Crowley actually says a barely-coded "I love you" to Aziraphale back in 2.03

In his proposal in the S2 finale, Crowley told us that he and Aziraphale know they're in love and have known it for damn ever but they pretend they're not a couple. This, by default, means that they've not specifically said the words "I love you" before, by Crowley's own admission. They've said I love you in their own little language and we've watched it before. It's little demonic miracle of my own. It's don't go unscrewing the cap. It's just a little bit of a good person and just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing... But what Crowley says in the S2 finale is that they've never-- ever-- said in 6,000 years is just I love you in those normal people, human words. It has always been too dangerous for too many reasons to count so they have euphemisms for it and whole conversations around it and have made that be enough. Why do I bring this up? Because Crowley found a middle ground between the words and their coded language with one another in S2 and it's flying under the radar.

So you know that scene when Muriel has shown up and interrupts Crowley and Aziraphale talking in the back room? The one where while Crowley is speaking, Aziraphale suddenly looks like he's about to pass out with sheer want? Yes, our angel always looks at Crowley like he hung the damn moon (which he did but lol...) but this scene is different. This scene is like... someone get Aziraphale a chair and a glass a water because he is pupils-dilated, audibly breathing, and eyeing up Crowley with naked want. More than the lust? He looks happy. He looks delighted. You can basically hear his heart race from that look on his face. Why here? Yes, Crowley looks hot. Yes, he's in profile in a way that is a visual parallel to Before the Beginning (which was an inspired choice for this scene.) Yes, he's here with a Plan and taking charge of the Muriel situation and swaying his hips a bit while he speaks. It's not any of that. Those are nice bonuses. Aziraphale likes them. He gets them all the time. It's what Crowley said in this moment. To Aziraphale. Through what he said to Muriel.

Crowley cracks a dry, kinda dark joke that is meant for an audience of one: just Aziraphale. He knows Muriel won't get it. Since Muriel is cosplaying as what they think is a human Inspector Constable and they are here to verify the miracle Aziraphale has told Heaven and so are monitoring them, Crowley quips that Muriel is here to spy on them (since they, well, are, actually) and that he knows that many human police officers like to make a bit of a hobby out of spying on "people in love."

People. In. Love.

In a one-two punch in the same sentence, Crowley called him and Aziraphale queer humans and he called what they have love, using the actual word *aloud* for the first time in 6,000 years. He said he loved Aziraphale in front of an angel of Heaven in a little coded joke but this time, using the coded bit to say the real thing for the first time.

Then, just to hammer it all home and make sure that Aziraphale really knows it was very much intentional, Crowley says 'love' again in the next sentence. He starts going on about how Muriel can come to him anytime with any questions about love and he's happy to assist with their understanding of human love with all of his implied vast, vast years of experience with the subject and how he'll be here to answer their questions, in the bookshop, while Aziraphale drives his car to Edinburgh.

Go back and tell Heaven I'm here, Inspector Constable, I don't give a fuck anymore. *We* don't give a fuck anymore. You go tell The Archangel Michael that I'm who they're going to get managing Angelic Embassy X aka The Bookshop until Aziraphale gets back-- yep, me, former Demon of Hell. The Boyfriend in the Dark Sunglasses. He's asked me to, which is his way of saying he wants to stop hiding and asking me not to sneak out to my car in the middle of the night which hallefuckinglujah, Inspector Constable... Go tell Their Beatitudes that we ravish each other all over the bookshop. You won't even be lying. As Maggie'll put it later in the season: I'm done being afraid all the time. I love him. We're in love. There's your hot intel.

Aziraphale:

Aziraphale: Inspector Constable, be a dear and spray me down with all 700 of our fire extinguishers, will you?

Impossible not to reblog simply for the sake of "Yes, our angel always looks at Crowley like he hung the damn moon (which he did but lol...)" :)

I was minding my own business and analyzing another part of the A. Z. Fell & Co. bookshop from the Radio Times footage when I noticed something interesting on Aziraphale’s desk. It looks like the angel was studying a handwritten copy of someone’s last will and testament and left in a hurry, with a bronze medal and a fountain pen on top of it. And… an attachment of a land registry plan, barely visible underneath.

Obviously that’s when my South Downs obsessed brain turned all of its alarms on and decided to read the whole thing. And look for the missing parts, since only a portion of the original document was visible on screen. Unfortunately the full text is much longer and less exciting than anticipated, and — spoiler alert — related to a different area of the country, but still relevant to the Good Omens universe. We’ll look into that in a moment.

