#amy pond growing up

[khruschevshoe]

My Complicated Feelings on Angels Take Manhattan/How Amy's Story Should Have Ended

You know I think the reason why Angels Take Manhattan has always felt off to me (other than the logical gaps/statue of liberty Weeping angel/why couldn't eleven just fly to New Jersey in the 1940s and then just bus in) is that all of Amy's arc up literally beginning in Eleventh Hour/Amy's Choice going through God Complex and Dinosaurs In A Spaceship and the Power of Three feels like it's building up to Amy finally choosing her domestic life/growing up over travelling with the Doctor. Like, it feels like it's building up to a "Martha leaves the Doctor" type ending where Amy decides to choose her normal life and growing up over the Doctor, the kind of situation where he will always be her friend but that she has decided to make her life in the here and now. Something that might feel bittersweet, but ultimately satisfying.

But instead Angels Take Manhattan is about the Doctor and Amy/Rory getting ripped apart ala Ten/Rose or Ten&Donna and it just doesn't quite fit right? Like, Amy gets to choose to stay with Rory but it's framed as more of a tragedy from the Doctor's end? And it's still a repeat of the whole "Rory died so I won't live a life without him" dilemma in Amy's Choice rather than "I choose to grow up on my own terms of my own free will." Like, they were attempting the "choosing to grow up" bit with the final afterword by Amelia Williams part of the story but Rory doesn't get to make a choice over anything. He gets no agency. Hell, Amy doesn't get to choose the life she and Rory were building for themselves so carefully in the Power of Three- that gets ripped away from her, too.

I honestly love the storyline that Amy and Rory and Eleven had, buried between all of the Silence plots and the weird way it ended. I liked the idea of growing up and choosing to settle down while still keeping friends with the stars. And I feel like the need to make their ending tragic kind of undercut some of the impact that Amy getting to make her choice to build something of her own and choose that could have had.

[achroma-dw]

2011 called they want them

[quietwingsinthesky]

once again. i am thinking about an alternate end of time ending where the master joins up with the doctor on the tardis, but now specifically, an au where the doctor still ends up regenerating and crashlanding in amy's backyard. au where the doctor doesn't show up 12 years late because two timelords piloting a tardis is (marginally) better than one, and now amelia pond is going on adventures in time and space in the care of the two least qualified being in the history of the universe to take care of a seven year old.

[spongek-squidge]

Amy and Rory (post Angel incident): *going about their day* *see a crowd surrounding the town square* *go to investigate*

Amy and Rory: Sigh

River, who is currently tied to a chair after disrespecting the local government and priest and stealing some of their valuables (the gov and priest and corrupt the and valuables are alien tech): Hi mum, hi dad :D

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

this is the cheesiest thing ive ever written but i dont care

[dylanlila]

THE OWNER OF THE HOUSE OF LOVE

[wavebiders]

lrt what's ironic about 7a being a favorite of mine now is that I love it for the same reason young me struggled with it

[transmasc-rose]

Still finishing this and the others up, but since AU characters are allowed on Art Fight I'm adding the Silent Ponds. Which I haven't talked much about here.

I'm @/AnxiousHare on Artfight! >:)

Brief(ish) AU summary: Amy and Rory were taken as kids by Madame Korvarian and were raised to catch/kill the Doctor with Mels/River Song. They succeed in capturing the Doctor using Amy as a "lure", but he isn't killed immediately for research purposes.

Life is very poor for the Doctor there, but he doesn't want to leave without Amy, and Amy keeps petitioning for the Doctor to be kept around due to her own attachment to him.

After Amy has and loses Melody (Korvarian brings Melody back to her past self, kick-starting the events of the AU in its own little paradox), Amy, Rory, and Mels take the Doctor and run away in the TARDIS.

[gnougnouss]

Four hours ago I saw someone saying Amy is written misogynistically because her entire character is about Rory and I have yet to recover from the either absolute bad faith or utter lack of reading comprehension that I experienced second hand here

[macbethz]

Photoshopped Amy and Rory grave in the middle of this deadly tragic episode is always so fucking funny. Spent all the fake rock budget on the angels huh

[killjoygem]

Currently obsessed with both Speak Now (TS album) and Doctor Who, which means every Speak Now song is a dr who song now

[khruschevshoe]

Hello! You recently posted a 11th doctor analysis/critique(?) post and I really want to post my point of view and such and maybe start a sort of discussion? You obviously wouldn't have to respond! I don't even know if I'd respond, I'm not good with conversations. I just kinda want to get your permission I guess, because I really don't mean what I'd write as hate and maybe you just made this as a sort of vent/your opinion post and don't actually want anyone to discuss it.

