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Written for the fic commentary meme. Would you like to help me procrastinate request a commentary? You may do so right here
lostmoon71 wanted a commentary for Anthropomorphic, so here goes.
I was surprised (and pleased) at the amount of positive feedback that I got for this. It's my first time writing anything series 5-related. I saw the prompt and thought I'd give it a go because it seemed to suit several notions I already had percolating, which I'll get in to as they arise here.
There are ghosts on the TARDIS. Rory knows there are.
Ah, the ole one-line-paragraph opening.
Amy tells him he's being stupid. She's never seen one, and she's spent so much of her life being disbelieved by others that the only way she can even the score is to not believe anyone else.
Here we have Amy's only appearance. By the end of series 5, I'd grown very fond of Eleven, was utterly smitten with Rory, but was still pretty ambivalent about Amy. I don't feel like I was ever able to get a real handle on her, and I just can't write fic about characters that I don't feel I know.
"There's no such thing as ghosts," the Doctor says. But Rory has seen vampires who aren't vampires, and humans who are really monsters, and lived a whole life that never existed. He has a feeling that the Doctor is getting off on a technicality with this statement.
Besides, the TARDIS is just creepy, all around. He hears things: the chiming of far-off church-bells, or the trickle of running water, or someone singing under their breath, just behind him, just over his shoulder, until he turns to look and there's nothing.
So, one big reason I took this prompt is because I'm always looking for excuses to portray the TARDIS as creepy and possibly haunted. I mean, on any other show, a portal to another dimension which is sentient, psychic, may or may not be infinite in size and does not obey the laws of physics or Euclidean geometry would generally be considered a bad thing. I usually approach writing this as a very Whovian corner-of-your-eye type of phenomenon.
Except sometimes there's not nothing.
It's not nothing, but it's not really something, either. Rory is left with an impression of a shape that has been seen, in the past, in a memory. A human shape, that flickers and shifts and then evaporates. He does not see it in the present, but the memory is with him nonetheless. He thinks this place may be driving him mad.
As mad as the Doctor.
This is not a consolation.
I do love Rory for how steadfastly sober he is, even in the face of total lunacy.
The corridors never take him to the same location twice. He's sent for biscuits, but where the kitchen was, there is now a large room containing what appears to be a 1/10 scale model of Hogwarts Castle, built out of cotton swabs.
Good old JK. I did have a bit of a think about what ludicrous thing he might find while looking for the kitchen.
He knows he will get laughed at if he does not return with the requested packets of Jammy Dodgers (the Doctor) and Jaffa Cakes (Amy). Poor Rory, can't even find his way to the kitchen without help. Dear sweet Rory, not quite so cut out for this sort of life, bless.
The spoiler warning states this is taking place prior to The Hungry Earth. I think there's some canon wiggle-room in there for off-screen adventures, but I must confess, I didn't check. Anyway, the timeframe means that Rory is still the third wheel, still mistrustful of the Doctor, and hasn't yet found his footing as a companion. I like the idea of this incident giving him some insight into who the Doctor is, since he will fairly soon sacrifice his life for him.
He realises he is clenching his teeth and tries to relax. He will simply exit this very-much-not-the-kitchen, and try again. Maybe there's a trick to making rooms appear. Maybe you have to really want it... or perhaps you have to pretend you don't. He backs out into the corridor again, and that is when he sees her.
A girl. Well, a woman. An ordinary human woman, by the looks (except for the otherworldly golden glow about her, and how is it that Rory has learnt so quickly to expand his definition of 'ordinary' to include this?). She's young, and blonde, and when she turns to walk back down the corridor and around a corner, he sees that the back of her pink jacket says "Punky Fish."
Punky Fish?
This is, of course, Rose's outfit from Parting of the Ways. I have mixed feelings about putting Rose in clothes the real Rose wouldn't wear for Bad Wolfy scenes such as this. On the one hand: Bilie Piper pretty. On the other: I kind of love Rose for her down-to-Earth fashion sense. And I doubly-triply loved that the universe was saved by a girl wearing a jacket that said "Punky Fish" (which is a brand name, for those keeping score at home-yes, I googled it).
