i'm going to stop pretending that i didn't break your heart;

[ever_neutral]

And so it continues.

02 | the ship you love because it really never will was going to happen

'Cause he never looked at her twice. I mean, he liked her, but that was
it. And she wasted years pining after him, years of her life, 'cause
while he was around, she never looked at anyone else. And I told her, I
always said to her, time and time again, I said, "get out"
So this is me, getting out.

/random boring spam


Surprise, I ship it. (Tho, not a surprise to xx_pinkstar, bless.) This may earn me some stink eye considering the way this fandom is about 1) Doctor/Rose and 2) doctor/companion pairings in general. I'm pretty sure 80% of criticisms leveled at the show concern the almost-constant UST between the (revolving-door) leads BUT I BEG TO DIFFER. I will literally ship the Doctor with practically everyone except River and Clara. Humans, aliens, the Tardis; I DON'T CARE. And you can expect to see all the canon doc/companion ships here before this meme is out; deal with it or like go eat a tree I don't care what you do with your life.

Ahem. So, Martha/Ten. Unpopular ship. Firstly because everyone's obsessed with Rose/Ten, and secondly because Ten is a bag of dicks who never appreciated Martha like she deserved, which I understand turns a lot of people off. Not me! I live for terrible awkward unrequited shit like that, MAKE OF IT WHAT YOU WILL. One huge source of appeal of Martha/Ten for me, ironically, is actually because I don't care to see the Doctor being portrayed as some smoldering romantic hero. I don't care for him being romanticized or glorified. I LIKE that even though the Doctor can be a hero and saver of galaxies blah blah blah, he is also the world's worst friend/boyfriend and also generally a vain self-absorbed douche. At the same time, I do find it very believable (and almost inevitable in certain cases) that so many would fall head-over-heels for that showy time lord shit because, well. But the thing about Martha and Ten's NOT!romance is that while there is a textual ongoing romantic/sexual tension (and unlike the Doctor and Rose's relatively straightforward epic love) the relationship itself isn't romanticized. That is, it isn't presented as romantic.

And really, why should it be. Why should any doctor/companion relationship be. The Doctor is a hundreds-years-old genocidal alien. I'm not particularly interested in seeing romance involving him, but I am (always) interested in seeing romantic tropes being subverted. And while I can appreciate how the story was problematic (re: the narrative either implicitly or explicitly pitting Martha against Rose and/or propping up Doctor/Rose), it's also clear IMO that we're meant to sympathize with Martha in her rejection, often even over the Doctor -- her relationship with him is framed almost completely from her POV and, like Amy, it overturns and to some degree deconstructs the idealised perspective of the Doctor-as-romantic-figure established by Rose/Ten. One of the things that works for me about the tragedy of Martha and Ten is that it's so mundane: it's not sprawling and epic; the Doctor isn't a tortured Romeo -- he is really just another guy who took you for granted.

[ASIDE: And contrary to how this basic piece of shit fandom would have it, Martha Jones is not wholly and solely "defined" by the Doctor. She is in fact consistently portrayed as an exceptionally capable, intelligent, proactive, and moral person whose one major weakness is being hung up on an emotionally unavailable guy. I balk at the idea that the latter "ruined" her character because no, being a Strong Female Character (TM) let alone a "strong woman" does not preclude being in love with a dude who's bad for you -- plus also fuck Strong Female Characters (TM). This complaint particularly irks me wrt Martha since inside the story she consistently displays agency, has life goals that are unrelated to men, forms and maintains relationships with other women, helps people for the sake of helping people and, oh yeah, SAVES THE ENTIRE WORLD ALMOST SINGLEHANDEDLY, not to mention the Doctor's useless ass on more than one occasion. And at the end of it all she makes the decision for herself to stop traveling with the Doctor, not just because she recognizes that she deserves better but also in order to pursue her true life goal: helping people in need. The moral of this paragraph is basically that Martha Jones is a goddess and peasants will bow or get out of my journal.]

Possibly the most (mundanely) tragic part, though, is the effect of bad timing. The thing is that Martha is exactly the Doctor's type of person: smart, curious, headstrong, big heart, gorgeous, adapts easily in bizarre situations, etc. and their best moments are when he properly acknowledges these things (especially in Smith & Jones). The Doctor does love and care for Martha a lot, considers her his best friend for a long time. But, ultimately, his heart's not fully in it; he left it back in that parallel universe. You could have had it all but instead were hung up on what was already lost. Which, really, is obnoxiously human.

So, yeah, in summary: Martha/Ten. Wrong!ship it because it was absolutely futile. COME AT ME.