Here's the post in question btw.

Hey, I totally wouldn't mind you responding and I would love to see your opinion (especially since you were so polite about it) but I'm going to be completely honest: my opinions on Eleven's arc have already changed somewhat since I wrote it! I've been reading a lot of analysis of his era recently and I've been getting a better overall view of his arc all the way through the end of it entirely. Though I still agree with some of the points that I made regarding kindness v. cruelty and agency, I feel like they only apply to the Pond era specifically, and even then it's a bit more nuanced than I wrote it, more about the framing of the end of their arc by the writers rather than choices by the characters themselves. Taking into consideration his entire arc/era I think softens the thematic arc I wrote about, though once again framing in the Time of the Doctor kind of posing Eleven as this sort of god-like all-important figure gets a bit dialled up (though tbh regeneration episodes tend to be a bit sloppy on that front in general, and I think my problem with the Time of the Doctor has less to do with framing/these themes specifically and more to do with the fact that we don't really get any emotional investment in the town of Christmas from a character point of view making it feel a bit less impactful from a character-driven v. plot-driven writing lens).

Still, even with my (personal, subjective) critiques of the Time of the Doctor and the Day of the Doctor from a writing point of view, I do have to say that rewatching them, they posit Eleven where I wanted to see him all along: as a Doctor driven by kindness. As a Doctor who looks at his trauma and his past and says "no more." No one else will get hurt by what happened.

I still don't like Angels Take Manhattan and I still really, really hate how the River Song arc played out in A Good Man Goes to War/Let's Kill Hitler (I think I might have made a post about it but I can't quite remember) and I personally think that a better ending for the Ponds would have been for them to decide to stop travelling with the Doctor on their own for character arc reasons, but I think that by the end of Eleven's era, we get to see the Doctor from the Beast Below. We get to see all that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made him kind. I think even if I have some questions about the exact details of how it plays out, we get a return to theme. We get an Eleven that sacrifices his life for someone else. We get The Doctor, a man who comes to heal.

I'm sorry if this came out a bit rambling; I think that reflects the more nuanced, messy opinion I have on Eleven's era now. And I think that as I've grown older and read more critiques and analysises of every era of Doctor Who, that's how I've begun to feel about every era of the show. Season 3 might be my favorite season of the show, but you cannot deny the antiblack undertones of the writing of both Mickey and Martha (despite how much I love their arcs). While I still am not a fan of the way that the narrative takes agency away from Amy and River in Season 6 (and the way that the narrative framing posits River Song and Clara as being "born to save/kill the Doctor"), I now really, really love the Pandorica Opens/Big Bang as well as several other episodes of Eleven's era that gave me a sour taste in my mouth as a teenager. I like Season 8 Clara's arc more than I used to, especially when it made me quit watching back in the day (even if I think that Danny deserves better). I think that Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is an amazing finale, my third favorite of the show (proving an old opinion that I tend to dislike Moffat finales wrong), but I don't think that Season 9 is the strongest lead-up for it. Season 10 is my third favorite season of the show (though I do question the fact that both of Moffat's black companions get turned into Cybermen). I honestly think that many episodes of Thirteen's era are well-written (Demons of the Punjab, the Witchfinders, and Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror are classic episodes of all time for me) or were, like, one tweak away from brilliance and that though there are a few stinkers (Kerblam, I hate you with a burning passion) every showrunner has a few stinkers under their belt (Girl in the Fireplace, Let's Kill Hitler, Kill the Moon, for example). I even think the Timeless Child is not as bad as I think it once was (I think the Cybermasters might actually be the worst part of that episode). I think that the 50th anniversary and the Power of the Doctor are better celebrations of the show than the 60th anniversary specials.

And none of that I would have thought a couple of months ago, much less nine years ago when I first quit the show. But that's the value of time and thought; you gain more nuance if you're willing to think about something long and hard enough.

Once again, I'm so sorry for rambling; I've been trying to find a way to put all of these messy thoughts together for awhile now and your ask gave me the place to do so. Thank you for that.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, though! Please feel free to start a dialogue/write your own response/etc.

