Happy Bi Week! Captain Jack Harkness was requested on Discord some time ago and I’ve finally drawn him! Bonus Omni and Pan flags for him too because *of course* 💖💜💙

He's always been a queer bi trans demi ace pan genderfluid nonbinary being 🏳️‍🌈 (tenth doctor edition) [og post]

The Susan twist isn't over!!

She's the Doctor's child. Dad a postman? Mom a dinner lady? That's TenRose coding 👀

She's the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler's kid crossing dimensions and scattering herself in time and space.

Just like her mother.

OMGG my anon (of many names lol)! OK first off, I drafted some of this way back but forgot to add on and post, so in the words of our beloved Doctor,

🌹 But onto the DW comics and Meta-Crisis/Rose!!

I only recently started reading the comics, starting with the ones about Gabby Gonzalez by Nick Abadzis, and I have to admit:

They make me yearn pretty fucking hard to run away and travel with the Doctor. There's some killer art by Elena Casagrande that feels so much like the Doctor we know and love (that kindness, that earnest love.... god!! my heart and soul!!).

But I warn ye (any readers of this post), DO NOT TOUCH Volume 2 by Robbie Morrison. He takes Ten blatantly out of character, making him out to be an arrogant bastard who belittles his companion and is flippant in the face of suffering. (Morrison watched too much Eleven, methinks 🙈)

I haven't read the Rose/Meta-Crisis comic yet (part of the Empire of the Wolf series), but I did see the important panel from that series, showing Rose's daughter Mia:

I think the Meta-Crisis settling down to have a family with Rose is pretty in-character and very much what the Tenth Doctor would have wanted, as much as it hurt him.

Because Ten fundamentally felt unworthy of Rose.

💔 The Doctor's Trauma

Rose was strong and compassionate and amazing, and Ten had done so much, seen so much, experienced so much tragedy and guilt. He's a man wrecked by PTSD, depression, shame, and self-blame. He felt like it wasn't fair to her that she'd sacrifice her life to someone who would go on living and changing and becoming a different person, while she grew old and died in a world without a home and away from everyone she knew.

He didn't want her to become like him, homeless and without the love of friends and family, because to be him is to be alone. And he didn't want that for her. Because he wanted her to be happy, not just momentarily, but for the rest of her life.

Ten is a man who loathes taking life, and it weighs on him every time someone sacrifices who they are because they love him.

It's no surprise Ten's entire decision about the Meta-Crisis took place after Davros massively guilt-tripped him into thinking it was his fault that all those people died. (It wasn't.) But Davros played on Ten's depression and trauma, manipulating Ten into thinking he had done unforgivable things to the people he loved. (when in fact those people died because they were inspired to be selfless like him, or were killed someplace beyond the Doctor's reach)

I've actually been doing a lot of research on Ten's trauma (including invaluable insight from Judith Lewis Herman's famous book Trauma and Recovery). This journal article about Major Depressive Disorder speaks so deeply to Ten's character, especially post-Time War and post-Davros:

This explains so much about Ten's choice to sacrifice his own happiness and ask Rose to take his Meta-Crisis as her life partner. He's pushing her away, isolating himself. He's rejecting the people he loves the most because he's in a very, very dark place.

🖤🤍💜 An Asexual (Meta) Reading

There's so many reasons that Ten felt he couldn't give Rose the life she wanted (his trauma, his values). There's one angle I've been sifting around in my head in the past couple years, and it's more of a headcanon than anything: For me, because of the way the Doctor's character has been established since 1963, the Doctor's own asexuality is an almost meta-conceptual reason why the Doctor in general can't have a "normative," family life.

He couldn't say "I love you"—not because he didn't love her. (He loved her more than he ever loved himself.) But also because he knew what saying those words would mean: the expectations, the responsibility, the behaviors he felt she deserved to have from him because those words carry so much weight in human culture. All those things he could not give her.

But the Meta-Crisis could. I personally headcanon that the Meta-Crisis is not asexual like the Doctor. (Just like John Smith may not have been asexual either.) The point of both John Smith and the Meta-Crisis is showing how much they differ from the Doctor—and I think sexuality is one of those differences. It's why it was so easy for John Smith to imagine a traditional life, why it was so easy for the Meta-Crisis to promise his entire world and his entire self to Rose on that beach.

