#(eleventh) Doctor is neurodivergent tag

[seaweedstarshine]

Listen is so great you don't understand. It's an episode about mental illness. And some people point out that some of the things that happen (the kid under the blanket, the airlock mechanism triggering) are on the surface unlikely, but that's the exact point. The Doctor is not an objective narrator, I mean this is the episode that starts with him sitting on top of the TARDIS in space speechifying, we see it in the way he frames it, so we see these ordinary things (a mischievous child, a dead ship breaking down) in the uncanny way he sees them—

—and because he is the Doctor, because he is the person who bad guys pause their plans to listen when he talks, because he is charismatic and impressive and the Oncoming Storm—

—because he's the Doctor, Clara (and baby Danny and Orson) start to believe him, until they arrive on Gallifrey, until Clara sees the root of his trauma, and she understands.

And it doesn't matter if this creature is a delusion or not, it only matters that it scares him, because fear is a superpower, and the way he responds to the reality he experiences is why he's the Doctor.

What. an. icon.

[ao3feed-petermj]

Spider-Man: New Home

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/4nGKBqj by cesiqf For Clara, it was a regular day. Get up, get dressed, brush you teeth, hair.. blah blah blah. But a new student, that day, was admitted to her class. A boy. A boy named Peter Parker. For Peter, it was a big day. Get up, get dressed, brush his teeth, and go to his new school assigned by Mr Stark. Awesome, right? What could go wrong? [cross-posted on wattpad bc I didn't know how to tag for years] Words: 105, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Doctor Who, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: Other Characters: Clara Oswin Oswald, Tony Stark, Eleventh Doctor (Doctor Who), Peter Parker, Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones (Marvel), Minor Characters Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor (Doctor Who) & Peter Parker, Clara Oswin Oswald & Tony Stark, The Doctor (Doctor Who) & Tony Stark, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker Additional Tags: BAMF Clara Oswin Oswald, BAMF Peter Parker, BAMF Doctor (Doctor Who), Everyone Needs A Hug, Neurodivergent Doctor (Doctor Who), Neurodivergent Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Teacher Clara Oswin Oswald read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/4nGKBqj

[seaweedstarshine]

Thinking about River affectionately calling the Doctor her “madman in a box” only after he's called her his “bespoke psychopath,” and vice versa. They each were called these words by the other before ever using them to describe the other.

Thinking about the way they defy reality for each other. How modern psychiatry elevates objective reality to gatekeep full participation in society, yet they shatter objective reality with love — “I can’t let you die without knowing that you are loved.” and “You are always here to me and I always listen and I can always see you.”

Thinking about “What's the mad fool talking about now?” and how Gallifrey ostracizes those labelled mad, going so far as to see it as failure in children. Thinking about “A child is not a weapon!” “Give us time.” and how Kovarian equates psychopath with weapon as a tool of dehumanization and control.

Thinking about the way the psychiatric-industrial complex inflicts violence upon those who deviate from psychosocial norms. How their relationship was born in violence, but of madness — not madness in a post-Enlightenment framework of opposition to Reason, but madness as radical compassion that doesn’t demand so-called rationality — “Every time you've asked, I have been there.”

Thinking about how neither of them chose “psychopath” or “madman,” but they both own those words as instruments in their own agency.

[seaweedstarshine]

Sources: Nightmare in Silver (+ TV Tropes haha •ᴗ•), Night Terrors, Flesh and Stone, The Day of the Doctor Novelization, The Day of the Doctor, Amy's Choice, The Crimson Horror Novelization, The Doctor's Wife

[seaweedstarshine]

Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).

I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?

That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.

Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌

TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.

Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.

(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)

Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.

(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)

Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.

Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.

Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.

We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).

Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.

(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)

And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.

If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.

Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.

[seaweedstarshine]

You know that time in the comics when the Doctor is so depressed, he shuts off the lights, turns on an interrogation spotlight, locks himself in the console room, and argues with a bunch of judgmental shadow-figures resembling his past incarnations?

