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reachexceedinggrasp · 2 months

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Danny 'I don't do weird' Pink frustrates me as a character, because I'm honestly not sure whether he was supposed to have an arc or not.

His primary role is as a foil for Clara's arc and, in aid of that, as a mirror to the Doctor. A solider with survivor's guilt and a man of action who can't stand by when people need help etc., in some ways he and the Doctor have a lot in common, but he's also a very grounded and circumspect personality versus the Doctor's being fantastical and adventurous. Danny isn't curious and doesn't want to pursue new things or experiences, instead he wants to be fully present with and grateful for what he already has. The Doctor is incorrigibly curious and always interested in new things.

Danny is someone who desires nothing more than an ordinary life, and looks for beauty and satisfaction in the normal things and people around him. He wants his world to be small and quiet, he values the mundane things others might take for granted. He's normal, patient, dependable, simple, honest, etc. His reaction to trauma hasn't been to disavow the things which lead him to that event, or to seek out stimulation to avoid thinking about it, it's to be thoughtful and cautious and somewhat rigid so he can always apply the mindset and skills he retained from before he was traumatised.

He's very firm and unbending in his worldview and in his self-image. He doesn't seem to ever reassess people once he's decided what he thinks of them. He's not unreasonable or unwilling to compromise, he is in fact maybe too reasonable, but he is implastic. He's extremely even-tempered except for around his identity as a soldier, which he's prickly about, but still pretty quick to let it go as long as he's not being deliberately antagonised.

So anyway Danny represents this other path, and this opposite response to the horror of war and making a catastrophic mistake, but he never learns, he never grows and he and Clara are never much on the same wavelength about anything. He's supposed to be stability, the things she 'should' want, the 'person she's supposed to like', the safe choice, the presentable life which Clara feels like she has to have. He's orderly and ordinary and that's what she wants from him. She has to control her image, her future, and her options.

And their simple relationship, once it exists, functions well as the contrast to her complicated and tumultuous relationship with the Doctor while the companion power dynamic is being dismantled and rebuilt so they can be emotional equals. But like, the set up is confusingly executed.

Listen- they have zero chemistry, they have nothing to talk about and have to resort to talking about work, every conversation goes instantly off the rails, they rub each other the wrong way, there is never any reason for them to keep reconciling and trying again to connect. Like. You are not hitting it off! and keep offending each other bc you're not compatible! Quit!!

Clara is forcing it, that makes complete sense with what she's going through, she's trying to take control of her life and her emotions, trying to prove to herself she's not pining for the Doctor and at the mercy of his whims for her life to be full and complete. She doesn't want to need him or to be dependant on him. She doesn't want to be the heartbroken sadsack whom he abandoned at Christmas or who will take whatever scraps he'll throw her. She wants to control his position in her life and control how she feels about him. Hence her assigning him a specific day and confining their adventures on her own terms. She's trying to keep the Doctor compartmentalised. Having an Appropriate Human Relationship means she's successfully put the Doctor in his box (lol) and neutralised the chaotic power of her feelings for him. I mean, obviously not, but that's what she tells herself.

But what is Danny doing? Why does he keep pursuing this when it's so clearly not a good match?

Again in Listen, and much more so The Caretaker, Danny illustrates that he does not know who Clara is, he's wildly wrong about her and what she's like, and he's very high handed about it as well. He's convinced that the Doctor is taking advantage of her, that the Doctor is domineering in their relationship, that she is not a person who wants to be put into challenging or dangerous positions, that the Doctor is pushing her to takes risks and become a leader where that's not her nature. None of this is true. Clara was always a decisive, assertive, strongly driven person who seeks out new experiences and naturally assumes a leadership role any time that's necessary; she relishes being challenged and facing the unknown. Her blow up with the Doctor wasn't about him 'pushing her too far', it was about him failing to support her when she needed him and condescending to her as a human rather than treating her with the intimacy and equity their bond and history together demands. It's personal and it's about their emotional relationship. It's not about making hard choices, it's about having to make hard choices without her partner being honest with and emotionally available to her.

