#anti tentoo

[afirewiel]

I've been seeing a lot of discourse about Rose and Tentoo on my dash lately and I thought I'd add my two cents. I have never been a fan of that ending for Rose. "He's Ten but human! He has Ten's memories!" That argument would hold a lot more weight if it weren't for the fact that earlier in the same season there was a clone of Martha who had Martha's memories and yet acted completely differently than Martha, showing that she was in fact not Martha but her own person. In the "Almost People" arc in season 6, we get a copy of Eleven with his memories, who again acts unlike Eleven and is his own person. In one of the new specials, we get copies of Fourteen and Donna, who also have their memories but are not them. So this whole "memories are what make the person" argument in Tentoo's favor just falls flat.

He had Ten's memories and yet still committed genocide. An act Ten was enraged at him for. So clearly they are in disagreement here, so Ten's memories didn't seem to do him any good as he still chose to do something Ten did not approve of. And why would anyone, least of all the Doctor, leave the woman he loves with a man who had just committed genocide!? It makes no sense to me for him to do that. If anything, one would have thought the Doctor would want to keep Rose as far away from Tentoo as possible after that.

"You changed me. You made me better. Now you can change him." Excuse me, Doctor, but it is not Rose's job to change him! She doesn't owe it to you, to him, or to anyone else to make make him better. She made you better by influence, not because she actively went "I can fix him." And expecting her to, is just wrong and that is not the healthy basis for a relationship.

The biggest reason, however, that I don't like this ending is that Rose wasn't given a choice. Ten didn't let her choose between him and Tentoo. He didn't tell her that Tentoo was human and then asked her if she wanted to stay and live her life with Tentoo. Nope. He told she was going to. "But she kissed Tentoo!" Only because he was the one who told her how he felt about her. Ten purposefully avoided answering her. And even after she kissed Tentoo and realized that Tardis was leaving with Ten and Donna in tow, she chased after them and looked heartbroken when she realized they were gone. Even RTD and Billie Piper have said that the ending was a cope out and that Rose wasn't given a choice. That if she had been, she would have chosen to return to the Tardis with Ten and Donna.

Perhaps if we had gotten a spin-off show about Rose and Tentoo's life, I could have warmed up to this ending, but we didn't. Instead all we got was Ten losing her again (this time of his own choosing) and then immediately losing Donna afterward and him being all alone. So yeah, not a happy ending in my book. If you like it, that's fine. I for one just cannot.

[captainswan618]

holy shit ok just watched the giggle.

1: HOLY FUCK HE ACTUALLY ADMITTED HE LOVED ROSE THANK YOU SO MUCHHHHH

I was literally ranting two days ago about how Ten never managed to actually confess to her!!! And then here comes Fourteen with a general level of emotional vulnerability and affection that we NEVER saw from Ten, and then Fifteen goes and just SAYS it AUGHHGJGHHHHH

2: So I absolutely loved the ending, don’t get me wrong. Fourteen settling down with Donna and her family is absolutely incredible, and I don’t want to diminish how important the centering of their platonic relationship was to me.

But god it was so reminiscent of Journey’s End, I couldn’t get it out of my head the entire time. I just kept thinking, like…this is what Rose’s end with Tentoo could have been.

Like…with Journey’s End, the main issues I had were:

Tentoo was literally a different person (including noticeable personality differences, like KILLING ALL OF THE DALEKS WITH NO REMORSE) thanks to Donna’s DNA.

The Doctor said some bullshit about it being Rose’s responsibility to ““fix”” Tentoo, as if her entire purpose was to rehabilitate him (which wouldn’t be necessary if he really was the same person but whatever), instead of having her own existence. (And he acted like she had actively set out to fix him before?? Instead of just having a positive impact on him in general, because that’s how people work???) He literally stranded her with someone who was “too dangerous to be left alone,” in the hopes that she would somehow…rein him in, I guess? I don’t really see how “too dangerous to be left alone” translates to “perfect person to spend your life with,” but whatever.

He never gave her a choice of where to go. He just told her she had to stay in Pete’s world with Tentoo, and didn’t ask what she wanted. And when he deliberately held back his confession and Tentoo didn’t, and she kissed Tentoo (because like yeah, obviously you pick the one that’s willing to actually TELL you how he feels!), he took that as an opportunity to leave before she could stop him. She kissed Tentoo, but that does NOT mean she consented to the Doctor just leaving her there, and you can see it in the distress on her face when she hears the TARDIS.