🌹 The Meta-Crisis and Rose Tyler

Which brings me back to the Tentoo himself. He was born in battle and he can die, but what does that exactly mean for his life with Rose? It's fascinating because to imagine the Doctor feeling mortality and knowing he cannot cheat death anymore—that's a horrific, terrifying thing.

There are actually two Big Finish Audios that explore this traumatic realization for the Doctor, and what that does to him. (They're both one-shots from Jackie's POV and narration, and you can listen to them here: Part 1, Part 2).

It makes Tentoo lean into his Ninth-era darkness, a ruthlessness to villains driven by the fear that he cannot protect Rose because he is not indestructible. But luckily for him, there are people he loves around him (Jackie and Rose) who keep him from that darkness.

Additionally, the Big Finish stories lean into the fact that Tentoo and Rose aren't sitting idly by. Both of them work for Torchwood and are growing their own TARDIS to continue to defend the Earth.

They don't settle down into a domestic life, at least not right away, and I think that suits them both. We know how much Rose didn't want the life of eating chips and watching telly. But listen to what RTD's Doctor Who has always tried to say: How deeply important the everyday things are, how much the Doctor, for how amazing they are, craves for a life of simplicity and the stupid little things that define humanity.

Because here's the key: It wasn't the everyday things that bothered Rose. Like she told Mickey in "Parting of the Ways":

Rose didn't hate the domestic, everyday life. She hated how life had no meaning.

She hated how people let things happen to them, without challenging anything or standing up for anything. She didn't want to travel as much as she wanted to live, to be something and do something with her life.

And that's the magic of Doctor Who, particularly RTD's era. Because you can be amazing and you can have meaning even without the Doctor, but the Doctor shows you how.

You stand up for what you believe is right and you choose to give meaning to what you do in life. You don't need to travel the stars to do that. You can make choices that give your life meaning right here and now. You can believe in something. You can find meaning in your place in the universe. You can give your enthusiasm and time to something that is important. Meaning and purpose comes from how we see the world, and that change in perspective is what Rose finds with the Doctor.

If Rose is with someone who can fill her life with meaning, who inspires her to see life as a beautiful adventure, then it really doesn't matter what she's doing with them. In The Impossible Planet, Rose was completely willing to settle down with Ten to "find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe." Why? Because she'd be with him.

If I imagine Tentoo as a dad, I can't help but imagine him like Tennant himself. Kind, giving, selfless, and loving. I think Tentoo would be so afraid of letting someone hurt his child, because he hasn't had a family in so long, and he isn't the same man he was in those ancient days when, as a completely different man, he had a family.

He's a man still afraid of himself, still keenly aware of the inhuman things he's capable of. I think this fear would drive Rose and him closer together, like it did when he was Nine. But Tentoo is more self-aware now, more willing to grow and change and be different. Because he's the Doctor who was given a second chance, to live the life he thought he'd never have with the person he loves. He wants to be different to make this work.

I also think Tentoo would be the Doctor who passes on his title after he's gone. Not that I like to think about Tentoo dying one day, but let's be real: Where would his TARDIS go? As a half-human, I think Tentoo could imagine Mia taking on the role of Defender of the Earth when he and Rose have passed on. She would have been there to see it grow, and she would have been there when Tentoo and Rose first stepped out into the stars with this brand-new TARDIS. Because of his mortality, I think it would make Tentoo more open to sharing the secret, sacred things of his Gallifreyan people with the family he chose to start. He's not alone anymore, he has someone to share it with, someone who will pass it on after him and keep the world safe in his stead.

Which is all to say, I think it's a gift that Rose has the Meta-Crisis. Because when Ten regenerated and became, as he said, a completely different man, she was able to stay with the person she fell in love with and explore what that life was like, to have him with her for all of her life, and all of his.

💎 David Tennant Birthday DTIYS 💎

For David's b'day, I made a #TennantDTIYS ! Click here for prizes & rules!

David Tennant is sacred to me. His humility endeared me to him ages ago & his activism made me love him even more. Ten & Crowley shaped who I am. 💜 Thank you David!

Happy Ace Day to David Tennant saying Asexual Doctor Rights! (source)

𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒓, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒈𝒐𝒅 ✨