Let’s start with the struck bronze medal — acting here as a paperweight, which makes the documents in question already stand out from the usual bumph and bric-a-brac accumulated by Aziraphale over an unknown period of time on his desk.

It’s a very interesting rendition of the mythological scene centered around Daedalus fastening the wings onto his son Icarus (little does he know that this attempt to escape imprisonment will lead to his son’s demise). Contrary to popular sentiment in the history of art, this particular version of Icarus isn’t depicted as a child or teenager, but as a warrior donning a helmet and preparing himself to battle. Which makes perfect sense after discovering that it was made for the Royal Air Force Athletic & Cross Country Association’s WAAF Athletic Championships in 1945. There’s some poetic irony in the fact that the medal was apparently given to the third place winner in a high jump category.

Apart from its obviously military style, this concept seems inspired by a 1885-86 medal by Auguste Patey commemorating the experimental flights at the first French wind tunnel at Chalais-Meudon, a town on the banks of the Seine near Paris. On 9 August 1884, engineers Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs made the first controllable free flight there when they piloted their airship, La France, over a course and returned to their starting point. From 9 August 1884 to 23 September 1885, La France made seven flights and was able to return to its starting point five times.

I rewatched lower decks with a friend and now since that last episode of mariner reveal I can't stop thinking about it and her putting herself in danger because she can't stand to lose more people like...

ready to fight a guy to the death to stop the away team from dying? let's not think about how willing she was.

pushing her friend out the way of danger but then having to watch them die anyway? well that's gonna leave a mark.

facing a holoprogrammed version of yourself who would let herself be beaten up so she could set off the self destruct despite knowing that would kill herself too? well, therapy works. I guess.

and then there's a brief throwaway line in season 2:

like what was she gonna say here? was this going to be about sito? another person she lost? another mark on beckett that makes her worry obsessively about everyone around her while simultaneously pushing them away because once they get what they want, that promotion, that job, they don't need her anymore?

did she? what was her part in the dominion war that caused her to say this line.

I'm just obsessed with what made beckett like this, we actually know so little about what she went through that isn't just thrown out as a joke and she's still clearly dealing from all that aftermath.

I'm just rotating her in my mind forever, thanks

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

Episodes: Scorpion 2, The Gift, The Raven, Bliss

I love this scene in Picard S3. (One of the reasons I love this season!)

Tuvok and Seven have had this conversation many, many, many times before. Seven even looked like the most Seven in the last gif -- listening to Tuvok reprimand her for hijacking a Federation Starship or a shuttlecraft again.

cant given SNW enough props for once showing an accurate representation of a doctor & nurse, their individual strengths/academic specialities and talents, their mutual scientific prowess, their collegial relationship, the dynamic of trust, the dynamic of mutual respect, the ease with which they share medical responsibility (there is no "hierarchy" it is a partnership), & depicting what I can only describe as a jarring allegory to our earthly "war" against Covid that healthcare workers today suffer extreme PTSD from while coupling it with the further challenge of learning to coexist with people who merrily killed elderly people, children, and others for their anti masker, anti vaxxer ideals - while healthcare workers suffered extreme mental duress to fight a war people gladly forget or even ignore when the plain fact that the reason we globally overcame Covid at all is because frontliners (and scientists and supporters) fought for the right thing and yes, "came home different".

it's like a modern frontline doctor and nurse having to sit down to a dinner with Ron DeSantis or any other anti science psychopath and being expected to fucking swallow it.

bravo

& props to the actors for M'Benga and Christine, thank you.

I love the one scene Seven and Riker had together.

I wish we saw Seven work as a First Officer under Riker.

I think they work well as a Command team, their styles aren't all that different. As Picard noted in Best of Both Worlds when Shelby arrived, he was also brash and a risk-taker.

It's why Riker knows how to talk to both Shelby and now, Seven.

Seven would be good at pushing Riker from being too cautious. And Riker could get her on board things without setting off a minefield. Unfortunately, Starfleet Command wanted Seven to undergo her own Shakedown cruise to check if she can be herself in the confines of Starfleet.

I love Seven's expression when she learned Riker wasn't dismissing her concerns but listening to her and actually sharing a plan.

