#Anti River Song

[variousqueerthings]

genuinely may have to make a tag for river song, because I know I'm a minority in the way I feel about her writing and place in the story, and I really feel so very negatively about the character as functioning to be The Most Special Of The Show and how that diminishes every other character (noticeably not created by moffat).

even the episode order of her first appearance -- library right after the doctor's daughter, yes it feels like the latest in a long list of people the doctor sees die and that's how ten's narrative tends to go, but it's only truly affecting because she is going to be more special than any of the others the doctor has witnessed the deaths of, honest, and you can tell because of the screwdriver and because she "knows the doctor's true name" which is hinted at as being only for the most important person in the doctor's life, and the most important person is not just romantic, it's the person the doctor marries Spoilers Wait And See It's All So Romantic Honest

and they're going to get married and it will be sad, promise, so feel sad now, because this is deeper -- deeper than rose, deeper than martha, deeper than donna, deeper than jack, deeper than jenny, deeper than the master, deeper than any classic companion or nu!who companion... and it's deeper because it's been stated to be deeper for some reason or other, which is the same as writing a narrative I guess

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

Nine and Ten going absolutely insane every time Rose, Martha, Donna were in danger

vs

River having to break her wrist to get out of the angel’s grasp b/c Eleven wouldn’t help her  😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭

[oswinpond]

re: your tags on that river post; going to be super mean and say most of eleven’s era is downright boring/unwatchable until the ponds and river leave and clara joins him 🫣

I lowkey agree... I mean I adore Amy and Rory and their relationship with Eleven despite some gripes, like the non-existen love triangle that just wouldn't quit. And s5 is decent, even if the ending is a mess and Amy's characterization is a bit spotty, but s6 is just awful IMO. With the exception of The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, I'm never going to rewatch it. It's where River gets totally ruined and it drags down Amy and Rory in the process, and some parts of it are a bit disgusting and maybe that's a rant for later. And by ruining River, it makes me dread seeing her in s5, which takes that season down a notch in hindsight. By 7A, it feels like Moffat didn't know what to do with Amy and Rory anymore.

Then 7B is such a breath of fresh air. I don't get the hate for it at all; the only episode I consider weak is the Crimson Horror. Eleven is at his most enjoyable and least gimmicky (and best dressed lol), the episodes are generally really fun and some of them truly unique, the Impossible Girl mystery ties them all together nicely with a great ending that a lot of people misunderstand completely. It's like Moffat found his footing again, getting him ready for the spectacular s8-s9 Capaldi run.

It's saying something that 6/10 of my favourite Eleven episodes are in 7B.

[unastar47]

So, bad news, Hell Site has found out that I like Doctor Who and now won’t stop recommending posts about R!ver $ong.

[stars-and-darkness]

i was forced to look at river song in my archaeology and media course, ten dead, fifteen injured

[fatum679]

On the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of the year 130 AC

Daemon ripped off his nephew’s helm and drove the sword down into his blind eye, so hard the point came out the back of the young prince’s throat. Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water that was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower. Neither man nor dragon could have survived such an impact, the fisherfolk who saw it said. Prince Aemond had only turned twenty.

The end came when a crossbow bolt nicked one of the dragon’s eyes. Half-blind, and maddened by a dozen lesser wounds, Dreamfyre spread her wings and flew straight up at the great dome above in a last desperate attempt to break into the open sky.

Helaena Targarye threw herself from her window in Maegor’s Holdfast to die impaled upon the iron spikes that lined the dry moat below. Helaena’s end had been mercifully swift: one of the spikes took her through the throat and she died without a sound. She was but one-and-twenty.

The Blood Wyrm’s jaws closed about Vhagar’s neck, her black teeth sinking deep into the flesh of the larger dragon. Even as Vhagar’s claws raked her belly open and Vhagar’s own teeth ripped away a wing, Caraxes bit deeper, worrying at the wound as the lake rushed up below them with terrible speed.

Aemond & Helaena Dreamfyre & Vhagar

[khruschevshoe]

Just rewatched The Girl In the Fireplace for the first time in about nine years and Steven Moffat really read the Time Traveller's Wife one time and decided that every single woman companion he was going to write on the show (with the exception of Bill, and since she's a lesbian, she literally couldn't fall for the Doctor) was going to meet the Doctor as a child and then fall in love with him later on, didn't he? Reinette snogged him when she met him as an adult. Amy snogged him the day before she was getting married. River had, well, every single thing about her arc, birth to death. Even Clara, after being introduced as just friends, is revealed to have met the Doctor as a teenager and then is revealed to fancy him in the regeneration episode. Like, it's an absolutely bizarre and a little bit uncomfortable recurring plot point that these women met a man briefly as a child, imprinted on him, and fell in love/had a sexual interest in him/were obsessed with him as an adult, making large portions of their lives from childhood revolve around this man. Like...a bit of a yikes.