He follows her. He might as well: maybe she knows the way to the kitchen. He supposes he could ask her. He's seen this sort of thing on Star Trek, and maybe she's a hologram, dispatched to show new residents around. The Doctor would say, "There is no such thing as ghosts," but fail to follow that up with, "but there is a very helpful hologram who will take you to biscuits." Too right, he would, and probably on purpose.
"Excuse me," he says, trotting a bit to catch up to her. "Um, hi? Hello?"
She ignores him, or doesn't hear. Is there a special phrase or code word?
"It's just that I can't seem to find my way to the kitchen." He laughs it off a little. Self-deprecating in front of a hologram-a new low.
Even though I made this line my cut-text, I'm actually a bit iffy on it. I'm not sure what to make of Rory's self-esteem situation, because despite being sort of the whipping boy, he isn't a doormat in the usual sense of the word. His initial scene on board the TARDIS is case in point. So, would he really be thinking in terms of "a new low" here? I'm not actually so sure about that.
The woman stops, turns, and scares the life out of him. Her images flickers, like a television with bad reception, and just for a split second she is replaced by a beast. A wolf. Rather, a wolf from a fairy-story, so not really a wolf but more like a monster in wolf's clothing. Anthropomorphic is the word his brain is searching for, as if naming it will make the fact that he's just seen a monster be okay.
But then the young woman is back, in her totally normal contemporary dress and totally abnormal glow about the edges. She opens her mouth, and is clearly speaking, but no sound comes out. The look in her glowing eyes is of great concern, sadness, and fierce determination. Rory reconsiders who it is here that requires help.
"I... I'm sorry, I can't hear you," he says, slowly approaching, like he would an injured animal.
She is still speaking, and there are still no words to be heard. Perhaps if he touches her, maybe that's what she wants. A tiny voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he doesn't know if this woman is friend or foe, and doing what she wants may not be wise.
But he never could resist a cry for help. This is why I love Rory. I felt that what series 5 was missing when he wasn't around was someone who really noticed when someone was in need. It's a quality that Rose, Martha and Donna all had in spades, but I felt was sort of absent in Amy (not consistently, but enough that it bothered me).
She is, as he suspected, not a solid thing. When he gets up close, he can see right through her, to the silvery walls of the corridor behind. His hand shakes slightly as he reaches out, like it did the first time he punctured skin with a needle, or the first time he was permitted to touch the smooth, pink cheek of Amy Pond.I like the imagery here, but I'm not sure about my phrasing. I do try to keep an eye on rhythm when I write, but that sort of broke down here. I'm sure the solution is better punctuation. Somehow.
"Has he been kept safe, my Doctor? Protected from the False God?" Rory hears these words in his head, this woman's voice, breaking with emotion, crying out for confirmation. She repeats them again, and once more, and Rory pulls his hand back from her, returning to the silence.
Has the Doctor been kept safe? What sort of question is that? That man is never safe, but he himself the menace, not the other way around. He is the false god that needs protecting from, if anything.Okay, I'm quite fond of how this turns around. Rose always saw the Doctor as someone who needed her, which I think was quite the case, but that's just me. And indeed the moral of the story of the Ninth and Tenth Doctor eras is that the Doctor does need his companions, that they do keep him safe and protect him (from himself most of all). Eleven's story is different (and, to be honest, that's one angle that I find less compelling than previous) and Rory has quite a different perspective. I think any of Ten's companions would know exactly what BadWolf!Rose here is talking about, but Eleven's companions I think would both be confused at the entire concept of the Doctor needing to be protected and kept safe by his human friends.
Still, right now everyone seems to be safe, regardless. There's tea, and would be biscuits if Rory could stop being such a knob and just find some. He nods a little. "Yeah, I guess. We're all safe here, I suppose."
The woman tilts her head, considering him. She's the transparent one but he feels as if he is being looked through. She reaches a shimmering hand out, places it on his chest, over his heart.
"I look and I look, but he doesn't come to me any more. Why does he hide?"
He can see the tracks of tears running down her cheeks. The way she speaks of him, Rory can't imagine anyone ever talking to the Doctor like this. It's raw. Intimate. Who is she? I tried to capture the essence of what I find most affecting about the Bad Wolf scene in Parting of the Ways. I just rewatched it recently (after I wrote this fic) and it still makes me burst into big fat blubbery tears. I've tried to kind of quantify why that is and insert those things into this fic. Becaue I like to shamelessly pander to emotions like that. I think the thing that struck me, even from the first time I watched that scene, is that Rose is crying. I don't know why I find that so perfect, but I guess it's that it's counter-intuitive and subverts expectations. The whole scene does, as you're expecting a bit sci fi laser shooty explodey thing and instead you get one human woman, crying, wanting her loved ones to be safe, and doing the impossible in order to ensure that. Yeah, I have a lot of ~feelings~ about this.