And operating in 'an unofficial capacity' is Seven's default and a role she's comfortable with since this was Seven's role in Voyager: a free-floating troubleshooter. This is her wheelhouse.

Look at how pleased Seven is, that she can be useful and use her skills, and that Riker speaks her language. Because he does.

Also, it's only a small sample size but Seven getting along well with Picard's First Officers is now a thing.

Star Trek Voyager 7x13 - Repentance

The show doesn't usually touch on the things Seven has done and made to do as a Borg drone. And Seven also almost never talked about how painful it is to become a drone and have implants installed in her body.

As we've seen from previous scans, Seven's occipital implant required removing half of her skull. Seven was probably still a child at that point when the procedure was done, a teen at most.

I like that the episode started with Seven not being sympathetic to Iko, who started as an unrepentant killer but by some hand wave sci-fi nanoprobe, Iko began to feel the weight of his crime. By the end Iko and Seven bonded together. This is a part of Seven hasn't shared with anyone apart from Captain Janeway but also it's not something Seven liked talking about.

The only other time Seven talked about this was when Neelix asked in Memorial and she was a little brusque in her response because she really didn't like to talk about the horrible things she's done for the Borg.

Seven has come a long way from the time B'Elanna asked her if she felt terrible for what she's done to easily diagnosing guilt in another person because she lives with guilt every day. Guilt and remorse are old friends to Seven.

Star Trek Voyager 6x02 - Survival Instinct | Star Trek Picard 1x08 - Broken PIeces

Rewatching Star Trek Voyager after Picard is so good because it makes the Seven-centric stories even richer. They were already good but it adds another layer to everything.

It also makes this moment in Broken Pieces even more resonant for Seven because she's not only assimilated people before but she's assimilated people who were trying to escape. I love how interesting this makes Seven's character. It's a situation TV Tropes call Ignored Epiphany.

It's the moment when someone who is on a path of redemption or enlightenment willfully ignores the epiphany to continue on the current path they were. But narratively, the ignored epiphany moment wasn't futile.

Eventually what happens is the ignored epiphany becomes a building block for when the real epiphany hits. Because sometimes epiphany and the choice to turn around is not just one moment, it's composed of several moments, and sometimes, people need the help of other people to pull or push them out of the current path they were on.

This is what happened to Seven of Nine.

Drone Borg Seven of Nine was happy to continue being a Borg and was proud of being a Borg. It wasn't until Janeway chose to cut Seven from the Borg and started Seven on the path of her own individuality that Seven finally understood the real damage the Borg has down to other people and herself.

And now that she possesses individuality and knowledge when she's asked a year later if she would want to return to the Collective given the choice and Seven's answer is a resounding No.

And then going back to this moment in Survival Instinct to the moment in Broken Pieces knowing the context for Seven now it's so much more poignant because she's done this before and regretted it.

I think this is one moment out of many moments in what she's done and made to do as a Borg that Seven will never forgive herself for because the moment with her three Unimatrix Drones was something Seven did herself.

(I do wish they let the moment in Picard 1x08 breathe more but time and production probably didn't give them enough time to do more).

I made a comment about Tecteun being kind of like the evil stepmother trope but not the other week, and how it bucks trends usually seen in this type of story. But thinking about it, there’s a reason Why it bucks trends. 

It’s because in the evil stepmother stories, the child involved escapes When they’re important. it doesn’t matter why or how they’re important. Cinderella wasn’t a super important figure destined to save the world, she was merely important to her step family because she provided free labour and therefore gave her stepmother and sisters free reign to be free themselves and not waste time on chores. The loss of Cinderella hurt nobody but the people exploiting her, her being free did not make the world a better place. It was just one less child being exploited. Cinderella was not important in the grand scheme of things in general, but she was to Them. 

The timeless child is, actually, Cinderella. Wanted for nothing but aiding the advancement of Tecteun, the evil stepmother. Even before the regeneration discovery, the child was merely a curiosity to research for her. First the child’s usefulness comes as a hobby, then as a science experiment lacking all morals, and finally as an agent for division. They have no choice in this as Cinderella had no choice but to do her chores. 

But Cinderella’s a fairy tale. A poor used and abused child meets a prince and secures a way to escape her evil abusive family, she lives happily ever after and They don’t. 

This story with Tecteun and the child isn’t a fairy tale. It has the broad notes, you recognise the players as those in a fairy tale, but the narrative veers off into a sad story, one without the rescuing prince or any agent of liberation. You are witnessing a tragedy. By the time Tecteun dies, the damage was done So long ago it is not cathartic, it’s merely infuriating she got off so easy. 