Clara was always an adventurous person, willing to be spontaneous as long as it's on her terms, and excited by the prospect of authority and responsibility. The danger and challenge isn't an unfortunate side effect or a risk she has to take to see amazing sights, it's part of the appeal. She lied to Danny by omission when she said she went off in the box to 'see wonders', not just because the real reason is that she's in love with Doctor, but also because she doesn't just want to be a tourist. She wants to get involved and save people, she wants things to sometimes go pear shaped. She enjoys and craves that part of it too.

Danny is also wildly wrong about the Doctor, but this is understandable and would be fine except that he's never corrected? He never learns better? What's the point?

In Death in Heaven Danny goes out still wrong about the Doctor, still condemning him cruelly and unfairly while knowing nothing about him. He had a point with some of his original rant, there was actual insight there, but it's buried in assumptions and bitterness and then Danny keeps tripling down on the assumption. The one which doesn't understand that the very thing he's shitting on the Doctor for (being willing to lead and make hard choices that must be made in order to save people) is something the Doctor has in common with Clara. And always has. The Doctor didn't change her or push her into that, that's who she's always been.

What is the point of Danny calling him a blood-soaked general and mocking him, calling him an officer as a pejorative again, and again because the Doctor is trying to save the planet. Like, memory check, that's what Danny is mad about. The Doctor doing everything in his power to save literal billions of lives. Doing it for no reason, out of altruism. Doing it while always trying very hard not to fight or kill anyone. Doing it even at enormous spiritual cost to himself.

I don't understand how we're meant to find Danny sympathetic in that moment, because he comes off like a complete dickhead. And it's all the more frustrating because in the intervening episodes Danny has been eminently reasonable. As I've discussed before, we're exhaustively shown that Danny is 100% okay with what Clara claims is going on, that he doesn't want to get in the way of her friendship with the Doctor, that if it really were only the relationship she's pretending it is, there would be no conflict. He's the one who encourages her to make up with him after Kill the Moon! He tells her to go on travelling and it's fine!

Even when he discovers she's been lying to him and cavorting with the Doctor behind his back (again despite him telling her it was fine with him!), he's calm about it and repeats for the millionth time that all he wants from her is honesty. The truth. Which is the one thing she can't give him because Clara knows their entire relationship is built on the lie, they're only together because of the lie. The truth is, as Moffatt said, that Danny never stood a chance. There is a conflict between the two relationships and she's always going to choose the Doctor.

And that does come out, she gives the whole speech to Danny, not knowing it's him, finally being honest. And he seems unsurprised by it, which makes sense because on some level he definitely always knew ('do you love him?' 'no' 'really had enough of the lies'), but then nothing comes of that. Clara just soldiers on, going right back to pretending this relationship wasn't a façade doomed from the start, and Danny allows her to pretend. He goes off on the Doctor, but not in a way the Doctor actually deserves at all, and just sweeps her confession under the carpet. Letting her get away with it again. True to form, I guess! he always did. But shouldn't we make progress?

And it's like... I hate that he dies on that note. It feels like he dies in denial. I guess you could argue it contributes to his decision to not come back, but that feels like a disservice to the character. Saving the kid is important to Danny, it allows him to atone for his greatest mistake, but he didn't need to change or grow to accomplish that and it doesn't provide any closure to his actual role in the narrative, which was as Clara's foil. Clara is off the hook, free to go on lying to herself about their relationship. It's not addressed in Last Christmas, either, it's only barely hinted at.

#clara oswald #whouffaldi #dw #twelfth doctor #dw meta #I feel a constant need to remind people that the first thing Danny asks after Clara explains who the Doctor is #is 'do you love him?'#it's that transparent #and he asks already knowing the answer and immediately calling bullshit when she denies it #and apparently accepts this as not a threat to him on the basis of the Doctor being an untouchable alien incapable of loving her back #like as if she had a crush on a dragon or the Great Wall of China #I can't tell if that speaks to his lack of self worth or if it's just really patronising #I appreciate In the Forests of the Night so much for the scene where he finally realises he should be jealous #but then he's just Extremely Reasonable about it again #he has total faith in his idea of who Clara is- utter conviction #and it's completely misplaced #I feel owed the psychological fallout from this is all I'm saying #calling this meta is being very generous bc did I even say anything #but whatever it's a bunch of words I'll put it in the box with the other words #I've realised 95% of my whouffaldi meta is in tags on gifsets so

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yurious-george · 9 days

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4'33'', by John Cage, is commonly remembered as 4 and a half minutes of silence. But contrary to popular belief, the song is not actually meant to be the sound of silence, but the sound of quiet. Ambient noises contribute to - and consist of - the performance. True silence does not exist. If one tilts their head right, the whole world sings. and, with that said, a playlist.

yeah, this one's a doozy. hi, cubewatermelon and co. miss me?

rhetorical question. don't answer that.