"He's in the, you know... that main room, out there. If you want to find him." Point of fic-to-canon equivalence: do we ever hear anyone on the show refer to the console room as "the console room?"
"He hides," she repeats.
"I'm here." Footsteps, and the Doctor's voice. And he's not telling this vision to shut up or go away or anything of the sort. In fact, his tone is tender and indulgent. Rory is dumbstruck.Something that bugs me about Eleven is how often he tells people to shut up. I get that it's a point of characterisation, but it's just a pet peeve of mine, in real life as well. I hate being shushed. Especially in the first half of the series, Eleven was really quick with the shushing, and I thought Rory would be surprised if the Doctor was actually kind of nice and sweet and soft-spoken.
The woman speaks without sound again but Rory can see her mouth the words, "My Doctor."
"I'm safe," he says, and reaches out to run a single finger along the curve of her arm. "But you mustn't do this. There will be a time, but not now." He takes her hand, though it's just air. "Sleep. Dream."So here is the part where I talk about Doctor/Rose and what I'm actually attempting to say about the ship here. Because the thing is that I don't ship Eleven/Rose. I've never been the "Rose is the Doctor's only one true love forever" sort of shipper. He's just too old for me to buy that. I've loved more than one person-truly, deeply loved-in just my short life. But I totally buy that he will for a long time feel regretful over everything that happened, and will remember her very fondly and tenderly.
She fades, dissolves, like fog.
And then they are alone. So very, very awkwardly alone. Rory feels like he just saw the Doctor naked. The Doctor rubs his hands together as if they've just finished a building project together and it's time for a pint. I'm happy with this image because I can sort of see Eleven trying to just brush this whole thing off and Rory feel realllllly awkward about it.
"Now! About those biscuits, Rory."
Rory doesn't move an inch. "Who... what...?"
"Kitchen's this way, but it does like to move around a lot this time around, I'll grant you." He strides down the corridor a few paces, but turns when he doesn't hear Rory follow. "Come along," he says.
"But Doctor, what was that? She said... she said she wanted you safe, and that you hid from her."
"It's nothing." The Doctor reconsiders for a moment. "No, not nothing. Definitely something. Something from a whole lifetime ago. An echo, I guess you could say. My ship saves more than just hard data, it saves Time. She invited the TARDIS in, and it took something back." My focus here wasn't really on the who/what/why of the "data ghost" situation. I'm wondering if this bit of technobabble feels sort of out-of-place in this scene and breaks up the flow.
"She was real? I mean, once, on this ship, you knew her, and it saved her."
"I've known a lot of people." The Doctor turns from Rory once again, but does not start walking away. Not before he heaves a heavy sigh (almost human, that sound of regret). "And I knew her." Pleeze Mr. Steven Moffat can the Doctor angst a little next year pleeze? Thank you. All joking aside, this fic, aside from being shippy, also is working to satisfy my urge to see Eleven show an emotion beyond alarm and/or shock. Is this a case of still waters (er, flaily waters?) running deep?
And he walks off into the darkness, the sound of his boots on the polished floor fading. Rory doesn't care about the biscuits any more. He has a new version of the Doctor to wrestle with. Raggedy doll, invisible friend, absent rival, dangerous alien... tragic lover? That just doesn't seem right. Imagining this mad, infuriating man as someone capable of that sort of folly (Rory knows better than anyone, love is always folly-the best kind of folly) is cognitive dissonance of the highest degree.
That's why the Doctor appears so invested in a happy outcome to the story of Rory Williams and Amy Pond, the girl who waited. Maybe. It's not a mystery solved-not quite yet. But Rory never could resist a cry for help, no matter who was making it. I hate this last paragraph. I fiddled and poked and even edited it again after I posted it. It seems clunky and overly telly-not-showy and maybe I should have just trusted my readers to make the connections without me pointing them out.