If this were a story of happily ever after, if this were the usual evil stepmother narrative then somebody, Anybody, would have swooped in and rescued that child. Yes, they’d have suffered first, but they’d have gotten help from a person who was Kind. Maybe even somebody who bothers to remember their name. Because sometimes fairy tales are just a reminder that kind people exist and are out there even when you don’t know them. And Tecteun would have been left beaten, her research unfinished because the child she took ran away and escaped! Even after All she did for them (sarcasm). 

But no, the child didn’t escape When they were important to the antagonist, so the antagonist wins. This story happened a long long time ago, in a land far far away, and the child did not get a fairy tale ending, they were used, abused and dumped, their memory erased, left to fend alone for themselves and nobody even knew it happened for millennia and the architect of this evil barely gets any comeuppance.  

The child Does escape, eventually. But they never achieve full autonomy until the society that did this to them is in ash and ruin. 

This story Really plays into familiar tropes but then does not lean into the endings we think it will. There is no happily ever after. The doctor escapes the machinations of the society that did this and it leaves her traumatized and reeling because the escape was a genocide committed against them. 

The timings are all Off for this story to feel anything more than just Slightly familiar. There’s only an almost. 

This story isn’t a fairy tale, it doesn’t have the happily ever after. The wrongs were committed and they’re horrifying. 

But somewhere in there, the doctor saved themselves and made themselves a better person just because they wanted to. It’s not a story about everything being negative. The classic tale may be absent from the narrative, but it has a more complex vein of positivity spun through it in that Eventually this child Did escape and live and Thrive. Even if they don’t totally manage to erase their ties to this society, they came So far. 

This story kind of bucks what narrative you think it maybe should have through popular storytelling. There isn’t actually anything fundamentally wrong with that. This story is when Cinderella escapes her evil family because, maybe the mother dies of old age, maybe some accident befalls the sisters, and Cinderella is left free without them. Maybe they find a better person to serve them and just ditch her. Maybe she has had enough and just runs away and never looks back. Either way, It’s Sad she did not escape earlier, but it’s still good she did eventually. Her freedom matters no matter how late it happens. 

I know historically that the Nu!who doctors before 13 have suffered from moderate to massive levels of self hatred, but just because they have, it doesn’t mean it’s a permanent state for the doctor to live in. 

13 doesn’t ever exhibit signs of actual self loathing, she doesn’t have existential questions about the worth of her existence, nor does she ever actually seem to care that much (or at all) if she does anything objectively questionable, even if it’s Really Questionable. 

Now while all of the above raises questions about the benevolence of her personality at base line, it doesn’t show any self hatred either. 

13 is an “i am what i do and therefore this is who I am person” kind of person, meaning basically that she tries to always do good, Wants to do good, helps people, tries very hard, so therefore she Is good because that’s what she’s doing! 

This contrasts with 12 who always wondered if he was a good person underneath all of the actions that define the doctor. 13 is not existential, 12 very much is. He considered the content of his character to be what is underneath his own actions, it’s why he spends all of S8 being Like That. He can’t prove to himself that he’s a good man by doing good things, because he openly expresses that true goodness must be selfless in entirely and if he’s trying to prove it, he’s not being good enough. The harsh standards he imposes on Missy he’s also subjected himself to, so he at the very least isn’t hypocritical in that. 

Both 12 and 13 are fascinating to examine together, tbh, because it Does raise existential questions and we could debate it till the cows come home so i’ll spare my opinions on both of their philosophies (or lack thereof) but the point is, 12 is Steeped in self hatred and is actively suicidal his Whole Run because of it. At the very last moment, just before the end, he makes the hail mary decision to try just One more time. To live. To carry on in the hopes that it will be better. That it won’t always feel like this to live. 

And 13′s lack of self hatred is Everything to 12′s arc. That she can do good deeds without dragging herself over hot coals about motivations, that she laughs and runs and loves and doesn’t want to die!!! She doesn’t hate herself and she doesn’t want to die! And her life is hard and painful and horrible things happen but in the end she’d not have had it any other way, she ended it not wanting to die and wanting to keep the life she has built. 

