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! )

You know what’s marvellous about this episode from a meta point-of-view? The mirrors finally [begin to] become clearly defined, and I can write a post with lots of subheadings and different topics, rather than something that’s a big tangled ball with no beginning or end.

Please no spoilers beyond this episode (and the trailer)!!!
( These spoilers are adorable and quietly heartbreaking )

This week’s Doctor Who is without a doubt one of my favourite things ever. It was beautiful and heartbreaking and hit one of my major, major kinks and it also - miracles of miracles - treated religion with intelligence, rather than just steal some imagery and then sneer. Basically it was [metaphorically, and literally] 1 Corinthians 13, 11-12 in Doctor Who form (and yes, that is a spoiler-y, so don’t look it up if you don’t want to know). :)

Oh and please no spoilers beyond this episode. Thank you.

( Read more... )

It turns out that I had A LOT of thoughts....
( Spoilers )

ETA: In a fairytale nutshell: Amy is the questing knight, Rory is the princess, the Doctor is the wizard and River is, uh, everything.

ETA2: Make sure to read this thread, because it is brilliance.

The short version: EVERYTHING IS A MIRROR FOR EVERYTHING ELSE!

I'm... not sure there'll be a long version. For now, I'm working on fic. (Angsty crack!fic. It'll make sense when you see it. ETA: NOTHING to do with this ep btw.) Don't get me wrong, I loved it all to pieces. But there's too much there there.

OK, I’m about to embark on something very, very foolish. I’m going to attempt to talk about the Ponds... and gender. Specifically how this works in relation to Amy and Rory’s story this season. So - a warning, or disclaimer: I will make a lot of generalisations. Anyone who thinks that speaking about men and women as men and women is sexist in and of itself should probably not read any further. Of course there are always exceptions, because no one is a stereotype, but Moffat is (as always?) writing about families, and is using a specific family with a specific story to talk about families in general. And that's what I'm going to explore here. (Subject line is a quote from the Buffy episode 'Restless', which is one long dream metaphor. It... seemed appropriate.)

Spoilers up to and including Night Terrors.

( The Ponds: This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning... )

( Spoilers for LKH )

(Now as for Night Terrors then I was looking forward to a nice, uncomplicated Monster of the Week kind of episode, where I could just sit back and enjoy and let the meta rest for a week. Ha! It was ALL metaphor. ALL OF IT. Which was lovely, but I’ll need a little while to sort through my thoughts. I mean - it was also DELIGHTFUL and FULL OF ELEVENTY and I very much enjoyed that too. But it’s the meta which is eating my head... Plus, I'm horribly behind on so much!)

Outside the cut, two things:

Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip...

Because it is internet history, everyone should read it, and I'll bet anything that the Moff knows it. Plus it's hilarious!

And also, from Forest of the Dead, because I’ve lost count of the number of people who I've seen mis-remembering this:

RIVER: Difficult? It'll kill you stone dead!
DOCTOR: Yeah, it's easy to criticise.
RIVER: It'll burn out both your hearts and don't think you'll regenerate!

ETA: Almost forgot! I overheard Impish Girl (age 10) talking to my father-in-law when he said he'd tried to watch LKH and not been able to get into it (he also has a tendency to fall asleep when watching anything that isn't rugby...): "Of course you can't understand it grandad! You don't even know who River Song is!" (I have rarely heard anything so patronising. So don't believe anyone who says the show is too complicated for kids!)

( This episode was bigger on the inside. And I try my best to address *everything*... )

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

( Spoilers for AGMGTW )

Spoilers for The Almost People, but no further. Might do a post about the trailer/prequel for episode 7, so please keep all speculation out of this post. Thank you.

( Doctor, Doctor... )