Next commentary on the docket: Swallowing the Storm for juliet316
lostmoon71 wanted a commentary for Anthropomorphic, so here goes.
I was surprised (and pleased) at the amount of positive feedback that I got for this. It's my first time writing anything series 5-related. I saw the prompt and thought I'd give it a go because it seemed to suit several notions I already had percolating, which I'll get in to as they arise here.
There are ghosts on the TARDIS. Rory knows there are.
Ah, the ole one-line-paragraph opening.
Amy tells him he's being stupid. She's never seen one, and she's spent so much of her life being disbelieved by others that the only way she can even the score is to not believe anyone else.
Here we have Amy's only appearance. By the end of series 5, I'd grown very fond of Eleven, was utterly smitten with Rory, but was still pretty ambivalent about Amy. I don't feel like I was ever able to get a real handle on her, and I just can't write fic about characters that I don't feel I know.
"There's no such thing as ghosts," the Doctor says. But Rory has seen vampires who aren't vampires, and humans who are really monsters, and lived a whole life that never existed. He has a feeling that the Doctor is getting off on a technicality with this statement.
Besides, the TARDIS is just creepy, all around. He hears things: the chiming of far-off church-bells, or the trickle of running water, or someone singing under their breath, just behind him, just over his shoulder, until he turns to look and there's nothing.
So, one big reason I took this prompt is because I'm always looking for excuses to portray the TARDIS as creepy and possibly haunted. I mean, on any other show, a portal to another dimension which is sentient, psychic, may or may not be infinite in size and does not obey the laws of physics or Euclidean geometry would generally be considered a bad thing. I usually approach writing this as a very Whovian corner-of-your-eye type of phenomenon.
Except sometimes there's not nothing.
It's not nothing, but it's not really something, either. Rory is left with an impression of a shape that has been seen, in the past, in a memory. A human shape, that flickers and shifts and then evaporates. He does not see it in the present, but the memory is with him nonetheless. He thinks this place may be driving him mad.
As mad as the Doctor.
This is not a consolation.
I do love Rory for how steadfastly sober he is, even in the face of total lunacy.
The corridors never take him to the same location twice. He's sent for biscuits, but where the kitchen was, there is now a large room containing what appears to be a 1/10 scale model of Hogwarts Castle, built out of cotton swabs.
Good old JK. I did have a bit of a think about what ludicrous thing he might find while looking for the kitchen.
He knows he will get laughed at if he does not return with the requested packets of Jammy Dodgers (the Doctor) and Jaffa Cakes (Amy). Poor Rory, can't even find his way to the kitchen without help. Dear sweet Rory, not quite so cut out for this sort of life, bless.
The spoiler warning states this is taking place prior to The Hungry Earth. I think there's some canon wiggle-room in there for off-screen adventures, but I must confess, I didn't check. Anyway, the timeframe means that Rory is still the third wheel, still mistrustful of the Doctor, and hasn't yet found his footing as a companion. I like the idea of this incident giving him some insight into who the Doctor is, since he will fairly soon sacrifice his life for him.
He realises he is clenching his teeth and tries to relax. He will simply exit this very-much-not-the-kitchen, and try again. Maybe there's a trick to making rooms appear. Maybe you have to really want it... or perhaps you have to pretend you don't. He backs out into the corridor again, and that is when he sees her.
A girl. Well, a woman. An ordinary human woman, by the looks (except for the otherworldly golden glow about her, and how is it that Rory has learnt so quickly to expand his definition of 'ordinary' to include this?). She's young, and blonde, and when she turns to walk back down the corridor and around a corner, he sees that the back of her pink jacket says "Punky Fish."
Punky Fish?
This is, of course, Rose's outfit from Parting of the Ways. I have mixed feelings about putting Rose in clothes the real Rose wouldn't wear for Bad Wolfy scenes such as this. On the one hand: Bilie Piper pretty. On the other: I kind of love Rose for her down-to-Earth fashion sense. And I doubly-triply loved that the universe was saved by a girl wearing a jacket that said "Punky Fish" (which is a brand name, for those keeping score at home-yes, I googled it).
He follows her. He might as well: maybe she knows the way to the kitchen. He supposes he could ask her. He's seen this sort of thing on Star Trek, and maybe she's a hologram, dispatched to show new residents around. The Doctor would say, "There is no such thing as ghosts," but fail to follow that up with, "but there is a very helpful hologram who will take you to biscuits." Too right, he would, and probably on purpose.