[drakaripykiros130ac]

It kind of amuses me to think that Borros Baratheon only agreed to help the greens in exchange for a marriage pact between Aemond and one of his daughters…which never happened, and Aemond took a witch as his paramour.

So it baffles me that he continued to support the greens.

I mean, I’ve seen TG stans complain that it makes no sense for the Velaryons to continue to support the Blacks. It kind of does.

The Targaryens and the Velaryons have always been close, regardless of whatever disagreements or problems they may have had in the past. They are kin. Cousins. They share Valyrian blood and common cause. Corlys and Rhaenys’ grandchildren (adoptive and biological) belong to Team Black. And whatever may have happened between Corlys, Rhaenys, Rhaenyra and Daemon, they all realize that they have bigger fish to fry, the real threat: the Hightowers. You know, the ones who schemed and pushed Corlys and Rhaenys’ daughter Laena aside in favor of Alicent. While Corlys and Rhaenys openly proposed their daughter Laena as a suitable bride before the King and the Council, Otto Hightower schemed with his daughter behind closed doors in the most shameful way possible to achieve their goal. Why on Earth would the Velaryons side with a vassal Andal House who schemed to humiliate Laena and crown a girl way inferior to her as Queen?

The Velaryons supporting the Blacks makes perfect sense.

Borros Baratheon supporting the greens after he admitted the only reason he was doing it was for that marriage pact…makes zero sense. He is the biggest fool in this civil war, as far as I am concerned. He has “loser” written all over his face.

[furinkan-high-school-kendo-club]

Saw "Boom." It's the best episode of Doctor Who since "The Husbands of River Song."

Steven Moffat was an iffy showrunner, but he's always been the best NuWho writer (except maybe Gaiman). This is one of his great episodes.

If you were wondering if Doctor Who was back after the wilderness of the Chibnall years, this is proof it is.

Also, loved the dead-on anticapitalism and The Doctor's atheism.

[paxbe]

steven moffat has a lot to answer for in his poor writing of women but his worst crime is what he did to river song

he took a very cool and interesting woman with an unexplored plotline that had limitless potential and turned her into another of his two-dimensional sexy-woman-who-could-shoot-you archetypes. her plotline also falls victim one of his repeated attempts to craft an exciting mystery with a plot twist which ended up being needlessly convoluted and somehow condescending almost, by neglecting to give river her own meaningful journey and centring her existence around creating puzzles for the doctor to solve

[variousqueerthings]

the thing is I do quite like individual stephen moffat episodes, I think they're good episodes. they get less good when you start to see patterns of writing and how he has a tendency of beating a dead horse + ongoing sexism which may be missed in one episode, but becomes very clear through repetition, but if one considers them as one-offs they're Neat bits of writing. it's when he tries to make it longform that it all falls to pieces for me and reverberates back. his lore is a mess and consequently so are his characters if one spends more than an episode or two with them.

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

Nine and Ten talking to literally the most random person:

You are so important! Humans oh how I love you!

Nine and Ten interacting with Rose/Martha/Donna like 95% of the time:

🧡 🥰 😀 🧡 🥰 😀 🧡

Eleven talking to River in the episode they get married:

It's not funny, River. Reality is fatally compromised. Tell me you understand that.

I don't want to marry you.

River! River, this is ridiculous. That would mean nothing to anyone. It's insane. Worse, it's stupid. You embarrass me.

[toocabaret]

you know what i’m actually pissed that i had to sit through so much bullshit with river song and the constant confirming and reconfirming of her relationship with the doctor, the not-quite-platonic nature of ALL previous female companions with the doctor and the frequent pulpy lampshading of doctor who’s flirting relationship with sexuality only to have 13 be completely sexless. it is so obvious that they were terrified to put a foot wrong with the first woman and so gave her nothing so no one could criticise them, without realising that distinction would read as so infantilising and sterile.