And that right there, that is honouring 12. It’s also there to be explicitly clear that the hole he was in, the self loathing depression and suicidal ideation is something that he can recover from. You can move on from this. The Doctor did, so can everybody else. It is a story of hope. 

ofc, 13′s joie de vivre can and did lead her to do very questionable things, there are two sides to every coin and self introspection is necessary in moderation, and it is arguably a moderation she lacks, but for whatever problems and flaws she does have, it is not the self hatred that ran through the entirety of 12′s run like a patch of black mould you can never quite get rid of no matter how much you try. 

I’ve always found it weird that people say 13′s era doesn’t have a connect to 12′s because 12 is everywhere in 13′s story to me, he lives in the quiet moments and is always there. She lived her life trying to laugh hard, run fast, and be kind. 

She may not be the same as him, but that was what he Wanted. 

Some of you guys need to twig that while Rose is portrayed as poor, Dan is portrayed as living in actual cannot afford food poverty.

Rose is frustrated with her life because she recognises her circumstances and lack of finances mean she’s lacking in opportunities to do something more with her life. Her main complaint is she’s bored and she could be better than this.

Dan literally can’t afford food. That thing that is necessary for survival. Rose is portrayed as poor, Dan is showing modern day poverty. He is, also, incidentally, also bristling at his own lack of opportunities as much as Rose.

If you’re gonna bitch at Dan for not wanting to do his plastering job because he wants to be a tour guide and saying it’s his own fault he’s in this situation, have a bitch at Rose for not wanting to do her boring retail jobs because she wants better things out of life than her circumstances will allow.

These are the same thing.

Dan is, however, Much more poor than Rose ever was and this is without even mentioning how Shockingly expensive it is to live in London compared to other England post codes, and that if Rose losing her job wasn’t an absolute terrifying crisis to her and Jackie, that they can afford to live on just Jackie’s money. In London. Dan does not live in London and can’t feed himself, and as we learn, he had a house but.. really not anything else, no food no luxuries and it looks like he’s not got any heat either. And then he doesn’t even have a house.

Dan is strictly speaking, homeless, his whole run as a companion. He is in poverty. The show is making a point by having his journey say ‘i am all of these things and I am still worth living, my life is worth something, it is a life worth living’.

And while Rose’s story pointing out the unfairness of the lack of opportunity afforded to the working class is obviously something that needs to be said, Dan’s story portraying a homeless person in poverty as an important and worthy human being deserving of both respect and help is utterly vital.

Having the doctor magically fix his poverty would literally negate the importance of the message.

Dan returns home realising he has worth and will accept the help of others, the type of help he always offers others himself. His arc does not change his circumstance, it changes how he views himself and how he responds to others.

But really. Dan’s arc is Rose’s with the kid gloves removed, both of these stories exist perfectly harmoniously and point out different yet the same facets of a serious issue. And slamming Dan’s only to point out how great Rose’s is just comes across as… potentially troubling  for a variety of reasons. Why is it acceptable to root for the poor person only when they’re not Gallingly poor? Dan’s arc is saying Dan has worth as a person, a homeless person. Have you seen the way the world treats those without homes? This is vital. 

Okay, Okay. 

I am real. Everybody out there living without opportunities because they’re poor are real. Every person out there living through modern day poverty are real. They feel, they think, they suffer, they live etc etc you get the point. 

Rose Tyler and Dan Lewis Are Not Real. Dan and Rose do not suffer, they do not live without opportunities because of their financial status because they don’t live at all. They are characters created by writers whom live in a fictional display of our actual lived reality whom are therefore not able to suffer or feel anything by being used as a way form a narrative. Doctor Who is fiction, not a reality show. It’s a fictional show that for 60 years now has been used to make societal commentary in such a way that isn’t harmfully using real people as guinea pigs. 

Dan and Rose are vehicles to tell stories and point out social inequities with. As a culture we use stories to demonstrate to viewers points of view and social inequities they may not understand or have any knowledge of because of Their real life circumstances being so different from the fictional Characters who portray the lived reality of Actual people without actually living it. 

As such, Dan and Rose’s stories are Both critiques of Capitalism. The root evil is capitalism. It has harmed these innocent, deserving characters (whom Represent real people without being real) through no fault of their own but just because they live in a society without equity and weren’t lucky to be born loaded. 