"Excuse me," he says, trotting a bit to catch up to her. "Um, hi? Hello?"
She ignores him, or doesn't hear. Is there a special phrase or code word?
"It's just that I can't seem to find my way to the kitchen." He laughs it off a little. Self-deprecating in front of a hologram-a new low.
Even though I made this line my cut-text, I'm actually a bit iffy on it. I'm not sure what to make of Rory's self-esteem situation, because despite being sort of the whipping boy, he isn't a doormat in the usual sense of the word. His initial scene on board the TARDIS is case in point. So, would he really be thinking in terms of "a new low" here? I'm not actually so sure about that.
The woman stops, turns, and scares the life out of him. Her images flickers, like a television with bad reception, and just for a split second she is replaced by a beast. A wolf. Rather, a wolf from a fairy-story, so not really a wolf but more like a monster in wolf's clothing. Anthropomorphic is the word his brain is searching for, as if naming it will make the fact that he's just seen a monster be okay.
But then the young woman is back, in her totally normal contemporary dress and totally abnormal glow about the edges. She opens her mouth, and is clearly speaking, but no sound comes out. The look in her glowing eyes is of great concern, sadness, and fierce determination. Rory reconsiders who it is here that requires help.
"I... I'm sorry, I can't hear you," he says, slowly approaching, like he would an injured animal.
She is still speaking, and there are still no words to be heard. Perhaps if he touches her, maybe that's what she wants. A tiny voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he doesn't know if this woman is friend or foe, and doing what she wants may not be wise.
But he never could resist a cry for help. This is why I love Rory. I felt that what series 5 was missing when he wasn't around was someone who really noticed when someone was in need. It's a quality that Rose, Martha and Donna all had in spades, but I felt was sort of absent in Amy (not consistently, but enough that it bothered me).
She is, as he suspected, not a solid thing. When he gets up close, he can see right through her, to the silvery walls of the corridor behind. His hand shakes slightly as he reaches out, like it did the first time he punctured skin with a needle, or the first time he was permitted to touch the smooth, pink cheek of Amy Pond.I like the imagery here, but I'm not sure about my phrasing. I do try to keep an eye on rhythm when I write, but that sort of broke down here. I'm sure the solution is better punctuation. Somehow.
"Has he been kept safe, my Doctor? Protected from the False God?" Rory hears these words in his head, this woman's voice, breaking with emotion, crying out for confirmation. She repeats them again, and once more, and Rory pulls his hand back from her, returning to the silence.
Has the Doctor been kept safe? What sort of question is that? That man is never safe, but he himself the menace, not the other way around. He is the false god that needs protecting from, if anything.Okay, I'm quite fond of how this turns around. Rose always saw the Doctor as someone who needed her, which I think was quite the case, but that's just me. And indeed the moral of the story of the Ninth and Tenth Doctor eras is that the Doctor does need his companions, that they do keep him safe and protect him (from himself most of all). Eleven's story is different (and, to be honest, that's one angle that I find less compelling than previous) and Rory has quite a different perspective. I think any of Ten's companions would know exactly what BadWolf!Rose here is talking about, but Eleven's companions I think would both be confused at the entire concept of the Doctor needing to be protected and kept safe by his human friends.
Still, right now everyone seems to be safe, regardless. There's tea, and would be biscuits if Rory could stop being such a knob and just find some. He nods a little. "Yeah, I guess. We're all safe here, I suppose."
The woman tilts her head, considering him. She's the transparent one but he feels as if he is being looked through. She reaches a shimmering hand out, places it on his chest, over his heart.
"I look and I look, but he doesn't come to me any more. Why does he hide?"
He can see the tracks of tears running down her cheeks. The way she speaks of him, Rory can't imagine anyone ever talking to the Doctor like this. It's raw. Intimate. Who is she? I tried to capture the essence of what I find most affecting about the Bad Wolf scene in Parting of the Ways. I just rewatched it recently (after I wrote this fic) and it still makes me burst into big fat blubbery tears. I've tried to kind of quantify why that is and insert those things into this fic. Becaue I like to shamelessly pander to emotions like that. I think the thing that struck me, even from the first time I watched that scene, is that Rose is crying. I don't know why I find that so perfect, but I guess it's that it's counter-intuitive and subverts expectations. The whole scene does, as you're expecting a bit sci fi laser shooty explodey thing and instead you get one human woman, crying, wanting her loved ones to be safe, and doing the impossible in order to ensure that. Yeah, I have a lot of ~feelings~ about this.