But the end of this episode had exactly none of those problems! For 1, the bi-generation really was Fourteen, not a corrupted clone (and I wouldn’t have even had an issue with Tentoo if he had been an exact clone! but noooo). 2 is irrelevant since 1 wasn’t a problem, and 3 is irrelevant because they weren’t in a parallel universe in the first place.

So yeah. As much as I’m happy with the way it ended, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think about it without comparing it to Journey’s End, and dreaming of what we could have had.

(Actually, if anyone has fic recs that merge the two concepts in any way, or make Journey’s End more like this episode, or just fix Journey’s End in general, please let me know!!!)

[metacrisisdoctor]

"Firstly, Rose is neither shallow nor stupid. She doesn’t settle for second best. She gets the person she fell in love with. And, as a bonus, he’s now able to spend the rest of his life with her, as she with him. Secondly, the very same person who experienced the heartbreak of losing Rose for the first time now experiences joy at the prospect of a lifetime in her company. In this full sense, the Doctor who lost, finally wins.” — Paul Dawson, Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside

[rosetylxrs]

is there a tentoo/rose discord or community or something out there i could join? i wanna join & talk about them but i have zero friends who ship them

[variousqueerthings]

i think in many ways it's harder for me to write about rose than any other companion of the show. with martha-detractors I simply go "be on your way, you are incorrect" (same with donna, but with less judgement), and I think that while I do have my niggling things about amy and clara, from what I've seen, the discussions around them (in these here parts of the interweb) are reeeelatively chill? or at least, if I've had positives or negatives to bring up about some of the writing, I think people tend to stay in their space of what does or doesn't work for them about these characters, whether or not they agree with what I'm saying (I think, same for river song)

this not to say that there isn't presumably drama out there, but I don't really care to seek it out, and so far I haven't seemed to invite it

with rose, my favourite companion because she was my first doctor who companion and I have such warm memories of her as a character type I looked up to, I'm kind of very affectionate of how I read her, and it's very based in feeling like her ending removes a lot of her agency

and I think she gets put so much into a box because of that ending, that trying to complicate that box makes people's hackles rise, even if you're not... saying anything bad about her? because you're a fan of her character? I don't think I've ever said anything to the contrary? specifically amatonormative box-wise, and I even read rose as an alloromantic character most of the time (unless I'm having fun going even further on complicating that, which I should do more often honestly)

people who don't like the idea of rose and doctor as romantic endgame get annoyed that they have to think about her at all, and it seems those people frequently put her low/lowest on their companion rankings because of the amatonormative read they have of the arc that they also don't like, and that is all she is as character to them in the end, which is such a shame

and people who do like the idea of rose and specifically tentoo as romantic endgame get annoyed because... well, I don't like it much? and I read rose and the doctor's relationship differently to something so straightforward? and I like challenging the ending that she's given that to me is very open and seemingly under-explored

in the end it's a shame that she's not "allowed" to have her narrative complicated in read, without inviting annoyed responses. and I don't technically care, it's whatever the character-read version of kink tomato is, you do you and if someone's taking that personally, that's whatever, that's the kind of shit that happens in fandom sometimes right? block and move on

but it does make her harder to write about, on the whole, knowing that she's not a character that's so open to interpretation in a lot of peoples minds, because it starts and stops with the romance. makes me think I should go harder on why I don't read that so simply, not to be spiteful, but just because there's not a lot of people from the looks of things who are fans of rose, but don't read a straightforward alloromantic narrative in her relationship with the doctor or with tentoo, so I do feel like I'm mooostly writing to the void (appreciated your comment a lot @figgyblossom and everyone who does engage with rose-posts that read her differently)

just uh... don't take this so seriously. I'm a rose fan, I wouldn't be writing about her so much if I wasn't

[heyitsspaceace]

she got him, but he had to leave her

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

I hate to keep being so salty about Moffat’s era b/c RTD’s first era did have some things I didn’t like but man RTD was a freaking genius at weaving so much emotion and heart into his stories while still keeping it sci-fi

I mean we had arcs for soooo many characters it’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it, and I’m not just talking about Nine, Ten/Tentoo, Rose, Martha and Donna

The companions families as well--positive and negative b/c I’m still not over how difficult it must have been for Martha’s family after their year with the Master. But Jackie and Pete had their happily ever after (and a baby), Mickey grew so much, Sylvia seemed to have a bit of a change of heart regarding Donna at the end, Wilf was fabulously Wilf (we saw their families so many times on screen!!)