A few nitty-gritty things out of the way, first. this is specifically intended for the 2018 mod team for the sleepless domain fans discord server, primarily cubewatermelon/mary cagle. Folks who knew me are welcome to look on, but I'm not going to do much to catch people up to speed. hi, everyone! hope you're well!

I also might be a bit disjointed or biased in my recollection. For reasons that will be made clear extremely soon, I can't put my childhood on a linear timeline. I can only express myself, and hope I don't mess it up horribly this time.

Noooowww to the big stuff. re: stalking; i genuinely didn't mean to stalk anyone, and when they told me to back off, i backed off. I am not willing to discuss this further. not being able to conceptualize other people's emotions or the consequences of my actions has caused some problems for me

that's an autism thing btw. im autistic i dont think i told anyone that

And now, the special guest you've all been waiting for: a big round of applause for the elephant in the room! In accordance with the WMA Declaration of Tokyo, the deliberate overprescription of psychotropic medication is a form of pharmacological torture. Most victims of pharmacological torture and experimentation are children, because it is nigh-impossible to sue for brain damage when there is no fully-formed adult brain for comparison prior to the abuse.

Torture is a strong word, but I don't have another word to use. psychiatric abuse usually describes mistreatment in psychiatric wards; pharmacological abuse describes a patient who takes advantage of a prescription; medical abuse is when a doctor (usually physically) abuses their patient. Being able to understand what happened to you is a form of agency, and I don't even have the words. I identify as a torture victim; this may change.

This high dose was precedented and legal, but the vaginal stretching of intersex infants is also legal. much involuntary psychiatric & psychotropic treatment (such as restraints and solitary confinement) are legal, and child marriage is legal. abuse is not abnormal: it is profoundly normal. Because something is normal, legal, and precedented does not prevent it from being torture.

and when your mother hands you a poison apple and says "here, eat this; it will be good for you; i hope someday you'll forgive me" you have to eat it, because you are eight years old and you don't get to argue with your mother. despite all this, I don't blame my aunt for refilling the high dose. when I said the dose was hurting me, she listened. (thank you, auntie. i wouldn't have gotten out without you.)

And this brings us to you. oh, you four. (five? i forget myself!)

I'd like to establish some context. I was used to things getting taken from me. friend groups in particular: I didn't expect to keep any friends, because I constantly expected to have to pack up and move on. I moved a lot in my childhood, and in Africa, i was constantly told that at some undetermined point in the near future, i'd have to go back to the states. living with my aunt was a temporary thing, i was expected to eventually move back in with my parents at some undetermined point in the future. I relied heavily on online friends because they were people I could have anywhere, so online communities were my only lifeline - not to mention, i was basically in solitary confinement while in Kenya.

Most of all, I was terrified of my mental health/actions being exposed, examined, found lacking, and ultimately excluded. (this is why i was so afraid of psychiatric wards.) When you decided something had to be done about me - cutting me off from the server so i had to speak with you - It was either comply with your demands to communicate (which I could not, and did not understand why) or lose the community. I was so, so afraid of you i wanted to die when you all confronted me, and of course i couldn't say that, because only manipulative people would say "your attempt to solve this problem makes me want to seriously hurt myself."

But then I got called manipulative anyway <3 yay <3

Seriously: I wasn't trying to manipulate anyone, and i have no idea how you can manipulate someone without intention. (ah, that felt good to say!) Between medication spellbinding, alexithymia, and prior abuse, all my thoughts were so disordered i genuinely couldn't explain myself most of the time. Looking back, I have no childhood memory where I was fully lucid. I leaned into a manic persona because it was the only way I had any agency at all. I was something beyond both reason and self-recognition, and I willingly tried to brute-force my way through an extreme trauma response to please you. And you still hit me with my worst nightmare. that's why i was mad at you lol

I was so, so afraid, all the time, and I didn't even have the tools to understand I was afraid. How could someone as confident and impulsive as me be so fearful all the time? Was that manic persona freedom? Or was it a longer leash?