[ania-tyler]

I love Amy.

I can never decide if I prefere her or Rose.

I think it's sad how she got cut off so roughly in the middle of a season. I wish we had more episodes with her.

But, as Doctor Who is a show that, by essence, never stops changing and developing, I must admet that her ending is actually pretty good and she leaves with her act completed, finally grown up...

And it become sad when you remember the nightmare Doctor (you know what I mean... in Amy's choice episode). He says: "Your friends never see you again once they've grown up. The old man prefers the company of the young, does he not?"

(plus it's been around 10 years now, but leave me alone😂).

[quietwingsinthesky]

i do love canon amy & rory but god, does some part of me wish they really had gone with the idea of the doctor picking up a child as a companion (and then later, that child’s best friend with a huge crush on her.) with the rest of the season really not changing at all, except now it’s amelia pond with an angel in her head killing her and lost alone in the woods. it’s little rory who dies and is forgotten and becomes a toy soldier. if this is going to be a fairy tale, then let it be one. children have never been safe in fairy tales.

[songprof]

current struggle in putting together my ideas for this portrayal is being unable to decide just how chaotically divergent i wanna get

[reasonsforhope]

A reef that has been degraded—whether by coral bleaching or disease—can’t support the same diversity of species and has a much quieter, less rich soundscape.

But new research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows that sound could potentially be a vital tool in the effort to restore coral reefs.

A healthy coral reef is noisy, full of the croaks, purrs, and grunts of various fishes and the crackling of snapping shrimp. Scientists believe that coral larvae use this symphony of sounds to help them determine where they should live and grow.

So, replaying healthy reef sounds can encourage new life in damaged or degraded reefs.

In a paper published last week in Royal Society Open Science, the Woods Hole researchers showed that broadcasting the soundscape of a healthy reef caused coral larvae to settle at significantly higher rates—up to seven times more often.

“What we’re showing is that you can actively induce coral settlement by playing sounds,” said Nadège Aoki, a doctoral candidate at WHOI and first author on the paper.

“You can go to a reef that is degraded in some way and add in the sounds of biological activity from a healthy reef, potentially helping this really important step in the coral life cycle.”

Corals are immobile as adults, so the larval stage is their only opportunity to select a good habitat. They swim or drift with the currents, seeking the right conditions to settle out of the water column and affix themselves to the seabed. Previous research has shown that chemical and light cues can influence that decision, but Aoki and her colleagues demonstrate that the soundscape also plays a major role in where corals settle.

The researchers ran the same experiment twice in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2022. They collected larvae from Porites astreoides, a hardy species commonly known as mustard hill coral thanks to its lumpy shape and yellow color and distributed them in cups at three reefs along the southern coast of St. John. One of those reefs, Tektite, is relatively healthy. The other two, Cocoloba and Salt Pond, are more degraded with sparse coral cover and fewer fish.

At Salt Pond, Aoki and her colleagues installed an underwater speaker system and placed cups of larvae at distances of one, five, 10, and 30 meters from the speakers. They broadcast healthy reef sounds – recorded at Tektite in 2013 – for three nights. They set up similar installations at the other two reefs but didn’t play any sounds.

When they collected the cups, the researchers found that significantly more coral larvae had settled in the cups at Salt Pond than the other two reefs. On average, coral larvae settled at rates 1.7 times (and up to 7x) higher with the enriched sound environment.

The highest settlement rates were at five meters from the speakers, but even the cups placed 30 meters away had more larvae settling to the bottom than at Cocoloba and Tektite.

“The fact that settlement is consistently decreasing with distance from the speaker, when all else is kept constant, is particularly important because it shows that these changes are due to the added sound and not other factors,” said Aran Mooney, a marine biologist at WHOI and lead author on the paper.

“This gives us a new tool in the toolbox for potentially rebuilding a reef.”

Adding the audio is a process that would be relatively simple to implement, too.

“Replicating an acoustic environment is actually quite easy compared to replicating the reef chemical and microbial cues which also play a role in where corals choose to settle,” said Amy Apprill, a microbial ecologist at WHOI and a co-author on the paper.

“It appears to be one of the most scalable tools that can be applied to rebuild reefs, so we’re really excited about that potential.”"

-via Good News Network, March 17, 2024