Like think about how wild it is that I know Mickey was raised by his gran, I remember Martha warning her brother Leo and he was walking with a gf/wife/partner? pushing a baby stroller, Martha’s dad had a gf who I think was called Annalise and there was drama about that cheating scandal...I know so much about characters that aren’t really the main companions in comparison to, for example, Amy and Rory

We had arcs for “minor” characters like Cassandra, Harriet Jones, Adam, The Face of Boe, the Slitheen that took over Margaret, even Jake from Pete’s World

We had a connection between Gwyneth and Gwen with the explanation as to why they look the same, same for the explanation as to why Tosh was there in S1

We had what was essentially like an origin story for the Ood in S4 when they had first been introduced in S2

Jack had his own spinoff, I haven’t watched Classic Who but Sarah Jane was incredible in what I’ve seen of her own spinoff too

Even though there’s some things I don’t like about Journey’s End the reason it was so exciting to see was b/c of the culmination of so many characters that had so much backstory coming together. Come on we even had a reference to Mr. Copper from the “Voyage of the Damned” special since he funded the Sub-Wave Network! Incredible, just incredible. 

[sadwolves]

[khruschevshoe]

Stolen Earth/Journey's End v. A Good Man Goes To War

aka: The Importance of Character in Avngers-Assemble-Style Plots

There's something to be said about the reason why Stolen Earth/Journey's End works for me in a way that A Good Man Goes to War doesn't (despite them both being big, Avengers-assemble-style, finale-esque pieces of bombast) and it's very simple: we have spent Seasons getting to know the characters in Journey's End, with each one of them hitting the climax or the end of their character arc, all the way from the three main companions (Rose, Martha, and Donna) to even Mickey and Jackie and Jack and Sarah Jane and Harriet Jones, while we literally have no emotional connection to ANY of the characters in a Good Man Goes to War other than the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and I guess maybe River but she does nothing but exposition/plot twist dump at the end. Sure, there's the cameo of Captain Henry and his son from Curse of the Black Spot and it's fun to see them for a hot second, sure, but all the other characters we have never met before. The Doctor has the big exposition discussion/Colonel Runaway speech/discussion of anger/big Melody-as-a-trap reveal with Madame Vastra&Dorium, characters we've never met before.

As for the characters we know, Amy gets very little emotional fallout from the body horror situation of realizing you're pregnant and have been kidnapped other than a tiny little exchange with the Doctor regarding the nature of the Flesh (she does get to be horrified by Melody's disappearance, but that ends by the end of the episode). Rory gets a little something regarding protecting Amy but he gets very little emotional development/reaction in this episode other than crying when he meets Melody. Most of his time in the episode is spent randomly being badass/threatening the Doctor with a sword when the Doctor asks for permission to hug Amy (which 1) is incredibly sexist and very much not in keeping with Rory's character so far and 2) doesn't even make sense because the Doctor LITERALLY HUGS AMY earlier in the episode). The Doctor gets plenty of emotional reactions/realizations/regret this episode, but the structure of the episode/conceit of the Avengers-assemble-style story leads to a lot of flash without a lot of substance to back it up, unlike Stolen Earth/Journey's End which only works as well as it does with all of the plot/world-building shit/fan-service/plot twists it throws at you because it is almost all in service of character development. Ends to Martha's Doctorification arc, the Ten/Rose plot line, Donna's tragic ending, Mickey&Jackie's friendship, HARRIET JONES ARC MY BELOVED, even Jack getting to reunite with Rose. Even the more fan-servicy bits like bringing in the characters from Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures works because those characters are well-established with seasons of character development behind them, even if mainline-only watchers of Doctor Who aren't aware of it.

Stolen Earth/Journey's End is all about the character of the characters and A Good Man Goes to War is about cameos/introducing characters/exploring the agency of well-established characters and I think that's why one of them works far better than the other.

[darklinaforever]

Me, when people say that the doctor didn't really love Rose, and had a great romance with Madame de pompadour :

Honestly... how stupid can you be ?

