stephanie-roberts

[stephanie-roberts]

I love my wife Merrill <3

[stephanie-roberts]

[stephanie-roberts]

Paintings by Jason Limon on Instagram

[stephanie-roberts]

went to a spa the other week and thought about absolutely nothing but this the whole time. gale was a team effort so thank you @ladymurgatroid for the phrase ‘retired old lady workout regimen’.

i know shadowheart can learn to swim in the course of the game but there is no way she’s good at it. she is forcibly removed from the floatie when karlach cannonballs too close to the sun, and spends the rest of the day on a lounger insisting that she isn’t sulking.

[stephanie-roberts]

it was worth a try

[stephanie-roberts]

I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

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never underestimate my ability to cross brooklyn nine nine over with anything

based on this

[stephanie-roberts]

yeah

[stephanie-roberts]

At the end of The Reality War, the Doctor rewrites Belinda's timeline without her consent to make her into the mother of Poppy. I think this is badly written and quite sexist. I'm sorry, but there's probably no way to suddenly flatten out a character into "mother" without it being those two things.

But what if, actually, Belinda was actually a mother all along, and the Doctor fixed the timeline?

Well if that's true, the writing is even worse, and it's more sexist. Hooray! Also: there's a bonus horrifying implication.

I'm going to start with the quality of writing angle first, because that's the main thing that initially aggravated me about the "Belinda was always a mother" theory. To be blunt, there is simply no strong textual evidence for it. Nobody was posting theories that Belinda had a child before The Reality War, because there was no reason to think that. If the evidence can only be found post-hoc, as random pieces of subtext, then it hasn't been presented well. And since Belinda being a mother all along should be a signifigant aspect of her character (if only in a negative space kind of way), then it needs to be presented at that level.

While it's certainly tempting to claim that the audience is stupid and Just Doesn't Get it, there's a point where that stops working. If the intention is that Belinda was a mother, then wasn't, then the Doctor fixed things, for most viewers that was not conveyed. The most common reading is that Belinda wasn't a mother, and then the Doctor rewrote her timeline to make her one. If the theory is true, then the series as presented utterly failed to make that clear. You cannot hinge this kind of thing on random background details and the running gag of "mavity". You actually have to build it into the text.

The Well presented the perfect opportunity for this. Aliss' motivation is to return home to her daughter. Belinda has absolutely zero reaction to this. Sure, she wants to help Aliss, but that's clearly motivated by her generally being a good person. Even a single line of Belinda bringing up Aliss' daughter as a reason not to leave her behind would be far more than the entire season actually gives.

The Story & The Engine provides a similar chance. Now, "Belinda sees Poppy for no good reason" does not count as foreshadowing for what happens in Wish World or The Reality War. It definitely doesn't suggest that Poppy is Belinda's secretly erased from reality daughter. But what The Story & The Engine does have is Abena, who has a less than happy relationship with her father. A child seperated from a parent by the parent's own choice. And again, this passes without comment from Belinda. It would only need one or two lines when Belinda is talking with Abena about what Anansi did. A reaction along the lines of "I would never do that to my daughter (pause) I mean, if I had a daughter" would be enough. Especially if the first part is said conversationally, and the second part as if Belinda is trying to reassure herself that such a thing is true.

Of course, this analysis mostly gets eaten by the Occam's Razor of "the obvious reading is true, there was no original Belinda is a mother timeline". Communication is key, and if the "original mother timeline" theory is true, it's only a theory because it was so poorly communicated.

So that's the writing angle. But the theory also amplifies the existing sexist resolution to be more sexist.

By positioning the timeline where Belinda is a mother as the correct timeline, the theory implicitly states that the non-mother Belinda is incorrect. You can word it however you want, but the theory is saying "a correct woman is a mother". This is an uncharitable reading, but the theory is an uncharitable sexist reading of Belinda's chatacter, so I will continue.