I am repeating myself, but i reiterate. They are not real. They are here to portray things about our society in ways that cannot harm actual people by using them as a twisted inspiration p/orn fantasy about how ‘look how they started out poor! look where they are now!!! look, it can happen to You if you’re lucky enough and work super hard!!!’ which then allows people to turn away and not think critically about how evil that is, or their own complicity in the utterly rotten system. It allows the fix it to be other peoples problems, these people can escape if they’re lucky and work hard even if they hate it! it doesn’t force people to think that this whole thing is Wrong and that actual real life work needs to be put in to stop people falling through the cracks. It doesn’t say something needs to be done about the way things work because it’s fine! they could get Lucky. It has Nothing to do with Me. 

In as such, Dan getting a fix it would just be a societal wide absolving of guilt because he Could get out of it without Us as a society having to do any work, right? He just has to wait and be Lucky while living miserably and hungry for one of those lucky people to bail him out.  

Pointing out that Dan has worth and meaning as a homeless person whose life is not magically fixed by being a companion is not cruel because Dan is not a real person. The story is not Trying to say they have an answer to systematic poverty, they’d never have the time for that, they Are however saying that Dan and the Real people like him have worth and meaning and that society needs to stop shitting on them. A lesson many people stand to learn, I know this because I saw the disgust from people that doctor who introduced a companion in poverty who doesn’t Deserve the privilege of travelling with the doctor because he’s lazy and a failure as a man and isn’t willing to work himself to death. Again. The message that he has worth was utterly vital to send. 

But giving Dan self worth And Money is giving the message that Dan has worth BECAUSE of the money. It is the literal opposite of what is being said by this arc. 

And for the 8th time (probably, not counted) this being said in Fiction with fake people allows somebody to make this point on prime time BBC without actually victimising real homeless people who absolutely should get that wad of cash you have spare! You should absolutely put food in the food bank buckets (gonna shill this for england (possibly uk) readers, but there’s an app called bankthefood where you can learn what items your local food banks are desperate for, once you buy it and leave it in the collection bin you input what you bought in what quantity so they know what they will have coming into their stock. A lot of the times the things they need are stuff like nappies, sanitary pads and toothpaste, not the tinned food most people put in donations bins, it is worth downloading to get them the items they really need.) You should absolutely do all these things to help make homeless people and people living in poverty have a slightly easier time of it because they’re real life people stuck in an evil system who Do stand to be victimised by people not helping. 

But Doctor who is pointing out a Societal issue that needs to be fixed by Society, not the charity of individual people like me using that app, or idk, the doctor robbing a bank for Dan (tho, the show i still saying you should help. food bank. yeah). You are supposed to think bigger, and having their avatar of the problem get lucky and win a boon is encouraging the audience to Look Away and absolve themselves, not look closer and help fix the societal problem. 

I can advocate for change and so can you, I can advocate to end homelessness and for universal basic income, but i am but one cog in a machine who is, also, poor myself, realistically the most I can do as an individual is try and ease the burden a little with what little i can afford to give while also being vocal about the Societal issue dw is tackling here. In this sense, I am 13 here, One Person cannot fix this, so she did not. She couldn’t. 

But really, Dan is not real. Implying the Societal Issue they’re displaying with him can be fixed and put to bed by him getting money is false, all that can do is give him money. And getting a boon and suddenly ‘winning’ at capitalism through either luck or dodgy dealings is literally a facet of how capitalism works. It’s championing the evil thing they are pointing out is wrong. 

So yeah, it’d be great if people gave the person struggling money, but the point of Dan Lewis is not that he is struggling.

It’s the Reason why he’s struggling. Also. He’s not real. 

———————————————

And to break form and go Watsonian instead of Doyleist, i’m honestly not sure how anybody thinks this ‘13 fixes Dan’s problems’ thing could have happened Anyway btw, 13 did not destroy Dan’s house nor is she ever shown to have the tech to Fix it, it’s not her fault he’s living in poverty nor is it her fault he’s homeless. Nor did she even have the time to do anything about it once he said he wanted to leave. 

She cannot fix the museum not allowing him to work despite his willingness or blatant skill at the work, she also cannot fix the systematic failure of capitalism that left him with his only choice being a plasterer that he obviously does Not Want To Do. She cannot fix the way our culture has moulded people to think that accepting help is disgraceful and those who cannot provide are failures. 