Comments

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

And I actually think that the Ten-is-a-privileged-white-dude-whose-servant-is-Martha, which Ten chooses, lolol, is actually genuinely a good reflection of their dynamic
lol IT'S HILARIOUS BECAUSE IT'S HORRIBLE. (I actually hadn't considered that but I'm inclined to agree.)

And yeah, Ten inviting Joan along cracks my shit up every time. Ten, you are the worst. So entertaining.

Your thoughts about Ten's alien-ness are interesting to me though because that's typically how I see Eleven. I always thought Ten was the one who secretly yearned to be part of the ~human world~ (but ultimately couldn't, for obvious reasons) and his attitude towards Martha was really just specific to the context (i.e. mourning Rose).

Anyway, wrong!ship! (I might ship this too wrongly?)
YESSSSS JOIN ME. \o/ \o/ \o/

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I do think that Ten is more human than Eleven, but he's also -- like, has superpowers, is immortal, he loves humans so much but so many of their problems are something he never has to worry about. I have a vague feeling, for ex., that he chose the 1910s in part because on some level in his calculations he thought Martha would be easier to control from...his position as not even aware of who he was, if she was in a socially depowered position. I don't think this is racism toward her as a POC, because on some level, I think that the actual nitty-gritty of the everyday stuff of the way systemic human racism works just goes way below his emotional radar. I'm sure he knows it exists, but I think for him, all human existence exists within a fairly narrow spectrum, and all humans (unless they Bad Wolf out or whatever) have such limited power that it's not like he fully intuitively recognizes the difference between Martha being an empowered 21st century doctor and being a 1910s servant, because, well, when you're practically a god both are not really that dissimilar. See also the "strut around like you own the place!" thing in the Shakespeare ep that my friend somebraveapollo brings up a lot -- that is probably the writers more so than Ten, but I think that it is more clueless about the realities of human dynamics than hurtful, but it also, I think, comes from a recognition that all humans are so ridiculously depowered compared to him anyway that, you know, what does it matter?

What doesn't mean he doesn't want to be human, or doesn't even have a basically human emotional makeup -- but the power differential is where the alien-ness comes in and the inability then to pick up on certain nuances of his own dickishness because he does kind of fetishize humans as these bright innocentish sprites and can't quite respect them all the way and is basically emotionally built the same way but can't quite recognize it and has SO MANY FEELINGS all the time but can't quite work it out.

I do agree that the mourning Rose makes him particularly inclined to screw up and is the bigger part of why he can't form enough of an emotional attachment, but I do think that there is a big ~privilege blind spot (as a god, not as a white guy, but the Time Lord thing is kind of a metaphor for British colonial adventurer of yore!, so) w.r.t. humans that he doesn't bother trying to get over with Martha the way he does with Rose because of love and the way Donna browbeats him into paying attention to. He gets total respect for Martha...right around when she realizes she needs to move the fuck on with her life. I mean, that being "the year where he is captured and tortured and she goes around the world spreading the word of resistancey things".

The Joan thing cracks me up. For some reason it reminds me of Xander/Anya after the non-wedding. "You don't want to get married, but you still want to...date?" hahaha. Of course, Xander is 21 and Ten is not.

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

See also the "strut around like you own the place!" thing in the Shakespeare ep that my friend somebraveapollo brings up a lot -- that is probably the writers more so than Ten, but I think that it is more clueless about the realities of human dynamics than hurtful, but it also, I think, comes from a recognition that all humans are so ridiculously depowered compared to him anyway that, you know, what does it matter?
True. And that's a good example. I think I can agree with your analysis of the Doctor being so removed from humans and enjoying so much power that he's just callous in that way. I like the way you put it as him "fetishising humans", lol.

He gets total respect for Martha...right around when she realizes she needs to move the fuck on with her life.
Indeed. I think there's also something there about the Doctor's specific fucked-up-ness that caused him to respect her less when she was trying to earn his recognition? IDK.

For some reason it reminds me of Xander/Anya after the non-wedding. "You don't want to get married, but you still want to...date?" hahaha. Of course, Xander is 21 and Ten is not.
LOLOLOL. You have a point.

(Also, just looking back at my comment -- I didn't actually mean to say that I think Eleven is ~less~ innately human or whatever than Ten -- I'm sort of tired of this fandom conception of Ten as super emo and angsty in contrast to Eleven who is supposedly not emo/angsty, when it's like, all the same issues and emotions and weaknesses are there, just manifested differently. I honestly think the Doctor is an incredibly consistent character in all incarnations.)