having an interpreter who's also someone she clearly has a lot of chemistry with, and the whole idea that these two characters come as a set, not just because nobody else speaks BSL, but because they understand each other emotionally as well

there's also several parts that go untranslated for a non-signing audience, and I wonder how much swearing one is allowed if it's signed. so she's a great character. I kind of wish there hadn't been the early joke of the Doctor being like "aw yeah I can do sign language" and then... not being able to? Why wouldn't the Doctor speak BSL?

I understand there may have been extra logistics, but tbh they coulda just confirmed it in that scene, but had the interpreting happen anyway, because we know that Twelve wouldn't bother getting anyone else up to speed. just think that was an odd choice

perhaps a tad nitpicky, but I am nothing in this if not picking at nits

FULL RATING: 68/100 (if I can count….)

this is a good episode in my opinion. one of the most solid of M*ffat-era, thoroughly enjoyed myself. I wish wish wish Clara had been more than witty one-liners, I feel like there were several points where she could have been given more to do, but I really like the other characters, and The Fisher King design is... well. this blog likes monsterfucking so obvs it was great for me personally

#im watching nu!who #im watching capaldi who #the measurement #episode under the lake #episode before the flood

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thecapturedafrique · 1 year

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Reminder: being upset or traumatized doesn’t give you license to take it out on the people around you.

The point of Ruby breaking down isn’t about her being right to lash out, it’s about her finally revealing just how fucked up she’s become so that everyone can take off the rose-colored glasses (ha!) to see that Ruby is Not Okay.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby9 spoilers #ruby rose #rant in the tags #some of y’all really didn’t learn the right lesson from “hurt people hurt people”#and in this case ruby hurting people is meant to showcase how she herself is deeply DEEPLY wounded #like wby has recognized ruby isn’t doing too hot but they didn’t realize the extent of it until this moment #also it’s incredibly telling how rubes has a full blown panic attack but before it can be addressed the flood happens #and then all their focus is turned to jaune #so of course ruby is left standing there like “what about me huh?! when is it my turn to breakdown!”#ruby’s rant is bc she needs the space to grieve and mourn and be sad but her team didn’t know #now thankfully they (and jaune) do!#can’t wait to see next week’s episode even if i have the terrible feeling it may be too late #the tree is coming for our girl i can feel it 😭

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yardsards · 2 years

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okay this scene is making me emotional in multiple different ways right now

in a sweet way because the knowledge that he used to use his magic to keep her warm when she was little, and did it enough for it to become her nickname, is absolutely ADORABLE

but also in a sad way because like. okay, in my experience, when you're a little kid:

when your parent who is pretty much always cold to you does something to hurt you, of course that sucks. but you're like "yeah, of course that happened, they're just mean like that."

but when your parent who is sweet to you sometimes, who has proven themself *capable* of warmth, does something to hurt you, it feels 3x worse. it feels like a betrayal. sometimes you might even wonder it it was because of you

so here we have alador, who kept her warm, who she looked up to. but who neglected her and helped his wife abuse her.

and i doubt it was a flipped switch that happened one day to change him from "good dad" to "bad dad". i even doubt that it was a linear development from good to bad.

i doubt that memory in understanding willow was an isolated incident. he'd probably hurt his childrens' feelings multiple times long before he was forced to really withdraw from them. and in between those incidents, he was probably pretty sweet and kind to them.

and when you're so young, you have no choice but to accept that kindness. you're evolutionarily hardwired to seek out the care of a parental figure. so you run back into their arms even though you're scared they're gonna betray you again.

and amity STILL seemed to care about him, at the older age of 14 when you don't have such an instinctive pull to seek the care of an adult, after all that he'd done and after barely seeing him anymore. her whole goal of joining the tournament in reaching out was to feel close to him, even though he hadn't started to redeem himself and she didn't trust him enough to accept a hug from him.

so she'd probably been really hurt every time he sided with her mother. and him pulling away was probably really painful. and she's probably dealing with so many complicated emotions as she starts to trust him again, even with the proof that he's actually improved and won't hurt her again

ouch

#eliot posts #toh #toh spoilers #the owl house #toh meta #amity blight #alador blight #abuse tw #i got a little spoiled on stuff before i started watching the show back in s1 #i started watching around grom when my whole dash was flooded with posts about the show #and i was like okay lemme go see what all the fuss is about. i'm in the market for a new show anyway.#so i saw understanding willow spoilers #and so i have been invested in blight family angst from the very start and watched all amity episodes w it in mind #*slaps roof of amity* this bad boy can fit so many of my familial issues in it #before the more recent reveals it was just the hatred i feel for them now #but now? it is the Complicated feelings i had about my own dad when i was real young and couldn't hate him yet #(stuff w my own father was Worse tho bc he was shitty on his own volition. and was just always unstable and immature)#(and was outright violent at times)#i don't forgive my own father. idk if i ever will but even if i do i will never trust him or want him in my life ever again #but i am crossing my fingers for my fictional girl to get a happy family bc i want good things for her #...and bc she's too young to be able to outright cut them all off

