I love your wolf at the door series very much, and im really excited for your retelling of season 5. Ive read a couple retellings of season 5 with rose included and im aleays excited to see how amy and rory fit into a story with rose in it. Can you give any idea of how those relationships are going to be, maybe ??
hi and thank you!! hope you're ready for a Long Answer because I don't seem to be able to do short ones these days :)
So, first thing's first. I feel like I can't explain my Rose & Amy & Rory dynamics without addressing how most Pond-Era rewrites with Rose are set up. Basically, most fics set in this era have one out of two core Doctor/Rose vibes which then impact all the other character relationships:
The Doctor and Rose were either never separated OR they reunited a long time ago, and now they're super married. In these types of stories, the regeneration causes a bit of a shakeup in their dynamic but only a very minor one, and they are baseline happy.
The Doctor meets little Amelia (and eventually grown-up Amy) while alone, and at some point during his travels with her and Rory, Rose comes back all of a sudden.
In scenario 1, usually Rose has a sort of warm maternal relationship with Amy, who looks up to her in return. Sometimes this results in a little less closeness between Amy and the Doctor in canon, sometimes not. In scenario 2, usually Amy is shown as very jealous of Rose (and sometimes it's mutual), because she didn't know Rose existed until she showed up out of nowhere and now suddenly she's the most important person in the Doctor's life instead of Amy.
Regardless of whether a fic uses scenario 1 or 2, usually Rose and Rory get along well. They are often written as the "sensible" (though jeopardy-friendly) counterparts to their daring/reckless partners. I do think Rose and Rory would get along, but I feel like this justification sells them both a bit short.
NOW. In my story, we're working with scenario 3. (Actual Plot Spoilers for the Howling books 1-4 and like relationship vibe spoilers for book 5 below)
3. Rose has just returned to being human(ish) after being a chaotic, destructive Eldritch Terror in constant agony who definitely destroyed several inhabited planets (and many more uninhabited ones) for good. She's sort of like Nine right now, operating out of an extreme level of guilt and self-loathing and feeling undeserving of love and also feeling an obligation to do as much good in the universe as possible as a form of penance. Eleven, on the other hand, also went through the wringer in Rose's absence BUT he wasn't alone. Martha and Donna absolutely helped him heal from losing the love of his lives, but now she's back! He's ecstatic to have her back, so much so that he's inclined to overlook all the Eldritch Terror planet-eating stuff, and he's got this deep and vivid fear of losing her again. Add to that new-regeneration-insecurity and we've got ourselves a party.
So, how does this impact their relationships with the Ponds?
Well, for one thing, young Amelia has two mad people in a box appear in her backyard, not just one. She grows up idolizing the pair of them, and when she and Rory play make-believe, she dresses up as Rose and he dresses up as the Doctor. So when older Amy meets them both, she’s built up this image in her head of the pair of them that isn’t wholly accurate—the Doctor as a goofy, swashbuckling hero, Rose as a beautiful, nurturing damsel in distress (thanks to a poorly timed seizure).
As she actually gets to know them, Amy’s rather disappointed that their romance is not as perfect as she imagined (but she’s rooting for them to get it figured out). She is impressed by Rose’s bravery and wit and kindness, but confused by her self-loathing and the uncanny age in her eyes and the way she seems to disregard her limits and personal safety. By linear measures, Rose is only a couple years older than Amy, but all that time (or, well, untime) in the Void has changed her.
Rose looks at Amy and sees echoes of herself: both lost at least one parent at a young age, both have somewhat “dead-end” jobs at nineteen (insofar as there aren’t really avenues for promotion and neither envisions working that role forever), both leave their childhood-bestie-turned-boyfriend behind to travel time and space, both have learnt to be brave when the world doesn’t expect much of them. Of course, because Rose first met Amelia as a child, she has a hard time no longer seeing her as such, and sometimes the way she treats Amy comes off as somewhat patronising or infantilising. Rose also really doesn’t think she should be a role model. As mentioned above, she starts off the story not operating out of an abundance is self-compassion, so anything Amy does that seems like she’s trying to be like or impress Rose is upsetting to Rose also. And another thing—Amelia is all about remembering when all Rose really wants right now is to forget.
Rory also grew up with the stories Amy told about the Doctor and Rose, but he didn’t really believe her, or if he did once, he certainly doesn’t by the time he first meets them. In the two years between defeating Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi and the Pond-Williams wedding, he does some research into both the Doctor and Rose. This goes beyond just reading about dimensional theory—he also finds Clive’s old website and Rose’s old missing posters. He's pieced together a lot more of the truth about them than Amy has by the time he comes aboard, but he’s also Rory about it—patient, occasionally snarky, rarely pushing things except when it’s important. Rose appreciates that he doesn’t ask too many questions, and is irritated when he (correctly) insists she rest or not strain herself when her disabilities are acting up. It’s often easier to tell him about her fears and self-judgment and all that than it is to tell the Doctor, because he seems sort of detached from it all.
Also, I don’t want to sound too bleak about the nature of Rose & the Doctor’s relationship because they do get back to a (very) good place by the end of all this!! They are still best friends and still deeply in love and still each other’s favourite person. It’s just that in any relationship there are growing pains, and when one of you is a nine-century-old face-changing alien and the other of you is a human-turned-avatar-for-an-amoral-eldritch-entity, rough patches are perhaps a bit more pronounced than they are for us mere mortals.