And all the TARDIS' lights go out and her interior becomes a maze to keep his companions out of the console room, all from her psychic connection with the Doctor (“moodbleed”)?

And his companions are left wandering in circles for two days as the air goes “stale,” not knowing where he is but thinking the worst, while he hallucinates in a dark room?

...because I'm thinking again about the times this definitely happened when he was with the Ponds.

[seaweedstarshine]

I love Amy's Choice and I love The Day of the Doctor Novelization, but something that only clicked for me recently — is that the reason the Eleventh Doctor is able to instantly recognize and brush past the Dream Lord when he appears — is because for as long as he's had this body, he's been hallucinating the War Doctor’s voice taunting him in a very similar way (minus all the jokes).

Similar like this:

Of course at the end of Amy's Choice, the Doctor sees the Dream Lord reflected in the console, looks distressed, and says nothing, and I just. I love how Moffat used that novelization to flesh out so many different elements he included in his run.

[seaweedstarshine]

[QUESTION: I'm wondering, when watching Doctor Who, could the Doctor could be diagnosed with ADHD?]

MATT SMITH: Probably, yeah. I mean, I probably can. Yeah, I mean I think the Doctor could be diagnosed with a lot of things. He’s a pretty strange, mad creature. He’s got a lot of alien afflictions, I’m sure. But yeah, why not! Why not.

Q&A Matt Smith Heroes Comic Con Brussels 2022

[seaweedstarshine]

Sometimes I think of Amy Pond, who grew up being called mad by those who wielded the word as a tool of exclusion and shame —

Amy Pond, who though forced into the hands of four psychiatrists, still clung to that which they called madness until those systems which elevate psychosocial conformity above humanity stripped it from her —

Amy Pond, whose imaginary friend reappeared for a single hour after twelve years and reignited that faith before disappearing for two more years —

Amy Pond, who spent those those two years under the same implicit threat ingrained in her through psychiatric violence, and thus began to believe the man who stopped the invasion was “just a madman with a box,” only for him to agree, and to also call her “mad, impossible Amy Pond,” reframing madness as non-negative for the first time in her life —

Amy Pond, who ignored the disembodied voice of her imaginary friend even as she ran away with him for real, who still lived each day with the traumatic internalization of deviancy dictated upon her by the psychiatric-industrial complex that shaped her from childhood —

Amy Pond, who wouldn't acknowledge the Doctor's voice, such that it took an Angel in her eye that was literally killing her to ensure she couldn't reality check herself —

Amy Pond, who stood before a room which muttered about “the psychiatrists we brought her to,” and though afraid, escaped their rigid parameters of acceptable existence.

[seaweedstarshine]

Rewatching my favorite Christmas special and I cannot get over “Psych*tic Potato Dwarf” as an insult from a person who — canonically — according to sources from the same writer — often hears voices that he has trouble distinguishing from reality. It's not just the one line, it's the fact that it’s the title of Strax’s theme! I always wanna call it out 😭, which works out in my The Snowmen-era Eleventh Doctor fanfictions because Strax is a nurse and would know what that word means.

Like, it does unfortunately fit the character because Gallifreyan culture is — canonically — systematically exclusionary of mentally ill people, and the Eleventh Doctor — canonically — hates himself more than anyone in the universe. But the choice?

[seaweedstarshine]

Oh don't mind me. Just paging through A Brief History of the Time Lords thinking about “mad” actually a being a legal education clinical official term on Gallifrey, in the context of “madman with a box”…

[ao3feed-doctorwho]

Comprendre

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3gD4WHi

by Amaeliss

Juste un échange entre Eleven et Amy, avec une bonne dose de neurodivergent!Doctor parce que je peux pas m'en empêcher.

Words: 476, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Français

Series: Part 1 of Twitter Ficlets

Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Characters: Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond (Doctor Who)

Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Amy Pond

Additional Tags: I will fight for this headcanon, Neurodivergent Doctor (Doctor Who), Neurodiversity, Autistic Doctor (Doctor Who), ? - Freeform, Français | French

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3gD4WHi