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hephaestuscrew · 11 months

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Assorted Thoughts about the Greater Boston Season 4 finale

I'd assumed that Leon would 'move on' at the end of Season 5, the end of the podcast as a whole. But now we're going to have a whole season of the podcast without him. It's strange to imagine. There's never been a Greater Boston podcast without Leon Stamatis. There's never been a city of Red Line without Leon Stamatis. We began Season 1 confronting the gap that Leon left behind. We learned that he wasn't quite as gone as we might have thought, but there was still the loss, the grief, the consequences of his death. In an interesting narrative symmetry, at the beginning of Season 5 we'll have to confront him being more fully, completely gone. But I think we'll continue to see the ways in which his life and afterlife have rippled outwards.

Immediately after Nica said Leon had brought people together "like a family", Louisa exclaimed that she needed to call Michael. I can't help wondering if it was Nica's comment that triggered that thought for Louisa. I'm emotional about Michael being family for Leon, Michael being family for Louisa, Michael being someone who was brought into Louisa's life by Leon…

There were two moments of Nica and Dimitri sitting with Gemma in the middle of them holding the crystal ball. First, in the back of Lucia's car, when Nica reached out to touch the ball and Dimitri took her hand instead. Second, on the Ferris wheel as they prepared to say goodbye to Leon. Leon was in the middle between his two siblings - he is what divides them and he is what unites them. They held hands over him, finding awkward togetherness in the presence of their loss, stopping each from succumbing to that loss. Leon was in the middle between his two siblings, but he also wasn't; it was Gemma occupying that space for him.

On a related note, I can't help but wonder whether the Stamatis siblings had habitual positions when they'd sit in the back of a car together as children. I think that's a fairly common sibling thing, and it seems likely that it would appeal to the order-loving Leon. I can't decide if it makes me more emotional to imagine that they usually sat with Leon in the middle like that, or to imagine how they sat on that ferris wheel wasn't their typical childhood order.

The lack of narration and the high number of monologues from a range of characters this episode meant that sometimes I wasn't initially sure whether a scene was an interview snippet from a real person or a monologue from a character. I think there's something significant in that blurring of reality and fiction, in real stories of loss mixed with the fictional. Those interviewees are a part of this story, or this story is a part of our world too.

I loved Michael's mantra being spoken by the group, with each person taking one word. For Michael, that sequence of numbers was a way of asserting his own agency in spite of circumstances and his ideas about his nature. It was a way of saying 'my choices matter, even if I can't change the outcome'. And this moment showed how that idea can be upheld within through community and togetherness.

Michael spoke the word "Eight". And perhaps he wanted other people to take over, trusting that the people around him would complete his mantra, believing that they'd understand what he needed in that moment. Or perhaps he was intending to speak the mantra by himself until Louisa interrupted to support him. Either way there's a uniquely powerful kind of choice made against an indifferent world - the choice for people to stand against that world together. It's a contrast with Michael's often self-isolating tendencies for that mantra to become a shared thing.

#Greater Boston #Greater Boston podcast #I was going to make these into separate posts but I don't want to flood the tag or people's dashes #And I'll probably have more thoughts about this later #I listened to the last half hour of this episode on my way to work today #because I have not learned my lesson about being emotionally devastated by GB right before I need to do work #But anyway I mistimed it slightly so I had to take a bit of an extra walk around the block to experience the ending #Btw I thought about the Stamatis siblings maybe having habitual seats in the back of a car #because me and my brother have always sat on the same sides when we're in the back of a car together #For us it's the ghost of a sticker I had on the window of our family car when we were kids #That car is long gone but I still sit on the right in the back of a car #I imagine Leon might have been in the middle because Dimitri and Nica would want to look out of the window and would be more restless #And Leon was a generous big brother #Urgh the idea that he's properly past tense now 😭#greater boston spoilers #Greater Boston podcast spoilers #the empty man posteth

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