Another important note here—a lot of Pond Era Plus Rose stories just sort of slide Rose into the side of the fic like an observer, or slot her in instead of River, or otherwise reduce her plot centrality. It's hard NOT to do this if you're trying to stay fairly canon compliant. I'm... not so concerned with that in the Moffat era, because there's so little internal consistency and character growth and emotional depth that I'm going to have to build a lot from whole cloth anyhow. Someone once described this series as me doing precision surgery on the canon, but from book 5 on I’d say it’s more like exploding the canon and using parts of it to patch together something new in its place.
If you accidentally killed someone, who are your top three people you'd trust to have your back?
“Well, Holly and Sahra are definitely getting the call. They’d definitely help me stay out of jail because I would not fair well. I’d say Emil, but I wouldn’t want to risk him being away from Isa if we got caught. Perhaps Wes or Shane because if Holly was involved, might as well make it a family affair. But really.. I think I’d call Alara. She used to get spiders out of my apartment, so it’s not that big of a jump, right?”
ft. @hollyparkcr, ft. @sahrademir, ft. @emilmoreno, ft. @wesparkcr, ft. @shanepcrker, ft. @alarakcplan
secret agent!jimin has such an eye for detail. so much sharper than he lets on, and it's honestly blindsiding how much he notices and remembers. but he hides it all beneath this very cute and goofy persona, like he's always falling off chairs and giggling over jungkook's and tae's antics and whining about how he never gets assigned anywhere interesting when it comes to missions (damn you, namjoon).
oh, and he gives great advice. when he starts talking, you'd best listen. 💜
You said in your tags you had an Arthur/Mary AU fic? Did you post it? I would love more of the text conversation you posted.
Ah how very sweet! Unfortunately, no I never posted or finished my Arthur/Mary fic. This is so sweet tho, thank you! Maybe someday I'll get over my writer's block, but tbh I'm not comfortable writing in Arthur's voice (dialects are hard to pin down), so please don't hold your breath lol.
The howling series is actually taking over my brain
without too many spoilers:
How will Bad Wolf affect Rose as a disability?
Thank you!! Hmm, I think I can do this without too many spoilers for the future… but if anyone reading this isn’t caught up with “The Howling” series, spoilers for books 1-4 below
Ok so, as of book 4’s ending we have already seen Bad Wolf’s impacts show up in the form of migraines and at least one seizure (plus flickering in and out of being, I’m p sure the flickering is done now but the seizing will remain and I’m trying to do some more research to make sure I am at least semi-accurate with that experience)… can confirm that both types of episodes will continue to recur with trigger points related to Rose’s temporal sensitivity as Bad Wolf (and there’s a lot lot lot of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff ahead…)
Rose will live with a higher level of fatigue than she did previously, and her temporal senses and telepathic (and especially empathic) abilities, which originated with the original Bad Wolfening but strengthen now that she’s back, will cause their own challenges, sometimes triggering headaches or seizures. There’s gonna be some definite PTSD from the whole “being nothing then destroying myriad worlds” thing.
I’m still exploring a few other ways the whole thing might impact her body in ways that are helpful for her, challenging for her, or sometimes both. Bad Wolf has made it so she can do some things she couldn’t before (obviously) but it’s also gonna make some of the things she could do before difficult, sometimes impossible. I’m trying to stay vague here to avoid too many spoilers…
BUT
I think the way I’m most excited to write about BW as a disability, and this bit might be slightly spoilery but more of relationship dynamics than of specific plot points per se, is less about the changes to Rose’s health itself and more about the way the changes in her influence her relationship with herself and the Doctor. She’s gonna go through it for a while. She’s gonna be frustrated with these newfound difficulties. She’s gonna push herself past the point where it’s wise as she’s still learning her new limits. And the Doctor is of course initially gonna go hardcore overprotective as he does. Watching the pair of them navigate how Rose’s disabilities necessarily alter both their lives, and seeing them figure out what triggers her and what soothes her, what can be treated and what must simply be waited out, watching her grow from frustration and pain to a fuller understanding and acceptance of her new reality (albeit marked by some level of frustration and pain bc tbh those def don’t go away) and especially watching the Doctor have to come to terms with the fact that Rose cannot be “fixed”/“cured” and that her disabilities don’t mean he can go making decisions for her or treating her like she’s fragile.
Rose needs care, but everyone needs care. Sometimes that care looks like spending time in the Zero Room in total isolation and silence until a migraine passes. Sometimes that care looks like sitting an adventure or two out. Sometimes that care looks like the Doctor holding her hair while she throws up a bunch. Sometimes that care looks like needing the Doctor to put her in rescue position until a seizure passes, then take her back to the TARDIS to sleep off the postdrome and help her remember when things are fuzzy afterwards. Sometimes that care looks like the Doctor pleading with Pete to make just one (1) flavour of Vitex that doesn’t taste atrocious because it’s genuinely the best way to get Rose all the nutrition she needs when she can’t bring herself to eat but it all tastes like, as Jack Harkness will describe it, “synthetic ass.”
Mostly that care looks like continuing to love her, respect her, and support her, even and especially when she finds it hardest to love herself.