Madame de Pompadour is literally there for a single episode, completely forgotten later. This is an episode that has no impact on the main plot. Not to mention that you can easily explain the doctor's behavior in relation to his complicated relationship with Rose. He almost told her he loved her. Became all the more aware of his mortality and therefore the impossibility of their relationship. The fear of seeing her die. He took Mickey, his boyfriend, on board. In short, you can easily tell yourself that he is trying to run away from his feelings for Rose. Even more so if we think of Jack and his sentence about blondes compared to the Doctor... Not to mention the fact that Madame de Pompadour is also an historical figure of whom the doctor is a very fan. (Even though the reality is that moffat just wrote a really bad episode in terms of continuity)

There is really this tendency that I was unaware of to hate the character of Rose and to deny her importance in the first 4 seasons of the series (Present over 2 entire seasons, mentioned as much as possible in season 3 and back in season 4). I even saw someone say that she wasn't that important because she had only been there for 2 seasons (wtf ?), that the doctor never saw her as an equal (wtf ?), or even really loved her (wtf ?). Where does all this bullshit come from ? The 10th Doctor's very identity essentially revolves around / is intrinsically linked to Rose. It's crazy though.

[whywhatswrongwithblue]

there’s over 3.2k works for tentoorose on ao3 alone 🥺🥺 i love my underrated babies

[gingerdunbroch]

i really wish we had more content about tentoo and rose’s life in pete’s world

i particularly would love a comic series about them—i really enjoyed Empire Of The Wolf and i wish there would be a series delving into their life together in the years between Journey’s End and EotW

just as long as it’s not written by whoever did Turning Of The Tide

[captainswan618]

Fully! Some people get really into tentoo and I understand for logistical reasons—the cast/crew completely changes, like COMPLETELY after s4–why they had to it’s just….so unsatisfying that is NOT the doctor!!!

Sorry it took me a minute to answer this - I realized I wasn’t really clear in my earlier post that I hadn’t actually finished the specials yet, just the regular season, so I was still holding out a bit of hope that they would fix it. (Btw one of the reasons I had hope was that I kept seeing that gifset of Rose and Ten saying “happy new year,” so I was pretty sure they would see each other again. I had successfully avoided reading the rest of the subtitles to avoid spoilers, so I didn’t know what that scene actually was, but now that I do, that hope is FUCKING HEARTBREAKING.) I knew there would be a new Doctor and everything after the specials, so idk how I thought they would fix it in that time, but yeah. Anyway, I didn’t want to see spoilers for the specials, so I avoided really reading the ask.

BUT NOW THAT I’M DONE I CAN RANT!

What the fuck even happened there???? Was it seriously supposed to be a happy ending for Rose?? Tentoo (lol at that name - I’ve seen “Tenthree” tossed around, I think as another name for Fourteen, and things are starting to fall into place 😂) was a clone of Ten, and not even an exact one. He had some of Donna’s human DNA, and we witnessed him make different decisions than Ten. He was a different person. I just can’t believe that Rose would be happy with an imperfect copy of the man she loved.

And that’s not even getting into how shitty the thing Ten said about her making Tentoo better was — as if Rose were just a tool to improve a different version of him, instead of being a full person who fell in love with that version of him, and who deserves to be happy.

Anyway, it’s all very muddled in my brain. I want Rose to be happy, but it honestly feels to me like a betrayal of her character if she’s happy with him, as if he can just neatly substitute for her Doctor. I guess I’ll just have to read a lot of fix-it fics, lol. (If anyone reading this has recs they are EXTREMELY WELCOME.)

[metacrisisdoctor]

DOCTOR & ROSE | EXTENDED JOURNEY'S END KISS

[softdandelions]

a.k.a the tentoorose anthem <3

[darklinaforever]

Deconstructing Moffat fanboys (and why they will ALWAYS choose to believe Ten was in love with and shagged Reinette)

I want to say that the ideas in this meta are not entirely my own – I’ve gotten a lot of help and feedback from MEN irl. MEN AS IN MALE. And that’s something I want to highlight bc of the very nature of what I will be saying here. A lot of people are getting upset over the latest Moffat fan to hit the Internet today, via that Digital Spy article (which I won’t link to, out of principle lol).

I – and every other Doctor Who fan with a sense of justice and a keyboard – has written meta about the inherent sexism in Moffat episodes, but that’s not what this post is about: it’s about the inherent sexism of the fanboys, and why our very valid arguments are doomed to fail. In particular, this is about their sexism, and why they cheer on every one of the Doctor’s romantic escapades (both real and imagined), except for one … Rose Tyler. Why is that? Is it classism? Maybe. Sexism??? Definitely.