Do you want her to do what ten did and go Cheat at the lottery? (and with the caveat that I know lotteries are basically just gambling scams and all and just another rotten facet of capitalism) All 10 did was scam whoever Would have gotten that money out of it by Cheating and giving it to Donna instead. I am not even sure if Donna’s story was meant to critique emotionally abusive behaviour or capitalism because it’s… Not clear either way you want to view it, imo, but you cannot critique something with a whole ass arc about how evil it is and then Abuse it to your own means as the happy ending! I mean, for some problems that’d work as a narrative, but we’re talking about capitalism where the way to win is cheating and stepping on necks, so That’s not a critique, that’s literally just how capitalism works! That was ten winning at the game. 

And Rose’s issues are literally fixed by a class bump. Which is tragic for the girl whose character is founded on her empathy with other working class people just like her. Her living in the other reality where Rose is middle class (or possibly higher, i have little to no clue how the class boundaries would have been drawn back in the 2000′s at this point) is making the systematic issue the show wants us to care about not be a problem anymore because, look, fixed it! She’s not working class anymore so all the problems are gone, happy ending! For Rose only.

It’s fundamentally selfish of a narrative, and you can uhm and ahh over if it’s in character for Rose to not care about it being just her escaping the noose of being poor when the show stops caring about the other people like her, but that is so Toothless a critique of capitalism it’s barely a critique anymore. 

I do not expect dw to offer the solution to systematic poverty or homelessness, it’s basically a YA tv show, but i Would like if it did not accidentally ally itself with the system of capitalism it is trying to slam. 

It’s also important to mention that none of these people are real and cannot be harmed by not getting a white knight, they are fictional avatars used to portray the intricacies of real life problems without the issue of doing so actively victimising real humans. To claim that anybody wanting a show to portray the shitty reality of poverty with honesty, so ignorant people understand said reality in a totally fictional way, is equating to real life in any way, shape or form is disingenuous to the extreme. People need to understand that the great majority of people in this situation get no white knights. Rich people in their homes don’t deserve the comforting thought that Somebody Else will fix it for them. 

The show saying Dan -the homeless man- is worth something and should have self worth, self respect, and the respect of others is a message that should be sent to people living the reality of his story because society tries to tell them otherwise. 

That this reality cannot be fixed easily or with a bow is also a message that should be sent. I care about Dan, he should have better, but he is beyond suffering and is not real, and this show is about pointing/calling out social inequity and has been for decades. This issue is Dan’s function. This in no way harms real people. 

Fiction and reality are separate. Feeling empathy for Dan does not make him any more real, it just makes him written well enough that you care he’s in a shit situation. The point is you watch this and then stretch that empathy to the real people like him and care about the issue of systematic poverty in real life.

slight aside, but star trek’s future utopia is an acknowledgement of the system of capitalism being evil After the fact. It is saying people will work for passion (like dan literally does but bc capitalism is not Allowed) and that everybody deserves and will thrive if guaranteed the basics needed to live. It erased capitalism. It does not Use it to help people, it points out people were in trouble Because of it. This is, btw, what Dan’s story is also saying from a modern day perspective in a time period where we are all still stuck unable to escape from said evil system and Have to exist in it. Harsh reality, no utopia, no escape without Systematic Change. Sure, this perspective is more miserable, but trek is saying We Can Do This Because We Already Did, and doctor who is saying We Need To Do Something Now Because People Are Suffering. 

and really, guys, if 13 went and handed Dan half a million… Do you really actually believe he’d keep it for himself?  

Really and honestly, thirteen dying and Yaz knowing she was dead was the kindest way to separate them. Yaz just got a masterclass on regeneration, she Knows there are different doctors and is even heard to place claim on This doctor as her own.

In revolution of the daleks, Yaz calls 13 on her statement that she won't disappear again by telling her that yes. She Would. 13 didn't have an answer because it was entirely correct of a statement.

But thirteen didn't disappear. She died. And Yaz knows that and I know it's semantics, but sometimes that's just what we're left with in life to be frank. So 13 left her, but not because she walked away or wanted to ditch her, not through some painful inconclusive situation like the timeless children where Yaz did not know for sure enough to move on. This was different.

She left because she died.

That is something that will probably be much easier to deal with in the long run for Yaz. Even if she knows there's another regeneration out there, it's not Her regeneration and she made that distinction herself. She will hurt and grieve but she will move on and live as well afterwards with no uncertainty.

And Yaz understands that, too. She knows the doctor is out there, and it's a comfort to her. But not Her doctor. So she bowed out of her own will. A "the king is dead, the king is alive" situation (@ the doctor don't slap me for that analogy).