The extended problem is that the theoy also implies that motherhood is the only legitimate reason that Belinda would not want to travel with the Doctor. That her insistence on wanting to return to a specific time is only valid if she has a child waiting for her. Which is simply not true. Going missing, even for a few days, runs the risk of derailing Belinda's life. "My evil ex-boyfriend sent robots to kidnap me to another planet" is not a reasonable sounding excuse for missing work. But if the Doctor has a time machine, her problem is seemingly solve - he can drop her back the next morning, and her life continues seamlessly where it left off.

As an aside, there is nothing wrong with Belinda being a mother. If The Robot Revolution had ended with her saying "No, you need to bring me back to the day I left because my daughter is waiting for me", that would have been a fine character hook. Once you start throwing in extra timelines and suggesting Belinda as a mother is better off in everyway, that's when things get dodgy.

Anyhow, I promised a horrifying implication. So, it's suggested a few times in The Reality War that the reason the Doctor and Belinda's wish child is Poppy the space baby is due to the Doctor's (and maybe Ruby's) memories of the space babies. But if Belinda had a child in an "original" timeline, that child wouldn't be Poppy. Because Poppy is only there because of the Doctor.

So Belinda's real child was erased from reality.

And the Doctor didn't save Belinda's child. He saved his own, effectively overwriting yet another person's life to achieve it.

Belinda won't know the difference? Well that's alright then.

[stephanie-roberts]

I wouldn't be as much bothered by the "how to dress right for your body type! :)" guides if they didn't presume to know what people want to look like. Ok you've got a guide on how to minimise one's most distinct features, one for every body type. But what if someone who's naturally long and gangly wants to emphasise how much they look like several David Bowies stacked on top of each other, or someone who's short and round wants to make sure that everyone is aware that she's as wide as she is tall with tits to match?

[stephanie-roberts]

i really enjoy looking through reddit threads related to death metal because the replies sound like a groupchat for cartoon villains

[stephanie-roberts]

It’s not even just Belinda. This entire era has been weirdly pushy on enforcing motherhood as the purpose of women

Donna is confirmed to have settled down and had a child as soon as she left the doctor

Ruby is only 19 and from the very beginning she’s in a maternal role. She looks after the children Carla fosters. In space babies she immediately assumes a maternal role to look after the children.

Anita was sad and lonely and now she’s happy and pregnant (from an accidental pregnancy, isn’t she so glad that happened without her deciding to do it!)

The ranis motivation is grief about her infertility, and her plan is to create loads of new time lord children. One of her incarnations describes herself as the mother of the other.

This entire two series arc has been building up to the statement that women should be mothers, and would be so much happier if they were mothers. Whether they want it or not. When it happens they’ll realise it’s what they wanted the whole time. It’s gross and I think one of the most misogynistic plots from a modern show I’ve seen.

[stephanie-roberts]

against my better judgment I'm becoming entranced by video essays that claim to be talking about really pervasive pressing issues that are everywhere 😱 that turn out to be about some shit you've never heard of in your life if you're not on tiktok or insta

[stephanie-roberts]

Nuwho doctors meeting each other: HI BESTIE 🤗 let's trade compliments 🥰 and maybe lightly make fun of each other for our silly quirks 😝

Classic who doctors meeting each other: the bbc broadcasting standards are the only thing preventing me from calling you a slur.

[stephanie-roberts]

I have to believe that Doctor Who can come back one day from wherever the hell it's currently headed and be the show I fell in love with but I never expected to be this uncertain about its future and frankly upset about the direction it's going in.

And I hate being negative about it.

[stephanie-roberts]

Is anyone going to point out how Belinda "You scanned my DNA without my consent, that makes you dangerous" Chandra had absolutely no qualms about the doctor scanning the DNA of a baby who CAN'T CONSENT and without at least asking her? RTD this isn't even "The writer wrote this without knowing who Belinda was" this is you removing Belinda's grit and not paying off a single damn thing about her. What the hell.