(Forgive my impulse toward rhetoric. I shouldn't ask questions you can't answer.)

I also couldn't say how badly i was hurting, because that would be venting, but you also accused me of venting when I was just talking about my day? or what was on my mind? I didn't understand that very well. autism moment, don't bother explaining it now. I also couldn't burden people with my actual mental health problems, because making strangers deal with that would be toxic! I resent you for setting up a system where it seemed safest not to speak and then punishing me for my inability to communicate. I resent every system that set me up for failure and punished me for failing, including yours.

And yet - I know that was not your intent! I can see in retrospect how hard you tried to be kind using the tools you had. The people with power over me, who genuinely did not want to do me harm and gave me multiple second chances, still upheld and facilitated the systems that tortured me; a miniature parody of the psychiatric system. (talk therapy and communication are useless if you struggle with self-awareness.) The same is true for the source: No person in my psychiatric treatment wanted me to suffer, and yet, here I am: a torture victim without a torturer. (except my parents, sort of.)

The logical conclusion, then: the system only intends to heal those who are already compliant, or prioritize compliance. The rest of us are treated to induce compliance, and if we still cannot, we are sequestered away. My medicine made me sick, and my prescribers made money off of keeping me sick - off of my torture. This is not a conspiracy: it is my lived experience.

However, even if i could communicate perfectly, we still would have had massive communication issues. Like - you know that one page where ben and steffi talk about dating, and ben says he thought steffi was gay? and steffi gets super defensive and it escalates into a screaming fight? I found that offensive, because a character getting that offput by the concept of not liking men (or a man) is kind of lesbophobic! But I understood that it would be a pain to redraw/write the page so they they fight about something else, don't fight, or some other solution, so i didn't need it to be fixed - just wanted to point out that was a reasonable interpretation, and one to be aware of in the future. but somehow my concerns got interpreted as a phrasing issue…? like, Ms. Cagle rewrote the page to say "weren't into guys" instead of "gay"..? You were very polite about it, Ms! But I found this interaction so baffling I didn't even try to correct it. that… wasn't what i said…

frankly we should bring back mildly homophobic steffi. twas narratively appropriate (<- different essay for a different time)

but yeah the whole communication operation was doomed from the start. rip!

The issue was always my inability to communicate, but my meds made it nigh-impossible to understand what I was feeling, and when I did, expressing myself could get me institutionalized. My suffering was inevitable but always, somehow, my fault. Awesome! *disintegrates into a pile of sand*

I cannot deny I was a girl like a box of matches waiting to be struck. You had no choice but to do as you did. But is it really what you ought to have done? (On this, I have no answer. I hope you have one that satisfies you.)

(that was genuine, by the by. i've spent a lot of time pondering this mess, and I still haven't found the "right" answer. I don't think there is one - though action or inaction, there is no version of this story where I don't suffer. I can only hope it was worth it. wait, hold on *adds the omelas child to my Kin List*)

Nor can I deny making my previous open letter in a small attempt to 'get back' at you - i'm not above that. lord knows i'm not innocent. but i really was trying to channel that rage into something productive. unfortunately i was doomed to fail because i didn't know what i meant. if you showed me that letter now, you'd hear a lot of "what? I don't know why I said that" "i have no idea why i would complain about something so minor" etc. You can disregard all that. This is what I was trying to say. the obsession, the trauma, the projection: all of it. So much of my obsession was talking around an issue i couldn't identify.

(meguka image) I know now

I knew I would be traumatized by this whole situation. I saw it coming and i could do nothing to stop it. But Gear was crucial to deciphering all this - in fact, suddenly thinking about her last year prompted me to really dissect my medical situation and realize i was tortured. I couldn't have done it without her. cassie & maggie, against the world.

Gear scans surprisingly well as a victim of long-term torture, actually. I don't think you meant to do that but good job!

speaking of her - i still don't think she's consistently suicidal. she's a real cockroach of a character, and I love her for it! But sometimes, i want to die and i want to live mean the same thing, because they both mean i need to get out of here. Imo, her thought processes and desires frequently contradict themselves, like mine did. and making your favs kill themselves in increasingly gruesome ways is really fun catharsis!