I know Yaz’s rebuttal to the master has gained more attention for her claim on the doctor by saying ‘My Doctor’ but honestly, the;

Deserves analytical attention as well for how accurate it is Despite the fact that 13′s immediately out to Not get any friends after everything that happened with 12. 

She tries to ditch the fam in her first episode. And I don’t mean, ‘they met in one night and she doesn’t ask them to stick around’. I mean, she finds herself with this group of people that help her solve the alien problem but one of them Dies and they have to cover up why, and 13′s stranded so she can’t leave and realistically has to have lived with Graham and Ryan for a couple of weeks during their grief. And she took the time to comfort Ryan at his gran’s funeral (which means she Went to the funeral) and watch over him as he practiced riding his bike atop the cliff. And she gets the three of them to help her try and get home. 

She says to them, After all of this ‘I’m ALMOST going to miss you’. She does not want to get too close. The Grace thing is just another reminder of how 12 left off, how it’s not changed, it’s still dangerous and lethal for humans. 

But then, of course, she accidentally takes the humans across space with her when trying to get herself back to the tardis, and they have to team up again to get back to the ship alive. And then tardis decides to not Let 13 take them home straight away and keeps sending her the wrong place for so long that they start to pack bond. By the time they Do get back home, 13 obviously doesn’t Want to say goodbye because she’s attached already, but she also doesn’t want to keep them around because lately the doctor’s track record in companion safety is Appalling and she doesn’t want them hurt and they’ve already almost died a bunch of times. There’s a reason at the end of the ghost monument 13′s distraught and resigned to their untimely deaths very quickly. Old hat. Exactly what she expected to happen from having humans near her. 

She Then does not offer them a trip in the tardis. They ask her to go. She tells them the score. It will be very dangerous, you will not return who you left as. They want to stay, and 13 is Clearly happy about it even though her taking the time to warn them shows she’s being exceptionally cautious. 

and as time goes on, they get closer and closer. 

13 then Does spend her life making friends, these were just the first. 

‘She can’t help it’ 

She really Can’t help it. She gained these friends against her will and probably despite thinking she should know better by now. She didn’t want this, did not want anybody in danger because of her anymore. But she can’t help it, even when she doesn’t want to and is trying actively not to, she can’t help it. 

Such a good line. 

#13 Wants to be an antisocial hermit but gets a fail grade#i will give her a Mild pass because i genuinely think the tardis was keeping them there SO they'd bond with the doctor#and not leave for good#13's like 'and i would've gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling tardis'#anyway i love her she doesn't want friends she just attracts them without trying

Okay, time to get pretentious and REALLY talk about this shot.

So put on your over-analysis goggles, and let’s talk about the Imperial Cog, Renaissance-era military forts, 18th century prison architecture, the military-industrial complex, the surveillance state, and why this single shot of Mon Mothma standing in a doorway in “Nobody’s Listening!” (the 9th episode of Andor season one) is making me so feral I want to kiss Luke Hull and his entire production design team right on the mouth.

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no but like, Yaz being the doctor is narratively important and at the core of the whole era’s philosophy, let alone the main point of the last episode, but lets pretend she did nothing or achieved nothing at all in her time on the show, sure. 

#the point is the master is the doctor quite literally and he's still the master#meanwhile yaz is like. Okay so she's out of the game. My Turn.#anyway yaz's main goal has ALWAYS been to help in important ways#she identified 13 as a way to do that#to achieve that goal#and to culminate her arc she Becomes her ideal#meanwhile the entire era is going HardBall on the fact that The Doctor is a choice#they're not who they are because of a shred of code#it's because of their choices#it's why the master stole the doctor's body but Still didn't become the doctor because they are their choices#so in effect. Yaz's arc is fulfilling the wish she had from her first moments on screen. helping people.#doing something Important#she saved the whole damn world!!!!#and she saved the woman she's in love with#and not to mention other assorted people#while the master's reward is the curse of Doctor Frankenstein. A Pointless Hopeless Death.#because the measure of a man to him is its parts#the era triumphs our identify as that of the choices we make in whatever agency we have#yaz's frustration in the begining was her agency was too small#she wanted More#and damn did she get it.#13 was her ticket to this.#and getting offended by That is to be pissed at a whole ton of Other companion journeys as well so can we not#that's kind of how the show works (via @ssaalexblake)