#*some guy being john dorney not anon

[quantumshade]

Just so you know, you can’t ship NineRose romantically. Nine is canonically Aromantic.

sorry i don’t take things as canon if they’re written by the same guy who wrote river song sexually assaulting five.

partly joking but not really. the way big finish wrote this story has one episode call the doctor aro (by john dorney, mentioned above), and have him solve the problem of the episode with his lack of romantic attraction, and two episodes later (by tim foley, who i also have beef with) basically has nine and river call their relationship romantic.

i know being aromantic is a spectrum and something complicated and different to each individual, and i would love it if the show (or surrounding media) made an effort to explore this with the doctor, but i. don't think it's done super well here. like. on one hand it could be saying nine didn't love rose*, which i dislike and also goes against what we see in the show, or it could be saying he needed to just Meet The Right Person, which i also dislike for very obvious reasons. and either way you slice it, it confirms the doctor has feelings in the future for river (which i agree with) but it basically says the only reason the doctor doesn’t have those feelings Now is because he’s aro (with the implication of “aro For Now”). not because he. yknow. just met her. or he just got out of the time war and he hates himself. dorney just kind of bungles it, which is very disappointing because nineriver could be such an interesting dynamic, romantic or not.

i guess i just do fundamentally disagree that the doctor’s sexuality really changes all that much body to body so it really ends up feeling like “he just hasn’t Met The Right Person Yet”.

*if you personally don't think this love is romantic then that's totally fine! if you prefer to read them as queerplatonic partners or what have you then you absolutely should. personally i do think it's romantic love -- specifically allegorical queer romantic love, given how it's written in the show -- and i don't think it's a moral wrong to read it that way.

tl;dr i dislike this writer and how he handled nine and river's relationship and i think how he handled nine's romantic attraction (or lack thereof) specifically in Swipe Right really kind of sucks. that story alone contradicts the doctor being aromantic by saying that they feel romantic attraction in the future, and then the third episode in the set by foley also contradicts the doctor being aro in the present. i know stuff with sexuality can change over time, but that doesn't really feel like what was being done here. it feels more like the stereotypical thing a lot of media does that basically says aromanticism has to be fixed or is a temporary thing.

i also think telling people they can't say two characters were in gay love because of a pseudocanon side story most people have not listened to and costs a lot of money is a weird way to interact with people you don't know on the internet. i like romantic readings of doctorrose and doctorriver, sue me.