But please don't take this to mean I consider myself - or Gear - blameless. I love her because she's not blameless, because she's cruel for fun, because she'd rather be wicked than helpless. Like knows like. What I mean to say is, as of 2018, there is a black space between little Margret and Gear, and I saw all the signs of something very, very bad happening in that space. I know because I shared that space. what I mean to say is, teenage girls don't go out of their minds over nothing. Everything I made here is just an expression of what I heard in the narrative's silences.

and thus my biggest apprehension around revisiting the comic. knowing the author and I have such fundamentally different experiences with mental health - what if the signs of torture i picked up on weren't intended, or i completely made them up? what if, in the parts i haven't read yet, there's information that uproots my entire interpretation, or berates her for refusing mental health services that hurt me profoundly? how do you reconcile that a character so crucial to deciphering yourself may not be anything like you at all? I Don't Know. Shitpost, probably

You're welcome to share those shitposts and whatnot by the way. Creating this let me put down years of hurt, and i hope it relieves you, too. I don't need to go back on the server, or forgiveness, or anything besides understanding. consider this a peace offering. the terms are yours.

Despite writing nearly 10k words, I still probably missed something or was callous or whatever. Self-expression and self-understanding are… new to me. My apology may be understated, but please take it as I meant it, with utmost sincerity. My askbox is open, and I'm more than happy to discuss antipsych resources, KB, What The Hell Is Wrong With Gear, artistic choices made in this comic, etc. I'm even down to reconnect on discord! Maybe. Uh, I'm conflicted. I reserve my right to not want to talk, be slow in responding, and so on, as should you. we've no obligations and all the time in the world. Let neither of us hurt ourselves in meeting because it's the "right" thing to do. I'm not blaming anyone or trying to start drama. If it would give you the most peace of mind to completely ignore this, please do so.

or, translated: as of right now, I'm not ready for any information about KB after steffi reunites with her dad, or difficult emotional reunions. I would really like to hear from everyone, and I'd appreciate casual well-wishes. I don't want things to be the same, I want them to be peaceful. Baby steps, cassie, baby steps. (very large and fearful prey animal tries not to run into oncoming traffic)

mostly, making this was for me. Perhaps I've said too much, but after spending so long unable to express myself freely, my art was cathartic and necessary. I'm no one's martyr or innocent, I'm just a torture victim trying to make sense of it all. I want to articulate some thoughts I couldn't figure out how to say before and make some silly things that make people laugh. Most of all, I'm happy in ways I never thought I could be, and I would like to share that joy with old acquaintances and other fans of a story I adored.

What I mean to say is: The train's about to leave the station, and there's an empty seat beside me. The train will still leave whether or not you board; but I would be honored not to go it alone!

Thank you to everyone who stuck by me even after the drama. Ethel, Felipe, Chris - even though we've fallen out of contact, your kindness and patience meant more than i can say. special thank you to @stars-in-a-jam-jar, the first person i confessed everything to after the smoke cleared, and someone i consider myself close with no matter how long we fall out of contact. My close online friends, @shafpanda, @theoandmoon, @dvanaestmrva, my honorary cousin @my-name-is-jimmy, and everyone else I confided in about my torture. and, of course, my partners @transloo and @teenyjellyfishy, and my little sibling, @aroacenezhaanddainsleif, the three people I love most in the world. Thank you, all. it is an honor to love you, and be loved by you.

#kiwi blitz #there's a lot more we could discuss. this barely scratched the surface #i didn't even MENTION barry and he's so important!#for now I'll just say: pain obfuscates everything outside of yourself #i still can't really conceptualize how yall feel about my actions other than 'probably bad?'#so i decided it was in the best taste to simply speak for myself #rather than put words in your mouth #i hope that's the right choice #it's funny. i thought i'd be angrier.#now there's just hope where my rage should be. how'd that happen?#torture tw #child torture tw #gore tw #medical abuse tw #psychiatric abuse tw #suicide tw #death tw #blood tw #abuse tw #parental abuse tw #child abuse tw #suicidal ideation tw #uhhh there's more probably. quite the laundry list here #also! you would express romantic attraction really strangely too #(as a severely undersocialized & completely manic lesbian teenager)#if you knew what happened to david kato.#not saying i was right obv. just saying.#ok back to never speaking of that again #this is cassandra

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