It’s important to take a big step back, and look at the fanboys, and how a lot of them initially became Doctor Who fans: because a LOT of them are Classic Who fans, or at least had it on their peripheral radar (and conversely, the show didn’t have nearly as many female fans back then as it does today). These concepts are almost definitely related. Prior to 2005, the Doctor was a lone figure. He wasn’t always handsome – but he was brilliant. He saved the day. He was respected – and when he wasn’t, he proved himself and brought his enemies to heel. He had hot companions that he never looked twice at because he didn’t need to. He was powerful, and smart …

… and pretty much the perfect character for a geeky male tween/teen to self-identify with. Particularly males who maybe had a bit of a hard time with women—which, let’s face it, although stereotypes are often a bad thing, the stereotype of a geeky male who is uncomfortable with women is still culturally relevant.

Fast forward to 2005. Billie Piper is the companion. And she’s hot, right? In a girl-next-door kind of way (probably the girl you could never get a date with). And there’s some flirtation with Nine, but nothing you can’t really handwave away if you’re so freaking totally excited that your favorite show is back on the air after a long hiatus, and the writer’s don’t push things too far. (This, I believe, is where I think a lot of the “I liked Rose — but only in season 1” comments come from). And Nine dies for her – and not in the same distant way that Five dies for Peri, by handing her the poison’s antidote instead of taking it himself. Nine kisses her. This is the stuff of discomfort here (and probably where a lot of the “Bad Wolf wasn’t really Rose – it was the TARDIS!!” stuff comes from).

Now let’s fast forward to 2006. Again, Billie is the companion, but this time she sizzles on screen with David Tennant. And they are clearly in love, they are written to be in love. You’re a fan, you watch the confidentials, and you read DWM, and it’s all over the place. And here is your male childhood hero, the hero on TV you identify with because he’s not the kind of Casanova that you will never be either, because he never needed to be–and look at him. He’s fawning all over Rose. She’s just a stupid companion. She’s no different from anyone else!! But he fucking cries when she leaves?? Wtf is this bullshit about him practically being suicidal in The Runaway Bride? WHY WON’T HE SHUT UP ABOUT HER IN S3?? He is NOT supposed to be emotionally reliant on women. He is supposed to be YOU. And YOU’RE not emotionally reliant on women—particularly not those who are all kind of girl-next-door and kind of remind you of the girl you could never get a date with in high school. That is NOT her place. He shouldn’t even NOTICE her!!

… so what do you do?

You hone into episodes like Girl in the Fireplace. Let’s think like an angry cis white male for a minute here:

1)      Option 1 is that you have problems with the characterization and sexism in the script, because it’s very OOC and the Doctor’s character arc is compromised in many ways, including but not limited to the fact that he no longer acts like he’s in love with the companion who now pisses you the hell off for reasons stated about

2)      Option 2 is that he sidelines his useless companion, just like she’s meant to fucking be sidelined. He doesn’t notice her. He falls in love with someone else – someone who WAITS for him, because he is an allegory for you, and he is just that damn awesome that girls will do that. She’s hot and famous and has a huge rack, and even though the episode’s writer and DWM come right out and say he never screwed her, you insist upon it. Not because you don’t know better – but because it means that Rose is now back to being the companion she should be (e.g. “I really hated Rose in s2 – except for Girl in the Fireplace, she was great in that one!”)

Why doesn’t this extend to other ships, you may ask? Because Rose was unique in that since then, the Doctor has never been so emotionally reliant – indeed, repeatedly emasculated, for multiple seasons, in their opinion – by a love interest. (e.g. “I really hated how he moped over Rose – he never moped over Dodo!”)

River Song – first off, he’s not exactly written to be in love with her. He’s alluded to have sex with her, and spar with her—she’s a sassy, sexy match, and he never really mourns her extensively.

QE1 – he shagged her and they broke up

Reinette – Reinette who? (After GitF, she’s never mentioned again)

Astrid – ditto

Lady Christina – ditto

Lynda-with-a-Y – ditto

Jabe – ditto

Joan – it wasn’t really the Doctor, and again, except for feeling bad about the incident in The End of Time, by all appearances he’s over it as quickly as with the others

Rose is clearly different. VERY different. And that’s why he was NEVER in love with her, and she WASN’T special, and that’s why he FELL IN LOVE WITH REINETTE, and that’s why he SHAGGED REINETTE, and that’s why S1 ROSE WAS BETTER, and that’s why MOFFAT IS A BETTER WRITER, and that’s why … ((insert fanboy opinion trope here)).

It all comes down to this: Rose mattered. Rose touched the Doctor’s life in a way that fanboys don’t want to admit they would have liked to have been touched during their formative years, when he was an allegory for them. And to this very day, it pisses them off.