"He's in the, you know... that main room, out there. If you want to find him." Point of fic-to-canon equivalence: do we ever hear anyone on the show refer to the console room as "the console room?"
"He hides," she repeats.
"I'm here." Footsteps, and the Doctor's voice. And he's not telling this vision to shut up or go away or anything of the sort. In fact, his tone is tender and indulgent. Rory is dumbstruck.Something that bugs me about Eleven is how often he tells people to shut up. I get that it's a point of characterisation, but it's just a pet peeve of mine, in real life as well. I hate being shushed. Especially in the first half of the series, Eleven was really quick with the shushing, and I thought Rory would be surprised if the Doctor was actually kind of nice and sweet and soft-spoken.
The woman speaks without sound again but Rory can see her mouth the words, "My Doctor."
"I'm safe," he says, and reaches out to run a single finger along the curve of her arm. "But you mustn't do this. There will be a time, but not now." He takes her hand, though it's just air. "Sleep. Dream."So here is the part where I talk about Doctor/Rose and what I'm actually attempting to say about the ship here. Because the thing is that I don't ship Eleven/Rose. I've never been the "Rose is the Doctor's only one true love forever" sort of shipper. He's just too old for me to buy that. I've loved more than one person-truly, deeply loved-in just my short life. But I totally buy that he will for a long time feel regretful over everything that happened, and will remember her very fondly and tenderly.
She fades, dissolves, like fog.
And then they are alone. So very, very awkwardly alone. Rory feels like he just saw the Doctor naked. The Doctor rubs his hands together as if they've just finished a building project together and it's time for a pint. I'm happy with this image because I can sort of see Eleven trying to just brush this whole thing off and Rory feel realllllly awkward about it.
"Now! About those biscuits, Rory."
Rory doesn't move an inch. "Who... what...?"
"Kitchen's this way, but it does like to move around a lot this time around, I'll grant you." He strides down the corridor a few paces, but turns when he doesn't hear Rory follow. "Come along," he says.
"But Doctor, what was that? She said... she said she wanted you safe, and that you hid from her."
"It's nothing." The Doctor reconsiders for a moment. "No, not nothing. Definitely something. Something from a whole lifetime ago. An echo, I guess you could say. My ship saves more than just hard data, it saves Time. She invited the TARDIS in, and it took something back." My focus here wasn't really on the who/what/why of the "data ghost" situation. I'm wondering if this bit of technobabble feels sort of out-of-place in this scene and breaks up the flow.
"She was real? I mean, once, on this ship, you knew her, and it saved her."
"I've known a lot of people." The Doctor turns from Rory once again, but does not start walking away. Not before he heaves a heavy sigh (almost human, that sound of regret). "And I knew her." Pleeze Mr. Steven Moffat can the Doctor angst a little next year pleeze? Thank you. All joking aside, this fic, aside from being shippy, also is working to satisfy my urge to see Eleven show an emotion beyond alarm and/or shock. Is this a case of still waters (er, flaily waters?) running deep?
And he walks off into the darkness, the sound of his boots on the polished floor fading. Rory doesn't care about the biscuits any more. He has a new version of the Doctor to wrestle with. Raggedy doll, invisible friend, absent rival, dangerous alien... tragic lover? That just doesn't seem right. Imagining this mad, infuriating man as someone capable of that sort of folly (Rory knows better than anyone, love is always folly-the best kind of folly) is cognitive dissonance of the highest degree.
That's why the Doctor appears so invested in a happy outcome to the story of Rory Williams and Amy Pond, the girl who waited. Maybe. It's not a mystery solved-not quite yet. But Rory never could resist a cry for help, no matter who was making it. I hate this last paragraph. I fiddled and poked and even edited it again after I posted it. It seems clunky and overly telly-not-showy and maybe I should have just trusted my readers to make the connections without me pointing them out.
Next commentary on the docket: Swallowing the Storm for juliet316