It’s actually worse than that because they explicitly gave her a romance subplot, but were too cowardly to see it through. i don’t think i should have to sit through so much overt romanticism with previous male doctors to have a canon wlw doctor baited and then abandoned at the last minute. it undermines all the other positive messages of the show in my opinion

[layaboutace]

Clara Oswald and River Song are strange in that they are completely unrelated characters, yet have similar character traits and a unique relationship with the doctor. they are also similar in their rather inconsistent writing, with Clara having a terrible opening and disappointing ending, with an amazing in-between, and River having an amazing opening and ending, while having a terrible in-between.

clara was so disappointing from her first episodes, zero chemistry with matt smith and just a terrible plot line that showed absolutely nothing about her personality, she was so underdeveloped that they could simply switch her job from nanny to teacher out of nowhere and nothing would change. however when the 12th doctor showed up, its almost like she regenerated as well into a better more realistic character! not only does she have an entire seen life outside of the doctor, but the doctor effects her and brings out her worst character traits. she tries to be like the doctor and her curiosity becomes carelessness and her sharp wit becomes pathologic lying to her boyfriend, she becomes reckless and somewhat cruel, immitating the man that she used to criticize for having those traits, she becomes addicted to traveling with the doctor, and to the doctor himself. its very interesting in how it effects the doctor as well, because no matter how deep clara gets into her dark side, the doctor is always by her side, helping her, even when she betrays him, even when she does something stupid, hes always read to be by her side. their dynamic is complex and in many ways toxic, and its very interesting! the ending of season 8, with clara lying to the doctor about danny coming back, and the doctor lying to clara about finding gallifrey, would have been a perfect ending, its them looking at each other and hugging, to hide their true faces, what the doctor had taught clara to do. last Christmas, the season 8 Christmas special, would have also been a perfect ending, the doctor and clara going on one last adventure in a dream, and the doctor reuniting with an old clara was beautiful, as the two opened up to each other about their lies. then it didn't end and surprise its another dream shes actually young. i don't like this at all, but i really like what they did at the end of season 9. face the raven is claras 3rd perfect ending, its the drastic conclusion to all the negative traits her relationship with the doctor has brought out in her, and she pays the price for it, dying tragically attempting to be clever. and then it doesn't end. heaven sent was a perfect finale for this, with the doctor battling with grief before overcoming it. except he didn't now its time for hell bent, and messy conclusion with some of moffats worst moffatisms all in one episode with messy themes and a terrible ending. i like the idea of clara traveling on her own, I don't like her evading death, yes she will die eventually, but still becoming doctorlike wasn't her end, it brought her to come back and then mess with the mind wipe device, making the doctor forget about her, she in the end is rewarded with effective immorality and a tardis of her own for being like the doctor. the doctor isn't even rewarded for being like the doctor thats often what makes him so lonely! its so sad because she had 3 perfect outs and for her actual ending it was completely flubbed of any thematic closure for a happy ending with immortal clara.

Similarly, river song has a rocky history of quality. silence in the library is an amazing opening, and it perfectly sets her up as an engematic reccuring character by making you ask the right questions while making her an actual intriguing character, unlike season 7b clara who often came across as a plot device. however after that she completely falls apart. she is a femme fatal written by a straight man who wants her to step on him. she is in love with the doctor and her whole life revolves around him and she lives for the few days she sees him and she loves him so. she have zero chemistry with matt smith, something she shares with most people interacting with matt smith, so I don't buy their Romance, I don't buy that they did the dirty, seriously i hate that in season 5 11 was pretty definitively asexual but after that hes kissing lesbians without consent and making innuendos with his sonic screwdriver! Her story is also makes no sense, its overly complicated the way moffat loves to write things and has zero emotional payoff. her being amy and rorys kid is something that i don't like as a concept, but if it was done well i could roll with it, but its not done well and has zero emotional pay off for anyone involved. this is compounded by the second twist that mels, Amy and Rorys best friend since childhood who was literally never mentioned until now, is actually river, who can regenerate! not only do amy and rory not have a reaction to it, but afterwards its just never mentioned and they just roll with it??? its just incredibly poor writing, im sure river is better written in the big finish stories, but in the actual stories, shes one of the most poorly written characters in the show. however, she has an amazing ending. the husbands of river song is an amazing episode that shows river as a character who has an interesting life outside of the doctor, she has amazing chemistry with capaldi, and is just a really fun episode, with a sad but satisfying ending to rivers story. honestly both these characters suffer from some of moffats worst qualities in his writing, and while i would say river got the worse end of the stick, clara is still let down by her terrible introduction and ending

[witchy-v1xen]

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